To Sacrifice the Joy of Life is to Miss the Point
Your ability to get things done and be productive is not always a function of hours. Working more doesn’t always mean you’re working better or harder. It doesn’t mean you’re …
Books
The Best Way to Get Smarter? Learn to Read the Right Way.
There is a Buffett & Munger interview from 2013 that we reflect on frequently. They discuss how they’ve leaped ahead of their peers and competitors time and time again: Munger: We’ve learned how …
Nick Hornby Reminds us Why We Love Books (Sometimes)
“All the books we own, both read and unread, are the fullest expression of self we have at our disposal…With each passing year, and with each whimsical purchase, our libraries become more …
Maria Konnikova on How we Get Conned
There’s a scene in the classic Paul Newman film The Sting, where Johnny Hooker (played by a young Robert Redford) tries to get Henry Gondorf (played by Newman) to finally tell him when …
The Difference Between Truth and Honesty: What Law School Teaches us About Insight, Logic, and Thinking
“We don’t see things as they are, but as we are.” — Anaïs Nin *** Matthew Frederick‘s series of 101 things I learned in {Business School, Law School, Architecture School, …
Religion and History: Will Durant on the Role of Religion and Morality
“Even the skeptical historian develops a humble respect for religion, since he sees it functioning, and seemingly indispensable, in every land and age.” *** Will and Ariel Durant have …
Just Twenty-Five Pages a Day
I love bookshelves. I love the physical act of having the books on the shelves to be looked at, admired, and remembered. When I was younger, I really enjoyed the library, and I still do. But I learned …
Steven Pinker: What a Broad Education Should Entail
Harvard’s biologist/psychologist Steven Pinker is one of my favorites, even though I’m just starting to get into his work. What makes him great is not just his rational mind, but his …
Ten Commandments for Aspiring Superforecasters
The Knowledge Project interview with Philip Tetlock deconstructs our ability to make accurate predictions into specific components. He learned through his work on The Good Judgment Project. In …
E.O. Wilson on Becoming a Great Scientist
The biologist E.O. Wilson, now of Harvard University, made his first and largest splash by releasing his book Sociobiology: The New Synthesis, which made the controversial claim (at the time) that …
Mindfulness versus Concentration
From the excellent Mindfulness in Plain English: Concentration and mindfulness are distinctly different functions. They each have their role to play in meditation, and the relationship between them is …
Three Filters Needed to Think Through Problems
One of the best parts of Garrett Hardin‘s wonderful Filters Against Folly is when he explores the three filters that help us interpret reality. No matter how much we’d like it to, the …
The Two Sides of Seneca and A Lesson on Human Fallibility
If you can withhold moral judgment, Dying Every Day: Seneca at the Court of Nero is a great historical account of making decisions in complex situations. Here is one way to describe the career …
Biases and Blunders
You would be hard pressed to come across a reading list on behavioral economics that doesn’t mention Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein. …
Knowledge Makes Everything Simpler
Operating a screw is pretty simple as John Maeda points out in The Laws of Simplicity: Just mate the grooves atop the screw’s head to the appropriate tip-slotted or Phillips-of a screwdriver. …
Richard Feynman on Refusing an Honorary Degree, Being Driven, and Understanding his Circle of Competence
Perfectly Reasonable Deviations From the Beaten Track is a wonderful collection of letters written to and from the physicist and professor Richard Feynman—champion of understanding, explainer, an …