Farnam Street
Mastering the best of what other people have already figured out
If life is a game, how do you play it? The answer will have a huge impact on your choices, your satisfaction, and how you achieve success. *** James Carse, the Director of Religious Studies at New …
The author Louis L’Amour (1908-1988) was among America’s most prolific and most beloved. He wrote 105 books, most of which were fiction, and at his death in 1988 they were all still in print. Most …
“The object of education is not to fill a man’s mind with facts; it is to teach him how to use his mind in thinking.” — Henry Ford *** In his memoir My Life and Work, written in …
Legendary scientist Richard Feynman (1918-1988) was famous for his penetrating insight and clarity of thought. Famous for not only the work he did to garner a Nobel Prize, but also for the lucidity of …
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 …
There are two main mindsets we can navigate life with: growth and fixed. Having a growth mindset is essential for success. In this post, we explore how to develop the right mindset for improving your …
“By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third, by experience, which is the bitterest.” — Confucius *** …
Brainpickings put me onto this timeless wisdom from famous eccentric James T. Mangan’s 1936 book You Can Do Anything! PRACTICE Consider the knowledge you already have — the things you really …
Melissa Korn reporting in the Wall Street Journal: “The biggest complaint,” writes Korn is that “undergraduate degrees focus too much on the nuts and bolts of finance and accounting and don’t …
Teacher Jessica Lahey reminds parents that the educational benefits of consequences are a gift, not a dereliction of duty. The stories teachers exchange these days reveal a whole new level of …
Despite his best efforts and long hours, Nobel-Prize winning physicist and professor Carl Wieman grew frustrated by his inability to teach and his students’ failure to learn. When I first taught …
Everyone has an opinion on what to teach at business school. Few are as informed or timeless as Charlie Munger, the billionaire business partner of Warren Buffett at Berkshire Hathaway. Here’s …
Clay Christensen is best known as the author of The Innovator’s Dilemma. He’s also the author of a new book, How Will You Measure Your Life?, which has some wonderful insights (see …
Deliberate practice is a method for improving your performance at anything, based on constant feedback and working at the edge of your abilities. Elite people in every field use it to build up their …
“He (Richard Feynman) was always searching for patterns, for connections, for a new way of looking at something, but I suspect his motivation was not so much to understand the world as it was to …
Although Neil Gaiman never attended college, he gives one of the best commencement speeches ever. This is right up there with the Steve Jobs and David Foster Wallace commencement speeches. People who …