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 …
Learning
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 …
Albert Bandura on Acquiring Self-Efficacy and Personal Agency
Psychologist Albert Bandura is famous for his social learning theory which is really more of a model than a theory. He stresses the importance of observational learning. Who you spend time with …
Lifelong Learning
Your education shouldn’t end when your schooling does. If you want to get an edge in life, you must be constantly learning, not coasting along on what you already know. Lifelong learning requires the …
Ray Dalio: Open-Mindedness And The Power of Not Knowing
Ray Dalio, founder of the investment firm Bridgewater Associates (and guest on The Knowledge Project), offers a prime example of what a learning organization looks like in the best book I’ve ever read …
Elon Musk on How To Build Knowledge
Elon Musk recently did an AMA on reddit. Here are three question-and-response pairs that I enjoyed, including how to build knowledge. He knows how to say I don’t know. Previously, you’ve …
Richard Feynman: The Difference Between Knowing the Name of Something and Knowing Something
Richard Feynman (1918-1988) was no ordinary genius. He believed that “the world is much more interesting than any one discipline.” His explanations — on why questions, why trains stay on the tracks as …
Charlie Munger: Adding Mental Tools to Your Toolbox
In The Art of War, Sun Tzu said: “The general who wins a battle makes many calculations in his temple before the battle is fought.” Those ‘calculations’ are the tools we have available to …
Edward Hess, Interview No. 6
This interview with Ed Hess is full of amazing insights but I don’t know if you’ll read it because a) it’s long and we live in a world of increasingly short attention spans and b) it’s an actual …
Learning by Thinking: How Reflection Aids Performance
“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 *** …
Decision Journal: Template and Example Included
One of the strangest things about being human is that we can’t trust our own memories of what we were thinking. Not because we forget but rather because our brains actively edit the past to make …
“That’s as far as they go. They can’t take it any further. And why not? Because they won’t put in the effort”
A brilliant passage from Haruki Murakami’s Norwegian Wood on talent. There just happen to be people like that. They’re blessed with this marvelous talent, but they can’t make the effort to …
Rethinking the Value of a Business Major
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 …
The Secret Ingredient for Success: The Brutal Discipline Necessary for Self-Assessment
Camille Sweeney and Josh Gosfield, authors of The Art of Doing: How Superachievers Do What They Do and How They Do It So Well, came out with an op-ed in the New York Times. The interesting …
Robert Greene explains the Process to Attain Mastery
The relationship between people and their craft is such that you can tell by the path they have followed whether they are a master or an amateur. Robert Greene, most famous for his exposure of power, …
Arguments Are For Learning, Not Winning
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 …