Farnam Street
Mastering the best of what other people have already figured out
Michael Abrashoff was in his mid-thirties when he took command of the USS Benfold, a guided missile destroyer and one of the worst-performing ships in the navy. Despite her potency, the …
German Philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) influenced some of the more prominent minds in the world. His writings and lessons traverse time and discipline. Schopenhauer confronted …
“We shall never have more time. We have, and have always had, all the time there is.” *** Despite having been published in 1910, Arnold Bennett’s book How to Live on 24 Hours a Day remains …
It can be daunting, wondering what to give people, especially at this time of year. What gift properly communicates the feelings you have for someone? One idea is to give yourself. Another is to give …
The first thing they always do is tell you what they think. When someone has an opinion about everything, they want to share it with you. They often tout stats and research as if they had an imaginary …
“Thought is the original source of all wealth, all success, all material gain, all great discoveries and inventions, and of all achievement.” —Claude M. Bristol *** One of the most …
We’re quite glad that you read Farnam Street, and we hope we’re always offering you a massive amount of value. (If not, email us and tell us what we can do more effectively.) But there’s a message all …
It’s a wonderful idea to try to find a set of systems and principles that “work better” for big swaths of your life. Better habits, better mental tendencies, better methods of …
“Often we imagine that we will work hard until we arrive at some distant goal, and then we will be happy. This is a delusion. Happiness is the result of a life lived with purpose. Happiness is …
At the PEN America Literary Gala & Free Expression Awards, J.K. Rowling, of Harry Potter fame, received the 2016 PEN/Allen Foundation Literary Service Award. Embedded in her acceptance speech is …
“The life of wisdom must be a life of contemplation combined with action.” *** Life is full of problems. We can moan about them, or we can solve them. Scott Peck argues in The Road Less …
At some time or another, we’ve all sought to make big changes. And almost of all of us have, after making grand plans, discovered that changing some aspect of our lives or organizations, whether …
Lee Kuan Yew, the former Prime Minister of Singapore and the one responsible for its rise from third world to first in only a generation, is a great source of wisdom. In this excerpt from, Lee Kuan …
“Always design a thing by considering it in its next larger context —a chair in a room, a room in a house, a house in an environment, an environment in a city plan.” — Eliel Saarinen *** …
Architect Matthew Frederick draws our attention to the three levels of knowing in 101 Things Things I Learned in Architecture School. Simplicity is the world view of the child or uninformed adult, …
In 1960, David Packard gave an informal speech that wasn’t originally intended for publication. In fact the speech only surfaced again during the debate over the merger between Hewlett Packard …