How much do we learn simply by doing the things we’re trying to get good at? This question is at the heart of a personal research project I’ve been working on for several months. Readers can note some previous entries I’ve already written on this project. My original intuition was that we get good at […]

I often don’t feel smart enough to do what I do. I don’t say this out of false modesty or as an attempt to be more relatable. I spent the last decade taking on rather-immodest learning challenges. I’ve always been confident in my ability to learn new things. Instead, the insecurity comes from recognizing that, […]

I once met with a successful academic and author. He told me that he didn’t understand most of his peers. Getting tenure at a university is a lot of work. You need to produce a lot of the right kind of intellectual output to get recognized. But after that, you have total freedom to pursue […]

In a recent essay, I argued that most people are trying to do too much. In the attempt to do everything that interests them, they end up making little progress on anything. One reader noted a problem. Doesn’t this view of having a few serial projects contradict the idea of building good habits? Isn’t it […]