How much can you change your nature? Your personality? Your intelligence? Your life? This is obviously a hugely important question. The world where our natures are fixed is a vastly different place from the world where we can bend ourselves into any shape. Unfortunately, this is also not a question with easy and obvious answers. […]

How much should you worry about forgetting things? In one sense, forgetting is a very real problem. How many of us could still pass exams for classes we took in college? How many dust-covered books sit on your shelf which you’ve forgotten the plot? Knowledge, like all things, decays with time. It would be nice […]

Last month, Cal Newport and I released a new course, Life of Focus. The course covers three months dedicated to cultivating focus in three areas: work, life and mind. One thing that makes a course like this different is that it centers on month-long challenges. Thus even if you’re already relatively focused, you can use […]

Focus is incredibly important. But often we struggle to turn it on when we need it. The right rituals can help a lot. The human brain is a giant association machine. As neuropsychologist Donald Hebb famously put it, “neurons that fire together, wire together.” Repeated patterns form stronger connections. Thus if you pair a consistent […]