Be yourself. Be genuine. Show people who you really are. Our culture is obsessed with authenticity. But what if the entire idea of being authentic is based on a lie? There’s a pervasive belief people hold that the person they appear to be is not who they actually are. Underneath all the masks, there’s a […]
Useful Mental Model: Normal Distribution
Some ideas are so powerful and useful that once you understand them deeply, you start to see them everywhere. One of those ideas is the normal distribution. Normal distributions, also known as bell curves or Gaussian functions look like this: They have a fat lump in the middle and two “tails” that stretch off in […]
“I already know what to do, I just don’t do it.” I disagree.
My dad, who taught elementary school for thirty seven years, once had a kid in his class who would always interrupt the class saying, “I know that already!” It was doubly annoying, he told me, because this kid clearly did not know it already. He was near the bottom of the class, and could probably […]
Fear Fizzle More Than Failure
Most people don’t fail that much. They may not always succeed, but genuine, fall-flat-on-your-face failure is quite rare. Instead, most efforts fizzle long before someone could call it failure. Our plans don’t explode, but fizzle out and are forgotten. Instead of detonating and needing to pick up the pieces, they get pushed to the back […]
I'm a Wall Street Journal bestselling author, podcast host, computer programmer and an avid reader. Since 2006, I've published weekly essays on this website to help people like you learn and think better. My work has been featured in The New York Times, BBC, TEDx, Pocket, Business Insider and more. I don't promise I have all the answers, just a place to start.