Where should you go to school? What should you study? Whom should you marry? Should you have kids? Where should you live? These are all hard decisions. In particular, they’re hard for a few reasons: There’s more than one (socially) acceptable answer. Our cultures often nudge us to make hard decisions by making one answer […]
How to Get Feedback
Feedback is essential for learning. Whether you’re studying for a test, trying to improve in your work or want to master a difficult skill, you need feedback. The challenge is that feedback can often be hard to get. Worse, if you get bad feedback, you may end up worse than before. In a systematic meta-analysis […]
How to Be Prolific
I’ve written a lot of stuff here in the past ten years. 1254 articles. Four books (and another on the way). Five courses. Hundreds of videos. Additionally, I’ve written at least another 100-200 articles for other publications over the years. Being prolific has two main benefits: Talking with fledgling writers, the biggest struggle I see […]
Haters are Good: Why You Need Your Critics
Nobody likes a critic. The colleague who stomps on your suggestions in the meeting. The reviewer who says your work is terrible. The high-school teacher who said you’d never make it. The standard advice is to just ignore your critics. March forward bravely and prove them wrong. Critics are envious, bitter or evil. I see […]
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.