During this week, Cal Newport and I want to share some of few of the most useful and surprising lessons we’ve learned from teaching our career mastery course, Top Performer, to over two thousand students. We will only be posting this first lesson publicly. If you want to get the other lessons (for free), please […]
What I’ve Been Reading
Here’s some of the books I’ve read lately: Flash Boys – Michael Lewis’s book about high-frequency trading and Wall Street corruption. I’m quite envious of Lewis’s ability to take a complicated story that hinges on weird financial derivatives and somehow make it a page-turner. The Undoing Project – Also by Lewis, this one covers Israeli […]
First, See the Circle
I really enjoyed the first season of HBO’s Westworld. I’m a fan of the robots-who-might-be-conscious-vs-exploitative-humans trope in all its many incarnations, but I felt this show did a particularly good job. The reason I liked it most was the constant uncanny valley between spontaneous and scripted behavior. Without spoiling anything, the show does a masterful […]
Don’t Be Busy
The most useful and counterintuitive productivity advice I was ever given was don’t be busy. Do less things. Commit to fewer responsibilities. Don’t try to fill your schedule up. It’s strange advice because busyness is one of the things we most associate with productive people. Think of the CEO who works 100 hour workweeks or […]
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.