Is some amount of self-delusion a good thing? I used to believe seeing the world more accurately was always a good thing. After all, even positive delusions must at some point brush against the rough surface of reality. Now I’m not so sure. Depressive realism is a phenomenon where, in some cases, depressed patients can […]
If You’re Young, Do Harder, Riskier Things
I get a lot of email. Most is encouraging, but now and then I get an email from a reader irate that one of my articles didn’t speak to them personally, so they write me a scathing critique. A common template goes something like, “You think it’s easy to do _____. Just wait until you […]
Swimming Upstream Against Your Destiny
The heritability of IQ increases with age. If this doesn’t surprise you, it should. What it means is that as you have more experiences, they matter even less for your overall intelligence. One explanation for this bizarre fact is that intelligence has a compounding property. If you’re slightly smarter as a child, due to innate […]
Good Life Philosophies Aren’t Simple
I asked my friend Benny Lewis, who is fluent in nearly a dozen languages, what he thought enabled him to gain fluency so quickly, often in as little as three months. He claimed that most of it came down to attitude—when he is learning, he stops speaking English, fully devoting himself to the language he […]
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.