The slower you build up energy in the morning, the more painful waking up will be. What’s better, spending thirty minutes wrestling with the snooze button followed by an hour ramp up to normal mental functioning or quickly starting the day with energy? In my recent article on morning rituals, I mentioned how I wake […]
Sprinting Theory: How to Have Self-Discipline on Steroids
There ain’t no such thing as willpower. Explaining away wins and losses by some magical force is only useful if you don’t understand anything about your own psychology. Having concrete theories about why your self-discipline can fail you is far more useful. I’m going to explore one of those ideas for putting your self-discipline on […]
The Power of Complements: Get Obsessive Results, Without the Obsession
How do you become completely focused towards a goal without burning yourself out? Even if your motivation for finishing a project, getting in shape or graduating summa cum laude is high, 100% focus is almost impossible to keep up. Does achievement require obsession, or is there another way? The most obvious solution to the burnout […]
Riding the Tipping Point: 6 Tips for Using Exponential Growth
If nobody can work 100 times harder than you, then how can some people earn 100, 1 000 or even a 1 000 000 times the results? The answer is that most problems don’t work on a straight line, giving the same amount of results for each hour you invest. The Stonecutter’s Dilemma is a […]
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.