I tend to prefer courses to books. Although the best books definitely beat mediocre courses, there’s a few reasons why a great course can leave a lasting impression. For starters, courses tend to teach foundational topics. Most books try to be original. But much of what’s worth knowing is actually fairly old. Courses tend to […]

A personal goal of mine is to get a basic understanding of every major intellectual area: physics, philosophy, history, and so on. I thought I’d share a little bit about my motivation, the feasibility of achieving it and how well I’m making progress. The first difficulty in learning every subject is, what counts as a […]

Last week, I shared the idea of a “productive frontier.” When you’re below the frontier, you can usually get more done simply by optimizing your systems. Cut out the waste and be more productive. When you’re at the frontier, getting more done comes at the expense of other things—like your time off. One wrinkle I […]

Pareto efficiency is a concept everyone should understand. Named after Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto, the idea refers to situations where you can (or can’t) improve something without trade-offs. Consider designing a car where you care about speed and safety. You have one design that’s fast but dangerous, another that is slow and safe, and a […]