There’s something unnatural about how you’ve been taught to learn all your life. Consider a typical class. You show up and the professor hands you a syllabus. It lists all the topics you’re going to study. At the end, you’ll take an exam based on that list. What’s unnatural is that life has no such […]
The Right Way to Measure Productivity (and Why It’s Harder Than it Seems)
Measuring productivity is hard. A lot of the form and (dys)function of working life can be derived from this fact. Consider this perspective on Japanese salaryman work culture: Your first obligation, in all things, will be to your company. You will work incredibly hard (90+ hour weeks barely even occasion comment) on their behalf. The […]
The Surprisingly Narrow Path to Success
I just finished the excellent, Good Work if You Can Get It, by Jason Brennan. An insider’s account into academia, the book shares what it takes to become a professor, backed by statistics. What jumped out at me from the book was how surprisingly narrow the path to becoming a professor at a good school […]
The 10 Most Useful Mental Models
A mental model is a pattern in reality that shows up again and again. Once you recognize one, it starts to pop-up everywhere. Understand how it works, and you can recognize something deep about the universe. Here are the ten mental models that have impacted my thinking the most: 1. The Margin Listen to this […]