Last fall, I finished the MIT Challenge. While the challenge was exciting and educational, the tight deadline didn’t give me any time for extracurricular projects. When I finished, I wanted to work on a small and fun project that would test some of the things I learned. The result was WordSmith, a program that lets […]
“It’s Who You Know”
I’ve often heard the titular expression in conversations about professional success. Uttered with a sneer, it seems to point at the unfairness of life and the hopelessness of the masses of people without good connections. It’s also an expression that is mostly true. Talent and effort matter, of course, but the gears of the machine […]
Two Types of Growth
Anything you try to improve will have a growth curve. Imagine you ran everyday and you tracked your speed to finish a 5-mile course. Smoothing out the noise, over enough time you’d probably get a graph like this: Here, improvement works on a logarithmic scale. As you get better, it gets harder and harder to […]
Flow Doesn’t Maximize Improvement
Flow is the mental state of complete engagement. It happens when you are fully immersed in an activity that is neither too difficult to be frustrating, but not so easy as to be boring. First described by Dr. Mihály CsÃkszentmihályi, the concept became popular because it was seen as a key to both performance and […]
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.