I was recently having dinner with a friend who was telling me his plan to get in shape. He had always been on the skinny side and wanted to bulk up a bit. His plan was to gain ten pounds over the following two months. Being the good friend I am, I told him he’d […]
Is Owning Your Own Business Worth It?
I try to avoid writing too much about being an online entrepreneur. For one, there are plenty of people writing about it who are much better than I am. Even after being at this game for nine years, I still feel like a newbie most the time. I also try to avoid hyping entrepreneurship too […]
Learning to Doubt
Human nature is to reason in certainties. It takes training to rid yourself of that handicap. Nobel-laureate, Richard Feynman, said it best: “I can live with doubt and uncertainty. I think it’s much more interesting than live with answers which might be wrong. I have approximate answers and different degrees of certainty about various things, […]
Healthy Delusions?
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 […]
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.