We all care way too much what other people think of us. Here's why.

“Understanding and loving are inseparable. If they are separate, it is a cerebral process and the door to essential understanding remains closed.”

C.G. Jung Speaking : Interviews and Encounters Question 3. In what respect, if any, does the treatment of neurosis in the second half of life—that means after thirty—differ from that in the …

A ghost grid is a guide for organising thoughts, information and sketches, that doesn't compete with content. Content itself can also be the ghost grid to highlight changes and help draw comparisons — as when you might sketch options for extending a house or designing a garden. A grid is useful for structure and creation but needs to fade back from content or disappear when no longer needed. Like freeing data from its data prison, a ghost grid emphasises content and information without non-data-ink taking attention. I learned the term ghost grid from Edward Tufte's Seeing with Fresh Eyes: Meaning, Space, Data, Truth. I rarely buy other notebooks for work than a dot grid, preferably in a funky colour. Some of my favourites: Leuchtterm dot grid hardcover, Moleskine dot grid softcover, Moo soft cover dotted journals

So Simple As To Be Trivial In software engineering, there is method of analysis known as “functional decomposition.” If some function or output is not working properly, a software engineer will break the function down, layer by layer, to find the component part or input that is creating the problem. “If you layer down far

Lately, I’ve been feeling a lack of a well-deliberated, explicit moral code. The world is changing really fast – we have Elon Musk trying to set up a human colony on Mars while Earth’s bio-ecosystem is degrading by the day. So, should I support the investment of resources into making Mars habitable while Earth is… Read More

Coming out of college or out of a traditional corporate job, most people think like turkeys. I thought like a turkey. Based on our understanding of the world having spent our entire lives in Mediocristan and the fact that up until relatively recent history, we have lived in Mediocristan, a turkey’s view of the world is highly rational. It’s also wrong. “A turkey is fed for a thousand days by a butcher; every day confirms to its staff of analysts that butchers love turkeys “with increased statistical confidence.” The butcher will keep feeding the turkey until a few days before Thanksgiving… [The] turkey will have a revision of belief— right when its confidence in the statement that the butcher loves turkeys is maximal and ‘it is very quiet’ and soothingly predictable in the life of the turkey.” -N.N. Taleb

Agency just accelerated and no one told you. The internet has accelerated disintermediation and increased agency more than any prior technology, but it’s only been commercially available for a couple of decades.

The Threshold Theory The Terman Study of the Gifted is one of the most legendary studies in psychology. In 1916, Lewis Terman developed America’s first IQ test. He used it and other evaluations to recruit 1,528 of the highest-IQ students he could find. The study began in 1921 and went on to become the longest-running

1. Finding your true self is an act of love. Expressing it is an act of rebellion. 2. A sign of growth is having more tolerance for discomfort. But it’s also having less tolerance for bullshi…

You said, “All the returns in life, whether in wealth, relationships, or knowledge, come from compound interest.” How does one know if they’re earning compound interest? Compound interest is a very powerful concept. Compound interest applies to more than just compounding capital. Compounding capit

BTI360 teammate Joel Goldberg recently retired after working in the software industry for over four decades. When he left he shared with our team some of the lessons he learned over his career. With his...

Ideas to help you make sense of the world

When considering whether to buy yet another book, you might well ask yourself when you'll get around to reading it. But perhaps there are other, even more important considerations, such as the intellectual value of the book in its still-unread state.

Dear readers, it is with troublesome news I break my three months of silence. The statistics all point towards the same conclusion: we have a global outbreak of fuckarounditis. Fuckarounditis is a behavioral disorder characterized by a mediocre physique and complete lack of progress, despite significant amounts of time spent in the gym. Fuckarounditis most commonly manifests […]

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​ ​ ​ Everyone is (still) winging it I don't have access to the traffic data, but I wouldn't be surprised if the single most-read thing I've ever written is still a blog post I ...

“Maybe that’s enlightenment enough: to know that there is no final resting place of the mind; no moment of smug clarity. Perhaps wisdom…is…

In 1956 Harry Belafonte placed a call to Coretta Scott King. With her husband arrested once again, he wanted to check in with her and see how she was doing and what the movement might need. Except they could barely carry on a conversation, because Coretta kept being pulled away from the phone to attend to one of the children, to check on dinner, to answer the door. Sensing she was doing this—and far too much at that—all alone, Belafonte politely asked why the Kings did not have any help at home. Well, she told him, Martin simply would not permit it. Not only because it was financially prohibitive on a minister’s salary, but also because he was worried what others might think. That he was self-important, enriching himself at the expense of the cause, living the high life while millions of blacks suffered. “That is absolutely ridiculous,” Belafonte replied. “He’s here in the middle of this movement doing all of these things, and he’s going to get caught up in what people are going to think if he has somebody helping you?” Then he informed Ms. King that from this moment forward, their life was changing. He was going to personally pay for staff—and that Martin had absolutely no say in the matter. This wasn’t just a nice gesture to an overworked family. It was also a strategic move. What Belafonte was buying Martin and Coretta was time. It was peace of mind. He understood that with this help, they would have more energy, more focus for the cause. The last thing he wanted Martin to be thinking about as he marched for peace and justice was whether his kids had a ride home from school. It takes discipline not to insist on doing everything yourself. Especially when you know how to do them well. Especially when you have high standards about how they should be done. Even if you enjoy doing them—whether that’s mowing your own lawn or answering your own phone. A glutton isn’t just someone who eats or drinks too much. Some of us are also gluttons for punishment. Gluttons for attention. Gluttons for control. It can come from a good place, as it did for Martin Luther King Jr. We feel obligated. We feel bad spending money. We feel guilty asking for help. It doesn’t matter the source though, because the outcome is the same: We wear ourselves down. You have to be able to pass the ball…especially when somebody is open and has a better shot. I was fortunate to learn this early in my career. One of my first jobs as a writer was as a research assistant to Robert Greene, who not only trained and showed me how the writing process works, but taught me an even more important part in the process: That even someone great and talented and self-sufficient doesn’t do it all by himself (this is also in The 48 Laws of Power, expressed more ominously as “Let others do all the work, take all the credit”). When I started having some success as a writer myself, one of the first things I did was hire a research assistant. I have been quite open and up front about this (my current researcher is Billy Oppenheimer—he has a great newsletter you can subscribe to) and yet still people ask how do you put out so much content? How do you juggle it all? How do you do it all? The answer is, I don’t. I have a team. Just in the way that I don’t do the international edition of my books, I have people who help translate what I’ve done into different mediums. This article itself is an example. I tell the Belafonte story in Discipline is Destiny, I’ve written about hiring help in Daily Dad emails (which you can sign up for here), and I’ve talked about my team on podcasts. So my research assistant gathered all of those pieces, strung them together, which allowed me to spend my time polishing and tweaking it before I put it out in the world. Yes, cumulatively, it has become quite expensive to pay for help (literally hundreds of thousands of dollars a year at this point). But the true cost would be the quality and quantity of content I couldn’t have created, the time I wouldn’t have had with my family, the energy I wouldn’t still have to do what I do. While this all might sound a little privileged, I am not saying “Oh everyone should have an enormous team behind them”—though in a fair world that would be great. If you can’t afford to hire someone, the good news is there is a much cheaper option, something that successful and busy people also do. It’s called: Automation. Some people hire an accountant or a financial advisor to handle their retirement and savings accounts. Just as easily, you can use the automation features in something like Wealthfront. Some people have a personal assistant manage tasks for their business or social media for them. Just as easily, you can use software like Buffer or IFTTT to automate routine tasks for you. Some people complain about what a pain their inbox is to manage. Just as easily they can set up filters and folders or use tools that block their spam or unsubscribe them from marketing emails. Some people spend hours a month opening mail, paying bills and doing administrative paperwork. Just as easily they can sign up for paperless billing, or auto-schedule payments. Almost everything we do as responsible adults in the world is set up inefficiently. By improving our systems, we buy ourselves time and energy. And then with this time and energy, we are able to be better at what we do, to get more done, to be more present for the people who depend on us. It doesn’t make sense to try to do everything yourself. You have to delegate and automate. You have to find [...]

A few things I’ve come to terms with…