How to Create Luck
Your entire worldview changes when you realize you can *create luck*.
The Body at Work: Why Self-Control is the #1 Rule of the 21st-Century Economy
The first time I recognized that my body should be controlled was when I was eleven or twelve years old. Thanks to some particularly nasty asthma medication, my body was already well on the “after”…
In Defense of the Unoptimized Life
Give yourself the space to be inspired
«we get so caught up in the daily grind, in the pursuit of the next step of the ladder, that we miss the point of being.»
My 8 Best Techniques for Evaluating Character
These methods have helped me enormously—and can save you much heartache and anxiety
The End of Infinity
Growing up means often saying, "that's it?" ♾️
Quit: A Framework for Giving Up
Lessons from Annie Duke's new book on when to pivot or cut your losses.
Zeno's paradox
An ancient puzzle leads ultimately to a remarkable observation on the malleable nature of infinite sums
Ending World History Part One in…1763?
By Rob Taber Many colleges split World History into two survey sections. The first spans from the dawn of humanity to around 1500 or 1600. The second half picks up when the first course leaves off …
The Carbon Con – How offsetting claims are vastly inflated
The world’s biggest companies are pouring billions into an offsetting industry whose climate claims appear increasingly at odds with reality.
OY, A.I.
To preserve our human reality, we must make our new technologies more like the Talmud
Deliberate doubt: the art of questioning our assumptions
Deliberate doubt is the practice of actively questioning our beliefs and assumptions. It is about suspending our certainty and letting go of our preconceived notions in order to explore new ideas and…
«Ask yourself questions like: What if I’m wrong about this? What evidence do I have to support my belief? What are the alternative explanations?»
The Paradox of Goals
Here lies the paradox of goals: Setting goals is a guarantee for disillusionment whether we reach the desired state or not, and yet working toward goals is an important part of evolving as a person.…
«It is tempting during such liminal moments to cling on to a ladder – any ladder – to regain an illusory sense of control and progression.»
The End of Organizing
How GPT-3 will turn your notes into an *actual* second brain
«there’s a lot of value locked up in what we’ve collected over the years, if we could just figure out how to use it.»
5 ways to set yourself up for success
Any success formula must start with your values and life goals. Here are five ways to find those and set yourself up for success.
«Success isn’t a condition without failure; it’s the condition of overcoming failure and improving.»
Change fatigue: When our brain’s adaptive capacity is depleted
We are experiencing change fatigue at an unprecedented scale. The cognitive system that allows us to deal with acute stressful situations has been drained. Our “mental surge capacity” is depleted.
«Instead of resisting change, adding to the load we put on our adaptive systems, we can strive to accept, embrace, and even foster change in a way that leads to personal growth.»
7 Self-Reflection Questions to Create Your Own Happiness This Year
Instead of setting resolutions, I pondered a few questions to help me create my own happiness this year based on what matters most to me.
«6. What are three actions you’ll take to achieve each of these goals?»
If You Only Read A Few Books In 2023, Read These
It’d be wonderful if a new year magically marked a new beginning. But 2022, like all years, reminded us that the same things keep happening, that world events continue on in their own unpredictable…
Did You Decide Who You Are? (Or Did Someone Else?)
When we fail to choose things for ourselves...
The Abilene paradox: When not rocking the boat may sink the boat
The Abilene paradox describes the unfortunately common situation where a group of people agree to an idea, despite most of them not fully believing that it is the best decision.
«The power of social conformity can persuade us to agree to the perceived general consensus and can lead to extremely poor group decisions.»
I'm a psychologist in Finland, the No. 1 happiest country in the world—here are 3 things we…
For five years in a row, Finland has been ranked the No. 1 happiest country in the world. A Finnish philosopher and psychology expert shares the habits that make people in Finland so exceptionally…
«There's a famous line by a Finnish poet: "Kell' onni on, se onnen kätkeköön." Roughly translated, it means: Don't compare or brag about your happiness.»
The Art and Science of Spending Money
Former General Electric CEO Jack Welch once nearly died of a heart attack. Years later he was asked what went through his mind while he was being rushed to the hospital in what could have been his…
«Psychologist Jonathan Haidt says people don’t communicate on social media; they perform for one another. Spending money is like that, too.»
Talent archetypes: what is the shape of your skills?
In a world driven by rapid changes in technology, being a generalist is no longer enough. To support the fast-moving targets of global businesses, the versatilist now prevails.
How to improve concentration
These actionable tips for how to improve concentration will help you get to the root of what's distracting you and reclaim your focus
The Red Carpet Technique of Getting Things Done
What if you could visualise your day for maximum success? Here's how.
6 tips to help you be a better human now
Podcast host Chris Duffy spends his days talking to a diverse group of experts in order to answer one question: “How can I be a better human?” Here’s the advice that has really st…
People Make Time for What They Want — Rightfully So
People make time for who and what they want, and you should, too. Though the author is unknown, this saying has become an axiom to soothe distraught thoughts. Some use it as reasoning to understand…
How Awe Can Change Our Lives For The Better
A new field of psychology has begun to quantify an age-old intuition: Feeling awe is good for us.
«Francis Bacon, described wonder as “broken knowledge” — a facet of the human condition, in other words, that defied his scientific method»
How Social Media Can Add to Your Well-Being (Not Detract From It)
Instead of bemoaning the ills of social media, we can try to use it in ways that support our relationships, identity, and success in life.
«The question often missing from the discussion is: How can social media use be optimized to enhance our well-being and flourishing?»
We need boredom to live better lives. But social media is destroying it
When boredom creeps in, many of us turn to social media. But that may be preventing us from reaching a transformative level of boredom.
Nothing Drains You Like Mixed Emotions
Feeling conflicted can be even more distressing than feeling bad. Here’s how to manage it.
«Researchers in 2017 showed that people can find a deeper sense of purpose when contemplating both their happy and sad emotions about a particular occurrence»
A Journey Toward Overcoming The Procrastination Habit
Overcoming procrastination is hard. Especially today. In a world full of stuff to click on. See tha main strategies to fight the procrastination habit.
What Makes You Procrastinate (Which Isn’t Always a Bad Thing)
Our brain's cognitive biases enable us to put off important tasks, even though it hurts us later. But are there benefits to procrastination?
«If procrastination is seriously interfering with your life, you may want to start chopping tasks into smaller pieces and set rewards after each step.»
16 productivity systems to help you work smarter, not harder
There's something for everyone in these 16 productivity systems, designed to help you regain focus, eliminate distractions, build habits, and more.
The Secret To Better Habits in 2023
It’s kind of crazy to think how recent December 2019 feels. Not that long ago, it seems, we were getting ready for what a new decade might…
Copywriting vs. Content Writing: What’s the Difference
Content writing and copywriting are two terms that are often used interchangeably, but they actually refer to two very different concepts. Here’s a breakdown.
The Intermediate Plateau: What Causes It? How Can We Move Beyond It?
Why do we stop improving? I discuss the research behind why skills stagnate and how to move past it.
GPT-3 Is the Best Journal I've Ever Used
My slow and steady progression to living out the plot of the movie 'Her'
«It can summarize things you’ve said to it in new language that helps you look at yourself in a different light and reframe situations more effectively. »
She's a Happiness Professor. Her Lessons Are Helping Her Beat Burnout
Psychologist Laurie Santos teaches Yale’s most popular course on the science of happiness
«“Natural selection isn’t into us being happy,” Santos says. “It would [prefer] we drove ourselves into the ground trying to survive, reproduce, and get the most resources. It’s not in it for joy.”»
Here's what being filthy rich in Europe looked like in 1000 BC, 1 AD, and 1000 AD
Studying the display of personal wealth across time can help us better understand the history of socioeconomic inequality.
Why some people can't tell left from right
It can seem like an almost childish mistake, but a surprising number of adults confuse left from right and scientists are only just starting to understand why.
How to be happier
There’s a simple science to contentment – it’s about reframing your time around life’s little pleasures. Read on for how to be happier.
The 6 Habits That 99% Of High Performers Practice Daily
“No goals, no growth. No clarity, no change.”
Justifying Optimism
What was the happiest day of your life? The documentary How to Live Forever asks that innocent question to a centenarian who offered an amazing response. “Armistice Day,” she said, referring to the…
«Hope often masquerades as optimism when you think things will improve only because the alternative is too scary to contemplate.»
3 Psychological Tips for Sticking to a Diet
Many diets fail because of emotional or psychological obstacles. These 3 tips will help you overcome them and stick to your diet for good.
«Hunger is what you feel when you need food. Craving is what you feel when you want food.»
“What is a Design System?” an article by Dan Mall
6 different types of design systems.
«A set of things—people, cells, molecules, or whatever—interconnected in such a way that they produce their own pattern of behavior over time.»
Want to improve your memory? Try these unexpected tips.
Your memory probably isn’t as bad as you think.
Evaluating Managers: 5 heuristics to measure managerial impact
Measuring a manager’s impact is hard since outcomes take time. The manager takes full responsibility for the team – be it stagnation, execution woes, poor collaboration, churn, or a lac…
«five measures: execution, strategic vision, people management, team growth, and organizational influence»
How to Express Your Feelings: 7 Tips
Learning how to express your feelings can make it easier to feel better and get the support you need. Use these 7 tips to boost your mood faster.
Navigating the Discovery Phase
Kicking off a big design project? Ashley shares tips and tricks for the all-important discovery phase.
How Narcissism Is Tearing Us Apart
A collective sense of self-righteousness has profound effects on social bonds.
«is characterized by the group's belief in its own superiority and special status, as well as its need for admiration and attention from others.»
It Is Always Time to Build
Interest rates do not equal innovation rates
«interest rates made highly risky»
The Physics Principle That Inspired Modern AI Art
Diffusion models generate incredible images by learning to reverse the process that, among other things, causes ink to spread through water.
AI Writing Tools Like ChatGPT Are the Future of Learning & No, It’s Not Cheating
ChatGPT is the most advanced technology of its kind and its popularity is growing fast. Especially among students.
Via Negativa: The Power of Knowing What Not to Do
A reflection on the powerful decision-making strategy of via negativa and what it has in common with exploding whales and inner daemons.
Good Design Is Intentional
Guidance for designing ethically humane digital products and services through patterns focused on user well-being.
Brand Awareness Vs. Reach: What’s the Difference?
Brand awareness and reach are two sides of the same coin - this article will demystify the difference and help you increase and measure both.
Navigating the AI revolution: how designers can stay competitive
Artificial intelligence is changing the way we design and the skills required to succeed in the design industry.
«Customer service will also benefit from AI. Current chatbots may not meet customer expectations, but they might replace more human managers in the future.»
Riddle solved: Why was Roman concrete so durable?
Researchers have discovered ancient Roman concrete-manufacturing strategies that incorporated self-healing. Applying this knowledge toward modern cement production, they hope to improve the material’s…
Want to live a happy life? Focus on your relationships
Harvard psychiatrist Robert Waldinger discusses how 80 years of research show relationships to be a critical part of a happy life.
Managing Your Team’s Emotional Dynamic
Collective emotion, when a group of people shares an emotion, is often stronger than a single individual feeling that same emotion alone. So, how can leaders manage emotions, particularly negative…
New Neuroscience Reveals 7 Secrets That Will Make You Emotionally Intelligent
Being emotionally intelligent matters most during conflict. And if we master that, it can lead to very good results. Here's how to improve...
Ants Live 10 Times Longer by Altering Their Insulin Responses
Queen ants live far longer than genetically identical workers. Researchers are learning what their longevity secrets could mean for aging in other species.
8 best productivity apps for creatives
Here are 8 productivity apps to help you eliminate the noise, stay organized, and get work done.
How to Increase Organic Traffic: 12 Tried & Tested Tips
Tried, tested, and not too complicated.
Which Meetings Should You Kill?
Your company’s most pointless meetings may not be the type you expect!
How Should We Think About Our Different Styles of Thinking?
Some people say their thought takes place in images, some in words. But our mental processes are more mysterious than we realize.
How to regain your confidence when it falters
Two reflective strategies can help you manage dips in self-assurance and be a more effective leader. See also “How to be confident when you’re not.”
Exclusive: The $2 Per Hour Workers Who Made ChatGPT Safer
A TIME investigation reveals the difficult conditions faced by the workers who made ChatGPT possible
Mobile Genes From the Mother Shape the Baby’s Microbiome
Tiny genetic sequences in a mother’s bacteria seem to hop into the infant’s bacteria, perhaps ensuring a healthy microbiome later in life.
Go Ahead—Quit the Books and Shows You’re Not That Into
The case for not wasting your precious free time on ‘meh’ entertainment.
What it means to design a platform
Editor’s note: This essay was adapted from a post I wrote on an employees-only blog at Stripe. After four months of parental leave, I came back to work and noticed something different. Many of the…
Persistent Stress: What Every Productive Worker Needs to Know
Most people love a challenge—and the jolt of stress that comes with it. But persistent stress at work? Here's how to eliminate it.
The Difference Between Fragile and Strong Couples
We publish articles around emotional education: calm, fulfilment, perspective and self-awareness. | The Difference Between Fragile and Strong Couples — Read now
CNET's AI Journalist Appears to Have Committed Extensive Plagiarism
CNET's AI-generated articles appear to show deep structural similarities, amounting to plagiarism, with previously published work elsewhere.
Finding Meaning
In different stages of life, we seek different things.
How to Build Technical Teams from Scratch
When you set out to bring a business concept to life, your first technical hiring question is whether to build the minimum viable product (MVP) yourself or hire someone else to do it. The factors to…
A Guide To Getting Data Visualization Right — Smashing Magazine
In this article, Sara Dholakia presents a guide on how to choose just the right type of data visualization, with guidelines and things to keep in mind.
A Product Owner Career Path
This article explains how agile product people can advance their careers, from owning a product part to becoming the head of product.
Too Few Marketers Grasp the Difference Between Strategy vs. Tactics; We Need to Fix That
Look, I get it. For (at least) the first decade of my career, I, too, foolishly conflated strategy and tactics. I'd say things like: "we need to be
Revealed: more than 90% of rainforest carbon offsets by biggest provider are worthless, analysis shows
Investigation into Verra carbon standard finds most are ‘phantom credits’ and may worsen global heating
Where Is Tech Going in 2023?
A group of McKinsey’s technology practice leaders have taken a look at what 2023 might hold, and offer a few new year’s tech resolutions to consider: 1) Look for combinatorial trends, in which the sum…
How to tell if your idea is worth pursuing (use this framework)
Validate startup ideas quickly using these 5 steps
Talking Less Will Get You More
Overtalkers are everywhere, but there are benefits to keeping your mouth shut
The Cause of Depression Is Probably Not What You Think
Depression has often been blamed on low levels of serotonin in the brain. That answer is insufficient, but alternatives are coming into view and changing our understanding of the disease.
5 tips to write more like a human
As AI gains traction, writing emails with a human touch becomes more important than ever.
Your attention span isn't dead — yet. These tips can help restore your ability to focus.
An expert who's studied the art and science of focusing shares her go-to strategies.
«47 seconds as the average 21st-century attention span on a screen»
How to Fit SEO Into Your Marketing Strategy
Align SEO with your other marketing efforts properly.
Four Thousand Weeks
A tribute to the book by Oliver Burkeman, an exploration of time management in the face of human finitude, and addressing the anxiety of “getting everything done.”
Large Language Model: world models or surface statistics?
A mystery Large Language Models (LLM) are on fire, capturing public attention by their ability to provide seemingly impressive completions to user prompts (NYT coverage). They are a delicate…
MusicLM: Generating Music From Text
|paper| Andrea Agostinelli, Timo I. Denk, Zalán Borsos, Jesse Engel, Mauro Verzetti, Antoine Caillon, Qingqing Huang, Aren Jansen, Adam Roberts, Marco Tagliasacchi, Matt Sharifi, Neil Zeghidour,…
The Viking woman who sailed to America and walked to Rome
The amazing life of “Gudrid the Far-Traveled” was unjustly overshadowed by her in-laws, Erik the Red and Leif Erikson.
VALL-E: Microsoft's new zero-shot text-to-speech model can duplicate everyone's voice in three seconds
Since the release of the first text-to-speech (TTS) model, researchers have been looking for ways to improve the way these systems generate speech. The
User onboarding: best practices
Simple rules that will help you design a streamlined first-time users experience
Prediction Consensus: What the Experts See Coming in 2023
In this, our fourth year of Prediction Consensus (now part of our more comprehensive 2023 Global Forecast Series), we’ve learned a few things about the universe of predictions, experts, outlooks, and…
No pain, no gain? Science debunks yet another exercise myth
While culture promotes the exercise myth of "no pain, no gain," research shows that moderate exercise improves habit formation and frequency.
Good leaders are good listeners. Here’s how to be one of them
These three skills are critical to become an effective leader.
The Power of Indulging Your Weird, Offbeat Obsessions
Being curious and obsessed can lead to interesting places