General

Reading Time: < 1 minIn some facets of life, focusing on simply being “not stupid” is your best bet. Striving to get ahead can be good in many places, but knowing when to pump the brakes and just keep things on track can save a lot of heartache. Charlie Munger has based much of his investing career on this, […]

Reading Time: < 1 minWhenever you do something in public, from writing to speaking to sports, critics will find you. When should you listen to them and when should you ignore them? In his book “Limitless“, author Jim Kwik makes it really simple: “Don’t take criticism from someone you wouldn’t take advice from.” There are a lot of people […]

Reading Time: 2 minThere are times in our lives when it feels like something should happen more often than it does, but the math proves that it’s actually on track. For example, the Atlanta Braves made it to the postseason 14 straight times (1991-2005) but only won the World Series once. It feels like if you make it […]

Reading Time: < 1 minLast summer, I wrote about how luck and chance are two different things. Chance is out of our control. Luck includes a degree of chance, but also is affected by our curiosity and hard work. When something goes wrong, it’s easy to blame chance for it — and you might be right! If you can […]

Reading Time: < 1 minIn the book “Seeking Wisdom“, author Peter Bevelin talks about the misjudgement of “say-something syndrome”, which he describes as: “…feeling a need to say something when we have nothing to say” George Eliot put it similarly, saying: “Blessed is the man, who having nothing to say, abstains from giving wordy evidence of the fact.” If […]

Reading Time: < 1 minA few weeks ago, Seth Godin wrote about “The things you can’t see“, talking about small everyday items that only some people are able to notice. One example he gave is the alignment of moldings in a house, which is something I almost certainly wouldn’t notice (but a good builder would). That made me think […]

Reading Time: < 1 minFacing a challenge is rarely a fun thing to do, but it’s also the place where you can grow the most. By seeing where your shortcomings are, it gives you a much better picture of where you need to put in the work. For example, Michael Jordan failed to make the varsity basketball team during […]

Reading Time: 2 minThis quote came up in my notes a few days ago, and it felt similar to a post I had recently written about how infinite numbers don’t include everything. If you have a system that generates random output, there is no guarantee that the results will be perfectly distributed. If you output something random 1,000,000 […]

Reading Time: < 1 minOver the past few decades, marketers of all kinds have been fighting for our attention. Like I said last year, your attention is the product that companies are purchasing. As a whole, sadly, they’re winning. These days, your focus shouldn’t necessarily be on gaining the attention of others, but rather fighting to get your own […]

Reading Time: < 1 minI thought this was a fascinating bit of a thought experiment. I was reading a thread where people we debating the idea of a “multiverse”, the idea that our universe is just one of an infinite number of universes out there, thus explaining how life could be possible. Whether you believe that theory or not, […]