In the last post, I explained why focusing on irrelevant details obscures the true driver of professional success: career capital. But the connection between career capital and a great career isn’t always obvious. Why does the owner of a car dealership tend to make more than a nurse or a…

A pet peeve of mine is self-help advice that obsesses over irrelevant personality quirks rather than the true drivers of a person’s success. Hedge fund billionaire Ray Dalio meditates forty minutes per day. Tim Ferriss wrote his bestselling books between 10 pm and 5 am. Warren Buffett famously drinks five…

Our deepest beliefs are often girded by assumptions we rarely articulate. The mindset of efficiency is one of mine. The assumptions of this mindset are essentially: There are things we want. We can take actions to get the things we want. Some actions are more efficient than others — i.e…

One needs to be confronted with a lot of evidence before changing their mind about it. — Recently, I wrote a defense of the uncontroversial-within-cognitive-science-but-widely-disbelieved idea that the mind is a computer. That post got me thinking about other ideas that are broadly accepted amongst the expert communities that study them, but not among the general population. I agreed with some of the following ideas before I…

Previously, I’ve written about the problem of being overly patient in learning. In particular, I singled out learning projects based on simple, minimal habits — say, learning a language by spending five minutes a day on Duolingo, or writing one page of a novel every week. To recap: While popular…

Mastery is often associated with patience. After all, getting good at things takes a long time, and only those who are in it for the long haul can expect to reach the pinnacle of their craft. Given that common association, I found it interesting to hear the opposite perspective from…

Suppose you have to memorize a lot of material — vocabulary words in a new language, terminology for an anatomy class, legal precedents, or dates of historical events. Which strategy will lead to better performance: mnemonics or flashcards? In the small and strange world of studying strategies, mnemonics techniques receive…

One of the few lessons I recall from business school is the make-or-buy decision. Big companies often face a choice: should they make something in-house, or outsource it to a supplier? The decision depends on many factors, but a big part is cost: will it be cheaper or more reliable…

A studying plan organizes three things: What you have to learn. How you’re going to learn it. When you’re going to invest the time. Although it sounds simple, most students don’t make a detailed study plan. Of those that do, they often make mistakes that render the plan highly unrealistic…