AI Strategies to Safeguard Personal Development

AI can make you far more productive, but it can also cause valuable skills to atrophy. Learn how to use AI to boost productivity without losing skills by following simple, practical principles.

How to Improve Anything: Building a World-Class Feedback Loop

Discover how to improve any skill or area of life using world-class feedback loops for faster self-improvement, growth, and lasting success.

Measure What Is in Your Control

Stephen King has written dozens of bestsellers, sold over 350 million books, and built a net worth north of $500 million. While impressive, these are metrics he pays little attention to. As an author, there is only one metric that King pays attention to—words written per day.

Credentials, Artifacts, and Competence

A college degree is an artifact. It shows that you got into a university, learned enough to not fail all of your classes, and persevered to the end to some extent. But true education is about competence and experience, not just credentials.

Save the Performance for the Stage

Setting goals, making plans, working hard, and achieving success can lead to recognition. Recognition can lead to distraction and perceived public expectation. Those distractions and expectations can shift your priorities away from doing meaningful, fulfilling work.

An Equation for a Successful Blog (And Life)

Successful people are often successful in spite of the things they do. What are you trying to accomplish? What variables matter most in the equation for your success? Are there things that others say are essential that might not even be necessary?

What I Learned From Ray Dalio and Hiring New People

Hiring someone to work for you (or looking for a job yourself) is all about "fit." Is the candidate capable of performing job responsibilities competently? Will they enjoy the job down the road?

Starting Successful Creative Projects

"If there is any magic in creative expression, it's how small, even silly ideas can become big, important, aw-inspiring works if a person invests enough time in them." - Ryan Holiday

Agile Development: A Pattern for Improvement

Make a plan to get a little closer to where you want to be. Act on that plan. Measure the outcome of your actions. Then, use what you have learned to adjust your vision for the future and plan your next move.

Netflix, Chaos Monkey, and Preparing for the Worst

While we can’t run an automated program to detect all of the potential, unseen problems in our lives, we can create our own personal Chaos Monkey by brainstorming the things that could go wrong in a given situation or project.

The Ninety-Ninety Rule and Overcoming Unplanned Work

If you don’t account for inevitable unplanned work ahead of time, you will have to find more time by dropping something else, which causes pain for all parties involved.

Be Curious, Not Opinionated

"When you are consumed with the rightness or wrongness of a given issue, it’s easy to lose track of what the issue actually is." - Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner

Monk Week: Harnessing Solitude for Intentional Living

Discover how “Monk Weeks”—a purposeful period of solitude for deep reflection and life calibration—can help you live your life more intentionally. Learn science-backed benefits of intentional solitude and practical steps to improve clarity, creativity, and well-being.

Grow Your Focus

It doesn't matter who you are. Lack of focus inhibits connection, productivity, and enjoyment. Too many people think that they can't focus. Trust me, you can.

Eliminate Automate Delegate Do

When there are tasks that just need to be done, you can use this process to reduce the amount of unpleasant, mundane work you have on your plate.

Books That Have Changed My Life

"If you haven't read hundreds of books, you are functionally illiterate, and you will be incompetent, because your personal experiences alone aren't broad enough to sustain you." - Jim Mattis