This Is How To Get What You Want In Life: 6 Secrets To High-Agency
'd all like to think we're deliberately steering our lives. Yet a heck of a lot of adulthood consists of continuing whatever we were already doing because stopping would require change. You took a job because you needed money, stayed because you knew where the toilets were, and now, apparently, this is your destiny. If you're ever going to achieve those things you dream about, it's going to require some agency. Being proactive. The capacity to act deliberately and influence…
9 minutes
The Uncomfortable Reason You Keep Self-Sabotaging: 6 Secrets From Philosophy’s Most Honest Madman
y do we so frequently self-sabotage? The usual answers can’t be accurate. We're far too good at it for that. Too consistent. Some part of us must be quietly invested in staying stuck. But nobody will say that to our faces. Aaaaaaactually, come to think of it, I know a guy who would… If you saw Slavoj Žižek shuffling through an airport, muttering about ideology and wiping his nose, you wouldn’t say, “There goes someone with practical advice for living.”…
9 minutes
The Counterintuitive Way To Get Better At Anything
while back, I posted about David Epstein’s new book, which breaks down how constraints can help us live better lives. Ironically, making things a little harder can lead to increased productivity, creativity, and happiness. This resonated with a lot of readers, but many were understandably hesitant to deliberately make their lives more difficult. (Apparently, this was a task that, up to this point, the world had handled for them just fine.) So the most common reply I got was:…
9 minutes
This Is The Simplest Way To Make Your Life Awesome
love freedom. And so it is with a heavy heart and a full awareness that I am committing a kind of cultural treason that I report the following: Freedom is ruining everything. Not political freedom. Political freedom is wonderful. I am, and have always been, in favor of people being allowed to say what they think, go where they please, and make their own terrible decisions about diet, recreation, and spouse selection without interference from the government. What I'm…
10 minutes
How To Stop Being Lazy And Get More Done: 6 Secrets To Motivation
st people see motivation like a fairy godmother: she magically appears, taps your forehead with a wand, and suddenly you’re the kind of person who does the thing. You “get in the zone.” You “crush it.” You become a creature of pure productivity and clean countertops. Unfortunately, she doesn’t always show up when you need her. So you find yourself still staring at The Task like it’s a live grenade. You could just sit down and do your taxes but…
10 minutes
New Neuroscience Reveals 6 Secrets That Will Make You More Productive
me days it feels impossible to get anything done at the office. (There’s a reason Susan in marketing has a voodoo doll of everyone, neatly labeled, in her desk drawer.) What can we do about it? Well, neuroscience -- yeah, that thing you vaguely remember hearing about in a TED Talk you half-watched -- has some answers to our office productivity problems. With a few simple tweaks, we can take a miserable workday from “soul-crushing marathon of existential despair” to…
9 minutes
How To Stop Procrastinating: 4 Secrets From Research
ocrastination. The bane of productivity, the thief of time, the reason why you’re currently reading this instead of doing that thing we both know you need to do. In the world of procrastination, time ceases to exist in its linear form. Hours stretch like taffy in a carnival booth, and you find yourself doing things you never knew you had an interest in. Suddenly, you develop an intense interest in organizing your spice rack. Did you know paprika comes in…
8 minutes
This Is The Newest, Biggest Thing That Will Make Your Life Easier
until very recently, most of our experiences with AI boiled down to shouting "ALEXA, STOP!" AI means “artificial intelligence”? More like “Awkwardly Inept”, if you ask me. But things have changed... Enter ChatGPT, strutting onto the scene like a rock star. Suddenly, AI wasn't just a voice in a box that occasionally understood your mumblings; it was like having a chat with someone who'd actually read a book. Or, you know, all of them. How well could a cold,…
9 minutes
