How To Handle Conflict: 7 Secrets From History’s Master Strategist
rk conflict. Relationship conflict. Family conflict. Conflict is everywhere and I’ll be honest with you: I’m kinda tired of it. So what are we gonna do? Well, today we’re gonna get some help from what may seem like an unlikely source: Carl von Clausewitz. Yeah, the dead war guy. The 19th-century Prussian strategist who spent his time thinking about armies and violence, which sounds like it has nothing to do with you, a person whose most frequent combat scenarios involve…
10 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 How To Improve Your Writing: 6 Expert Insights
iting is the most sadistic form of self-inflicted pain known to humankind, second only to deciding to marathon all the Transformer movies in one sitting because you lost a bet or something. Most of us walk around under the merciful illusion that our thoughts are orderly. They are not. Our brains are junk drawers filled with impressions, suspicions, slogans, half-remembered facts, emotional reflexes, borrowed opinions, and movie lines. We call this “having a point of view.” Writing calls it “a…
9 minutes
4 Secrets to Smarter Thinking
2005, Philip Tetlock did a study, “Expert Political Judgment”, where he basically asked, “Hey, what if we tested whether all these Very Important Experts™ were any good at predicting the future?” Surprise: they weren’t. He collected over 28,000 forecasts made by 284 political analysts, economists, foreign policy bigwigs, and all the usual loud-talking necktie people. What Tetlock found (and I’m condensing 20 years of depressing data here) is that the average talking head was terrible at predicting real-world outcomes.…
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 Be Persuasive: 7 Secrets From Research
rsuasion is the art of getting other people to want what you want without having to use a baseball bat, a crowbar, or a PowerPoint deck that makes them wish you’d used the baseball bat. If humans were rational, persuasion would be easy. You’d just present your argument like a neat little tray of facts, and they would accept it. But persuasion isn’t all about logic and evidence. It’s about emotion, identity, mood, status, pride, resentment, what they ate for…
9 minutes
This Is How To Increase Confidence: 5 Secrets From Research
nfidence, for most of us, is not a steady flame. It’s a tea light in a drafty hallway. You’re feeling good. But then something happens you weren’t prepared for. Or your inner critic begins chattering away. And you make the mistake of listening… Poof. Confidence gone. Your brain starts doing that thing where it narrates your life in real time: You’re standing weird. Your smile is too long. Why are you smiling like that? Stop smiling. Now you’re not smiling…
9 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
