Category: Mental Models

Beauty isn’t shallow. Beauty inspires artwork, starts wars, drives people to madness, and to perform acts of heroism and kindness that are beyond imagination. If you ask anyone the meaning of life for long enough, they’ll eventually answer that maybe it’s to experience the cosmic wonder of the universe. Which happens to be terrifying, exhilarating,…

You have to accept that you might hurt people. Not because you want to. Not because you should. But because, in the process of living your life, you must make decisions. And decisions often have unpredictable collateral damages that hurt people. And living in fear of that damage is paralyzing. It stops you from doing…

If you feel like you’re not living because you’re spending all your time disciplining yourself into a functional schedule of work and rest then I can guarantee you’re not as functional as you could be. Because the best ideas, the best rest, and the best work happens when you feel alive. Life is certainly made…

What do you want to do? If you sit down on the floor and ask yourself what you want. You’ll likely come up with a bunch of things that aren’t true desires. They’re just cravings. And after you’ve run through a mental list of chocolate, drugs, coffee, todo lists, and whatever else you automatically reach…

There are two types of people in this world… And that’s a false statement. There are so many different types of people that it’s impossible to understand them all. But the phrase ‘there are two types of people’ is still a useful phrase. Because knowledge comes from identifying the difference between things. You have to…

Learning to be a quieter person was difficult for me. When I was young I was extremely social and I based a lot of my self worth on my ability to be fun, the reactions I got from the people around me, and how cool I believed other people believed me to be. Over time,…

If you want to be more productive then you have to let go of doing too many impossible things. In the words of Elon Musk, “When creating a company it’s important to limit the number of miracles in series.” When scaling your life the same concept is true. It’s useful to have big dreams. But…

If you changed your life to make it better then you need to remember that what gets you healthy is what keeps you healthy. The steps you take to make yourself a functional person aren’t solutions. They’re lifestyle choices. And if you let go of the lifestyle that keeps you in a good place then…

A lot of success in life comes from applying a disproportionate amount of energy and determination to a small goal. We naturally underestimate how difficult it will be to accomplish small tasks in our lives but when we assume they’re big and apply as much force as we can to them they get done. This…

Let’s say you could save four hundred dollars a month. At the end of thirty years you’d have a hundred and forty four thousand dollars. Which isn’t bad, but what if you invested that same amount at eight percent interest? Then you’d have a bit more than half a million, which is a lot better.…