All Episodes
Displaying 1 - 20 of 463 in total
A Japanese Ritual to Improve Your Habits
In the early 1900s, an aging Japanese steam train engineer named Yasoichi Hori was growing increasingly concerned about his deteriorating eyesight. Hori's job relied o...
I Think I'm Having a Reverse Midlife Crisis
I think I'm having a midlife crisis." That's what my friend, who I'll call Joe, said to me at dinner a few weeks ago. Joe is in his early-40s. He's had a good career o...
The IKEA Effect: Why Effort Still Counts
Why do you value the things you build yourself so much more than anything you can buy? In this episode, I share a personal story from my first apartment and break down...
Stop Making a 5-Year Plan (Do This Instead)
"So, what's your 5-year plan?" That was the question posed to me by a mentor in January 2021. At the time, I was about seven years into my career, on the "track" in fi...
How to Avoid Catastrophe: The Normalization of Deviance
On January 27, 1986, just 16 hours before the Space Shuttle Challenger was set to launch, an engineer named Roger Boisjoly presented data showing a catastrophic risk w...
A Few Things I've Changed My Mind On
I’m increasingly convinced that the willingness to change your mind is the ultimate sign of intelligence. The most impressive people I know change their minds often in...
How Old Will You Be If You Don’t?
Last week, I wrote a piece about reinvention. Specifically, the myth of too late and how to reinvent your life at any age or life stage.It clearly struck a chord. I ...
The Cobra Effects of Life
In colonial India, a bounty on cobras was supposed to reduce the snake population. Instead, people started breeding cobras for profit — and when the policy ended, they...
The Life-Changing Magic of Active Optimism
There’s an old children’s fable I recently retold to my son about a farmer whose wagon wheel gets stuck in the mud. He calls on Hercules to come to his aid. Hercules a...
How to Reinvent Your Life in 30 Days
Every single week, I invariably get a handful of emails from readers around the world with a similar general message. Stuck on a path. Living a life they didn’t really...
The Frog Pond Effect
Have you ever noticed that growth feels like destruction? That getting better feels like getting worse? You're not doing something wrong. You're just experiencing some...
Why Are You In Such A Rush?
There’s a beautiful Zen parable that goes something like this: A man is walking across a field when a tiger leaps out from the trees and runs toward him. Fearing for h...
The Zipper Test: How to Stop Fooling Yourself
My son just turned four. One of the things I love most about the age is the unbridled curiosity with which he explores the world. He's deep in the classic "why" phase,...
7 Lies I Finally Stopped Telling Myself
A few years ago, as part of the research for my first book, I asked a group of centenarians for the advice they'd most like to give to their younger selves. One of t...
The Helsinki Bus Station Theory
In 2004, a Finnish-American photographer named Arno Minkkinen gave the commencement speech at the New England School of Photography. In the speech, he offered a powerf...
The 2 Types of Knowledge: Real vs. Surface
In 1918, German theoretical physicist Max Planck won the Nobel Prize for his discovery of energy quanta. After winning the prize, he went on a tour, giving lectures at...
Winner's Game vs. Loser's Game
"No unforced errors." At a recent speaking event, I was asked by an audience member to share one piece of advice I wish I could tell my younger self. Specifically, the...
The 4 Types of Professional Time
Most people end the day exhausted but can't point to a single thing they meaningfully moved forward. The problem isn't how much you're working -- it's the type of work...
The Goal Gradient Hypothesis
105.5. That's how many laps you have to run around the first lane of a regulation outdoor track to cover the 26.2 miles of a marathon. And, when I arrived at my local ...
The ABC Goal System
"Just be consistent." By now, you've undoubtedly heard this advice countless times. So much so that it may even induce an eye roll or sigh. Yes, it’s true, consistency...