What innovators do differently
You’re a science professor. A colleague asks you to arbitrate a dispute with a student over a question on a physics exam. Your colleague thinks the student deserves a zero, but the student demands full credit. Here’s the question: “Show how it is [...]
You can’t keep up
I feel guilty. I feel guilty about the unread books sitting on my bookshelf. I feel guilty about the podcasts sitting unlistened on my podcast app. I feel guilty about the unread articles collecting virtual dust on my phone. I feel guilty about [...]
Why you should invest in things that don’t change.
Earlier this year, the head of Instagram, Adam Mosseri, dropped a bombshell. At an annual event hosted by Facebook (which owns Instagram), Mosseri announced some updates. Most were pretty benign, but one made headlines. Instagram would experiment with hiding “like counts.” Users would [...]
This is the mark of a great mind
Smoking or non-smoking? This could have been a question we received from a maître d' at a European restaurant. But it wasn’t. The year was 1999, and my parents and I were checking into our flight from Istanbul to Paris on Turkish Airlines. [...]
The key to a really good day
I’ve walked out of every job interview believing I bombed it. Except one. A year after I graduated from law school, I got an interview for the most coveted legal job in the country—a clerkship for a U.S. Supreme Court Justice. The one-year [...]
Why you should shoot for the Moon
In September 1962, President John F. Kennedy stood before a packed Rice University stadium and pledged to land a man on the Moon and return him safely to the Earth before the decade was out. It appeared to most observers that Kennedy was [...]
Why we fight imaginary enemies (and what to do about it)
The same thing happens every time the doorbell rings. My office is on the second floor of our house. Our dog Einstein usually sleeps in his bed next to my desk while I’m busy typing away. The moment he hears the doorbell, he [...]
The problem with most advice
It was two years ago that I started thinking about launching a podcast. At the time, a trusted friend and mentor cautioned me against it. He said, “For the love of God, don’t start a podcast. Everyone and their cousin is launching one. [...]
Why you should walk away from your problems
Last week, we stayed in Eze, a small medieval village in the French Riviera. Eze is perched on a hillside, roughly 420 meters (1,400 feet) above sea level. Near the entrance to our hotel, I noticed a sign labeled the Friedrich Nietzsche Path. [...]
Why we need more inefficiency
A few months ago, I attended an unusual conference. As an academic, I’m used to conferences with the usual formula: one panel after another where three speakers each have 20 minutes to showcase their latest publication while the audience members twiddle their thumbs [...]