After his father died, the physicist Richard Feynman went into a deep depression. He found himself unable to work on research problems. So he told himself that he’d instead play with physics—not for immediate practical results, but for its own sake. One day, he was eating in a cafeteria at …
Productivity
Don’t fill the void
Nature, Aristotle once said, abhors a vacuum. He argued that a vacuum, once formed, would be filled by the dense material surrounding it. I also abhor a vacuum. Whenever I find a vacuum in my life, I fill it—no, stuff it—with the dense material surrounding it in an attempt to …
Be careful what you measure
During my time in academia, I was amazed by how much the U.S. News & World Report rankings influence decisions for both students and faculty. The Report, as you might know, ranks colleges and other degree programs in the United States. The rankings rely on a formula to determine which …
You should be procrastinating more
I recently started writing my next book. I’m not ready to share the details just yet, but I am ready to share with you a strategy that I use to bring out my best work. It’s called procrastination. By that, I don’t mean the type of procrastination where you decide …