Take Evernote, a start-up that offers productivity and organization software, which made the companywide decision to delay spending even a penny on marketing for the first several years of its growth....
THE FOOL WHO FEEDS THE MONSTER. I knew I had to find this century-old drawing, though I wasn’t sure why. As I rode the escalator through the glass canyon of the atrium and into the bowels of the centr...
T he single most important practice in Stoic philosophy is differentiating between what we can change and what we can’t.
Successfully finding and scratching a niche requires asking and answering a question that very few creators seem to do: Who is this thing for? Instead, many creators want to be for everyone . . . and...
Someone recently published a book called Working On My Novel, filled with social media posts from writers who are clearly not working on their novels. Writing,
Some companies like Airbnb and Instragram spend a long time trying new iterations until they achieve what growth hackers call Product Market Fit (PMF);
Some companies like Airbnb and Instragram spend a long time trying new iterations until they achieve what growth hackers call Product Market Fit (PMF); others find it right away. The end goal is the s...
Silence. The ability to deliberately keep yourself out of the conversation and subsist without its validation. Silence is the respite of the confident and the strong.
Show me that the good life doesn’t consist in its length, but in its use, and that it is possible—no, entirely too common—for a person who has had a long life to have lived too little. —SENECA, MORAL...
Show me someone sick and happy, in danger and happy, dying and happy, exiled and happy, disgraced and happy. Show me! By God, how much I’d like to see a Stoic. But since you can’t show me someone that...
Seneca observes how often powerful people are slaves to their money, to their positions, to their mistresses, even—as was legal in Rome—to their slaves. No
Self-control is a difficult thing, no question. Which is why a popular trick from dieting might be helpful. Some diets allow a cheat day—one day per week in which dieters can eat anything and everythi...
Self-awareness is the ability to objectively evaluate the self. It’s the ability to question our own instincts, patterns, and assumptions.
See things for what they are. Do what we can. Endure and bear what we must. What blocked the path now is a path. What once impeded action advances action. The Obstacle is the Way.
Saban’s process is exclusively this—existing in the present, taking it one step at a time, not getting distracted by anything else. Not the other team, not the scoreboard or the crowd. The process is...
Roger Ebert calls snarking cultural vandalism. He’s right. Snark makes culture impossible, or rather, it makes the conditions that make culture possible impossible. Earnestness, honesty, vulnerability...
Responsibility requires a readjustment and then increased clarity and purpose. First, setting the top-level goals and priorities of the organization and your life. Then enforcing and observing them.
Reminding ourselves each day that we will die helps us treat our time as a gift.
Remember: you’re a free agent. When someone points out a legitimate flaw in your belief or in your actions, they’re not criticizing you. They’re presenting a better alternative. Accept it!
Remember: We choose how we’ll look at things. We retain the ability to inject perspective into a situation. We can’t change the obstacles themselves—that part of the equation is set—but the power of p...