If you hate studying, if you feel like you can’t concentrate, if you’re tired of being average, I’d like to tell you one thing:
It’s okay. I used to be like you. You can change.
The one thing I now know that’s brought me from where you were to where I am now is why I study. And it’s made all the difference.
Here’s a timeline of my college history to illustrate.
Read MoreWhen you were 1 year old, you thought trying to touch everything you could get your tiny hands on was a good idea. Whatever would happen next, it sure would be amazing.
When you were 2 years old, you first learned to speak. You used that ability to be brutally honest. When you wanted mom, you said “Maaa!” and when you wanted dad you said “Dada!”
When you were 3 years old, you yelled in the grocery store that you wanted the cereal in the red box. And you didn’t give a damn what anyone walking by thought about it.
When you were 4 years old, you built the best Lego or Barbie house in the world. You were your own biggest fan, and you meant it.
Read MoreOn the 14th of May, 2012, one of my best friends, Paul, sent me an article by James Altucher.
In it, he described his daily practice of improving a little bit, every single day, in four areas:
I thought: Let me try that. So I started tracking it on this free website James had made: The Daily Practice.
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If we get on the treadmill together, there are two options: You’re getting off first, or I’m going to die.
— Will Smith
But who are you running against? For most of your life, the person on the other treadmill is yourself.
Right now, the field might be crowded. Many people are ahead of you, and you can’t see who leads the pack. But once you start running faster than everyone else, you’ll soon be the only one left in the race.
Very few people have an outstanding work ethic. That’s what makes them outstanding. But it also means it’ll get lonely.
You don’t want what your friends want. You want what you want. So you shouldn’t care about winning against them.
Your true competitor is also your greatest fan.
Look at Will Smith again. He could’ve long stopped running. There’s no one for him to beat any more. As of 2016, his movies have grossed $7.5 billion at the global box office.
Why does a guy like that turn around and go straight to making more films?
When people like Will Smith glance at the other treadmill, they see a different version of themselves. One that’s not as good, as generous, as humble, as disciplined, as honest or as dedicated as they are.
That’s who they’re running against. Running from. Before long, you’ll be running against yourself too. You’ll have to, in order to keep going.
When you get there, I hope you’ll do what Will Smith does: keep running anyway.
The first time I heard Alan Turing’s name was in a computer science class where we studied different kinds of basic machines and how they work. One of them was called a Turing machine. Alan invented it.
In modern academia, the focus lies on the theoretical model behind the machine, but this is what his implementation looked like:
It looks big and clunky and mysterious, but on the inside, you can imagine it a bit like this:
A Turing machine really only does a few things:
Despite its seeming simplicity, the Turing machine changed the course of history unlike any other invention ever made. The moment Alan Turing got his theoretical model to work inside a real-world machine is one of the greatest moments in the history of mankind.
Here’s why.
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Coming up with ways to make your brain sharp is a way to exercise your mental faculties in and of itself. But it’s not the only thing I do.
Here are 7 more ways I send my brain to the gym:
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As I was coming up with an example of a personal story I could tell where hard work beat intelligence (and I can think of a few), I realized something:
It doesn’t matter.
Why? Because hard work is your only option, either way.
Read MoreIn 430 BC, the second year of the Peloponnesian War, Greek general Pericles led a fleet of over 100 ships towards the enemy island.
As they were charging ahead at full speed, suddenly, a solar eclipse cast the entire fleet into darkness.
Unaware of the scientific nature of this unexpected and shocking event, panic befell the soldiers and sailors. But not Pericles.
Read More10 minutes, ha! I’m going to show you not one, but six things that will change your life — and we’ll do it with time to spare.
After this, you’ll feel calm, prepared and ready to take on the world, like this:
Let’s go!
Read MoreI don’t have to teach you to think like a genius. You already are.
A genius is by definition someone who’s wrong a lot so they can be very right about one, usually extremely specific thing, way before everyone else is.
But what if that’s not a special trait of geniuses? What if we’re all geniuses?
I mean, you and I are wrong a lot, aren’t we? And sometimes, we get to say “I told you so” to our friends.
All we do when we call someone a genius is elate them to this status in hindsight.
But in order for us to be able to do that, a genius has to do one thing first, and it’s the only thing that really makes them different: when they know they’re right, they speak up and do something about it.
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