“I only believe in statistics that I doctored myself.” — Winston Churchill
When I recently went to the time-traveling mailbox at my lake house, I found this letter from Winston Churchill inside. Apparently, he really took this question on Quora to heart. Here’s what it said.
Read More
“Knowing and not doing is the same as not knowing.” — Peter Sage
If you read a lot, but seem to forget most of the information you so eagerly soak up, this is for you. I’d like to give you 3 things today:
Let’s go!
Read More
Has anyone ever asked you for directions and you were too embarrassed to admit you don’t know? So much in fact, that you tried to tell them where to go regardless? Just to save your face?
“Uhhh, I think it’s that way.”
That’s what most career advice feels like these days. Nobody has a clue, so everyone goes with their best guess — which is everybody else’s best guess also.
Hence, we live in a world of depressed millennials, which is permeated by two ideas:
If you’re fine with putting your life into the hands of chance, then you can stop reading right now.
Or, you can flip both of these ideas on their head.
Read More
One of the most common conversations I remember from sitting in high school classrooms is the “Why should I remember this?”-debate.
“Why should I memorize where carbon is in the periodic table of elements, if I can just look it up any second on my phone?”
“Why should I remember when the Vietnam War started, if it’s on Wikipedia?”
“Why should I…”
It’s true that memorizing facts simply for the sake of memorizing facts has become useless.
Except for the one case where it hasn’t:
Being interesting.
tl;dr: I created a free, 14-day email course that’ll help you build a daily reading habit. You can sign up here.
Back in July, I asked the people on my Four Minute Books newsletter what their biggest struggle with reading was.
Here’s the unanimous answer:
It doesn’t get much clearer than that.
Read More
In October 2016 I started a Master’s Degree program at the Technical University of Munich, which is widely ranked as one of the best universities in the world.
This semester, I’m taking a class about strategies of global organizations.
Basically, it’s supposed to teach us how to think like the CEO of a global company, which I expect a rare few of my fellow students to become (don’t look at me, I wanna do my own thing).
Today, I’d like to start an experiment by sharing what I learned from the first of six chapters of that class. If the feedback is good, I’ll turn this into a series.
Read More
Do you know those annual review posts household names publish every year?
Like Pat Flynn’s annual income report (I’m sure he cracked $1 million this year, go Pat!).
Or James Clear’s annual review.
Well, what about those?
They suck!
They’re supposed to be inspiring and helpful.
But the truth is, you’re nowhere near having any of the problems these guys have.
Read More
I’m sorry Mum.
But I have to tell you something.
I have OLD.
Obsessive Learning Disorder.
There’s no cure for it.
If you’re born with it, you’re stuck with OLD for life.
My question today is: Do you have OLD as well?
Maybe we can be friends.
Read More
Minions is the third installment in the Despicable Me series.
If you haven’t seen or heard about the movie, you should. Because Minions is the 10th highest grossing movie of all time.
Do you know how hard it is for the third movie in a trilogy to outshine its predecessors?
It’s the reason why Avengers 2 is behind Avengers and why the first of the Hobbit movies was the most successful of them all.
So how do you go from not being on that list with the first movie, to spot number 26 with the second, to the top 10?
You double down on what works.
Read More
Do you think Facebook turned out well?
As a company, I mean.
I think so.
1.49 billion monthly active users.
The most targeted ad system in the world.
And let’s not forget that this company made its founder the 7th richest man in the world.
I don’t know about you, but I like to learn from the best.
And Facebook definitely qualifies.
Read More