Even if you have rock-solid evidence and impeccable logic, and you back the other person into a corner, what happens? They might concede—but they definitely hate you. When we make it win-or-lose, everyone loses.

what’s fascinating is that psychologists have realized that burnout isn’t just an acute overdose of stress; it’s pretty much plain ol’ clinical depression. The paper, “Comparative Symptomatology of Burnout and Depression,” said, “Our findings do not support the view hypothesizing that burnout and depression are separate entities.”

Remember how I said that working too hard was one of the biggest regrets people had on their deathbed? Definitely true. But what was the number-one regret? “I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.” Career was a solid number two, right behind education and ahead of relationships. We spend so much

I’d like to think that I’m the Jason Bourne of social science writing, but I’m probably a lot closer to its court jester.

As the old saying goes, “You can do anything once you stop trying to do everything.”

Karl Marx was wrong about a lot of things in economics, but we’re now realizing he was also right about some stuff. When you remove people’s emotional connection to their labor and treat them merely as machines that produce effort, it’s soul killing.

Consider the people we’re all envious of who can confidently pick something, say they’re going to be awesome at it, and then calmly go and actually be awesome at it. This is their secret: they’re not good at everything, but they know their strengths and choose things that are a good fit.

The lesson from cases of people both keeping and losing their jobs is that as long as you keep your boss or bosses happy, performance really does not matter that much and, by contrast, if you upset them, performance won’t save you.

Strong friendships kept the dealers out of jail, while “weak ties” provided them with business opportunities.