How To Enjoy The Process

s you invest in some skills, but not others, you get a greater return from activities where you have considerable training. Thus, your opportunity cost for learning new things increases. Therefore, a failure to learn new things is perfectly rational, even if it can result in inflexibility as we get older.

One way this manifests is the time horizon y... See more

Sometimes it's a little better to travel than to arrive

Once you choose a project, you are confined to a relatively narrow band of impact (

Figure 1

B); barring an unexpected surprise, the solution to a mediocre problem will have incremental impact, whereas solving an important problem will have greater impact. Even if you execute well, it is hard to make the solution to a middling problem interesting. In... See more

Most of my field (along with most of our social and ethical systems and institutions) is focused on “raising the floor” of human functioning: lifting more people out of depression, anxiety, and trauma, and up to the mean level of wellbeing, resilience, self-efficacy, or whatever outcomes we’re trying to optimize. The methods and metrics used by the... See more

When I go into a situation, I try to keep a mindset of baseline optimism.

• When starting the day: It’s going to be a good day.


• When meeting someone new: I’m going to like them.


• When trying something challenging: It’s going to work out.

Problems will inevitably arise and I’ll deal with them as the situation demands, but my preference is to assume I’m