Personal mastery

The better route for avoiding chaos in consciousness, of course, is through habits that give control over mental processes to the individual, rather than to some external source of stimulation,

Superforecasters’ online interactions are exercises in extremely polite antagonism, disagreeing without being disagreeable.

Great thinkers don’t harbor doubts because they’re impostors. They maintain doubts because they know we’re all partially blind and they’re committed to improving their sight.

the coping mechanisms used by Pixar and Disney Animation’s directors, producers, and writers draw heavily on visualization. By imagining their problems as familiar pictures, they are able to keep their wits about them when the pressures of not knowing shake their confidence.

Why waste time proving over and over how great you are, when you could be getting better?

IN THE VERY early days of Pixar, John, Andrew, Pete, Lee, and Joe made a promise to one another. No matter what happened, they would always tell each other the truth. They did this because they recognized how important and rare candid feedback is and how, without it, our films would suffer. Then and now, the term we use to describe this kind of

There has been a growing understanding about human cognitive biases and how they can affect decision making. Many of these are systematized and explained in Daniel Kahneman’s fascinating book, Thinking, Fast and Slow.4 For senior executives the most important seem to be optimism bias, confirmation bias, and the inside-view bias.

Everyone should write. Why? Because everyone is full of ideas they’re not aware of. This means they’re also unaware of the value of their ideas, and this value can only be unlocked via writing.

In general, people are resistant to self-assessment. Companies are bad at it, too. Looking inward, to them, often boils down to this: “We are successful, so what we are doing must be correct.” Or the converse: “We failed, so what we did was wrong.” This is shallow.