Johanna

What they want younger people to know is this: life is short. The older the respondent, the more likely to say that life passes by in what seems like an instant. They say this not to depress younger people, but to get them to be more aware and selective about how they use their time. Older people practice what psychologists call ‘socioemotional... See more

Good ideas are getting harder to find. In 300 BC, if you noticed that the water level in your bathtub got higher when you got into it, you were allowed to run through the streets shouting “eureka!” and declare yourself to be a genius. Now you would need some 400 page mathematical proof drawing on the topology of eight-dimensional manifolds in order... See more

Say you’re a car manufacturer. Every year, you must decide between investing in future innovations, such as self-driving software, and finding ways to squeeze new revenue out of existing technologies and materials. Too much fanciful R&D spending, and this year’s profit plummets. Too much emphasis on tweaking existing product lines, and you get... See more

Certain features of the modern academic system, like underpaid PhDs, interminably long postdocs, endless grant-writing drudgery, and clueless funders have lowered productivity. The 1930s academic system was indeed 25x more effective at getting researchers to actually do good research.

Ideally, you want to pay people just enough they don’t stress about cash flow. Equity is harder, but a good rule for the first 20 hires seems to be about double what your investors suggest.

“Bursts of high-impact works [are] remarkably universal across diverse domains,” he and his co-authors wrote. Just about everybody has a period in their life when they produce at their best, even if, unlike Aretha, they aren’t pumping out some of the greatest work of the 20th century.

There are four key steps to the Feynman Technique:1. Choose a concept you want to learn about2. Explain it to a 12 year old3. Reflect, Refine, and Simplify4. Organize and Review

If you want an average successful life, it doesn’t take much planning. Just stay out of trouble, go to school, and apply for jobs you might like. But if you want something extraordinary, you have two paths:1. Become the best at one specific thing.2. Become very good (top 25%) at two or more things.