Johanna

“Complain less” is one of the very best pieces of wisdom. That is positively correlated with criticizing other people less, though it is not identical either.

To do science, you don’t need to start with the dawn of all human knowledge and then work forward. You start with the current state of knowledge and go from there. Learning the history of science is helpful for shaping your intuitions and giving you perspective, but you don’t actually have to read Darwin, for example, to do evolutionary biology.

Take a problem, say analyzing a business’s profits (as in consulting). Break it down into logically exhaustive possibilities , e.g. “revenue” and “costs”. Break down each branch further into its component parts, e.g. revenue becomes price * quantity. Follow this process recursively, each time breaking the tree down into components.

Now you have a

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If you do not work on an important problem, it's unlikely you'll do important work. It's perfectly obvious. Great scientists have thought through, in a careful way, a number of important problems in their field, and they keep an eye on wondering how to attack them. (...) By important I mean guaranteed a Nobel Prize and any sum of money you want to... See more

I highly recommend using lists. I make lists of what I want to accomplish each year, each month, and each day. Lists are very focusing, and they help me with multitasking because I don’t have to keep as much in my head. If I’m not in the mood for some particular task, I can always find something else I’m excited to do.

The control of the thinking machine is perfectly possible. And since nothing whatsoever happens to us outside our brains, since nothing hurts us or give us pleasure except within our brain, the supreme importance of being able to control what goes on inside the mysterious brain is patent… people complain of the lack of the power to concentrate, not... See more

If you pivot, do it fully and with conviction. The worst thing is to try to do a bit of the old and the new—it’s hard to kill your babies.

As job tasks get replaced, the same humans might be able to spend their time doing more productive stuff — they’re still employed, and they get paid more (or get paid the same but have more leisure time). Meanwhile, mass automation will increase society’s income, which will increase labor demand and create whole new categories of jobs that these... See more

Habits can mean we overshoot our goals. Habits are easy to complete. Habits are for life. Habits can compound. Habits can be as small as necessary.