Curiosity Chronicle

In the 1980s, Microsoft founder Bill Gates began an annual tradition he called the Think Week. Gates would seclude himself in a remote location, shut off all of his communication, and spend an entire week dedicated to reading, learning, and thinking. While I knew I didn't have an entire week to dedicate to it (due to early career demands, family priorities, etc.), I figured I could adapt something...

While in Omaha at the Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting, I got into a long conversation with a friend and mentor on one particularly impressive facet of the show: The effortless air about Buffett and Munger's entire performance, the ease and elegance with which they operate in what looks like a pressure-packed situation. The term sprezzatura has come to be defined as a "studied carelessness" in th...

We all struggle with some degree of self-doubt and fear of failure. It's particularly common among ambitious high-achievers, who, by definition, are constantly putting themselves in situations that are on the edge of their current competency level. Character Invention: Create a character in your mind who can show up in the way you want to and teach yourself to "flip the switch" to become this char...

Investor Graham Duncan coined the phrase "Time Billionaire" as someone who has over one billion seconds to live. To me, being a “Time Billionaire” isn’t necessarily about having the actual time, but about the awareness of the precious nature of the time you do have. It is about embracing the shortness of life and finding joy in ordinary daily moments of beauty. Treat time as your ultimate currency...

We live in a culture that endlessly promotes and celebrates the achievement of the extraordinary—of those who accomplished some supreme feat in a single, narrow domain. The Trap of the Extraordinary is that we conflate success with the achievement of the extraordinary. Winners are those who achieve the extraordinary, losers are those who do not. To escape the trap, there are two mindset shifts to...

The Spotlight Effect is a common psychological phenomenon where we overestimate the degree to which other people are noticing or observing our actions, behaviors, appearance, or results. Pre-conditioned fear of placing yourself in "spotlight situations" means you shrink yourself down from your true potential. This is a tremendous drag on growth. To fight back: (1) Develop an awareness of the Spotl...

The Learning Pyramid indicates that teaching is a much more effective driver of retention than reading or lecture. The goal should be to move rapidly to teaching in order to cement new learning. The Feynman Technique is a learning model that leverages teaching and prioritizes simplicity to help you develop a deep understanding of any topic. The four key steps of the Feynman Technique: (1) Set the...

The 1-in-60 Rule says that a 1-degree error in heading will cause a plane to miss its target by 1 mile for every 60 miles flown. Tiny deviations from the optimal course are amplified by distance and time. A small miss now creates a very large miss later. This highlights the importance of real-time course corrections and adjustments. The end of each calendar quarter presents us with a valuable oppo...

The Four Idols framework says that everyone is driven by the pursuit of one (or more) of the following idols: Money, Power, Pleasure, and Fame. We make most of our daily decisions based on our worship of our idol. The downside: As we strive to get “closer” to our idol, we find ourselves on an endless chase for more. We incorrectly assume that this chase will lead us to the promised land of happine...

Complexity is a silent killer of focus, clarity, and performance. This statement is true for businesses, but even more so for your work and life. It's easy to let complexity and disorder slowly seep in—we tend to add, but rarely subtract. The Simplicity Audit examines four key environments of your life: Physical, Digital, Mental, and Social. For each item in each environment, ask: (1) Is this nece...

We're often told that we should live life according to a core set of values. The challenge, of course, is in determining and defining what these core values are. The Deathbed Regret List is the most efficient and illuminating process I've discovered for defining and clarifying the core values with which we should live our lives. It forces you to begin with the end in mind. The exercise has three s...

The Boot Up Sequence is a fixed set of actions and environmental cues that mentally and physically mark the start of your work session. While it can be used for any work session, I find it particularly impactful and valuable in priming for a deep work session (daily focused work on the "most important thing"). The Boot Up Sequence is built around the five senses: Touch, Taste, Sight, Sound, and Sm...

A parable is broadly defined as a succinct story that illustrates one or more instructive lessons or principles. My view is that these parables have a sort of “Lindy effect” signaling, whereby their survival and re-telling across the generations is a signal of their usefulness and value. The Parable of the Farmer and the Horse is about cultivating a "maybe" mindset. The villagers constantly tell t...

One of the most significant obstacles we face on our journey to progress is intimidation at what the progress will require. Sometimes the notion of needing to commit to a string of actions is enough to stop us from taking the first action. "Any success takes one in a row. Do one thing well, then another. Once, then once more. Over and over until the end, then it’s one in a row again." - Matthew Mc...

The Surfer Mentality: When a surfer gets up on a wave, they enjoy the present moment, even though they know with certainty that the wave will eventually end. They fully enjoy THIS wave, with the wisdom and awareness that there are always more waves coming. 5 ideas of applications of this mentality: (1) enjoy your next wave and embrace the present moment, (2) be strategic about your positioning in...

In my discussions for the Life Lessons from 1,000 Years , one of my 90-year-old participants shared a piece of poignent wisdom on lies: "The most damning lie is the lie you tell to yourself." I began reflecting on what lies I've been telling myself, as well as ways to reframe them to fight back. Here are the 10 most dangerous lies we tell ourselves (and reframes that will help change the internal...

President Dwight D. Eisenhower was known for his prolific, almost otherworldly productivity. His secret: He never confused the urgent with the important. The Eisenhower Matrix is a 2x2 visualization tool that forces you to differentiate between the urgent and the important in order to prioritize and manage your time more effectively. The Goal: Manage urgent and important tasks, spend most of your...

The Oxford Languages English dictionary defines luck as "success or failure apparently brought by chance rather than through one's own actions." But all you need to do is perform a simple search of the phrase "quotes on luck" to reveal a great many perspectives that differ from this definition. Maybe there is more to luck than meets the eye. Perhaps it's possible, as these quotes suggest, to manuf...

Every year on my birthday (January 5), I like to conduct some interesting exercise that will push me to grow in a new way. This year, I asked a number of 90-year-olds a simple question: "If you could speak your 32-year-old self, what advice would you give?" The responses were...incredible. They range from fun, playful, and witty to deeply moving. I'd encourage you to read through them with your lo...

In 1666, a young Cambridge University student left campus in the midst of a plague ravaging Europe and moved home to his small village. In the year that followed, he would make major discovering in mathematics, physics, and more. The young man was Sir Isaac Newton, and 1966 became known as his miracle year. This story is not about discovering gravity or inventing calculus—it's about the amazing po...

This annual planning process has been an immensely helpful exercise to which I would credit many of my greatest achievements. I hope that it will spark you to conduct your own before year-end. You can download a beautiful (and free!) printable PDF of the template at the link in the newsletter.

While somewhat arbitrary, the end of the calendar year does present us all with a valuable opportunity to reflect on the year that was, and plan for the year that will be. It's easy to glaze over the former and focus on the latter, but failure to reflect will eventually manifest as a failure to grow. It's easy to glaze over the former and focus on the latter, but failure to reflect will eventually...

Today at a Glance: There is one tool that has been used with near perfect consistency by history's greatest men and women. From artists and inventors to entrepreneurs and athletes, they have all understood the immense power of this one, simple tool: the walk. There is a tremendous body of research to support the mental and physical benefits of walking. Improved creativity, improved cardio health,...