Curiosity Chronicle

Why do you value the things you build yourself so much more than anything you can buy? In this episode, I share a personal story from my first apartment and break down the fascinating science behind why effort is the secret ingredient to a meaningful life. ••• This episode brought to you by: DeleteMe - DeleteMe makes it quick, easy, and safe to remove your personal data online.  Origin Financial -...

"So, what's your 5-year plan?" That was the question posed to me by a mentor in January 2021. At the time, I was about seven years into my career, on the "track" in finance. Climbing slowly up the mountain, I had started to wonder if it was the wrong one. I just didn't seem to have the same energy for the work as most of my colleagues. All of the future mountains I envisioned were (at most) one de...

On January 27, 1986, just 16 hours before the Space Shuttle Challenger was set to launch, an engineer named Roger Boisjoly presented data showing a catastrophic risk with the shuttle's O-rings in cold temperatures. His warnings were overruled. The next morning, 73 seconds into its flight, the Challenger exploded, killing all seven crew aboard. Sociologist Diane Vaughn coined the term Normalization...

I’m increasingly convinced that the willingness to change your mind is the ultimate sign of intelligence. The most impressive people I know change their minds often in response to new information or evidence. It's not that they lack conviction in their beliefs, but more so that they've developed enough self-awareness to understand what it would take to change them. The world will pressure you to s...

Last week, I ​wrote a piece​ about reinvention. Specifically, the myth of too late and how to reinvent your life at any age or life stage. It clearly struck a chord. I received thousands of replies in the days following the piece. One reader reply referenced a two-decade-old newspaper advice column segment that had resonated on the subject. Me being me, I decided to try to find the column. After a...

In colonial India, a bounty on cobras was supposed to reduce the snake population. Instead, people started breeding cobras for profit — and when the policy ended, they released thousands into the streets. The result? More cobras than ever.  This is Goodhart's Law: when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure. And it's not just a business problem — it's happening in your life rig...

There’s an old children’s fable I recently retold to my son about a farmer whose wagon wheel gets stuck in the mud. He calls on Hercules to come to his aid. Hercules appears, but rather than lifting the wagon, he speaks: "Do you think you can move the wagon by simply looking at it? Put your shoulder to the wheel." The farmer did so, and the wagon lurched forward as the wheel easily came unstuck. T...

Every single week, I invariably get a handful of emails from readers around the world with a similar general message. Stuck on a path. Living a life they didn’t really choose. Scared it’s too late to make a change. Given the frequency of these messages, I decided it warranted a deeper, more tactical guide. Here’s exactly how I would approach reinvention (at any age or life stage): ••• This episode...

Have you ever noticed that growth feels like destruction? That getting better feels like getting worse? You're not doing something wrong. You're just experiencing something nobody told you about... ••• This episode brought to you by: DeleteMe - DeleteMe makes it quick, easy, and safe to remove your personal data online.  Origin Financial - Your personal AI Financial Advisor. Track your spending, i...

There’s a beautiful Zen parable that goes something like this: A man is walking across a field when a tiger leaps out from the trees and runs toward him. Fearing for his life, the man sprints away but quickly halts at a steep cliff. Facing a terrifying drop, with the tiger bearing down on him, he grabs hold of a single vine and lowers himself over the cliff’s edge. Looking up, he sees the tiger ab...

My son just turned four. One of the things I love most about the age is the unbridled curiosity with which he explores the world. He's deep in the classic "why" phase, taking me down explanatory rabbit holes that go long past my point of comfort. But one of the most interesting prompts he asked recently was this one: "Tell me all about zippers." On any given day, zipper is replaced by some basic t...

A few years ago, as part of the research for my ​first book​ , I asked a group of centenarians for the advice they'd most like to give to their younger selves. One of them offered this piece of wisdom: "The most damning lie you can tell is the lie you tell to yourself." Those lies dilute your attention, pull you toward distractions, and cut into your confidence. They give you an easy out when the...

In 2004, a Finnish-American photographer named Arno Minkkinen gave the commencement speech at the New England School of Photography. In the speech, he offered a powerful thought experiment: Imagine for a moment that you find yourself at the large bus station in the center of Helsinki. There are two dozen platforms at the station, each with several different bus lines departing from them bound for...

In 1918, German theoretical physicist Max Planck won the Nobel Prize for his discovery of energy quanta. After winning the prize, he went on a tour, giving lectures at universities and institutions around the country on his findings. There’s an apocryphal story from that tour that I first came across while reading the transcript of Charlie Munger’s 2007 commencement speech at USC Law School. Max P...

"No unforced errors." At a recent speaking event, I was asked by an audience member to share one piece of advice I wish I could tell my younger self. Specifically, they asked for the non-obvious advice I've found most difficult to internalize and live by, despite knowing its importance. My response: No unforced errors. Three words. And I've spent years learning why they're so hard to live by... ••...

Most people end the day exhausted but can't point to a single thing they meaningfully moved forward. The problem isn't how much you're working -- it's the type of work filling your hours. In this piece, I break down a simple framework that fundamentally changed how I work: The Four Types of Professional Time... ••• This episode brought to you by: DeleteMe - DeleteMe makes it quick, easy, and safe...

105.5. That's how many laps you have to run around the first lane of a regulation outdoor track to cover the 26.2 miles of a marathon. And, when I arrived at my local high school track last Friday at 4:45am, that was exactly what I planned to do. I wish I had a thoughtful answer to the obvious " um, why? " this opener no doubt sparks in your mind. The truth is that every now and then, I like to re...

"Just be consistent." By now, you've undoubtedly heard this advice countless times. So much so that it may even induce an eye roll or sigh. Yes, it’s true, consistency is the difference maker. The common thread behind every major success story. Everyone tells you to be consistent , but no one ever tells you how to be consistent . And let’s be honest, it’s (much) easier said than done. Life gets ch...

In 1966, a University of Texas psychologist named Elliot Aronson ran an experiment to examine the role of imperfection on human connection. Aronson recruited 48 college students and had them listen to an audio recording of a candidate supposedly auditioning to be on a "College Quiz Bowl" team (a popular TV format at the time). The recordings were, in fact, staged. The candidate was just an actor w...

A few days ago, I was reminded by a reader that May 14 was the five year anniversary of my first Curiosity Chronicle newsletter. Sending that first newsletter, which went out to a few thousand people who had been receiving my tweet threads in email format each week, felt like something of a leap of faith at the time. Fast forward five years and what started with that tiny leap of faith has compoun...

In 2002, Harvard psychologists Daniel Gilbert and Jane Ebert designed a series of studies to test the role of optionality on happiness and human satisfaction. In the first study, the students in a Harvard photography class were asked to make prints of their two favorite photos from the semester. After creating the two prints, they were told to select one that they would get to keep, while the othe...

A razor is a rule of thumb that simplifies decision making. The term comes from philosophy. A principle that let you quickly cut away unlikely explanations or unnecessary steps was called a razor. Razors aren't perfect. They're shortcuts. But used well, they can be the highest-leverage tools you carry through life. In an age of infinite  information, razors can help you stop overthinking and start...

In 1902, a 19-year-old cadet in an Austrian military academy was silently becoming a bystander in his own life. Franz Xaver Kappus felt trapped. On the track for a life as a military officer, but unsure if he wanted it in the first place. His heart felt pulled in a very different direction. To poetry. When Kappus learned that one of his teachers had taught the famed poet Rainer Maria Rilke when he...

My son turns four years old this week. And if I'm being honest, I don't know where the time went. Everyone says this, and I spent most of my life rolling my eyes at it, but my goodness, it goes by fast. With parenting, perhaps more so than most things in life, the days are very long but the years are painfully short . Last year, I started a practice of writing him a letter each year on his birthda...

Last weekend, I had the joy of catching up for a quiet dinner in Omaha with a mentor and friend, Apple CEO Tim Cook. He recently announced that he would be transitioning out of the CEO role at the company after a 15 year tenure. When the news first broke of his announcement, several people asked me how I thought he would handle the major life change and identity shift. My answer was a story from a...