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Second-Order Thinking
Second-order thinking is a mental model that smart people like Warren Buffett & Howard Marks use to avoid problems. Read this article to learn how it works.
Farnam Street
Timeless lessons on decision making, thinking, and continuous improvement. Written by Shane Parrish.hinking, and continuous improvement.
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Visit fs.blog → RSS feedOn Hacker News May 2018 – May 2026
Life, Learning & Writing 44Tech Industry & Business 22Career & Management 6Society, Policy & Culture 5Math & Algorithms 3Science & Space 2
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The high price of mistrust
When we can’t trust each other, nothing works. As we participate in our communities less and less, we find it harder to feel other people are trustworthy. But if we can bring back a sense of trust in the people around us, the rewards are incredible.
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Mental Models: The Best Way to Make Intelligent Decisions (113 Models Explained)
The smartest people in the world use mental models to make intelligent decisions, avoid stupidity, and increase productivity. Let's take a look at how ...
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Experts vs. Imitators
Learn how to spot the difference between and expert and an imitator with 5 key tells.
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The Deliberate Practice Guide (2021)
Deliberate practice is the key to expert performance in writing, teaching, sports, programming, music, medicine, therapy, chess, business, and more. But there’s more to it than 10,000 hours. Read to learn how to accelerate learning, overcome plateaus, turn experience into expertise, and enhance focus.
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How to Think: The Skill You’ve Never Been Taught
Thinking better isn't about learning more; it's about doing a few simple things that really help create unstoppable progress.
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Carl Braun on communicating like a grown-up (2016)
Industrial genius Carl Braun believed that clear thinking and clear communication go hand in hand. Here the guide on writing productively to get things done.
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Greg Brockman interview [video]
The AI race, the future of AGI, and the inside story of OpenAI. Greg Brockman is the co-founder and President of OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT and GPT-5. He was the first engineer at Stripe before leaving in 2015 to help start OpenAI. In this rare conversation, Greg goes inside the moments that built, and nearly …
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Ways to say no with grace and style (2021)
Saying no with grace is its own leadership capability. It is not just a peripheral skill. As with any ability, we start with limited experience.
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Chesterton's Fence: A lesson in second order thinking (2021)
A core component of making great decisions is understanding previous decisions. If we don’t understand how we got “here,” we run the risk of making things much worse.
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Bad behavior is almost always good politics (2021)
Most great thinkers have speculated about the kind of leadership that might give rise to a better society, analyzing it through what’s sometimes called a “normative” lens: What should we be doing? In Leviathan, for example, Thomas Hobbes argued for a single, absolute sovereign to hold together the social contract. He…
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Efficiency is the enemy? (2021)
If you ever find yourself stressed, overwhelmed, sinking into stasis despite wanting to change, or frustrated when you can’t respond to new opportunities, you need more slack in your life. Here’s how slack works and why you need more of it.
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The Surprising Power of the Long Game
In everything we do, we play the long or the short game. The short game is easy, pleasurable, and offers visible and immediate benefits. But it almost never leads to success. Here's how to play the long game.
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Gresham’s Law: Bad Drives Out Good as Time Passes (2009)
Gresham's Law is an economic principle that sates "the bad drives out the good" as time passes. The concept has many broad and far reaching consequences.
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Why Write?
In a world of AI-powered writing tools, it's tempting to think human writing skills are losing their value. But this article reveals the surprising reasons why writing remains essential for clarifying your thinking, deepening your understanding, and standing out in an increasingly automated future. Discover the…
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The map is not the territory (2015)
The map is not the territory reminds us that our mental models of the world are not the same as the world itself. It cautions against confusing our abstractions and representations with the complex, ever-shifting reality they aim to describe.
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Earning Your Stripes: An Interview with Patrick Collison
Patrick Collison started Stripe, dropped out of MIT, and reads 1–2 books a week. In this episode, he breaks down how Stripe was built, what most orgs get wrong about bets, why speed beats precision in decision making, and how to actually learn from the right people. It’s a masterclass in clarity.
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Reversible and irreversible decisions (2018)
When decisions are reversible, speed them up. The biggest risk is dragging your feet. When decisions are irreversible, slow them down. The biggest risk is making the wrong decision.
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Limitations and pitfalls of the job interview
Better hiring leads to better work environments, less turnover, and more innovation and productivity. When you understand the limitations and pitfalls of the job interview, you improve your chances of hiring the best possible person for your needs.
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Schopenhauer: On Reading and Books
A meditation on reading, exploring what it means to read and whether it's a path to acquire wisdom.
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Psychology of Human Misjudgment (Transcript) by Charlie Munger
In The Psychology of Human Misjudgment, Charlie Munger explains why we behave the way we do. This is a transcript of the fully updated talk.