What if you didn't need money or attention?
Derek Sivers official site. Thoughts on philosophy, culture, self-improvement. Author of Useful Not True, How to Live, Hell Yeah or No, Anything You Want.
How to Think
Read this article to discover how chess is used to teach people how to think. "It’s uncomfortable to focus so intensely on what you’re bad at."
Hard-won lessons about money and investing
Any time you talk about money, you risk sounding like a jerk. I’m going to take that risk in this post. I’ll start out by talking about a couple ways I shot myself in the foot financial…
Success at Work, Failure at Home
Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) is a venture capital firm in Silicon Valley, California, investing in bold founders, innovators, and entrepreneurs building the future through technology.
Life is a game, this is your strategy guide
Navigate real life like a strategy game with tips on priorities, willpower, and skill synergy to win at everyday choices.
When security goes right
A few weeks ago, I heard that my slow and unreliable ISP was raising their prices, and I decided to look around for a better ISP. I found one in the form of Novus , which has fibre runs to towers around the Vancouver area. I signed up; they came to the building and placed the necessary patch cable in the basement…
Say No
Saying yes is so much easier than saying no, but nobody else will ever value your time as much as you do so you need to be a responsible steward of it. Say No to meetings. Say No to interruptions. Say No to things that are urgent but not important. Prioritize your time based on impact, be transparent about those…
How to Learn Efficiently
I am convinced that much of the gap between the best college students and the worst is explained by study habits. Frankly, most students study poorly. To make matters worse, most teachers are incapable of teaching good study habits. Learning is proportional with effort Sitting in a classroom listening to a professor…
Micro heaters cut 87% off my electric heat bill
In June of 2010 I moved to a place in Montana with only electric heat. By myself. In the past few winters I had conducted experiments in cutting the amount of energy I needed to stay warm, with a focus on heating myself instead of heating the whole house.
Goodbye Academia
I have enjoyed research and teaching for the last twelve years. Yet, I have resigned from my postdoctoral position at MIT a week ago, givin...
Capsela, the game that changed my life
Father, husband and software developer. Ex @auth0
Thoughts on Startup School
Perhaps my expectations were misaligned, but I was astonished at how geek-unfriendly the event was. At conferences like BSDCan , one of the major considerations is the availability of power sockets; at Startup School, not only were the power sockets very limited — we were in a theatre with perhaps a dozen outlets…
Will Work for Food and Lodging
In the past, the various professions were organized as guilds. If you wanted to become a cabinet maker you’d enter into an apprenticeship arrangement with a ‘master’ cabinetmaker and you’d be taught the tricks of the trade over a several year period. As your final examination you would be required to make a…
Programming Sucks
E very friend I have with a job that involves picking up something heavier than a laptop more than twice a week eventually finds a way to slip something like this into conversation: “Bro, 1 [1] you don’t work hard. I just worked a 4700-hour week digging a tunnel under Mordor with a screwdriver.”
The best things and stuff of 2014
Great things and people that I discovered, learned, read, met, etc. in 2014. No particular ordering is implied. Not everything is new.
MMM Receives Legal Threats
Sigh. I suppose this was bound to happen sometime. This blog is approaching its third birthday and has been blessed with over 62 million page views from 5.2 million people and counting. Many people…