The world bursts at the seams with people ready to tell you you’re not good enough. On occasion some may be correct. But do not do their work for them. Seek any job; ask anyone out; pursue any goal. Don’t take it personally when they say “no” – they may not be smart enough to [...]

Visualization works if you work hard. That’s the thing. You can’t just visualize and go eat a sandwich.
– Jim Carrey
I have learned the secret to getting rich in math and science. And now, for the first time ever, I am making these secrets available to you.
I can teach you everything you need to know to [...]

Morten Lund is as entrepreneurial as it gets. He has invested in more than 80 companies around the world, most famously Skype.
The first couple minutes of this video, a speech Lund gave about entrepreneurship at Le Web ‘08 in Paris, are rough going as they get the presentation set up. But the remaining 10 minutes [...]

The educated differ from the uneducated as much as the living from the dead.
– Aristotle
As Ayn Rand pointed out in her excellent book, Philosophy: Who Needs It, we are all philosophers.
We all have a certain attitude towards life, we all have different hypotheses regarding Flying Spaghetti Monsters, and we all have a standard by which [...]

A common recipe for personal growth is to start with what you have, identify what sucks about it, and try to make it suck less. Software developers call this “fixing bugs.”
“Fixing bugs” may seem like a natural metaphor for personal development, but in most cases this is actually an extremely limited, even harmful, perspective. [...]

The test of literature is, I suppose, whether we ourselves live more intensely for the reading of it.
– Elizabeth Drew
In my recent article, How to Read a Book, I offered some ideas for extracting value from dead trees. I focussed primarily on non-fiction in that article. Now I want to offer you an approach for [...]

Properly, we should read for power. Man reading should be man intensely alive. The book should be a ball of light in one’s hand.
– Ezra Pound
I run a One Man University.
I’m the Dean, the Professor, and the entire student body of OMU. My major is the conscious pursuit of happiness; my minor, everything else. My [...]

Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.
– Leonardo da Vinci
I need every word I write.
The titles of my articles are descriptive but unflashy. I strive for short sentences. I formulate simple concepts, act on their hint, and document my experiences in the hopes of inspiring others. I use technology as an instrument of reach, rather than as [...]

Only with absolute fearlessness can we slay the dragons of mediocrity that invade our gardens.
– George Lois
Since I started 30 sleeps, I’ve always imagined writing to be just one of several mediums through which I speak to the world. The written word can transport a serious payload, but there’s nothing quite like reaching out to [...]

Take your life in your own hands, and what happens? A terrible thing: no one to blame.
– Erica Jong
Every so often, somebody writes me an email or a comment for which a simple reply would be inadequate, and which I feel is too important to ignore. It’s not just that they’ve got a serious problem [...]