We’re more likely to recognize discoveries hidden in our own experiences when necessity pushes us, when panic or frustrations cause us to throw old ideas into new settings.

• The Post-it note was invented by a chemical engineer who, frustrated by bookmarks falling out of...

Motivation is a skill that can be learned. People can get better at self-motivation if they practice the right way. The trick is realizing that a condition for motivation to develop is believing we have authority over our actions and surroundings.

To motivate oursel...

Here is an example of a flowchart to use when setting a goal:

WHAT IS YOUR STRETCH GOAL?

To run a marathon

WHAT IS A SPECIFIC SUB-GOAL?

Run seven miles without stopping

HOW WILL YOU MEASURE SUCCESS?

Twice aroun...

• Internal locus of control translates into our belief that we can influence our destiny through the choices we make; it has been linked with academic success, higher self-motivation and social maturity, lower incidences of stress and depression, and a longer life span. This i...

Psychological safety is a "shared belief, held by members of a team, that a group is a safe place for taking risks. It is a sense of confidence that the team will not embarrass, reject, or punish someone for speaking up.”(Amy Edmondson, 1999)

This...

This system for making decisions allows us to define our dilemmas, collect data, brainstorm solutions, debate alternative approaches, and conduct iterative experiments.

This approach to problem-solving removes the emotion so we can view our problems more ob...

The choices that are most powerful in generating motivation convince us we’re in control and endow our actions with larger meaning.

An internal locus of control emerges when we develop a mental habit of transforming chores into meaningful choices, when we assert tha...

Reactive thinking is how we build habits, and it’s why to-do lists and calendar alerts are so helpful: Rather than needing to decide what to do next, we can take advantage of our reactive instincts and automatically proceed.

But the downside of reactive thinking is ...

Cognitive tunneling can cause people to become overly focused on whatever is directly in front of their eyes or become preoccupied with immediate tasks. It’s what keeps someone glued to their smartphone as the kids wail or pedestrians swerve around them on the sidewalk.

Make sure you are exposed to a full spectrum of experiences.

We all have a natural tendency to be optimistic, to ignore our mistakes and forget others’ tiny errors. But making good predictions relies on realistic assumptions, and those are based on our expe...

At the core of Bayes’ rule is a principle: Even if we have very little data, we can still forecast the future by making assumptions and then skewing them based on what we observe about the world.

Humans are astoundingly good Bayesian predictors, even if we’re unaware of it....

In the past two decades, the amount of information present in our daily lives has skyrocketed. Unfortunately, however, our ability to learn from information hasn’t necessarily kept pace with its proliferation.

In theory, the ongoing explosion in informa...

• The “star” model: executives hire from elite universities or other successful companies and give employees huge amounts of autonomy.
• The “engineering” model: engineers, as a group, hold the most sway.
• The “bureaucracies”: Exe...