Understanding yourself

• Seneca tells us that we should each have our own Cato - a great and noble person we can allow into our minds and use to guide our actions. It doesn't have to be an actual person, just someone who, like Seneca said, can stand witness to our behavior. Someone who can quietly admonish us if we ...

What makes something effortful? For example, why is it harder to do a math problem than play a video game?

Understanding how effort works is essential. Many of our goals will require a lot of it. If we have the wrong view on how effort works, many of our systems will fail ...

When distraction is just a click away, it is hard to learn something. Time is a huge barrier to progress, but it is our choices of where we put our attention and effort that really impacts our learning.

The way out of this is to suspend all activities we normally spend our...