The beautiful and intricate Czech capital is like an anti-Silicon Valley.

Science works through experimentation and replication. Hypotheses are put forward; tests are run; and results are obtained. If something surprising or interesting is found in an experiment, other researchers can...

Earlier today, I was speaking with a friend of mine about habit formation. In the middle of our conversation, he paused and told me: “The trick is to keep on going. You’ll make steps forward. Then you’ll fall...

You're not broken. I promise. I can understand why you would think you are, though. After all, you're an expert in yourself. Like a fine painter, you're so familiar with your subject matter that you quickly...

Behind every behavior there are four potential explanations: It’s been done to solve a tangible and practical problem. It’s a habit (and thus an automatic response to a cue). It’s been done for no...

“Envy is a really stupid sin because it’s the only one you could never possibly have any fun at. There’s a lot of pain and no fun. Why would you want to get on that trolley?” – Charlie Munger Recently I...

Two of the most fundamental human drives are: The drive to learn more about the world The drive to gain more control over one’s environment and circumstances While these may seem different, they’re...

There are two types of people in the world: those who believe that perfection exists in this life, and those who believe that every solution is flawed and that life is but a series of trade-offs. The former...

In life, the most important skill is communication. It’s the bottleneck to almost every problem in almost every area of our lives. Effective communication is similar to magic, for it transmutes the unseen concepts...

One of the eminently amusing and frustrating things in life is how people suspend common sense when thinking about anything related to their bodies or their health. Most people understand that there are...

Everyone has a large number of great theories or ideas. Here’s one that I have: Wouldn’t it be great if all of the money that each person generated was split up and distributed evenly across all of the...

I’ve always been struck by the power of envy. Other than anger, it is perhaps the most commanding emotion, able to instantly turn our stomachs and perceptions upside down. Envy is the realization that...

In the past few weeks, I’ve noticed a strangely ubiquitous pattern: an obsession with what I would call “advanced features”, and a nearly complete disregard of what I would consider “basics”. This all started when...

For most of human history, it’s been recognized that we tend to follow the path of least resistance. We go to comical lengths to avoid work of even the most trivial sort. 

All of us think that we’re more “special” and capable than we are. This phenomenon has many different names in the psychological literature, but my personal favorite is “The Lake Wobegon effect” – a reference to a...

A person is, in large part, the sum of their habits. We go through an evolutionary process each day, in which certain behaviors in our repertoire are selected for and certain behaviors in our repertoire are...

There are three primary ways that mobile technologies change our behavior:  1. By making things easier 2. By interrupting us 3. By giving us feedback By Making Things Easier: Let’s start with the...

In the last decade, the business and technology worlds have become obsessed with the science of the mind. The thinking goes as follows: if we understand the mind, in all its intricacy, we can manipulate and...

One of the trendiest ideas in popular psychology in the last few years has been that of “ego depletion” or willpower as a limited resource. Many different books have been written on the topic, with the most recent...

I’ve been thoroughly dismayed by Facebook the past couple of years. Maybe it’s a quirk of memory, but I don’t remember my feed being so full of political sparring and overwhelming anger between 2009 to 2012....