Top Posts

I have a lot of posts, so people often ask me where to start! This is my attempt to give a rough categorisation of the things I often write and think about, and my favourite posts in each category. This is in no particular order, and I recommend reading whatever stands out as sounding fun! If you just want a single starting point, the post I’m proudest of writing is my post on altruism

• Altruism

  • What altruism means to me - on my moral beliefs and how they’ve led me to the Effective Altruism movement

• Motivation

  • Become a person who Actually Does Things

  • Live a life you feel excited about - how to shape your life to be full of intrinsic motivation

  • Your standards are too high - on guilt, obligation and setting realistic standards for yourself

• Productivity

  • On systems - building routines and systems into your life, so that you do the right thing by default rather than by “trying harder”

• Procrastination

  • On procrastination - my toolkit for overcoming procrastination, and taking actions that achieve my values

• Education

  • How to teach things well

  • Learning how to learn - my personal learning style, and my advice for how to get better at learning

• Social skills

  • How to learn from conversations

  • Taking social initiative

• Life-optimisation

  • The world is full of wasted motion - an argument that the world is full of low-hanging fruit, incentives are poorly aligned, and there should be major returns to optimisation

  • Seek upside risk - fill your life with things that have the potential to go incredibly well

  • On reflection - make regular time to reflect on your life and notice what you could be doing differently. Make improving things the default.

• Pitfalls of optimisation

  • What it means to optimise - why I try to optimise my life for my goals, and common mistakes of optimisation

  • On Slack - Having room to be excited - the importance of leaving yourself spare capacity in your life, rather than trying to push everything to its limits

• Creativity

  • On blog posts - Why you should start a daily writing project

  • On creativity - how 5 minute timers are an exceptionally powerful tool for becoming more creative

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