Archive for May, 2009

Elite Are Elite Because They Have Better Genes. But For How Long?

Thursday, May 28th, 2009

Lessons in Survivial an article than ran in Newsweek details an experiment run at military training camp that explains scientifically why Special Forces units are able to bounce back faster than ordinary soldiers. The study shows that their bodies are simply genetically better suited for enduring and recovering from high pressure, high stress situations.
Morgan found [...]

Gladwell & Simmons’ Debate Sports and Everything Else

Saturday, May 23rd, 2009

I’ve just been getting around to finishing the Bill Simmons–Malcolm Gladwell article on espn.com and it has to be the most intriguing, insightful and entertaining sports article I’ve read in a long time. Both pull from a wide range of disciplines have great knoweldge of the history of the sport and possess unique views about [...]

Asking The Right Questions

Thursday, May 21st, 2009

Good writing and good conversation seem to have many parallels. In order to continue to write you’re basically having a conversation with yourself and you need to intuitively, or perhaps, sliently whisper the right questions to yourself to prompt an interesting recall or synthesis of information. Asking myself better questions is definitely something I want [...]

Capturing Creativity

Wednesday, May 20th, 2009

Captures ideas when you have them. If you don’t, these creative insights will try to flee and bringing them back is a sweat inducing struggle. Creativity is often romanticized but really it’s just making connections between disparate ideas. And it’s actually far easier to be creative when you say to yourself ‘What are some connections [...]

Striking the Balance Between Productivity and Over-Optimization

Thursday, May 7th, 2009

This post is a result of some ideas that were being tossed around amongst friends over dinner and then later over e-mail. I wanted to extend the conversation to a wider audience. The post has been lightly edited.
Max: If your goal is to optimize productivity, does taking a few hours out on a Saturday night [...]