Thinking Better

Dan Luu's characteristically data-driven look at the actual tradeoffs of working at startups vs. large companies — punctures a lot of myths on both sides.

“Dan doesn't moralize. He just shows the numbers and the incentives. Changed how I think about career decisions for engineers.”

Ben Kuhn argues that sustained attention is the bottleneck on almost everything valuable — and that our collective inability to focus is a bigger crisis than we acknowledge.

“Short, tight, and correct. I reread this whenever I notice I'm skimming more than reading.”

Why you should understand something before changing it

“The single most useful mental model for anyone making decisions about systems they did not build”

How Charlie Munger uses inversion to avoid stupidity

“Instead of asking how to succeed, ask how to fail - then avoid that. Deceptively powerful.”

Farnam Street's comprehensive overview of mental models from across disciplines — the latticework approach to thinking that Charlie Munger made famous.

“A good entry point into the Munger approach to reasoning. The actual value is in following the links — FS has expanded each model into much deeper posts.”

Cedric Chin's careful examination of where deliberate practice research holds up and where it doesn't — an important corrective to the popularized version of Ericsson's work.

“Ericsson's own work is being systematically misread. If you've read Outliers or Peak and think you understand deliberate practice, read this first.”