Understanding, accepting, and working with reality is both practical and beautiful. I have become so much of a hyperrealist that I’ve learned to appreciate the beauty of all realities, even harsh ones, and have come to despise impractical idealism.

Don’t get me wrong: I believe…

Larry Summer's post provides a good summary of the inflation issue.

There is nothing more important than understanding how reality works and how to deal with it. The state of mind you bring to this process makes all the difference. I have found it helpful to think of my life as if it were a game in which each problem I face is a puzzle I need to…

Tolerating a problem has the same consequences as failing to identify it. Whether you tolerate it because you believe it cannot be solved, because you don't care enough to solve it, or because you can't muster enough of whatever it takes to solve it, if you don't have the will to…

So I certainly don’t want to dissuade you from going after whatever you want. At the same time, I urge you to reflect on whether what you are going after is consistent with your nature. Whatever your nature is, there are many paths that will suit you, so don’t fixate on just one.…

I know that my own life has been full of mistakes and lots of great feedback. It was only by looking down on this body of evidence from a higher level that I was able to get around my mistakes and go after what I wanted. For as long as I have been practicing this, I still know I…

All successful people are good at this. #principleoftheday

People who do this fail because they are stubbornly stuck in their own heads. If they could just get around this, they could live up to their potential.

This is why higher-level thinking is essential for success.

#principleoftheday

One of the hardest things for people to do is to objectively look down on themselves within their circumstances (i.e., their machine) so that they can act as the machine's designer and manager.

Most people remain stuck in the perspective of being a worker within the machine. If…

As Carl Jung put it, 'Man needs difficulties. They are necessary for health.' Yet most people instinctually avoid pain. This is true whether we are talking about building the body (e.g., weight lifting) or the mind (e.g., frustration, mental struggle, embarrassment, shame)--and…

Today is #EarthDay , when we should take a moment to reflect how important the #earth is in taking care of us and how important it is for us to take care of it.

While doing that, please remember that the #ocean is the largest part of the earth and our ecosystem, more than twice…

You have your goals. I call the way you will operate to achieve your goals your machine. It consists of a design (the things that have to get done) and the people (who will do the things that need getting done). Those people include you and those who help you.

For example,…

For the most part, life gives you so many decisions to make and so many opportunities to recover from your mistakes that, if you handle them well, you can have a terrific life. Of course, sometimes there are major influences on the quality of our lives that come from things…

Do you have enough non-debt money? In my latest article, I discuss my views on the debt liabilities of most forms of money and why it’s important to have some non-debt money.

linkedin.com/pulse/do-you-h…

By recognizing the higher-level consequences nature optimizes for, I've come to see that people who overweigh the first-order consequences of their decisions and ignore the effects of second- and subsequent-order consequences rarely reach their goals. This is because first-order…

In my own life, what I want to give to people, most importantly to people I love, is the power to deal with reality to get what they want. In pursuit of my goal to give them strength, I will often deny them what they 'want' because that will give them the opportunity to struggle…

It’s important not to let our biases stand in the way of our objectivity. To get good results, we need to be analytical rather than emotional.

Whenever I observe something in nature that I (or mankind) think is wrong, I assume that I’m wrong and try to figure out why what nature…

Many of you have asked me about finding a work-life balance, so I wanted to share some of the principles that have helped me to achieve this. I have found that I can squeeze a whole lot more life into life by knowing how to do a few of these very well.

#principleoftheday

Leverage in an organization is not unlike leverage in the markets; you're looking for ways to achieve more with less. I am always eager to find people who can do things nearly as well as (and ideally better than) I can so that I can maximize my output per hour.

Technology is…