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Then you’ve got to be kind to people when they’re mean or rude to you. This is how the virtues strengthen: not by doing them when they’re easy, but by doing them when they’re hard. Consider: You cannot get braver unless you do what needs to be done when what needs to be done makes […]

One of the easiest ways to be a moron is to think you know something that you actually don’t. And right out of the gate, let me just admit that I’m adept at this kind of idiocy. But it’s not just me. In 1999, social psychologists David Dunning and Justin Kruger formalized something that we’ve […]

Long ago, I wrote that one of the “Jedi mind tricks” for avoiding burnout is this: you are not your job. Or rather, the mind trick lies in training yourself to habitually remember that your job performance is not indicative of your value as an individual. It helps to think here of two circles: one […]

In the first days of June 1944, General Dwight Eisenhower faced befuddling complexity as the final decision for the coming D-Day invasion loomed before him. The question was easy to ask — On what date shall the invasion begin? — but soul-crushingly difficult to answer. He needed a full moon in order for his nighttime […]

Great teachers did more than obsess on the efficiency of their classroom — their questions were artful; their assignments, demanding — but there was a clear tendency among positive outliers to see the power of the humdrum, the everyday. Practice Perfect: 42 Rules for Getting Better at Getting Better, by Doug Lemov, Erica Woolway, and […]