Bad news: your internal identity dictates everything you do. Good news: you can change it

I find that when I play RPG games, I often hoard single-use items like potions and scrolls, saving them for some future critical moment. I finish games like Skyrim with a backpack full of unspent resources, reserved for a crisis that never actually arrives. What’s the point, then, of all these items? Just like I save items in games, in real life I too am reluctant to ask for favors or promote my own projects. (Sometimes I even save all my favourite treats and I never eat the last one). I treated these social and professional resources as if they were single-use “magical items”, not to be wasted but reserved for some important-yet-undefined future magnum opus event. Recently I played Baldur’s Gate 3 and I decided to try something new: I would actually gasp use my items as needed, as they were intended, without undue reservation. Not only was it actually fun to use my fireball scrolls and blow stuff up, but I also discovered new layers and hidden quests. For instance, using a ‘Speak with the Dead’ scroll on a certain suspicious corpse unveiled a questline I would have otherwise missed.

How will I know what I need to hear in a future I can't anticipate? Who will I be, and what will she want?

Baby, it's cold outside! Especially when you spend the holidays in a tent full of explosives.

What if there's no good reason to avoid it?

Why tracking screen time doesn't matter and improving the relationship with your phone requires conscious decisions.

I wish I'd read this blog post years ago. I don't have any expertise whatsoever to be guiding others through this process so please don't look at this as a "how to". But what I do have is an audience, and I've found that each time I've opened up about the more personal aspects of my life and where I've struggled (such as my post a few years ago on dealing with stress), I've had a huge amount of feedback from people that have been helped by it. Just read this. Hugely helpful to me going through

As I watched him on stage, I thought about what made him extraordinary. It’s not his voice. He readily admits that his voice isn’t amazing.

Forming new friendships as an adult can seem like an impossible feat. Psychologist Marisa G. Franco shares her top tips for making genuine connections.

David shares 50 ideas that changed his life. Read here.

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The most surprising thing is that you wouldn’t let anyone steal your property, but you consistently let people steal your time, which is infinitely more valuable.

Pessimism can spark an idea. Annoyance can drive ingenuity. Disappointment can redirect effort towards change. But creativity requires optimism. Creativity isn't about starting something. It's about making something. Making requires sustained effort, and sustained effort requires fuel. That fuel is optimism. When you run out, momentum ...

30 underrated reasons to be thankful, starting with the fact that atomic bombs don’t ignite the atmosphere

Understanding psychology may be key to addressing the problem.

When you share your work there will be criticism. Learn how to handle the haters in a way that fits your personal needs, the community norms, and the specifics of the situation.

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Update (December 2016): Version 2 of this guide is now available! Announcement post here. Links in this post are updated to send you to the latest and greatest version. Click here to download 8,760 Hours v2  The end of a year […]

There’s no time like the present to grow or refine ourselves a little bit more, and few resources are as helpful as TED talks. In that vein, here are

You’re about to go pro, and you’re pretty excited. Deep in your heart you know you’re eventually going to succeed.

If you want to get anything done, there are two basic ways to get yourself to do it. The first, more popular and devastatingly wrong option is to try to motivate yourself. The second, somewhat unpo…