[New Post] Patterns Lead to Enjoyment, Creativity -

RT @kontrary: {Brand Spanking New} Behind-the-Scenes of My New Redesign!

Video cortito que hice anoche... | Tip: Un modo de distanciarse de la competencia con poco esfuerzo. -

Thought-provoking article by Peter Stromberg on Psychology Today | The Shadow Self -

[New Post] Should Kids Be Entrepreneurs? -

In Latin America, a new day is dawning | Great article by Vivek Wadhwa about Latin America's potential -

Happiness is not a destination -

A felt need is what makes us buy -

On hacking and the growth paradox -

The Three Ways to Introduce Two People Over Email -

Latest issue of my free weekly newsletter -

Clear and helpful. | The Secret Structure of Great Talks - #TED

Curiosity is one of the hallmarks of actual interesting people, as opposed to “interesting” people, people who make for excellent fashion blogs and mediocre humans. The more I think about it, the more I feel like plain old genuine curiosity is the antidote to the creeping Internet-borne conviction that nothing that has not already been brought (strobe-lit and booming) to our attention is worth our attention.

The Three Laws of Future Employment -

Eliezer Yudkowsky list

[Good post on persistence by Aaron Tucker] Chop Wood, Carry Water | Shugyosha Year -

The classics.

The most dangerous thing about our dislike of schleps is that much of it is unconscious. Your unconscious won't even let you see ideas that involve painful schleps. That's schlep blindness.

None of this is a matter of principle or asceticism; it’s just pure selfishness. Nothing makes me feel better — calmer, clearer and happier — than being in one place, absorbed in a book, a conversation, a piece of music. It’s actually something deeper than mere happiness: it’s joy, which the monk David Steindl-Rast describes as “that kind of happiness that doesn’t depend on what happens.”

Tyler Cowen on Stories [Transcript of his TED talk] -

RT @sivers: What do you hate NOT doing?

Where to Go to Understand the World in 2012 - #china #travel #tips

The strange history of drug policy -

Starting up with a friend -

XXIst century Resume.

So what does all this mean for job-seekers in this uncertain economy? Forget the titles on the org charts and the advertised positions. Design your own profession and convince employers that you are exactly what they need. In my view, the New York Times and other information hubs ought to be advertising for curators and verifiers, but you shouldn't wait for them to do so. Define the functions you think they need and you can supply, and then apply for a corresponding position, whether or not they've created it yet.

Celebrating the new year by reading "Ikigai", by @sebastmarsh from 11 pm to 2 am. -

Sir Ken Robinson (animated)

Time to end the war on drugs -

The overjustification effect threatens your fragile narratives, especially if you haven’t figured out what to do with your life. You run the risk of seeing your behavior as motivated by profit instead of interest if you agree to get paid for something you would probably do for free. Conditioning will not only fail, it will pollute you. You run the risk of believing the reward, not your passion, was responsible for your effort, and in the future it will be a challenge to generate enthusiasm. It becomes more and more difficult to look back on your actions and describe them in terms of internal motivations.

As I say, as our societies get bigger, and rely more and more on the Internet, fewer and fewer of us have to be very good at these creative and imaginative processes. And so, humanity might be moving towards becoming more docile, more oriented towards following, copying others, prone to fads, prone to going down blind alleys, because part of our evolutionary history that we could have never anticipated was leading us towards making use of the small number of other innovations that people come up with, rather than having to produce them ourselves.

The End of the Publishing Cartel - via @sebastmarsh

[NEW] Conversation with Amber Zuckswert -

Proud to announce new section of my website: "Conversations" -

RT @joshkaufman: Absence Blindness (via visibility bias) in programming:

TED talk relevant for our times | Luis von Ahn: Massive-scale online collaboration -

Had a fascinating conversation with Peter Stromberg, from Psychology Today (). Will upload to the site soon :)