Are you safe?

Is your home, your workplace, your Friendly Neighborhood Military Installation safe?

Likely not. (more…)

So, like, global warming? Well…

Here’s what happens when you get a top-notch scientific cartoonist to plot 22 000 years of temperature in one image. (more…)

I’ve got a soft spot for learning methods.

Anything that promises to be a productivity hack gets my attention. This video is a quick and sometimes brutal overview of how to study, it’s aimed at students but works for everyone.

Also, I wish I’d found it earlier because I’ve already implemented a number of those techniques on my own. Watching a 12 minute video would have been a much faster way of doing it. (more…)

We humans are obsessed with easy and free.

The five minute workout. The sweepstakes giveaway. The 10 simple ways to increase your productivity. Seven habits of highly successful people. Three core rules of effective leadership.

All of this is a result of our biology. (more…)

How much energy does it take to fuel an electric car? And is it really all that environmentally friendly?

Turns out there are studies of this, and the results are somewhat surprising. Check out the “energy needed to bring the electricity to the car” column… (more…)

Start by writing what you enjoy reading.

It’s usually the easiest way.

You’ll need to learn, and how fast you can quit your day job depends on how fast you’re willing to learn, which in turn is a function of butt-in-chair time. The more you’re willing to work, the faster you’ll accomplish your goals. This is true in any field.

Translation: less dreaming, more writing. (more…)

I can’t code and write.

I can code well enough, and I can write well enough. But I can’t do it on the same day. Coding and writing fill up the same creative well in my mind.

It doesn’t really matter if I’m writing fiction or non-fiction, or whether I’m coding JavaScript or Visual Basic, or any other language. If I code I get the same creative kicks that I get out of writing. (more…)

Everyone has doubts. It comes with the territory – you’re a creative, you are able to imagine things, thus you are able to imagine horrible things.

Like “I am not a writer.”

It sounds true. Your doubts tell you it’s true. Your internal editor tells you it’s true. If you’re very unlucky, your friends and family tell you it’s true.

But is there a way to know? (more…)

This is the most important writing and craft related article you will ever read. Allow me to quote from it:

So I change my students’ mindset to a reader/editor mindset. How do I do it? By giving them only three valid responses to something they’ve read:

1. I liked what I read.
2. I quit on page [insert number here].
3. I liked what I read and I would have bought this.

(more…)

In relationship psychology, there is this thing called the “five times positive”-rule. It says that for any relationship to remain positive over time, you need to have at least five times as many positive interactions as negative ones.

This is most commonly applied to parenting. If you yell at your kid once you have to make sure to have five positive play-dates with them before you yell at them again.

Otherwise, you’re going to get into recurring battles with your kids and your life will turn into a living hell.

Trust me on that one. (more…)