In Paul Graham’s essay, How to Start a Startup, he describes the type of people you should recruit to build a business as animals. How goes on to define what makes someone an animal:

It means someone who takes their work a little too seriously; someone who does what they do so well that they pass right through professional and cross over into obsessive.

What it means specifically depends on the job: a salesperson who just won’t take no for an answer; a hacker who will stay up till 4:00 AM rather than go to bed leaving code with a bug in it; a PR person who will cold-call New York Times reporters on their cell phones; a graphic designer who feels physical pain when something is two millimeters out of place.

Are you an animal? We all are to varying degrees. Our ability to use our animal strength depends on how we apply ourselves. Identifying the characteristics that makes animals successful is the first step to developing your inner animal. Click here to continue »

Being an early riser has its benefits, but it isn’t for everyone. Some of humanity’s greatest minds (Voltaire for example) were renowned for sleeping in. Depending on personality, environment, and work schedule, being an early riser may not be practical.

A few months ago I gave early rising a try. I was able to wake up 1-1.5 hours earlier, but I couldn’t adjust to the early bed time. Each night around 10:00, no matter how tired I’d felt that day, my mind became active and I was unable to shut down until after 12:00. After a few weeks, sleep deprivation set in and I went back to my normal sleep pattern. Click here to continue »

Although I usually focus on writing original content, I read a few articles this week that were so relevant I felt compelled to share them and add my own comments.

Train Your Brain

This fascinating article covers a scientific experiment on neuroplasticity — the brain’s recently discovered ability to change its structure and function, in particular by expanding or strengthening circuits that are used and by shrinking or weakening those that are rarely engaged.

In simple terms, the brain becomes stronger with training and weaker with idleness, similar to the way muscles react to exercise. In the experiment, the brain activity of Buddhist monks (who’ve spent up 10,000 hours in meditation) was compared to novice meditators. Click here to continue »

The other day I came across some disturbing statistics on reading. According to a Jenkins Group survey, 42% of college graduates will never read another book. Since most people read bestsellers printed in the past 10 years, it follows that virtually no one is reading the classics. Although it’s unfortunate that the intellectual heritage of humanity is being forgotten we can use this to our benefit. By reading the classics to improve your mind you can give yourself an advantage. These examples illustrate 10 ways reading the classics will help you succeed. Click here to continue »