On the long project of learning.
One a week. On reading carefully, learning slowly, and finishing what you start. No newsletter wall — just read.
On finishing the books on your shelf
Most reading fails not because we lack discipline, but because the reading has no shape that survives a Tuesday. On how to actually finish the books on your shelf — and why the shelf itself is a working document.
Read the essayWhat Stoicism actually is
A Hellenistic school founded in Athens around 300 BCE — not a self-help genre. The school the Stoics actually built.
ReadHow the Stoics actually lived day-to-day
The morning meditation, the evening review, the dichotomy of control in practice — sourced from Marcus, Seneca, and Epictetus.
ReadStoicism in 20 minutes a day
The case for slow reading, and the four books worth starting with — Meditations, Discourses, the Enchiridion, and Hadot.
ReadWhy streaks mislead
What the engagement literature actually shows, what a broken streak teaches a brain, and why closure is the better unit.
ReadWhat actually makes a habit
The cue–routine–reward loop, where it lives in the brain, and what the research under the popular books actually says.
ReadThe environment, not the willpower
Wendy Wood's forty years of research point one way — habits live in context, not character. The leverage is environmental.
ReadWhat to do when the streak breaks
The recovery, not the run. Why the second miss matters more than the first — and what the research says to do about it.
ReadThe three schools of negotiation
Fisher-Ury on interests, Voss on tactical empathy, Bazerman and Malhotra on cognitive biases — where they disagree.
ReadPrincipled vs tactical: Fisher-Ury and Voss
The Harvard school and the FBI school disagree about where to start. Each is right in different rooms.
ReadWhat the cognitive biases actually are
Bazerman, Malhotra, and what thirty years of research at Harvard documented about how negotiators actually reason.
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