Knowing where to start can be a little difficult.
知道該從哪裡開始可能會有些困難。
To help, we’ve compiled a list of the best articles based on popularity, feedback, and requests to republish.
為了幫助大家，我們整理了一份根據人氣、反饋和重發請求所選出的最佳文章列表。
If you want to browse categorically, start with decision making, reading, and mental models.
如果你想要按類別進行瀏覽，可以從決策、閱讀和心智模型開始。
Widely Shared 被廣泛分享
Mental Models: The Best Way to Make Intelligent Decisions — Mental models are how we understand the world. Not only do they shape what we think and how we understand, but mental models shape the connections and opportunities that we see. Mental models are how we simplify complexity, why we consider some things more relevant than others, and how we reason.
心智模型：做出明智決策的最佳方法——心智模型是我們理解世界的方式。它們不僅影響我們的思考和理解，還影響我們所見的聯繫和機會。心智模型幫助我們簡化複雜性，解釋為何我們認為某些事物比其他事物更重要，以及我們的推理過程。
The Difference Between Amateurs and Professionals — There are a host of other differences, but they can effectively be boiled down to two things: fear and reality. Amateurs believe that the world should work the way they want it to. Professionals realize that they have to work with the world as they find it. Amateurs are scared — scared to be vulnerable and honest with themselves. Professionals feel like they are capable of handling almost anything.
業餘者與專業人士之間的差異——雖然還有許多其他的差異，但可以簡單歸納為兩個方面：恐懼和現實。業餘者認為世界應該按照他們的意願運行，而專業人士則明白他們必須接受現實，與之合作。業餘者感到害怕——害怕展現脆弱和對自己誠實；而專業人士則相信自己能夠應對幾乎所有挑戰。
Habits vs. Goals: A Look at the Benefits of a Systematic Approach to Life — The power of habits comes from their automaticity. This is why they are more powerful than goals. Read this article to harness the power of habits.
習慣與目標：系統性生活方法的優勢 — 習慣的力量源於其自動化特性，這也是它們比目標更具威力的原因。閱讀這篇文章，掌握習慣的力量。
The Buffett Formula: How To Get Smarter — The simple (but not easy) way to acquire wisdom.
巴菲特公式：如何變得更聰明——獲得智慧的簡單（但不容易）之道。
Your Response to Mistakes Defines You — Just because we’ve lost our way doesn’t mean that we are lost forever. In the end, it’s not the failures that define us so much as how we respond.
你對錯誤的反應定義了你——雖然我們可能迷失了方向，但這並不意味著我們會永遠迷失。最終，真正定義我們的不是失敗，而是我們如何回應。
Warren Buffett: The Three Things I Look For in a Person — “Inevitably, the most useful qualities have nothing to do with IQ, grades, or family connections.”
沃倫·巴菲特：我在一個人身上尋找的三個特質——“不可避免地，最有價值的特質與智商、成績或家庭背景無關。”
Seneca on The Shortness of Time — Time is invisible, so it’s easy to spend without proper consideration to its value. Seneca offers a warning on how we squander our time only to regret it.
塞內卡論時間的短暫——時間是無形的，因此我們很容易在未充分考慮其價值的情況下浪費它。塞內卡警告我們，如何浪費時間，最終只會感到後悔。
How To Read A Book — Seriously.
如何真正地閱讀一本書。
How to Remember What You Read — Why is it that some people seem to be able to read a book once and remember every detail of it for life, while others struggle to recall even the title a few days after putting down a book? The answer is simple, but not easy. It’s not what they read. It’s how they read.
如何記住你所閱讀的內容——為什麼有些人能夠一次性閱讀一本書並終生記住每一個細節，而另一些人卻在放下書幾天後連書名都難以回想？答案雖然簡單，但並不容易。關鍵不在於他們讀了什麼，而在於他們如何閱讀。
How to Live on 24 Hours a Day: Arnold Bennett on Living a Meaningful Life Within the Constraints of Time — Arnold Bennett’s How to Live on 24 Hours a Day explores a meaningful life by addressing the age-old question: how can we make the best use of our time?
如何在一天 24 小時內生活：阿諾德·班奈特探討在時間限制下過有意義的生活——阿諾德·班奈特的《如何在一天 24 小時內生活》通過回答一個古老的問題：我們如何才能充分利用我們的時間，來探索有意義的生活？
The Feynman Technique: The Best Way to Learn Anything — The Feynman Technique is a mental model that helps you learn faster and increases retention. Read this article to supercharge your learning.
费曼技巧：學習任何事物的最佳方法——費曼技巧是一種思維模型，幫助你更快地學習並提高記憶力。閱讀這篇文章以提升你的學習效果。
Second-Order Thinking: What Smart People Use to Outperform — Second-order thinking is a mental model that smart people like Warren Buffett & Howard Marks use to avoid problems. Read this article to learn how it works.
二階思考：聰明人用來超越他人的策略 — 二階思考是一種心理模型，像沃倫·巴菲特和霍華德·馬克斯這樣的聰明人利用它來避免問題。閱讀這篇文章以了解其運作方式。
The Most Respectful Interpretation — The happiest people choose the most respectful interpretation when things don’t go their way. Read this to increase your happiness.
最尊重的詮釋 — 最快樂的人在面對困難時，會選擇最尊重的詮釋。閱讀這篇文章，讓你的快樂倍增。
Naval Ravikant on Reading, Happiness, Systems for Decision Making, Habits, Honesty and More — In this wide-ranging interview, AngelList CEO Naval Ravikant and Shane Parrish, talk about Reading, Happiness, Decision Making, Habits, and Mental Models.
Charlie Munger on Getting Rich, Wisdom, Focus, Fake Knowledge and More — Charlie Munger offers timeless and pithy wisdom on getting rich, focus, fake knowledge, understanding our circle of competence, and so much more.
The Difference Between Open-Minded and Closed-Minded People — The rate at which you learn and progress in the world depends on how willing you are to weigh the merit of new ideas, even if you don’t instinctively like them. Perhaps especially if you don’t like them. What’s more, placing your trust and effort in the right mentor can propel you forward, just as placing it in the wrong person can send you back to the starting point.
The Munger Operating System: How to Live a Life That Really Works — Charlie Munger gave the 2007 USC Law School Commencement Address, and within it, outlined a very wise operating system for leading a good life.
The Best Way to Find More Time to Read — Finding more time to read is easy. I’ll show you how busy people find time to read and continuously learn without sacrificing what matters in life.
Ten Techniques for Building Quick Rapport With Anyone — Warning: the content in this post is so effective that I encourage you to think carefully about how it is used. I do not endorse or condone the use of these skills in malicious or deceptive ways.
16 Leadership Lessons from a Four Star General — “We like to equate leaders with values we admire, but the two can be separate and distinct.”
Hunter S. Thompson on Finding Your Purpose and Living a Meaningful Life — You won’t find better advice. Anywhere.
Twenty-Five Pages a Day – How to get the Big Books read.
Maker vs. Manager: How Your Schedule Can Make or Break You – If you’re a maker on a manager’s schedule or a manager on a maker’s schedule, you could be spinning your wheels. Find out the ideal way to schedule your day for maximum results.
Thinking About Thinking — Thinking about how we think.
The Work Required To Have An Opinion — “I never allow myself to have an opinion on anything that I don’t know the other side’s argument better than they do.”
Avoiding Stupidity is Easier than Seeking Brilliance — If you’re an amateur, your focus should be on avoiding stupidity.
How Using a Decision Journal can Help you Make Better Decisions — “Odds are you’re going to discover two things. First, you’re right a lot of the time. Second, it’s often for the wrong reasons.”
Richard Feynman: The Difference Between Knowing the Name of Something and Knowing Something — Just because you know what something is called does not mean you understand it.
Eight Things I Learned from Peter Thiel’s Zero To One — There is no formula to innovation.
Habits vs. Goals: A Look at the Benefits of a Systematic Approach to Life — The power of habits comes from their automaticity. This is why they are more powerful than goals. Read this article to harness the power of habits.
10 Life Lessons From a Navy SEAL — “If you want to change the world, sometimes you have to slide down the obstacle head first.”
The Butterfly Effect: Everything You Need to Know About This Powerful Mental Model — The Butterfly Effect shows that we cannot predict the future or control powerful complex systems. Read to learn more about this mental model.
The Wrong Side of Right — One big mistake I see people make over and over is focusing on proving themselves right, instead of focusing on achieving the best outcome. People who are working to prove themselves right will work hard finding evidence for why they’re right. They’ll go to the ends of the earth to disagree with someone who has another idea. Everything becomes about their being right. These otherwise well-intentioned people are making the same costly mistake that I did.
The Top 3 Most Effective Ways to Take Notes While Reading — This is how I take notes.
Quick Reads: Five Minutes or Fewer
Arthur Schopenhauer on the Dangers of Clickbait — Arthur Schopenhauer Schopenhauer reminds us that the existence of words is no indication of their truth and offers timeless insights on clickbait.
Eudora Welty to The New Yorker: The best job application ever — “I suppose you’d be more interested in even a sleight-o’-hand trick than you’d be in an application for a position with your magazine, but as usual you can’t have the thing you want most.”
F. Scott Fitzgerald offers a list of things to worry about and things not to worry about — Offering a hint of his parenting, the letter from August 1933 concludes with a list of things to worry about and things not to worry about.
Richard Feynman’s Letter on What Problems to Solve — “With you I made a mistake, I gave you the problem instead of letting you find your own.”
Adding Mental Models to Your Mind’s Toolbox — How mental models are useful and how we can prioritize them.
A Two-Step Process For Making Effective Decisions — “One approach is rationality-the way you’d work out a bridge problem: by evaluating the real interests, the real probabilities and so forth. And the other is to evaluate the psychological factors that cause subconscious conclusions-many of which are wrong.”
Charlie Munger’s Five Simple Notions to Help Solve Big Problems — The five big, but simple notions Charlie Munger finds useful to begin solving a complex problem.
What You Can Learn About Making Better Decisions From One of Baseball’s Greatest Hitters — “the single most important thing for a hitter was to get a good ball to hit.”
Steve Jobs on Creativity — “Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That’s because they were able to connect experiences they’ve had and synthesize new things.”
Richard Feynman’s Love Letter to His Wife, Sixteen Months After Her Death — This will touch your soul.
Articles that Prompt a Response
How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big — Goals are for losers, passion is bullshit, and mediocre skills can make you valuable.
A Technique for Producing Ideas — “the habit of mind which leads to a search for relationships between facts becomes of the highest importance in the production of ideas.”
Einstein on The Essential Feature of Productive Thought — “Combinatory play seems to be the essential feature in productive thought.”
Creativity and the Necessity of Giving up Your Best Loved Ideas and Starting Over Again — “All we can hope is that we will fail better. That we won’t succumb to fear of the unknown. That we will not fall prey to the easy enchantments of repeating what may have worked in the past.”
Innovation: The Attacker’s Advantage — What if tomorrow does not resemble today?
The Unwritten Rules of Management — “#1. Learn to say, ‘I don’t know.’ If used when appropriate, it will be often.”
Carol Dweck: The Two Mindsets And The Power of Believing That You Can Improve — Dweck’s work shows the power of our most basic beliefs. Whether conscious or subconscious, they strongly “affect what we want and whether we succeed in getting it.” Much of what we think we understand about our personality comes from our “mindset.” This both propels us and prevents us from fulfilling our potential.
Albert Einstein on Sifting the Essential from the Non-Essential — “I soon learned to scent out what was able to lead to fundamentals and to turn aside from everything else, from the multitude of things that clutter up the mind.”
Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son — “College doesn’t make fools; it develops them. It doesn’t make bright men; it develops them. A fool will turn out a fool, whether he goes to college or not, though he’ll probably turn out a different sort of a fool.”
Tiny Beautiful Things — “Don’t lament so much about how your career is going to turn out. You don’t have a career.”
All Models Are Wrong … But Some Are Useful — Even the most useful models are imperfect. When we understand their limitations, we can use them to make better decisions, reduce anxiety, and free up time.
Long Reads: 10 Minutes or More
How did Charles Darwin Become an Effective Thinker? Follow the Golden Rule — Darwin’s habit of forced objectivity helped him see reality clearly, even though he wasn’t nearly the smartest person of his time.
Culture Eats Strategy: Nucor’s Ken Iverson on Building a Different Kind of Company — “Steel is about as bad a business as you could invent. Yet in Ken Iverson’s 30+ year reign, Nucor compounded its per-share earnings at a rate of about 17% per annum. There must have been something going on here.”
Active Listening — Some of the most successful people in the world use active listening to avoid problems and develop meaningful relationships. Read this to learn more.
Proximate vs. Root Causes: Why You Should Keep Digging to Find the Answer — Distinguishing between proximate and root causes is an important part of continuously improving. Read this to learn more about this mental model.
