Oct 7, 2024AI
A quick jaunt into the world of red-teaming turned into a month-long free-fall down the rabbit hole of AI psycho-warfare
Jan 2, 2024Learning
I tracked every word that Ruby learned to say in the first 2.5 years of life, analyzing vocab compared to her brothers.
Sep 4, 2023Writing
In which I ignore how many copies of The Motivation Hacker I sold for six years, then "just" ask the AI.
Dec 5, 2022AI
In which I have a magical Christmas shopping experience with the AI
Aug 22, 2021Family
Photos from the first few weeks of baby Ruby's life
Oct 17, 2020Learning
I tracked every word that Clark learned to say in the first 2.5 years of life, graphing it and comparing it to Max's.
Mar 17, 2019Lifehacking
I was talking to a friend who seemed to be independently rediscovering what he called self-referential motivation: m...
Feb 17, 2019Learning
Here's another concept from language learning pedagogy (see also Extensive vs. Intensive Learning): the difference b...
Feb 3, 2019Learning
In language learning, there's a slightly obscure but useful concept of "extensive reading" vs. "intensive reading". ...
Jan 20, 2019Learning
I use a site called PredictionBook to make predictions, say how likely I think they are to occur, and then later jud...
Jan 5, 2019Learning
Humans are naturally bad at predictions. Being bad at predictions, and figuring out how to make better ones, sounds ...
Mar 26, 2018Family
Now I have two kids. So far, it's pretty similar to just having one kid. The time and energy needed to sustain doubl...
Jun 10, 2017Writing
I always love it when people share revenue data for their apps / games / books / works, and it's been four years sin...
May 30, 2017Learning
Max's vocabulary started exploding around 15-17 months old. I started writing down everything he could say (with und...
May 18, 2017Family
Max recently turned two, so I made another video! See also the video I made for his first year....
Mar 26, 2017Learning
I just got back from a business trip to China, where I visited Beijing, Shenzhen, and Guangzhou. I listened to and s...
May 16, 2016Family
Since Max turned one last week, I made a poignant video of poignancy showing him growing up over the past year....
Nov 29, 2015Lifehacking
I used to eat food. I still do, but I used to, too.You have probably heard of Soylent, the liquid meal replacement w...
Sep 5, 2015Family
Baby Max is four months old today. I posted when he was one month, talking about what a difficult little demon he wa...
Jun 11, 2015Hacking
When Chloe and I were trying to come up with baby names, every conversation would go something like this:Chloe: "New...
Jun 5, 2015Family
We have reproduced! Max is one month old now. Here's his birth announcement photo, where he looks adorable:Apart fro...
Apr 11, 2015Writing
I always love it when people share revenue data for their apps / games / books / works, and it's been two years sinc...
Dec 31, 2014Lifehacking
When I was a kid, I didn't work. I got a tiny allowance ($5 per week, or maybe per month), and every now and then I'...
Dec 21, 2014Lifehacking
It's that time again where I become a better person. Help me out, would ya? Follow this link to give me anonymous ad...
Nov 6, 2014Random
Here are some of the posts I want to write: experiential sampling tools, the butter eating competition story, experi...
Jun 27, 2014Random
ManiacsInspired by my 120-Hour Workweek Epic Coding Time-lapse video, Bethany and Danny over at Beeminder have done ...
May 30, 2014Writing
Reader Raj Bapna has formatted The Motivation Hacker into a paperback, so you can now get one and do your normal boo...
May 26, 2014Random
There's a thought experiment people use when they think about possible future technologies like teleportation and cr...
May 21, 2014Hacking
Emacs wizards will tell you that it is not merely a text editor, but an operating system; not just a way to work, bu...
Apr 23, 2014Writing
I always love it when people share revenue data for their apps / games / books / works, and it's been a year since T...
Apr 14, 2014Random
This is the 2nd time I've seen this kid, both times with a burrito, and NO shoes. It's in SOMA, and he has a fancy b...
Mar 27, 2014Startups
A month before Y Combinator Demo Day, I resolved to be as productive as possible for 30 days, since they say that th...
Feb 10, 2014Startups
Here are the last six posts I've written for the CodeCombat blog over the past few months. Look at the view counts:T...
Feb 1, 2014Lifehacking
04:06. The wake light has gradually brightened to 20% brightness, but I cut it off early. It's time to rise, silentl...
Jan 11, 2014Startups
My head obsesses. I get songs stuck in my head so badly that I have to leave the room when "I'm On A Boat" comes on,...
Dec 26, 2013Random
Here's an old post from 2011-11-21 I thought I'd save from Google+. It is just two years old and already my G+ histo...
Dec 17, 2013Lifehacking
After a reader asked about why I don't use shower products on the cold showers post comments, I started thinking of ...
Dec 3, 2013Lifehacking
A few months ago, I set out to test cold showers. Here's what I wrote for my experimental mission statement:People a...
Nov 18, 2013Hacking
Last week I set out to see how many hours of programming work I could do in one week on CodeCombat, our multiplayer ...
Nov 10, 2013Hacking
Starting Monday morning at 04:00, and ending the next Monday at 03:59, I'm going to see how many hours of CodeCombat...
Oct 22, 2013Startups
Originally posted on the CodeCombat blog.What a crazy weekend! We launched our beta on Friday morning by posting to ...
Oct 13, 2013Lifehacking
Watch out: I use "I" 54 times in this post, so this will be boring if you, like me, aren't interested in hearing me ...
Sep 29, 2013Writing
It's been almost six months since I published The Motivation Hacker, my book on how to get yourself to want to do wh...
Sep 19, 2013Lifehacking
For a few months in the beginning of 2012, the only exercise I got was doing 10-20 sets of pull-ups a day. I was hac...
Sep 10, 2013Lifehacking
These are the three plants I have out of my 99 things. I went to a plant nursery and bought them after my friend Dav...
Sep 5, 2013Lifehacking
I was thinking of 1) setting something up where I could monitor my breath rate while working at my computer and 2) u...
Aug 21, 2013Learning
Yesterday, I went down to the Institute for the Future for a workshop on "extreme learning". There were many diverse...
Aug 15, 2013Random
During the hike up King's Peak (wild bachelor party, I know), I was a lithe gecko gliding up the trail. When going d...
Aug 1, 2013Hacking
A while ago I was working with Yoni on Telepath, a project to make your laptop do passive machine learning on your e...
Jul 24, 2013Lifehacking
I wrote this as a guest post on the Beeminder blog — comments can live there.It’s dark. Warm. Safe. You’re in bed, a...
Jul 14, 2013Family
Chloe and I dated for six years. For three years*, we were long-distance. For five years, starting five months in, I...
