Plus, my 10 most popular and 5 most underrated ones — My 10 Best Stories These are my best stories as in “I think this is my best work.” In no particular order: All These Flaws You See In Yourself Aren’t Real The Future of Learning If You Want To Be Happy, Make The World Small The Strong-Link Theory Behind Successful Careers 3 Simple Words…

The difference between blockbusters and a fun anecdote told over lunch — My friend used to play tennis in high school. He had a coach. His name was Felix Kerner. Kerner was young, making the kind of mistakes young coaches tend to make: He would promise my friend to restring his racket, then forget to bring it the next session. He’d schedule…

Sometimes, it’s difficult to stop once we’ve begun — On the surface, Peaky Blinders is a show about an early 20th century family of gypsies and petty criminals rising to build an international, respected, far-reaching yet still criminal empire. Actually, it’s about trauma. Trauma haunts the Shelbys, no matter where or how far they go. Arthur is lost in…

Or: Ode to the Concentrated Mind — Let’s say your forehead is 10 mm by 100 mm. That’s 1,000 mm². Each square millimeter is an exit point for your thoughts on a particular subject. If you daydream about ice cream, that thought exits through square #37. If you mull over an email response to a friend, that’s…

How you love matters less than whether you choose to love at all — The first time I blacked out from drinking, I stayed at a friend’s place. I puked on the dance floor, and, after my friend had stored me horizontally in the backseat of his car for a few hours, I woke up on his couch the next day. …

At least in the long run — I spent most of my 20s in college libraries. From Mannheim to Karlsruhe and from Boston to Munich, I have “librated” all over the place. In the beginning, it was essential. There were many of us trying to survive our first semester, and the only way we’d be able to…

Optimize for happiness instead of performance, because success is never guaranteed — If my math is right, Seth Godin will publish his 10,000th blog post on Friday, January 23rd, 2026 (not counting some of his older stuff that’s lost to time). Since Seth posts a blog every day, he will have done it 10,000 times over 10,000 days. How long is that…

A lesson from Stephen Hawking — In Brief Answers to the Big Questions, Stephen Hawking outlined what it would take for humans to reach other planets, particularly inhabitable ones. With existing rocket technology — the chemical combustion of fuel — we can reach planets in our solar system in an acceptable time frame: from 130 to…

This week, I’m playing a stupid amount of a racing game called Asphalt. Why? It’s Ferrari season. I have loved Ferrari since I was five years old. More than two decades later, I’m still a long way from driving my own. I can, however, virtually test-drive all kinds of Ferraris…