Talk1986
You and Your Research
Richard Hamming
Work on important problems with open doors and compound effort — why some capable people do significant work and most do not.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Applied & Practical
Thinking & Personal Effectiveness
The general-purpose skills: reasoning clearly, deciding well, writing plainly and getting things done.
10 fields · 101 topics · 138 curated works
Fields within Thinking & Personal Effectiveness
Critical Thinking
10Evaluating arguments, including your own.
Foundations & Overviews · Argument Analysis · Logical Fallacies (Applied) · Steelmanning · Evidence Evaluation
Decision Making
11Choosing well under uncertainty and time pressure.
Foundations & Overviews · Expected Value Thinking · Base Rates · Opportunity Cost · Reversible vs Irreversible Decisions
Mental Models & Frameworks
13Portable structures for thinking about unfamiliar problems.
Foundations & Overviews · First Principles Reasoning · Inversion · Systems Thinking · Feedback Loops
Probabilistic Thinking & Forecasting
9Reasoning in probabilities rather than certainties.
Foundations & Overviews · Thinking in Bets · Calibration Training · Superforecasting Methods · Fermi Estimation
Writing & Communication
10Making yourself understood, which is most of the job.
Foundations & Overviews · Clear Writing · Structuring an Argument · Editing Your Own Work · Technical Writing
Reading & Research
9Getting knowledge out of sources efficiently.
Foundations & Overviews · How to Read a Book · Reading Difficult Texts · Skimming vs Deep Reading · Literature Search
Productivity & Work Systems
11Structuring attention and time.
Foundations & Overviews · Deep Work & Focus · Attention Management · Task & Project Systems · Getting Things Done
Habits & Behaviour Change
9Changing what you do by default.
Foundations & Overviews · Habit Formation (Applied) · Cue-Routine-Reward · Environment Design · Identity-Based Habits
Career & Life Design
10Long-horizon choices about work.
Foundations & Overviews · Career Capital · Skill Stacking · Choosing What to Work On · Networking Honestly
Interpersonal Skills
9The part of every job that is other people.
Foundations & Overviews · Active Listening · Asking Better Questions · Giving Feedback · Difficult Conversations (Personal)
Reading in Thinking & Personal Effectiveness
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Start here
No prior grounding assumed.
You and Your Research
Richard Hamming · 1986
Work on important problems with open doors and compound effort — why some capable people do significant work and most do not.
+33 more at this level
Then
Assumes you know the vocabulary.
Pensées
Blaise Pascal · 1670
Argues that believing in God is the rational wager even under total uncertainty, because the expected loss from wrongly believing is finite while the…
+52 more at this level
Go deeper
Primary sources and full treatments.
De Inventione
Marcus Tullius Cicero · 90 BCE
Treats invention — discovering the arguments a particular case actually needs — as the first and most teachable of the five canons of rhetoric,…
+50 more at this level
12 of 138 works
Essay1625
Of Studies
Francis Bacon
Argues that books demand different depths of attention, some to be tasted, others swallowed, a few chewed and digested, and that reading which is not tested against writing and discussion produces only a full, not an exact, mind.
about 5 minutes to readlink checked 17 Sept 2026Essay1850
That Which Is Seen, and That Which Is Not Seen
Frédéric Bastiat
Argues that most error in judging a decision or a policy comes from weighing only its immediate, visible effect and ignoring the less visible effects it prevents or displaces elsewhere.
about 4 hours to readlink checked 17 Sept 2026Essay1870
Books
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Argues that most of any library is not worth a reader's time, and offers rules, read the best books first, reread rather than merely add, distrust a book's fame, for building a reading life around a small number of books read well.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Paper1978
Forgotten Fundamentals of the Energy Crisis
Albert A. Bartlett
Uses nothing but the arithmetic of steady percentage growth to show that any fixed growth rate has a fixed doubling time, and argues that policymakers and the public routinely misjudge how little time compounding leaves before consumption meets a finite limit.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Essay1995
Wonder and Skepticism
Carl Sagan
Argues that wonder and scepticism are not opposed but must operate together, since wonder without scepticism accepts any claim that delights while scepticism without wonder forecloses genuine discovery.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Report1998
A Plain English Handbook: How to Create Clear SEC Disclosure Documents
U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission
Argues that dense financial prose is a design choice, not a legal requirement, and shows through before-and-after rewrites that disclosure documents can be both precise and readable.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Essay2001
Baloney Detection: How to Draw Boundaries Between Science and Pseudoscience
Michael Shermer
Offers a checklist of questions, how reliable is the source, has the claim been verified independently, does it fit with what is already known, for telling a well-supported claim apart from a merely plausible one.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Essay2003
An Intuitive Explanation of Bayes' Theorem
Eliezer Yudkowsky
Works a concrete mammography example in full to show that a positive test for a rare condition is usually a false positive, and argues that visualising natural frequencies rather than manipulating the formula is what makes the result stick.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Paper2004
The CRAAP Test
Sarah Blakeslee
Proposes five questions, currency, relevance, authority, accuracy and purpose, as a fixed checklist for deciding whether a source is fit to use, aimed at students who otherwise judge a source by how professional it looks.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Essay2005
Good and Bad Procrastination
Paul Graham
Argues that avoiding an important, ill-defined problem in favour of well-defined small tasks is worse than doing nothing, because the small tasks feel like productivity while the real work never starts.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Essay2006
How to Do What You Love
Paul Graham
Argues that most people are trained by schooling to distrust the idea of enjoying their work, and that finding what to work on requires noticing what you would do anyway rather than what looks prestigious from outside.
link checked 17 Sept 2026