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Accidental Talent — On the accident of talent

• [article] On Motivation — 15 Sep 2025
  We can think of motivations in terms of three things. There is the <em>content</em>: what things motivate us. Then there is the <em>process</em>: how things motivate us. And lastly, we have those things that <em>maintain</em> our motivation.
• [article] Anticipation beats reward — 31 Jan 2025
  Basically, reward and ancipation both use the same system, but differently. Anticipation seems to come in through the senses and get sent throughout the brain, but pleasure seems to come in from more evaluatey bits—maybe to help us learn what’s rewarding.
• [article] Addictive Work — 24 Jan 2025
  The neural reward circuit implies that small, rewarding tasks that share environmental context are going to be the most addictive, so break tasks into small steps that end in a clear good feeling and optimise for a shared environment.
• [article] Motivation pt. II: Stickytaping it all together — 6 Dec 2024
  We can think of motivations in terms of three things. There is the <em>content</em>: what things motivate us. Then there is the <em>process</em>: how things motivate us. And lastly, we have those things that <em>maintain</em> our motivation.
• [article] Motivation pt. I: Haphazard Dichotomies — 29 Nov 2024
  Individually, the disconnected dichotomies of intrinsic vs extrinsic, normative vs motivating, ‘cognitive’ and ‘biological’, and the like have little utility. But when you put them together, you can get some quite juicy fidelity on why people do what they do.
• [article] Mechanical success vs nepotism and luck — 1 Nov 2024
  We usually complain about systems ‘getting in our way’, with arbitrary criteria that determine success. But this goes the other way too. Much of my success and that of those around me is similarly mechanical. Not luck, effort, or nepotism.
• [article] Solving the say-do-gap — 12 May 2023
  To close the say-do-gap, we need to feel some ownership of the problem, we need the social support to support the change, and we need to know how. Anything less will make us focus on how good thinking about changing feels and not actually putting in the work.
• [article] From Zero — 13 Mar 2021
  Hydraulic despotism is the idea the critical resources are used to control populaces. Once, water. Now tech. To counter this, we should learn to recreate more basic systems from scratch, fostering self-reliance and innovation.
• [article] A narrative of 'grit' — 16 Jan 2021
  Angela Duckworth’s concept of the personality trait ‘grit’ is an interesting one, but it’s actually rather less helpful than the narrative about success she weaves in her book Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance.
• [article] Genetics is nurture — 11 Jan 2021
  How much of who we are and what we do is the result of our genetic predispositions, and how much because of our environment? This tension is made complicated by the fact that the dichotomy doesn’t really exist. Rather, our nature is a form of nurture.
• [article] The nuance in Maslow's Hierarchy — 23 Dec 2020
  Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is one of these ideas that’s regularly misapplied both inside and out of academic circles. Which seems ridiculous, because there isn’t much to it. And yet, properly understood, it’s a powerful tool for encouraging personal growth and success.
• [article] Your personality doesn't belong to you — 17 Nov 2020
  The study of personality has a fairly storied history—a pretty contentious search for the essence of human expression. But more modern approaches to the study of personality show us something interesting—that our personalities might be something that’s forced upon us.
• [article] Advice on brain science from a farming manual — 22 Oct 2020
  In the early stages of a career in brain science, one learns very quickly that the human brain is still largely unknowable. But perhaps this is because our approach is wrong. Perhaps, rather than solving the unsolvable, we should be like the farmers of old. Observing, contemplating, and adding only a little helpful illumination on a complex problem.
• [article] The true meaning of family ties — 24 Sep 2020
  It’s no secret that we are lonelier than ever. We have many complaints of modern society, but our growing isolation is a common one. There are two reasons for this unhappy accident—the difficulty of finding people in ever more crowded cities, and the fact that we have lost sight of what a community is really made of. This article is about the latter.
• [article] The predictability of humans — 15 Sep 2020
  The human animal is an animal first–responding adaptively to the environment around it. Humans are only unpredictable because we’re obsessed with the human mind and uncomfortable accepting how influential our environment is.