Benjamin Franklin is best known as the iconic American polymath: writer, scientist, inventor, statesman, diplomat (and out of all things, a printer). Studying how he did all that is a masterclass on productive creativity. Luckily he also documented his own guidelines for us! These five principles from Mr. Franklin can…

Are there any solutions to the modern chaos around us? That’s what I was wondering just a month ago… I have a few thoughts to offer. And it has to do with where you focus in the now: We always talk about stopping but don’t have the time to do…

There’s been a lot of attention on our (lack of) focus over the past years. Best-selling books, such as Deep Work by Cal Newport, have made it very clear that focus is a long-lost art. Too many notifications. Too many blog posts like this. Too much everything. Scientists tend to…

The tyrants are invisible and pervasive around you. Watch out. In one of our all-time favourite books, Poke the Box by Seth Godin, there’s a catchy phrase “Reject the tyranny of being picked.” I’ve mentioned this phrase quite a few times before, but I find myself gravitating back to this…

The creator of logotherapy — Victor Frankl — during World War II hypothesized that “people who realize their life’s purpose can survive, whereas people without it die.” …

Seeing the world in black and white harms humanity as a whole. Take the pandemic, for example. Oversimplifying complex issues that nobody really can predict has polarised entire nations like nothing before. And it’s all thanks to social media. See what I just did that there? Of course it’s not…

I took the shot above just yesterday from Naantali Spa. See, Finland has pretty places too! But the humblebrag is not the point here. It’s what happened at the spa. In the jacuzzi, to be more precise. For quite a few years now I’ve been addicted to self-help porn. So…

Just before sitting down to write today, I finished re-reading the book Pilgrimage by Paulo Coelho. In the book Paulo tells a story of doing a pilgrimage from the border of France through the routes of Santiago de Compostela in Spain. Throughout the book, his motive for the pilgrimage was…

The entire (lucrative) genre of self-help appears repulsive to many. And I don’t blame them. I’m a fan of much of it myself, but there are days when I can’t stand any of the nonsense in some of my favourite books. …