Resistance is signal Allow me to use a personal anecdote to introduce a concept that’s highly relevant to business. In 2025, I finally leveled up my gym workouts, from a chore delivering moderate results to an enjoyable activity that delivers excellent results. What changed wasn’t the workout routine, but the stance I took toward resistance. For years, I treated emotional resistance as something to power through. And power through I did: I went to the gym, lifted weights, did “the inputs.”...
12 days ago • 4 min read
Police Shootings and Post-Mortems (read as a blog post) Last week, an officer shot a woman in Minnesota after she tried escaping with her car in a way that put him in danger. Most of the discussion I read on social media was around two topics: whether the car hit the agent or merely scraped him, and whether the agent was correct in reacting by shooting her. Not only do I dislike the framing that there's exactly one side at fault. But my broader opinion is that, unless you're close to the...
18 days ago • 3 min read
It's that time of the year when people review and plan for the upcoming year. Instead of the usual format ("what went right, what went wrong, etc.), here is a suggestion for a different kind of yearly reflection. Yes, it is still a good idea to reflect on the past year and plan the next one. But a better to-do list is the bottleneck only if you perfectly executed last year’s list. Otherwise, the real bottlenecks are what prevented execution in the first place: mental habits, lack of clarity,...
26 days ago • 2 min read
Here's a short review of everything I published in 2025: books, essays, podcasts, speeches, plug-ins, and more. (read as a blog post) Speeches I held a few lectures and speeches around the world. Most were private, but here is the recording of my favorite public speech of 2025: Winning Long-Term Games at VALUEx Berkshire. Books Published In 2025, I published a new book, Poverty and Prosperity (November 2025): The Principles That Build Civilizations and the Policies That Ruin Them. This book...
about 1 month ago • 4 min read
Earlier this month, Nature retracted the second-most-cited paper on climate change in 2024. The paper has already racked up 439 citations. It will probably collect even more, given that, according to a study on covid papers, 80% of papers citing retracted research were published after the retraction date. [1] This is a huge modern problem. Many news articles and scientific papers cite retracted research without knowing it's retracted. Even more readers read news articles and scientific papers...
about 1 month ago • 1 min read
I just wanted to share some more information about the 2026 Antifragile Organizations Course curriculum. I also offer a one-on-one version of the course on your schedule; more info below. The Curriculum The desired outcome is for you to learn how to make yourself, your team, and your organization more antifragile: not only more likely to survive problems, but also able to benefit from them. In concrete terms, it means you will change the culture from one where problems are hidden under the...
about 1 month ago • 1 min read
The Size of the Box Santa Clara’s School of Law steadily raised tuition year after year, from roughly $44,000 in 2015 to $63,280 in 2025. Yet it just announced its 2026–27 tuition: $50,000. Why the sudden drop, and why such a round number? That's because, starting next year, professional school borrowing in the US will be capped at $50,000 per year. Education costs, it turns out, expand to fill the size of the box we assume to be the default. Change the box, and the “necessary” cost instantly...
about 2 months ago • 1 min read
On surveys According to a recent survey, 12% of Americans aged 18 to 29 say they have operated a nuclear submarine. Of course, this is not possible: only a minuscule fraction of Americans have ever been licensed to operate one. The organization that administered the survey, Pew Research Center, proactively explains that, as in a classic case of Wittgenstein's Ruler, the result should not be read as information about submarine operators but as information about the unreliability of certain...
about 2 months ago • 1 min read
Beyond Income:Rethinking Redistribution Gradients Recent debates focused on how many dollars should count as the poverty line. Here, I want to ask a more fundamental question: Is income the right yardstick for poverty at all? Low disposable income can mean that someone is genuinely deprived, but it can also mean that someone has deliberately traded away savings or income for other things that matter to them: a nicer place to live, more free time, a less stressful job, better education, richer...
about 2 months ago • 4 min read