I liked the article on scaling yourself.

Staying focused hasn't always been a challenge—there hasn't always been hundreds of pages of new content to consume daily or a constant stream of new information interrupting you. Instead, Hanselman says, when he wanted to learn programming, he needed to know everything in just two books.

"Then the Internet happened and suddenly there's Exabytes of information being created, and half of it is garbage and a third of my day is wasted by interruptions," he says.

"I'm completely overwhelmed, and we tell ourselves that we're going to be able to pull it off if 'we just work late tonight.'" Stop. This is a danger sign.

"If you find yourself saying, 'I need to work late to catch up,' then that's a problem, that's a big problem," he says, admitting he's guilty of using this phrase himself. The remedy isn't as easy as "hoping" you'll catch up with your to-do list.

"Hope is not a plan," Hanselman says. "Hope is nothing but waiting and letting life happen to you."

So what do you do when you see danger signs? Hanselman has an antidote, but before he unveils it, he sets the record straight on what it means to be effective versus what is means to be efficient.

Understand Effectiveness Versus Efficiency

"Effectiveness is goal orientation. This is picking something to do. This is doing right things—picking a goal and doing that goal," Hanselman says. "Efficiency is doing things in an economical way, process-oriented.

"So phrased differently: Effectiveness is doing the right things, but efficiency is doing things right. That means effectiveness is picking a direction and efficiency is running really fast in that direction," he says.

...

"Only do it if it's going to take a minute and it's been scheduled. Otherwise, it's really just drop it,delegate it and defer it, that means I'm not going to do it, someone else is going to do it (or I'll do it later )," he says.

...

Pulling a page from author and software developer Jon Udell, Hanselman encourages you to "conserve your keystrokes." What does this mean? He explains by example:

If Brian emails me a really interesting question about ASP.net … and I send him back an exciting and long, five-paragraph with a code sample email that solves his problem, I just gave him the gift of 10,000 of my keystrokes. But there is a finite number of keystrokes left in my hands before I die, and I am never going to get those keystrokes back and I've just gifted them to Brian. And I don't even know if he reads that email. So what should I do to multiply these keystrokes given that there is a finite number of those keystrokes left in my hands? I write a blog post and I mail him the link. Then after I'm dead, my keystrokes multiple—every time I get a page view that's 5,000 keystrokes that I did not have to type.

...

The Pomodoro Technique, invented by Francesco Cirillo in the late 1980s, has you focus on one task for 25 minutes. Between each of these task sprints, you get a break.

Read more:

https://zapier.com/blog/scale-yourself-scott-hanselman/

Fermi Paradox from Wait but Why is very good:

http://waitbutwhy.com/2014/05/fermi-paradox.html

"Everyone feels something when they’re in a really good starry place on a really good starry night and they look up and see this: Some people stick with the traditional, feeling struck by the epic beauty or blown away by the insane scale of the universe."

Notes:

http://pandawhale.com/post/44208/the-fermi-paradox

Taming the Mammoth: Why You Should Stop Caring What Other People Think

By Tim Urban, Wait but Why

The first day I was in second grade, I came to school and noticed that there was a new, very pretty girl in the class—someone who hadn’t been there the previous two years. Her name was Alana and within an hour, she was everything to me.

This article is the source of the elephant above.

I also like the story of Slack:

http://pandawhale.com/post/55814/stewart-butterfield-and-the-history-of-slack-in-wired-the-most-fascinating-profile-youll-ever-read-about-a-guy-and-his-boring-startup

People don't buy products. They buy better versions of themselves.

http://blog.bufferapp.com/people-dont-buy-products-they-buy-better-versions-of-themselves

Fixed vs Growth mindset:

http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2014/01/29/carol-dweck-mindset/

Notes:

http://pandawhale.com/post/36668/fixed-vs-growth-the-two-basic-mindsets-that-shape-our-lives-brain-pickings

Masters of Love, by Emily Esfahani Smith of The Atlantic:

Science says lasting relationships come down to—you guessed it—kindness and generosity.

Notes:

http://pandawhale.com/post/45783/masters-and-disasters-of-love-by-emily-esfahani-smith