Rarely do we stop and consider whether the most prestigious of institutions is always in our best interest.
The most influential thinker, in my life, has been the psychologist Richard Nisbett. He basically gave me my view of the world.
The paradox of endurance sports is that an athlete can never work as hard as he wants, because if he pushes himself too far, his hematocrit will fall.
In cognitively demanding fields, there are no naturals. Nobody walks into an operating room straight out of a surgical rotation and does world-class neurosurgery.
Age-class running, as you know, is completely unreliable. It's based on this artificial thing, which is that people who are the same age have the same level of physical maturity. Which just isn't true.
The willingness to be self-critical in England is much greater than the willingness to be self-critical in America.
The visionary starts with a clean sheet of paper, and re-imagines the world.
You don't want to be first, right? You want to be second or third. You don't want to be - Facebook is not the first in social media. They're the third, right? Similarly, you know, if you look at Steve Jobs' history, he's never been first.
I am a story-teller, and I look to academic research... for ways of augmenting story-telling.
As a writer, the best mindset is to be unafraid.
I try to be unafraid of making a fool of myself.