psychology

(I wrote this talk for a high school. I never actually gave it, because the school authorities vetoed the plan to invite me.)

When I said I was speaking at a high school, my friends were curious. What will you say to high school students? So I asked them, what do you wish someone had told you in high school? Their answers were remarkably similar. So I'm going to tell you what we all wish someone had told us.

I'll start by telling you something you don't have to know in high school: what you want to do with your life. People are always asking you this, so you think you're supposed to have an answer. But adults ask this mainly as a conversation starter. They want to know what sort of person you are, and this question is just to get you talking. They ask it the way you might poke a hermit crab in a tide pool, to see what it does.Read more

^{(By Amy Chia. Reprinted from Wall Street Journal)}

Can a regimen of no playdates, no TV, no computer games and hours of music practice create happy kids? And what happens when they fight back?

A lot of people wonder how Chinese parents raise such stereotypically successful kids. They wonder what these parents do to produce so many math whizzes and music prodigies, what it's like inside the family, and whether they could do it too. Well, I can tell them, because I've done it. Here are some things my daughters, Sophia and Louisa, were never allowed to do:Read more

I have a friend, I’m going to call Gary. He’s going to read this, so I’ll be very diplomatic – Gary is an idiot who has been thinking and talking about the same startup idea for the past 4 years.

Gary also has lived in the same apartment for the past four years, he’s been working the same job for the past four years, and his last four holidays have been the the Mediterranean sea.

Also, Gary’s computer is filled with notes about things, TV shows he’s been collecting for the past four years, half-completed projects that he occasionally works on. He does a lot of PHP, Ruby On Rails and uses Eclipse, just like he has for the past four years. His music has not changed in years.Read more