Preventable Personal Dangers

September 23, 2017

I don't usually advocate for worrying more. Quite the opposite, in fact, but there are at least a handful of personal dangers to your happiness and life that you may be overlooking. Specifically, the below list of things that may be worth worrying about more because they: (a) could be more likely to impact you than you realize (b) could have severe consequences if they do affect you (c) are at least moderately preventable My hope is that this post will help prevent at least one ...

Goals are Valuable and Dangerous

June 30, 2017

One of the most dangerous and useful things about goal setting is that it feels good to achieve challenging goals even if they are meaningless, only five minutes old, or created by someone else. Imagine throwing away a crumpled piece of paper in a waste bin. Now imagine doing it again, but assume this time that you set the goal of throwing it in from 6 feet away. As your tossed paper ball sails through the air, you may feel an edge of nervousness. When it falls into the bin, you may feel a s...

Which Risks of Dying Are Worth Taking?

October 16, 2013

First, click here to figure out your chance of dying tomorrow. Is it worth taking a 1 in 100,000 chance of dying , in order to experience the novel thrill of sky diving? Is a 1 in 500,000 chance of death worth it to go bungee jumping? It's hard to know whether these risks are reasonable, because numbers like 100,000 or 500,000 feel so abstract to us. To think more clearly about these numbers, it helps to get our intuitions engaged. We can start by figuring out the daily risk of dying that...