Happy New Year!

At this time of year, people often make resolutions—specific commitments to maintain a particular habit or achieve a particular goal. This can be valuable, but a common and crucial reason why many people quickly fail to achieve their New Year’s resolutions is that they have focused on a particular concrete goal, not the habits and princip…

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Virtually all of us have things about our lives and the wider world that we wish we could change. Perhaps you simply wish that a particular person found you attractive or that your favourite TV show was back on the air. Or perhaps, like some of my close friends in less fortunate countries than mine, you long for a corrupt government to disappear or an i…

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When Richard Branson started his first business venture—a small record store in London—he and his business partner named it “Virgin” because they were inexperienced “virgins” in the corporate world.

That was in 1970. Over the following decade, Branson launched a record label, taking a risk on the controversial Sex Pistols to become a major name in the mu…

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To borrow a phrase from author Michael Crichton, we live in a state of fear. Everywhere we turn, news and social media are trying to give us reasons to be pessimistic and fearful.

It’s hard not to be infected by the deadly disease of pessimism. A quick scroll down my news feed is often enough to get me worrying about war advancing throughout Europe, the …

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In order to live well as individuals and build a flourishing society, we need clear knowledge of what is and is not proper behavior. Often, guidance on this comes in the form of virtues—a set of behaviors presented as a guide to good living. The ancient Greek philosophers promoted four key virtues: courage, justice, temperance, and wisdom. Later, Christ…

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We have a crisis of self-esteem today. Many young people don’t know what they stand for and don’t believe they’re capable—or even deserving—of a good life.

In order to build strong self-esteem, we need evidence that we have chosen the right goals and are pursuing and achieving them effectively. But none of us is born knowing what our values are or what c…

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The art we consume, especially as children, has a huge impact on our ideas. Accordingly, a key part of thinking deeply about our values and premises is being conscious and thoughtful about the ideas we’re picking up from the art we consume. To that end, I wanted to spend a little time probing the stories and ideas of Moana (2016) and its new sequel Moan…

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The idea that you should “follow your gut” or “listen to your intuition” has become popular in Western culture and the self-help industry of late. Figures from Warren Buffet to Jordan Peterson tell us to “listen to your intuitions” and “go with your gut feelings,” implying that listening to your emotions is more effective than thinking deeply about your…

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Political discourse today is an embarrassment. What was once a debate about proper governance has degenerated into an emotional cussing match in which principles are all but forgotten. It's become so emotionally charged that many people are simply giving up on politics altogether. The low turnout at the last UK general election and the popular disdain a…

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Does the future look bright?

Last week, I attended and spoke at the New Intellectuals Conference (NICON) in Budapest, Hungary. The conference, themed around the idea that “the future looks bright,” brought together advocates of reason and freedom for five days of presentations and discussions about what the future holds and how to improve it. 

Even when I…

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If you live for eighty years, you’ll have a little more than 700,000 hours in your life, a third of which you’ll spend asleep. Of the fewer than 500,000 hours you’ll spend awake, a typical education and full-time job will swallow more than 100,000. Accounting for early childhood, domestic chores, and illness, a person who lives for eighty years has less…

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In my article “Dealing with Others’ Irrationality,” I argued that we should limit our interactions with—and concern for—irrational people to the amount necessary to advance our rational values. In this deeper dive, I want to address the difficulty that those of us with autism and related “neurodivergent” conditions—which often include both a more reason-oriented outlook on life and difficulty in regulating emotions—have in dealing with others who do not share our way of thinking. 

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Do you ever get frustrated with people who refuse to think for themselves? Do you ever get angry with the irrational values and conformism prevalent in our culture? Do you ever find yourself wishing you could somehow change the way others think and act to be more rational?

Feeling this way is understandable in today’s society. In a survey of the American…

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Stephen Covey’s The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People is packed with powerful, actionable behaviors for achieving goals and transforming your life. Unfortunately, the useful ideas it contains are undermined by Covey’s fundamental premises. The book provides a standout example of the essential importance of being critical and paying close attention to …

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How much did you get done today? How much of it helped you progress your long-term goals?  

Being “too busy” is one of the most common excuses people offer for failing to progress the projects that most deeply matter to them—writing a book, learning an instrument, launching a business, producing videos, and so on. Advancing those kinds of projects can be…

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Last summer, when I was trying to write the first draft of my book, I got frustrated with my lack of progress. When I tried to work on it, there was invariably too much other work on my plate that day for me to focus on it. I couldn’t set aside a block of time large enough to fully immerse myself in the book, and I couldn’t hold my mind on it when I kne…

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Issue no. 6, 21 May 2024

Welcome to the Reason for Living newsletter!

In this issue:

• Feature Article: The Dangers of Evading Reality

• Keeping Yourself Accountable (including Reason for Living Book Update)

• Recently Posted: Reason & Emotion: In Harmony for Happiness

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Issue no. 5, 30 April 2024

Welcome to the Reason for Living newsletter!

In this issue:

• Feature Article: The Art of Living Curiously

• Book Review: A Classical Education: The Stuff You Wish You'd Been Taught in School by Caroline Taggart

• Recently Posted: “Don’t Be a Hyacinth: The Danger of Letting Others Set Your Standards”

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