We overlook just how large a role we all play--and by 'we' I mean society--in determining who makes it and who doesn't.

Superstar lawyers and math whizzes and software entrepreneurs appear at first blush to lie outside ordinary experience. But they don't. They are products of history and community, of opportunity and legacy. Their success is not exceptional or mysterious. It is grounded in a web of advantages and inheritances, some deserved, some not, some earned, some just plain lucky - but all critical to making them who they are. The outlier, in the end, is not an outlier at all.

extreme visual clarity, tunnel vision, diminished sound, and the sense that time is slowing down. this is how the human body reacts to extreme stress.

People are experience-rich and theory-poor.

The key to good decision making is not knowledge... It's whether our work fulfills us.

That is the paradox of the epidemic: that in order to create one contagious movement, you often have to create many small movements first.

Look at the world around you. It may seem like an immovable, implacable place. It is not. With the slightest push - in just the right place - it can be tipped.