This Centuries-Old Trick Will Unlock Your Productivity: by Ingrid Rojas Contreras in NYT. “Using self-mesmerism I felt overtaken on a cellular level by a serene form of concentration. I began to accumulate pages and finish my projects.”
Poverty Reduction and Economic Growth: by Lant Pritchett. “Broad-based growth, defined as the process that raises median income, is far and away the most important source of poverty reduction. There is no instance of a country achieving a headcount poverty rate below 1/3 of its population (at moderate poverty line of $5.50) without achieving the median consumption of that of Mexico. This is not to say that there do not exist anti-poverty programs that are cost-effective and hence should be expanded, or, conversely, that there are anti-poverty programs that are not cost-effective (or even have zero impact on poverty) and should be cut back or eliminated. Analyses of these types of programs would enable a more efficient use of resources devoted to poverty reduction. But large and sustained improvements in global poverty will almost certainly have to focus on how to raise the productivity of the typical person in a poor country, which is a key source of national income growth.”
David Perell: “Writing gets easier when you think of yourself as a painter, where each draft is a sketch that builds up to the final painting at the end. People freak out about first drafts because they write them as if others will see them. Artists take a different approach. Knowing that nobody will see their sketches silences the eye of judgment so they can play with ideas.”
