Stewart Smith recently published a blog post titled “My Favorite Blogs.” He listed a few of the blogs he frequently reads, and I thought it would be a great idea to do the same. So here’s a list of some of my favorite blogs:

one thing well

Perfect blog to find useful software (most of them are for OS X). A lot of the apps are small utilities that do one thing really well.

James Clear

I’ve actually signed up for James Clear’s newsletter, which he publishes every Monday and Thursday. He writes primarily about productivity, motivation, life lessons, and personal improvement. Here are a few of my favorite articles from his site: marginal gains, goals systems, not wrong, and slow growth.

zenhabits by Leo Babauta

I’ve been reading and following zenhabits for several years now, and I can definitely say reading Leo’s blog has made me more mindful and compassionate. The minimal design of...

Yesterday, I was spontaneously taken to Startup School in New York by the founder at my internship. I was hesitant at first as I did not have any immediate plans to create a startup, but boy was I wrong!

Two minutes within entering Best Buy Theater, I’m standing next to Alexis Ohanian, co-founder of Reddit. From there, it only gets better. As I entered the venue, I heard and felt the energy of all the attendees, many of them who had successfully founded their own company and were looking to grow. I felt like I was in a roomful of people who were passionate about technology and had the same interests as me. And more importantly, I saw people who were in similar positions as I and managed to elevate themselves to a position I’d like to be in.

Alexis Ohanian giving the introduction. Source: @leozuniga

Shortly after we sat down, the event started and Alexis welcomed us all and set the...

This morning, I stumbled upon the above phrase, and on my quest to find out its meaning, I was reminded of some valuable teachings. I’d like to share some of them with you here. But before I do, here’s a quick overview for the origin and meaning of the phrase, the “sword of Damocles.”

The story goes that Dionysius, the tyrant of Syracuse had a courtier named Damocles who was more or less a professional flatterer who lay around these opulent feasts saying nice things to Dionysius.

And once, he made a comment to the effect of, oh, how great it would be to be the king. And Dionysius said, oh, really? Well, if you want to know what that’s like, you can come sit in my throne, which Damocles did and Dionysius made sure that he was well supplied with opulent food and great service and cute waiters and beautiful perfumes and scented candles going.

And Damocles was thinking to himself, how...