Tyler Cowen: Production Function

In general, especially if you're a writer, but in general, you ought to hang out with people who are willing to criticize you. That gets harder as you get older and more successful. You have to take more extreme steps, but I would say those steps are worth taking.

One of the early things I learned playing chess, which I did when I was very young... I was always around people who were better than I was, including at young ages. Just to learn that there will always be people smarter than you was a great lesson to learn early, and a lot of smart people never learn it, but I learned it by age 11 or age 12.

If you look at American colleges and universities, they typically don't publicize their completion rates, but I suspect they're between 38% and 40%. A lot of those people ought to finish, but they don't—they lack the self confidence, the discipline, or their family has money problems. And I think if they assigned higher value to finishing, their lives would be better.

I've spent a lot of time studying the half-lives of ideas, and hardly anything happening now will still be read in 20 years time.

This emphasis on writing, to me, is very commonly a big plus for thinking people will do well at something. It's a sign of clear thinking.

If you write every day, you don't even have to worry about how much you've written. It's going to add up.