Self Improvement

To learn a difficult new skill means risking failure—but it’s also a path to greater happiness.

When you have a project to work on but just can’t get started or make significant progress, it’s easy to beat yourself up about it—which also doesn’t do much to put you in a go-getter mindset.

It’s all about calming down your brain and your body.

Socrates’s two-column technique only teaches one small part of his famous philosophical method, but it’s a great way to start thinking more flexibly and adaptively about life.

An 11-point plan to go to sleep, stay asleep, and wake up full of energy the next day.

Not long ago, my six-year-old son was in the bath, building cities out of colorful foam blocks. (“City blocks!” he said. “Get it?”) One metropolis, on the tub’s outside edge, was supposed to be based in the present day; another, closer to the wall, was a future city.

If you often forget what you read almost instantly, building a personal knowledge management system could be the key to finally remembering and using what you learn. Here's how I made it work.

This is an excerpt from Take My Name But Say It Slow by Thomas Dai, published by W.W. Norton and on sale January 21, 2025. It was edited and adapted for publication on Longreads. Two things happened to me right before I moved to China in 2017: I fell in love, and I witnessed a solar eclipse.

Care and Feeding is Slate’s parenting advice column. Have a question for Care and Feeding? Submit it here. My 5-year-old, “Jane,” started kindergarten this year and has made many new friends.

Mix and match civs and leaders while transforming your civilization into new ones over time. Mix and match civs and leaders while transforming your civilization into new ones over time.