I’m now entering the final month of my year-long Foundations project. This month’s focus is service. While the previous foundations have all focused on making one’s own life better, this one centers on contributing to the well-being of others. I thought service would be a good capstone for the project, a reminder that the point […] The post Service – Day One appeared first on Scott H Young.| Scott H Young
At the start of this month, I shared some reflections on my poor organizational skills, and how I’d generally like to be a tidier person. Today, I’d like to share a little bit about how my efforts at getting organized went, as well as some ideas from the five books I read this month on […] The post Organization – Month-End appeared first on Scott H Young.| Scott H Young
Today is my birthday. Every year, since I turned 18, I’ve written a blog post with some personal reflections on the previous year and some plans for the future. This year was notable for the conclusion of my twelve-month Foundations project, which I technically finished last month. I decided for logistical reasons to work on […]| Scott H Young
A few days ago I came back to Vancouver, marking the end of this project Vat and I started over a year ago. Together we lived in Spain, Brazil, China and Korea, all while trying to speak as little English as possible. In this post, I’m going to recap the successes and stumbles of the […]| Scott H Young
Archives for 2025| Scott H Young
A deep dive into the psychology of motivation. The post How to Motivate Yourself to Do Hard Things appeared first on Scott H Young.| Scott H Young
I’m heading into the eleventh month of my year-long Foundations project. This month’s focus is organization—getting a handle on your physical stuff to maximize the benefits those things provide while minimizing their ongoing costs in terms of tidying, storage and money spent. Those interested can check out my previous ten months here: fitness, productivity, money, […]| Scott H Young
Why are we suddenly getting so much better at Tetris? Even though far fewer people play the game now? Surprising implications for mastery in work and life.| Scott H Young
Archives for 2019| Scott H Young
Apprenticeships beat schooling. Here's why they're a superior method for learning, and how you can apply this to the things you want to master.| Scott H Young
Reflections on a month spent researching and improving my ability to focus and prioritize. The post Focus – Month-End appeared first on Scott H Young.| Scott H Young
A recurring theme in my ongoing Foundations project is evolutionary mismatch. This is the idea that our bodies and behavior were designed for a different sort of environment than we live in today. Since evolution is slow, we haven’t had time to adapt new instincts that safeguard us from novel dangers. Exercise is an example. […] The post The Attentional Junk Food Hypothesis appeared first on Scott H Young.| Scott H Young
I’m in the middle of the tenth month of my year-long Foundations project. This month’s topic is focus. I’ll share some personal updates in the next post, but for now I’d like to share some of my takeaways from this month’s reading. In case you’re interested, here are the previous nine months’ reading: The 3-Minute […]| Scott H Young
Here's the simple rule to explain when you should build on your strengths or fix your weaknesses. The post Focusing on Your Strengths Isn’t Always Good Advice appeared first on Scott H Young.| Scott H Young
Today is the first day of the tenth month of my year-long Foundations project. This month’s theme is focus. Focus is a complement to productivity, the second month, which emphasized creating systems that capture, organize and plan your efforts. But this system-building has an obvious weakness: it doesn’t decide what needs to be done and […]| Scott H Young
I’m wrapping up the ninth month of my year long Foundations project. This month’s focus was connection—improving the closest relationships in your life. As part of my efforts this month, I read seven books, including one textbook, on the topic. For those interested, here are my previous reading lists about fitness, productivity, money, food, reading, […]| Scott H Young
Some reflections on my close relationships, the ninth month in my year-long project.| Scott H Young
I’m wrapping up the eighth month of my year-long Foundations project. This month’s focus was on reflection. In addition to reading eight books about thinking and feeling better this month (which I wrote about here), I also stuck to a habit of daily journaling. In case you’re interested, you can see my day-one plans, books […]| Scott H Young
I read eight books on reflection this month. I chose to interpret the topic fairly broadly, with my reading covering not just thinking itself, but therapy, meditation, journaling and philosophy. Those interested in the previous seven reading lists for my year-long Foundations project can check them out here: 1-Minute Summary of What I Learned Our […]| Scott H Young
In 2014, I went with Vat Jaiswal on a trip to learn languages around the world. We traveled for just under one year, learning Spanish in Spain, Portuguese in Brazil, Mandarin Chinese in China and Taiwan and Korean in South Korea. For each language we had minimal preparation and aimed to learn with one rule: don't speak in English! See the progress we made for each language in just three months each, as well as Vat's stunning videography from each country.| Scott H Young
I’ve just begun a new month in my year-long Foundations project. This month is focused on reflection, where I’m restarting a daily journaling habit and digging into some of the research on thinking and feeling better. For those interested, you can check out my previous seven months here: Why Journal? The keystone habit for this […]| Scott H Young
As I write this, I’m reaching the end of my month-long effort to sleep better. This is part of my year-long project to improve my foundations in life, following previous months dedicated to fitness, productivity, money, food, reading and outreach. Overall, I’m pleased with how the month went. According to my Fitbit, the average time […]| Scott H Young
I am taking a year to strengthen my own foundations in life, while working with a group of people who want to do the same.| Scott H Young
I’m wrapping up the seventh month of my year-long Foundations project. This month’s focus is sleep. I’ll share some personal reflections in the next post. In this post, I’ll share the books I read and key takeaways on sleep. For those interested, you can also read my updates and book lists from previous months here: […]| Scott H Young
If I was to describe one practice that, when sustained over time, could produce the greatest benefits for your life, it would be this: regularly starting—and completing—meaningful projects. Projects are bigger than individual tasks, but still aim to complete some concrete set of actions. A project can be all sorts of things. It can be […]| Scott H Young
Today is the first day of the seventh month in my year-long Foundations project. This month’s focus is sleep. In case you’re interested, here are my notes from the previous six months: Sleep is essential for health, productivity and well-being. Yet often we don’t give it the attention it deserves. While those who shirk on […]| Scott H Young
Having now reached the end of the sixth month of my year-long Foundations project, I’d like to share some reflections on this month’s focus: outreach. In doing the reading for this month, I found myself impressed by the numerous associations between having strong and broad social ties and living well. Being connected isn’t just good […]| Scott H Young
Why loneliness is akin to smoking, democracy depends on bowling leagues, and how to make new friends as an adult.| Scott H Young
I’m now entering the sixth month of my year-long Foundations project. This month’s focus is on outreach. One of three socially-oriented foundations, outreach focuses on meeting new people and sustaining friendships with people you don’t see every day. Two related foundations, connection and service, will focus on improving close connections and finding ways to help […]| Scott H Young
I’m wrapping up this month’s focus, reading, in my year-long Foundations project. Normally, I split my final posts into one covering the books I read during the month and one discussing my personal experience and habit changes in the month’s focus area. However, since this month was *about* reading, I decided to merge the two. […]| Scott H Young
Money is the third month of my Foundations project. Read about my plans for improving my personal finances, and how I got to where I am today.| Scott H Young
I’m just beginning the fifth month of my year-long Foundations project. The focus for this month is reading. In case you’re interested, here are the previous months’ content: I picked this focus as one of the twelve because I believe a regular habit of reading, particularly from books, is one of the best foundational habits […]| Scott H Young
I’m wrapping up the fourth month in my year-long foundations project. This month, my focus was on food. You can also read my opening update, and my book notes for the month. Previous months centered on fitness, productivity and money. You can also watch my wife’s and my conversation about how this month in the […]| Scott H Young
As I write this, I’m concluding the first month of my year-long foundations project. The first month’s foundation was fitness. You can read my opening update here and my post covering all the books I read this month here. In this essay, I’ll be focusing on how the first month went for me personally, as […]| Scott H Young
Fitness is the first foundation in my year-long project. Here's how I'm getting back into shape.| Scott H Young
Looking to eat better? Here's some books to add to your shelf that helped me!| Scott H Young
I’m writing this on the first day of the fourth month in my year-long foundations project. The focus for this month is on food. See here for my previous months focusing on fitness, productivity and money. What we eat is a central foundation in life. Food provides the energy we use to live. It is […]| Scott H Young
I’m now rounding out the third month in my year-long project to improve my foundations. This month’s focus was money. In particular, the keystone habit I asked students of my course to work on this month was setting up a system to track their expenses and reviewing it at least monthly. Monthly expense tracking has […]| Scott H Young
Want to be better with money? Here are ten books + the one-minute summary of what you need to know.| Scott H Young
As might be expected given my renewed focus on productivity, I was pretty productive this month—especially at home, which was a bit of a weakness in my old system.| Scott H Young
Insights from ten classic books on productivity, a continuing series on my year-long Foundations reading project.| Scott H Young
Productivity is the second foundation in my year-long project (and course) to improve the universal elements essential to a good life. As I write this, today is the first day of my month-long productivity challenge, although you’ll probably be reading this in the newsletter around a week later. I didn’t want to publish my month-end […]| Scott H Young
As I write this, I’m wrapping up the first month of my year-long project to improve my foundations. This month was focused on fitness, where I concentrated on establishing a daily, thirty-minute exercise habit. Next week, I’ll share an update on how my first month went. But today, I’d like to focus on the other […]| Scott H Young
So much of modern life relies on specialization. But are you good at all the core activities? The foundations?| Scott H Young
In 2012, I decided to try to learn MIT's 4-year undergraduate computer science curriculum in 12 months, without taking any classes. I was successful in passing the final exams for 33 classes and completing the required programming projects. You can view my TEDx Talk regarding the challenge, see links to all the free material I used, and see all the exams and projects I posted.| Scott H Young
I defend the view that the mind is a computer, and why people who devote their lives to studying the brain believe it.| Scott H Young
The World Has Changed| Scott H Young
