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Eighty years ago, researchers began one of the longest and most complicated projects to understand human behavior in history. It would take almost 50 years to complete. But their work would define an entire field of psychology. It started with an idea: that people have different fundamental character traits and these character traits are inherited and stable throughout one’s life. It was the idea of personality. The problem was that there was an infinite number of human behaviors, so how could you know what was caused by someone’s personality, and what was caused by all the shit going on around them? To test and find stable personality traits, researchers would have to make an exhaustive list of all of the possible human behaviors and then measure these behaviors in a lot of people over a very long time to determine what was fundamental personality and what was just noise and bullshit. The project started out humbly enough. In 1936, Gordon Allport and Henry Odbert pulled out a...

Y ou can’t change yourself, so don’t even try. I know that’s not what the infomercials and self-help seminars tell you. But fuck it. They’re wrong. You can’t change. Like a thirsty man in a desert chasing a mirage, or a fat man peering into an empty fridge—there’s nothing there. So stop chasing it. Go do something else instead. Why can’t you change yourself? Because the whole idea of change is an arbitrary construct. It’s something you just made up to make yourself feel good (or bad). Yesterday, I hadn’t written this article. Today, I have. Did I change? Both yes and no are correct answers, depending on how I define change. Technically, you are both always changing and never changing. It just depends on how you look at it. What you decide is change or not is an imaginary line drawn in your head. I could decide that “changing myself” means having a billion dollars. I’ll then sit around beating myself up for not being able to “change” for the rest of my life. Therefore, that’s ...

T here’s a part of Navy SEAL training called “drown-proofing” where they bind your hands behind your back, tie your feet together, and dump you into a 9-foot-deep pool. Your job is to survive for five minutes. Like most of SEAL training, the vast majority of cadets who attempt drown-proofing fail. Upon being tossed into the water, many of them panic and scream to be lifted back out. Some struggle until they slip underwater where they proceed to lose consciousness and have to be fished out and resuscitated. Over the years, a number of trainees have even died during the exercise. But some people make it. And they do so because they understand two counterintuitive lessons. The first lesson of drown-proofing is paradoxical: the more you struggle to keep your head above water, the more likely you are to sink. With your arms and legs bound, it’s impossible to maintain yourself at the surface for the full five minutes. Even worse, your limited attempts to keep your body afloat wil...

W elcome, Player One, to a strategy guide for the game known as Life. As you’ve undoubtedly discovered, the game of Life is often quite difficult. You will face unexpected challenges and long periods of frustration. You will often struggle with self-doubt, feel overwhelmed by helplessness and loss, and sometimes take a shit when you’re out of toilet paper. Yes, Life is hard, as the saying goes. But fear not, this short guide is designed to help you complete your missions and complete the game at the highest possible level. HOW TO WIN AT LIFE Don’t worry, Champ, you got this. The goal of Life is simple: it is to Level Up as much as possible. Each Level in life presents a particular challenge that you must overcome. Once you overcome that challenge, you get to move on to the next Level. The goal is to complete as many levels as possible. At the end of the game, the person at the highest level gets to have the best funeral. There are five levels in life: Level 1 – Find food; find a bed to...