The three stages of comprehensible input — Languages are incredibly complex, but learning a language can be incredibly simple (albeit, time intensive). You don’t need classes, textbooks, or flashcards. You don’t need to study verb tables. You don’t need to know grammar words like aorist or subjunctive or pluperfect. All you need to do is look, listen…

Everyone knows that the basic strategy of investing is to buy low, sell high. This seems pretty easy. Get your money out of the market before a big crash, buy back in at the bottom, ride the next bull market to the top. How hard could it be? Well, it…

Are you using the platform or is the platform using you? — I’m not against using technology, but you shouldn’t mindlessly adopt the latest and greatest trends without counting the cost. Here are four critical problems with social media that may make you want to reconsider your decision to follow the crowd. 1️⃣ Distraction — Notifications, infinity scroll, and intermittent rewards cause…

Not every story needs to be retold — Sometime in the 2010’s, I heard there was going to be a live-action remake of Disney’s Beauty and the Beast. The original Disney film was one of the first movies I ever checked out from Blockbuster. As a five year old, there were some moments that were a little intense…

I love being a dad — My seven year-old son is obsessed with the Avengers. His favorite movie is Captain America: Civil War. For a while now he has wanted to travel to Berlin on a Quinjet like they do in the film. The other day he asked my wife how much a Quinjet costs. Instead…

It’s even better on a re-read — I’m going to let you in on a secret: The easiest way to determine if something is overrated or underrated is to look at how popular it is. The more popular it is, the more likely it is to be overrated. The less popular it is, the more likely it…

Being true isn’t enough to capture our attention — As a writer, it’s in my best interest to come up with interesting ideas to share. But there’s a problem: How do I know when an idea is interesting? Usually, I end up defaulting to one of two approaches to evaluate my ideas: An idea is interesting if it is…

The key to personal finance is spending less than you earn. When you don’t, the result is debt. Debt is borrowing from your future self. It forces you to keep paying (extra) for things you’ve already bought. The longer you carry your debt, the more interest you’ll pay. Paying off…

How life gets better without anyone noticing — For a good portion of my childhood, Subway was my favorite fast food restaurant. And I wasn’t alone. The chain exploded in popularity sometime in the late 90’s or early 2000’s. You could get $5 footlongs. Jared Fogle was blowing everyone’s mind with how much weight he lost eating nothing…