James Barry

Articles

This page covers articles on decision making and personal development. New one published every week.

 

Ditch Your Phone, Fix Your Mind

Last year I spent a month without a phone. It. Was. Amazing. Here's how the experience went: Day 1: Sadness. Breaking a phone is a bummer. Day 2 - 5: Jitters. I reached for my non-existent phone hundreds of times during this...

Commitment Devices That Don’t Suck

In the 1519s, six hundred men arrived by boat at the Yucatan Peninsula determined to explore the New World and its riches. First though, they did one thing: sunk their ships so there was no possibility of returning home. This...

The Worry Equation

In the field of economics there is a widely known concept known as the utility equation. Created by Daniel Bernoulli, it states that people will keep on making decisions as long as it increases their utility (a.k.a. you receive...

A Simple Way To Test Out Your Life Path

All of us have a dream of who we will one day be. Once we have that prestigious career, receive that graduate degree, make it as that famous artist, or win a gold medal. The problem with that dream though is that it focuses on...

The Benefit of The Benefit of The Doubt

On the evening of September 26, 1983, it was a night like any other for Stanislav Petrov. A lieutenant colonel in the Soviet Air Defense, Petrov had been assigned to a bunker command center near Moscow. This bunker was not like...

My 2020 Year In Review

This year I'm writing my first annual review in an effort to summarize what has gone well this past year, what has gone poorly, and what are the areas that I plan to improve in. While this exercise is important for me to take stock of how the past year has gone, the...