Wisereads Vol. 124 — Angela Duckworth on willpower and temptation, The Prison Of Financial Mediocrity, and more

Last week, we shared a preview of Inner Excellence, Jim Murphy’s viral handbook on mastering the mind for peak performance. This week, we're sharing How to Live on 24 Hours a Day, a short guide from 1910 on making the most of your time.

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Do things, and tell people. That’s the strategy Aaron Francis, marketing engineer at Tuple, uses to increase his luck. "The formula may be simple, but I’ll admit it’s not always easy. It’s scary to put yourself out there. It’s hard to open yourself up to criticism. People online can be mean. But for every snarky comment, there are ten times as many people quietly following along and admiring not only your work, but your bravery to put it out publicly. And at some point, one of those people quietly following along will reach out with a life-changing opportunity and you’ll think, 'Wow, that was lucky.'"

Drawing on imagery from a Frog and Toad children’s book, psychologist and Grit author Angela Duckworth explains how to resist temptation. "You cannot change the conditions of modern life, but you are the sovereign ruler of what enters your personal space. Physical distance creates psychological distance: Draw close what you want more of, push away what you want less."

Developer Peter Steinberger has a confession: he ships code he hasn’t read. Using GPT-5.2 Codex, he juggles 3–4 projects at a time. "The amount of software I can create is now mostly limited by inference time and hard thinking. And let’s be honest - most software does not require hard thinking."

Daniel Pink, bestselling author on work and behavior, shares a five step plan to rebuild attention: "Think of your brain like a toddler; it melts down if you don't give it snacks and naps. Ignoring that fact won't make you heroic. It'll just make you cranky and unproductive."

Internet writer "Sysls," an entrepreneur and portfolio manager, argues the old wealth bargain is broken, pushing young workers toward riskier bets like crypto and sports betting. "The traditional path to wealth accumulation is closed. Not difficult. Closed. When boomers hold ~50% of national wealth while comprising 20% of the population, and millennials hold ~10% despite being the same share, the game reveals itself to be fundamentally broken."

In his newly published short ebook, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck author Mark Manson shares five hacks for winning at the game of life. Among them: "Get Good at Feeling Bad: Life is a never-ending stream of challenges that must be confronted and surmounted," and "Don’t Die Alone. The people you allow into your life are one of the most important determinants of how you play this often lonely game."

With a fresh new year ahead, it’s the perfect moment to rethink how we spend our days. Enter English essayist Arnold Bennett’s century-old masterclass: How to Live on 24 Hours a Day.

"It has been said that time is money. That proverb understates the case. Time is a great deal more than money. If you have time you can obtain money—usually. But though you have the wealth of a cloak-room attendant at the Carlton Hotel, you cannot buy yourself a minute more time than I have, or the cat by the fire has."

First published in 1910 and praised by Ali Abdaal and Farnam Street, this classic delivers enduring wisdom on time management. This edition is available via Global Grey, where Julie, a solo curator, meticulously formatted over 2,500 public domain ebooks.

Marketing director Kent Hendricks positioned himself as one to watch with the launch of his new Substack. From his debut post, 52 things I learned in 2025: "Toast actually does usually land butter-side down. For toast to land butter-side up, average table height would need to be about 9.8 feet."