the boringwork.

Motivation fades.
Hacks break.Boring work compounds.

Self-improvement claims, traced back to the source that started them. Systems instead of sprints, sources instead of vibes. A library, not a feed.

Test your instincts first Or start with your problem
How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.Annie Dillard · The Writing Life, 1989 · checked
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Who was in the room · five rounds, one minute

Guess how many people stand behind the advice

Five famous claims. Each answer fills one bar of the chart.

Round 1 of 5

Kids who waited for the second marshmallow grew up to score higher.

653 children took the waiting test at Stanford. How many of them carry the famous SAT result?

Read the check

You guessed 0 of 5.

Most people guess high. That is the point: a confident sentence sounds as if it rests on thousands of people. Often it rests on a few dozen, or on a sentence in a paperback.

Who was in the room: the full essay
The claimPeople behind it
Waiting at four predicts your SAT score35 children
Six minutes of reading cuts stress by 68%16 readers
Cryotherapy speeds up recovery64 people
Brown noise helps you focus0 trials
nothing to draw
The military method: asleep in two minutes0 studies
nothing to draw
For scale: the 2018 re-test of the marshmallow link918 children

One scale for every bar. Gold: what the popular claim rests on. Grey: a larger re-test, for comparison.

Start where it hurts

Which one sounds like you?

Myths

Everyone repeats this advice. Is it true?

Each piece takes one confident claim, finds the first place it was ever said, and reports what that source actually contains.

  • 33 claims traced to the source
Open the registry →

Which of these do you believe?

Six things everyone has heard. One of them holds up.

You believed 0 of the five myths. Each one is traced, line by line, in the registry.

Books

I read the famous book. Nothing changed.

43 books read end to end and checked against a decade of replication attempts. Here is what we told readers about the famous ones.

All 43 verdicts →
Cover of The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ckNewNotesThe Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ckTen Years On, Four Claims TestedCover of Thinking, Fast and SlowRead itThinking, Fast and SlowKahneman Retracted a Chapter. Here Is What Else MovedCover of Why We SleepSkipWhy We SleepThe cancer claim failed a 1.5-million-person meta-analysis.Cover of Atomic HabitsNotesAtomic HabitsMakes repetition easier. Repetition is not mastery.Cover of Rich Dad Poor DadSkipRich Dad Poor DadThe metaphor survives. The method does not.Cover of Solving the Procrastination PuzzleRead itSolving the Procrastination PuzzleThe mood-repair model held up. Its main tool has real trial support.Cover of HappierNotesHappierThe 40% Its Authors WithdrewCover of The Willpower InstinctNotesThe Willpower InstinctGood Exercises, Dead Mechanism

Latest entries on the site

The feed sits at the bottom on purpose. A library is organised by subject, not by date — but here are the thirty most recent pieces, newest first. The complete index, filterable by kind and topic, is on the browse page.