The Genius Filter

[sei] [the genius filter] The Bias That Blinds You Charlie Munger believed that most mistakes aren't random; they're predictable. In June 1995, he gave a now-legendary talk at Harvard called The Psychology of Human Misjudgment. In it, he offered a precise breakdown of the mental errors that derail people and destroy companies. Munger dissected human nature. He named the biases and mapped the patterns that lead to misjudgment, and showed how they quietly wreak havoc when left unchecked....

[sei] [the genius filter] Shut Up and Hit the Ball We spend a lot of time trying to get better. More reps, more discipline, more instruction. But what if trying harder is part of the problem? Timothy Gallwey’s The Inner Game of Tennis flipped the script on performance. Instead of pushing for more, he suggested we step back. Quiet the internal coach. Focus on what’s actually happening. Let the body do what it already knows how to do. He called it relaxed concentration. Today, we might call it...

[sei] [ted is dead] TED is Dead. What Comes Next? Hello Everybody! We’ve got something exciting in motion, and we want your input before we share it with the world. At SEI, we’ve always believed in the power of great ideas to shape lives. We’ve built content with some of the world’s greatest thought leaders — Malcolm Gladwell, Jesse Itzler, Daniel Pink, Scott Galloway — and helped their insights reach millions. But we’ve been asking a simple question: What comes after TED? The way people...

[sei] [the genius filter] Start Late, Win Big Roger Federer didn't go all-in on tennis until his mid-teens. Steve Nash didn’t touch a basketball until he was thirteen. Neither looked like a prodigy. That’s the phenomenon David Epstein and Malcolm Gladwell couldn’t stop circling back to: why do we glorify the Tiger Woods model (an early start, on one path, in a straight line) when some of the greatest performers in the world took the scenic route? Their back-and-forth began as a debate. It...

[sei] [the genius filter] You Can’t Think Your Way to Genius We talk about creativity like it’s a genetic lottery: either you're born with it or you're not. Dr. Richard Hamming didn’t buy that.In his decades at Bell Labs, he noticed that brilliant people often fell short of doing brilliant work. The gap, he argued, came down to mental habits. Not IQ. Not luck. Not even skill. Hamming believed creativity could be cultivated if you were willing to do the uncomfortable thing and rewire how you...

[sei] [it's your time] Why Our Tagline Is: It’s Your Time. We’ve all heard the phrase: “Time is your most valuable resource.” But do we really understand what that means? Time is hard to conceptualize. It’s invisible, constant, and too easy these days to lose track of.. But while we struggle to value it— Big Tech doesn’t. Your attention doesn’t. And your goals definitely don’t. That’s why we say: It’s Your Time — they profit off of. It’s Your Time — to reclaim. It’s Your Time — to go for it....

[sei] [the genius filter] How to Live an Asymmetric Life Most of us play it safe day after day. We pick the path of least resistance and hope for decent results. But deep down, we know: the biggest wins rarely fall to those who avoid risk. Graham Weaver gave a legendary talk where he urged his audience to pursue what he calls an asymmetric life. His message was simple: seek out challenges that stretch you, follow your own vision instead of somebody else’s, stick with a chosen path, and refuse...

[sei] [the genius filter] How To Succeed and Thrive in a Career You Love Most people treat work as a set of chores. They show up, follow instructions, and hope something better comes along. We live in a world awash with career advice that promises a shortcut to success. But climbing the ladder is not the same as finding work that energizes you. Career fulfillment begins with a question few people ever ask themselves: What kind of work would you gladly do even if nobody paid you? In a 2019...

[sei] [meet the founders] Meet the Founders of [sei] It’s about time we share the team behind [sei]. As mission-driven founders who live and breath the content we create and share with all of you, our goal is to connect with you all on a deeper level. And the first piece to that puzzle is sharing the stories of who we are, and why we started. [sei] began 24 months ago. Both of us came from backgrounds in growing brands on social media, and we quickly connected over a shared vision. Our early...

[sei] [the genius filter] How To Think For Yourself Most people aren’t thinking. They’re reacting.We live in a world of endless input—tweets, headlines, hot takes. But consuming information isn’t the same as thinking. Real thinking requires something few people make time for: solitude. In 2009, former Yale professor William Deresiewicz delivered a speech at West Point with a bold claim: solitude isn’t a retreat from leadership—it’s the foundation of it. Without space to think, you don’t lead....