President Barack Obama used his Democratic National Convention speech to make the case that Hillary Clinton is the best person to be president and that she will build on his time in office.

I’d like to vote for Obama for a third term.

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The object of education is not to fill a man’s mind with facts; it is to teach him how to use his mind in thinking. Henry Ford

Farnam Street has quickly become one of my favorite sites. Well thought out articles about critical thinking and intellectual pursuits.

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One key to mastery is what Florida State University psychology professor Anders Ericsson calls deliberate practice – a ‘lifelong period of… effort to improve performance in a specific domain.’ Deliberate practice isn’t running a few miles each day or banging on the piano for twenty minutes each morning. It’s much more purposeful, focused, and, yes painful. Follow these steps – over and over again for a decade – and you just might become a master:

Focus and mastery of your chosen craft are topics that I’m deeply interested in, so this article checked all the right boxes for me. In the age of distraction that we live in, where any hint of boredom can be quickly and easily erased by Twitter or Buzzfeed, I believe that the ability to focus, and focus intently for extended periods of time is only going to become more valuable for people who work primarily with their minds.

Each day is an opportunity to either sharpen your saw, or let it rust. Taking action to ensure that you are focusing on the right things at the right time gives you an advantage.

I’d be remiss not to mention Shawn Blanc’s “The Power of a Focused Life” course. I’ve not taken the course yet, it’s a bit pricey, but I’ve followed his work for long enough that I understand where he’s coming from. To do your best work consistently, and to always be pressing the boundaries of your capability, to always be making yourself just a little bit better every day, these are the traits of a master craftsman.

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Have you ever noticed that the secret to all the secrets is that it’s never the easy path?

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However, the main reason was to explain how our actions fit into a larger picture, so that they would seem less random. The point of all this was, and remains, accelerating the advent of sustainable energy, so that we can imagine far into the future and life is still good. That’s what “sustainable” means. It’s not some silly, hippy thing – it matters for everyone.

By definition, we must at some point achieve a sustainable energy economy or we will run out of fossil fuels to burn and civilization will collapse. Given that we must get off fossil fuels anyway and that virtually all scientists agree that dramatically increasing atmospheric and oceanic carbon levels is insane, the faster we achieve sustainability, the better.

Here is what we plan to do to make that day come sooner:

Tesla is the most interesting company in America today.

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He saw Trump as driven not by a pure love of dealmaking but by an insatiable hunger for “money, praise, and celebrity.” Often, after spending the day with Trump, and watching him pile one hugely expensive project atop the next, like a circus performer spinning plates, Schwartz would go home and tell his wife, “He’s a living black hole!”

It’s a shame that the people who need to hear this message the most are the ones least likely to be reading The New Yorker on a regular basis.

This looks fantastic.

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I could see that my 9-to-5 job wasn’t my destiny. It didn’t fulfill me or stimulate significant personal growth. It wasn’t that I was bored, but it was more like feeling out of place—I could and should do more with my talents.

I know the feeling. Right now I’ve never been happier with where I am in my career, but the feeling Kevin describes is how I felt for seven years at my previous job. I felt like I was slowly atrophying in that cubicle. Today, after making the jump to a much smaller company where I have much more responsibility, I feel like I’m doing the best work of my life. It was scary, but worth it.

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Writers, nutritionists, doctors, chefs and Michelle Obama have all been promoting a hot new diet: home-cooked food.

Looking at this list makes me never want to eat out again. (via The Loop)

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It makes sense that you’d need a special tool or kit to replace a cracked screen, but why should I have to send away my laptop in order to upgrade the hard drive? Why should I have to be without my phone or tablet for a week while the battery is replaced because it will no longer hold a charge?

A computer becomes more useful the smaller and faster it is. No one, other than geeks, ever cared how computers were put together, or how they worked. They only cared how they could use them to design a building, or research brain injuries, or plan a trip to Africa to drill a well. Real work.

The argument for repairable hardware is similar to the argument for open source; it misses the point of computers.