Career Lessons From Embarrassing Yourself on National Television

Alex Banayan writes that success is like a nightclub with three doors: The first is the main entrance, through which you enter by working hard and playing by the rules. The line to this door is crowded and moves slowly. The second door is reserved for billionaires and celebrities and is off-limits to ordinary people. In The Third Door, he focuses on the last option—the door that allows regular folk to skip the line, find hidden opportunities, and think outside the box. He argues it’s the best—and really, only—route to getting ahead of the crowd.

Banayan interviews successful people from a wide range of fields to discover what insights, tricks, and motivations helped them find their unique paths to success. In this guide, we’ll review major themes he came across in his interviews, and we’ll explore how the insights he gleaned compare to theories of success from other thinkers.

Defining moments are the small, meaningful moments that make our lives richer and give us fond memories to look back on. In The Power of Moments, brothers Chip and Dan Heath break down the elements of defining moments and teach you how to use them to make everyday experiences meaningful and memorable. You’ll learn how to elevate moments with delightful and deliberately random surprise, guide others to transformative truths, multiply your moments of celebration on your journey to a goal, and deepen your connections with the people around you.

In this guide, we’ll explore the psychological phenomena and developments of human nature that shape the Heaths’ ideas. We’ll also discuss ways you can meaningfully use the elements of defining moments in a range of settings and with an eye toward our rapidly changing and ever more tech-dependent world.

Is there something in your life you wish you could undo? Everyone has regrets, but in The Power of Regret, Daniel Pink explains why that might actually be a good thing. According to Pink, you can grow from your regrets and use them to improve your life. In our guide to The Power of Regret, you'll learn about the process of forming regrets, the types of things people regret most, and how to analyze your regrets for life-changing lessons. You'll even learn which types of regret feel less intense with time—and which ones feel more.

Throughout the guide, our commentary will extend Pink's advice with actionables and insights from other authors. We'll also explore some of the psychological research underpinning his ideas.

Alex Banayan writes that success is like a nightclub with three doors: The first is the main entrance, through which you enter by working hard and playing by the rules. The line to this door is crowded and moves slowly. The second door is reserved for billionaires and celebrities and is off-limits to ordinary people. In The Third Door, he focuses on the last option—the door that allows regular folk to skip the line, find hidden opportunities, and think outside the box. He argues it’s the best—and really, only—route to getting ahead of the crowd.

Banayan interviews successful people from a wide range of fields to discover what insights, tricks, and motivations helped them find their unique paths to success. In this guide, we’ll review major themes he came across in his interviews, and we’ll explore how the insights he gleaned compare to theories of success from other thinkers.

In So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed, author Jon Ronson discusses the psychology of humiliation, the use of shame as punishment, and what happens to the targets of public shaming after the crusade is over and everyone forgets about them.

Initially, Ronson thought that public shaming was a force for good. Underdogs and average citizens can hold powerful people and corporations accountable and put enough pressure on them that they’re forced to change for the better. However, as Ronson learned more, he discovered that public shaming can also be a destructive force that ruins people’s lives, even if those people haven’t actually done anything wrong.

Relentless defines a mental framework that author Tim Grover claims you’ll need to become the best in your field or discipline—a framework he calls relentlessness. This framework involves committing everything you have to overcoming obstacles and finding success.

In this guide, we’ll explain why a relentless mindset helps you succeed, as well as how you can apply this mindset to your own life. We’ll also provide commentary offering psychological research to contextualize Grover’s arguments, practical advice on applying his recommendations, and expansions on some of his arguments for clarity.