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Brandon DonnellyCanada must become a global superpower
The silver lining to the US starting a trade war with Canada and regularly threatening annexation is that it has forced this country out of complacency. Indeed, I'm hard pressed to remember a time, at least in my lifetime, when patriotism and nationalism has united so much of Canada. According to a recent survey by Angus Reid, the percentage of Canadians expressing a "deep emotional attachment" to the country jumped from 49% in December 2024 to 59% in February 2025. And as further evidence of...
Brandon DonnellyThe bank robbery capital of the world
Between 1985 and 1995, Los Angeles' retail bank branches were robbed some 17,106 times. In 1992, which was the the city's worst year for robberies, the number was 2,641. This roughly translated into about one bank robbery every 45 minutes of each banking day. All of this, according to this CrimeReads piece by Peter Houlahan, gave Los Angeles the dubious title of "The Bank Robbery Capital of the World" during this time period. So what caused this? Well according to Peter it was facil...
Brandon DonnellyThe story behind those pixelated video game mosaics in Paris
If you've ever been to Paris, you've probably noticed the small pixelated art pieces that are scattered all around the city on buildings and various other hard surfaces. Or maybe you haven't seen or noticed them in Paris, but you've seen similarly pixelated mosaics in one of the other 79 cities around the world where they can be found. Or maybe you have no idea what I'm talking about right now. Huh? Here's an example from Bolivia (click here if you can't see...
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Brandon DonnellyIt's a long game
Conventional wisdom suggests that the way to get really good at something is to (1) start as early as possible learning the thing and (2) focus exclusively on the thing. This is relevant information for elite schools, sport academies, and other institutions because it leads to, "let's find the best young talent and then further accelerate their skills through discipline-specific practice."
But recent research has found that this typically isn't the case. By looking at more than 34,000 adult international top performers in different domains ranging from classical music composers to Olympic champions, researchers found the following three major features associated with human development (quoted verbatim from here):
Early exceptional performers and later exceptional performers within a domain are rarely the same individuals but are largely discrete populations over time. For example, world top-10 youth chess players and later world top-10 adult chess players are nearly 90% different individuals across time. Top secondary students and later top university students are also nearly 90% different people. Likewise, international-level youth athletes and later international-level adult athletes are nearly 90% different individuals.
Most top achievers (Nobel laureates and world-class musicians, athletes, and chess players) demonstrated lower performance than many peers during their early years. Across the highest adult performance levels, peak performance is negatively correlated with early performance.
The pattern of predictors that distinguishes among the highest levels of adult performance is different from the pattern of predictors of early performance. Higher early performance in a domain is associated with larger amounts of discipline-specific practice, smaller amounts of multidisciplinary practice, and faster early discipline-specific performance progress. By contrast, across high levels of adult performance, world-class performance in a domain is associated with smaller amounts of discipline-specific practice, larger amounts of early multidisciplinary practice, and more gradual early discipline-specific performance progress. These predictor effects are closely correlated with one another, suggesting a robust pattern.
In other words, it's a long game:
The most successful and highest-performing adults seem to start off as well-rounded kids.
Cover photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash
Conventional wisdom suggests that the way to get really good at something is to (1) start as early as possible learning the thing and (2) focus exclusively on the thing. This is relevant information for elite schools, sport academies, and other institutions because it leads to, "let's find the best young talent and then further accelerate their skills through discipline-specific practice."
But recent research has found that this typically isn't the case. By looking at more than 34,000 adult international top performers in different domains ranging from classical music composers to Olympic champions, researchers found the following three major features associated with human development (quoted verbatim from here):
Early exceptional performers and later exceptional performers within a domain are rarely the same individuals but are largely discrete populations over time. For example, world top-10 youth chess players and later world top-10 adult chess players are nearly 90% different individuals across time. Top secondary students and later top university students are also nearly 90% different people. Likewise, international-level youth athletes and later international-level adult athletes are nearly 90% different individuals.
Most top achievers (Nobel laureates and world-class musicians, athletes, and chess players) demonstrated lower performance than many peers during their early years. Across the highest adult performance levels, peak performance is negatively correlated with early performance.
The pattern of predictors that distinguishes among the highest levels of adult performance is different from the pattern of predictors of early performance. Higher early performance in a domain is associated with larger amounts of discipline-specific practice, smaller amounts of multidisciplinary practice, and faster early discipline-specific performance progress. By contrast, across high levels of adult performance, world-class performance in a domain is associated with smaller amounts of discipline-specific practice, larger amounts of early multidisciplinary practice, and more gradual early discipline-specific performance progress. These predictor effects are closely correlated with one another, suggesting a robust pattern.
In other words, it's a long game:
The most successful and highest-performing adults seem to start off as well-rounded kids.
Cover photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash
Brandon DonnellyCanada must become a global superpower
The silver lining to the US starting a trade war with Canada and regularly threatening annexation is that it has forced this country out of complacency. Indeed, I'm hard pressed to remember a time, at least in my lifetime, when patriotism and nationalism has united so much of Canada. According to a recent survey by Angus Reid, the percentage of Canadians expressing a "deep emotional attachment" to the country jumped from 49% in December 2024 to 59% in February 2025. And as further evidence of...
Brandon DonnellyThe bank robbery capital of the world
Between 1985 and 1995, Los Angeles' retail bank branches were robbed some 17,106 times. In 1992, which was the the city's worst year for robberies, the number was 2,641. This roughly translated into about one bank robbery every 45 minutes of each banking day. All of this, according to this CrimeReads piece by Peter Houlahan, gave Los Angeles the dubious title of "The Bank Robbery Capital of the World" during this time period. So what caused this? Well according to Peter it was facil...
Brandon DonnellyThe story behind those pixelated video game mosaics in Paris
If you've ever been to Paris, you've probably noticed the small pixelated art pieces that are scattered all around the city on buildings and various other hard surfaces. Or maybe you haven't seen or noticed them in Paris, but you've seen similarly pixelated mosaics in one of the other 79 cities around the world where they can be found. Or maybe you have no idea what I'm talking about right now. Huh? Here's an example from Bolivia (click here if you can't see...
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I was a mediocre student at best until architecture school. Then I consistently was among top students. The difference? I care about studying architecture and was willing to put a lot of effort into it.
Its long game 💙