Brian Sholis

"This book traces the history of adult education in America from its roots in the popular tradition of self-improvement, to present day education outside a college or university setting. The author persuasively links developments in the realm of popular self-improvement to cultural and social forces, and explores the reasons why ordinary citizens... See more

- “It seems like the quantified self movement is about our relationship with time, about the fact that we don’t know how much we exercised or what we ate, we can’t really perceive ourselves mechanically and in a world where there are so many units of time all at once, where there are so many timeframes. It’s really easy to lose track of when you... See more

- "“How do you pass the time?” suggests the basic model of existence, in which living a life is seen on the one hand as traversing an unspecified span of time—marked out in years—and on the other, as moving through the natural cycle of hours, from dawn to dusk. Time, then, is understood to be a medium one negotiates. And in this respect: how do I... See more

* “When you get on a plane and travel you go 15 heartbeats per mile. That is, in the time it takes to travel a mile in flight your heart beats 15 times. On a train your heart might beat 250 times per mile. And we count this up and we make sense of it. We’re constantly switching accelerations; we’re jumping between time frames. That’s what we’re... See more

* “If you’re a manager, or if the circumstances of your birth afford you more privilege, the burden is on you to attend to the opportunities for lossiness and work to reduce them.”

"The only way to make sure that junior staff get the support they need is to hold managers accountable for their growth."

* “I take extra care to prioritize extended time with friends. If you want a deep conversation, you need time. Instead of spending two or three hours with somebody, I prefer to spend two or three days with them.”

* “There was no “winning” this war; every act of defense and every show of loyalty served to keep the fight alive. This explains the curious fact that for all the fighting people do against cancellation, no cancelee ever vanquishes her cancelers.”