50 Things I Know

I know how to peel ginger. Use a spoon. The first time you do this, you’ll feel like you’re Neo with a fresh brain full of downloaded kung fu skills.

I know that the legal profession does a great job of identifying competence and rewarding it financially. Cheap lawyers are expensive.

I know that disembodiment is a real and pervasive mental issue afflicting cerebral people. The phrase “stuck in your head” isn’t metaphorical, it refers to the arbitrary sense that your perceptual home base is a golfball-sized hole in the middle of your head. I used to have it, and it is a massive downgrade versus correctly perceiving your awarenes... See more

I know that sometimes, persistence is not a virtue. I would trade my other abilities to be an exceptional songwriter. I gave it a serious enough try to know that I don’t have the knack, for years, and I’m not interested in being publicly mediocre at the performing arts. My life is incalculably better for having let the dream go.

I know how to handle a day when you feel extremely lazy. Decide that, given that you’re a lazy person, you will work diligently for only 30 entirely focused minutes on the most important thing, and then take the rest of the day off. You will do your best work on these days.

I know that the people who will make you feel warm and fuzzy when you’re sad, and the people who will give you brutally honest feedback, are usually different people. Ideally you want to have relationships with both kinds, and reward them for their strengths, rather than getting mad at them for failing to do what they’re bad at.

Don’t ask yourself where your true gifts lie. Ask what other people seem weirdly bad at.

I know that people are too eager to recommend their current lifestyle and disavow their developmentally important previous decisions.

Listening is a neglected social skill. But I know that an even more neglected social skill is candor.