An essay in which my friend feels stuck and I suggest relaxing some constraints

What my friend says sometimes bewilders me because he looks like a thirsty person standing right in front of a glass of water, yet when you suggest maybe he should drink it, he goes, “No, can’t drink that. There is a wall in the way.”

No, there isn’t!!

This makes me realize that what I said earlier in this essay is not enough. You can’t simply list w... See more

“What would be the most effective way to design your life so that you get to do more of that—assuming nothing about the shape of the solution and reasoning up from first principles?”

Instead of thinking “I want to be a musician (and that means having a label and making albums, and so on),” I suggest that we think about it as a design problem. The fi... See more