A couple of months ago I pursued a new habit. Every night I pulled out a pad of paper and filled a blank page with answers to the question “What do I want in life?” (This is an exercise based on Jim O’Shaughnessy’s excellent six-part Thinker & Prover thread.) Unearthing my desires was painstaking work.

But what if you’re under the influence of bad systems? What if we all are? What if we take a minute to laugh at how hard we defend our right to want things when we can barely explain why we want them in the first place, beyond “I like this”? Can we deconstruct those wants in a non-judgy but curious sort of way? Or maybe delight in the absurdity of... See more

We convince ourselves to want things because we think it’s what we are supposed to be doing or more common, we get hijacked by the desires of others.1 I convinced myself I wanted to be a consulting partner because it seemed sensible and I didn’t actually have experience following my own interests. A lot of times our wants are underdeveloped simply... See more