Career

While our ancestors risked starving or freezing to death, the risks we face today are psychological, not physiological. In a world where survival is all-but-guaranteed, your greatest risk is that you spend your life not really doing a whole lot of anything.

At all my jobs, I focused on coming up with ideas for projects and on working on as many projects as possible. I wanted to learn. I wanted to see how things worked. I made sure no one saw me as a threat–on the contrary, that they saw me as someone who was a team player, who worked hard for others (and the business) to succeed. All the while, I was

Figure out what is your core required achievement at this point in time — writing, building a data set, whatever — and do it first thing in the day no matter what. 

Historically, work looked very different. In the 1700s, approximately 90% of Americans were self-employed or engaged in family-owned trades or agriculture. Even by the early to mid-1800s, around 80-85% were independent artisans or farmers, continuing the tradition of self-employment. This dynamic began to shift dramatically with industrialization,

if you don’t have any public work or public proof then congratulations, you are whatever the hive mind imagines you to be.