feature or a bug?

how advantages can be disadvantages and strengths can be weaknesses

Our cognitive apparatus is designed, at least in part, to sustain us in the long term rather than balm us in the near term.

Daniel H. Pink • The Power of Regret: How Looking Backward Moves Us Forward

I developed the governing impression that our minds are wonderful explanation machines, capable of making sense out of almost anything, capable of mounting explanations for all manner of phenomena, and generally incapable of accepting the idea of unpredictability.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb • The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable (Incerto Book 2)

We’re good at learning by tinkering—which is fortunate, because we’re terrible at getting things right the first time.

Bent Flyvbjerg • How Big Things Get Done: The Surprising Factors That Determine the Fate of Every Project, from Home Renovations to Space Exploration and Everything In Between

THE GREAT TRIUMPH (OR horrible tragedy, depending on how you look at it) of being human is that our brains have evolved over hundreds of thousands of years to understand our mortality.

Caitlin Doughty • Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: And Other Lessons from the Crematory

II.

Writer and activist James Baldwin on the power of reading:

"You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was Dostoevsky and Dickens who taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who ever had been

A 2018 study found that people typically pursue higher levels of education because they believe it will lead to more leisure time. But, in fact, more educated people tend to have less leisure time.13 They earn more money, but also work more hours. This upends their expectations and ends up having a net zero effect on overall happiness.

Rob Henderson • Troubled: A Memoir of Foster Care, Family, and Social Class

“Contrary to popular belief, time does not heal, time does not fly, time does not do anything. Time has no consciousness. It does nothing for you. The key to happiness now is what you choose to do with your time right now. Are you, right now, making the most valuable use of your time? This moment is, after all, the time of your life. Your choices... See more

We should accept that our brains are strange, delicate instruments that evade our direct commands and are perplexingly talented at warding off the very ideas that might save us or help us flourish.

The School of Life • How to Think More Effectively: A guide to greater productivity, insight and creativity (Work series)

“It is impossible to get better and look good at the same time. Give yourself permission to be a beginner.” — Julia Cameron, The Artist’s Way