How To Enjoy The Process

My entire philosophy of how I organize myself as a working painter can be summed up by something George Carlin said: “Just keep movin’ straight ahead. Every now and then you find yourself in a different place.”

You hear a lot in art school about how painters must continue to “grow” and “evolve”—but I think those are such bullshit words. There is gre... See more

If not things like money, awards, honors, prizes, and medals—what should we strive for? “When we were writing Good Will Hunting ,” Matt Damon said, “Ben [Affleck] and I always talked about just wanting to love it. We would say, ‘If it’s just a tape on our mantel that no one ever watches, we want to love it.’ We kind of stumbled into a very wise str... See more

Cultivate a Portfolio of Meaning: Some people work to live. Others live to work. I get meaning from both domains. That means I will be less enlightened than some and less impactful than others. I’ve come to peace with this tradeoff.

Once you choose a project, you are confined to a relatively narrow band of impact (

Figure 1

B); barring an unexpected surprise, the solution to a mediocre problem will have incremental impact, whereas solving an important problem will have greater impact. Even if you execute well, it is hard to make the solution to a middling problem interesting. In... See more

Now I just want to explore. That may mean blog posts, research papers, new investing strategies, letters, podcasts, long periods of nothing, or maybe another book. Who knows? Exploration is continuous, there is no end point. Focusing on exploration is very rewarding all the time. It may produce things that look like end points, like achievements,

... See more

If you’re efficient, you’re doing it the wrong way. The right way is the hard way. The show was successful because I micromanaged it—every word, every line, every take, every edit, every casting. That’s my way of life.

If you never get bored of learning, you'll never get tired of living.

“The Guest House,” by Jalaluddin Rumi 

This being human is a guest house.

Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,

some momentary awareness comes

as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!

Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,

who violently sweep your house

empty of its furniture,

still, treat each guest honorably.

He may be ... See more

I am aware that I shouldn’t judge how people try to escape the 9-to-5 grind. I am aware that a job’s purpose is money, not emotional enrichment. I know!

What I am instead arguing for is something more expansive. The thing you should work hard at is everything . Finding ways to imbue each moment with meaning and purpose and effort is the only path t... See more