Leading a creative life
The thing is, you probably have all the information you need already, you just can't bring yourself to sit down and listen to it, so you just keep chain-smoking podcasts and youtube videos, never really thinking, knowing deep down that the answers you seek are in the silence you're avoiding
Analyzing the cultural shift in the concept of genius, from an external creative spirit to an inherent personal trait.
TRANSCRIPT
Well, yeah, I don't necessarily believe in the kind of supernatural element to it, but I think it is a useful way of thinking about it because it explains what is for lots of people a fundamentally inexplicable process, right? I mean, I'm sure you've had situations where you've tried to sit down to write something and it just will not come out.
Ther
... See moreSitting down to write in 2025 is its own kind of war with forces of distraction and click-to-buy shit at every turn.
Shakespeare and Jane Austen didn’t have to fight the itch to check Instagram every ten minutes while making their work.
They had oil lamps and real problems like measles or... See more
Allegra Preusssubstack.comThe antidote to envy is one's own work. Always one's own work. Not the thinking about it. Not the assessing of it. But the doing of it… [T]he work itself. It drives the spooks away.
-Bonnie Friedman
I take the patterns and principles I agree with—signature moves I want to enhance, foibles I want to avoid—and add them to my personal “style guide”: a Google Doc full of guidelines and examples that train the model on how to think like me. Plugged into the project files of a ChatGPT or Claude project, it functions as a “writing brain” that brings... See more
“Greatness is consistency.
Meditating once is common. Meditating daily is rare.
Exercising today is simple. Training every week is simply remarkable.
Writing one essay rarely matters. Write every day and you're practically a hero.
Unheroic days can make for heroic decades.”
Meditating once is common. Meditating daily is rare.
Exercising today is simple. Training every week is simply remarkable.
Writing one essay rarely matters. Write every day and you're practically a hero.
Unheroic days can make for heroic decades.”
James Clear • 3-2-1: On Hate as a Defense Mechanism, Reciprocity, and Consistency | James Clear
H
The first step of any meaningful pursuit is to severely underestimate its difficulty.
Sara Hooker • Tweet
"Dreams are fun when they are distant. The imagination loves to play with possibilities when there is no risk of failure.
But when you find yourself on the verge of action, you pause. You can feel the uncertainty of what lies ahead. Thoughts swirl. Maybe this isn't the right time? Failure is possible now.
In that moment—in that short pause that... See more
But when you find yourself on the verge of action, you pause. You can feel the uncertainty of what lies ahead. Thoughts swirl. Maybe this isn't the right time? Failure is possible now.
In that moment—in that short pause that... See more
3-2-1: On living with lightness, the root cause of sin, and how to compete without losing yourself
Winning the game of life requires you to focus on the cards you have and choosing what to do with them.