Life
Perfectionism often wears the mask of high standards , ambition , discipline. It parades itself as virtue, a propriety. In reality, it is rarely about the pursuit of excellence but the terror of being perceived as inadequate.
perfectionism is a form of shame
The future belongs to people who can think about a hard problem for more than 10 minutes without doing anything else.
People think freedom is the power to change what you dislike about the world around you.
You can quit a job you hate. Leave a person who hurts you. Switch cities for a change of scenery. Chop your hair for a new look.
What freedom actually is: the power to change what you dislike about yourself.
Julie Zhuo • The Looking Glass: Prioritize until it hurts
Tech optimists keep promising us we’re just one innovation away from magically enhancing our capacity for connection and meaning. Meanwhile, the messy, unoptimisable business of being alive remains stubbornly resistant to algorithmic solutions, reminding us that our limitations are the very features that make our existence worthwhile
-Kai, Dense
... See moresometimes the most important thing we can do is let ourselves stay blurry. to be unbranded, unpositioned, undone for a while. because real self-knowledge is a slow, unmarketable process. and the lost feeling might just be the first sign that you’ve finally stopped performing someone else’s idea of a good life.
milk and cookies • why feeling lost might mean you’re finally doing it right
... See moreTo enjoy life, we might have to stop thinking about what we will never be able to read and watch and say and do, and start to think of how to enjoy the world within our boundaries. To live on a human scale. To focus on the few things we can do, rather than the millions of things we can’t. To not crave parallel lives. To find a smaller mathematics.
much can be done through effort but more can be done through effortlessness.
and whatsoever you achieve through effort, will always remain a burden to you.
only that which is attained through effortlessness will never be a burden to you,
and only that which is not a burden can be eternal.
Build the game you can win . The corollary to the above is that to succeed; you must build a game that you are singularly suited to play.