loving the process

The monotony of life contains a reservoir of ways to find relief, if we can only muster the courage and energy to dive in instead of opting out. If today you find yourself bored with your work—perhaps surfing around and reading some random essay on happiness—you may have just gotten a signal from the universe that it’s time for your spirit to... See more

As the years unfold, you’ll see that all your questions aren’t so urgent. The only ones to care about are the ones you’ll never answer. And you don’t have to get caught up in your plans as you did when you were in your twenties.

Get a life. A real life, not a manic pursuit of the next promotion, the bigger paycheck, the larger house. Do you think you'd care so very much about those things if you blew an aneurysm one afternoon, or found a lump in your breast? Get a life in which you notice the smell of salt water pushing itself on a breeze over Seaside Heights, a life in

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The better life you absolutely can build isn’t going to be brought to you by ChatGPT but by your own steady uphill clawing and through careful management of your own expectations. You live here. This is it.

Adam Gopnik: In my lexicon – which may be idiosyncratic but I think is also illuminating – “achievement”represents all the outer-directed, institutionally compelled things we do to advance our lives or those of our children. Getting grades, passing classes, pushing forward into select colleges. All of that. “Accomplishment” on the other hand, means... See more

Choose work you have a natural aptitude for and a deep interest in. Develop a habit of working on your own projects; it doesn't matter what they are so long as you find them excitingly ambitious. Work as hard as you can without burning out, and this will eventually bring you to one of the frontiers of knowledge. These look smooth from a distance,... See more