loving the process

We all love the training montage in movies—those brisk two-minute sequences where the protagonist transforms from novice to expert while upbeat music plays. One minute they're struggling to do a single push-up; the next, they're ready for the championship fight.

Real life doesn't work like that. The actual training—the part where you build the... See more

Jonas Salk, inventor of the polio vaccine, said the main motivation of his life was, “To be a good ancestor.”

Every pretty good, sorta nice, kinda fun thing you abandon is like shedding a weighted vest that lets you move at top speed. You were so busy focusing on how much you could carry, you never realized you could run this fast.

Only that nothing works out the way you plan, which is a blessing every hour. Life always takes a different form, if only because life will always be more imaginative — deeper, wiser, more surprising — than you are.

This is an amazing algorithm: do interesting things and magically arrive at a complex understanding of the world.