Mind Exercises

I'm a very proud thief and deployer of Stewart Brand's pace layers.

Stewart originally used the pace layer model to describe how civilizations hold together, fashion moves fast, nature moves slow, and the health of the whole system depends on that tension being respected.

The slow layers are load-bearing. The fast layers are adaptive. You need... See more

Nervous system capacity is the constraint, not logic. You can explain something to someone a thousand times and it probably will not address the fundamental issue, which is that they’re paralyzed by fear and guilt. The bottleneck is never that you haven’t explained something well enough. It’s safety.

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“You can search and search all your life, but sometimes you need to realise you’ve arrived.”

My new age friends call that state of being pronoia , the opposite of paranoia. Instead of believing everyone is out to get you, you believe everyone is out to help you. Strangers are working behind your back to keep you going, prop you up, and get you on your path. The story of your life becomes one huge elaborate conspiracy to lift you up. But to... See more

The decline of deviance is mainly a good thing. Our lives have gotten longer, safer, healthier, and richer. But the rise of mass prosperity and disappearance of everyday dangers has also made trivial risks seem terrifying. So as we tame every frontier of human life, we have to find a way to keep the good kinds of weirdness alive. We need new... See more

9. Stockdale Paradox:

The optimal state of mind is neither optimism, which leaves you unprepared for adversity, nor pessimism, which destroys motivation, but optimistic pessimism: by preparing for the worst outcomes, you increase confidence in dealing with any outcome, and thus, you increase hope.