On becoming

Progress is not automatic or inevitable. It depends on choice and effort. It is up to us.

Progress is not automatically good. It must be steered. Progress always creates new problems, and they don’t get solved automatically. Solving them requires active focus and effort, and this is a part of progress, too.

But maybe this makes it easier—knowing that you will be nauseated and lost when you try to do anything in life other than stay on an understandable, legible, unobjectionable trajectory. Sometimes this is called safety. But it’s really not safe. It’s just steady-state. People with safe jobs get cancer and get fired all the time. Often, taking the ‘s... See more

radical agency involves finding real edges: things you are willing to do that others aren’t, often because they’re annoying, unpleasant, or obscured in a cloud of aversion.

Although doing great work takes less discipline than people think — because the way to do great work is to find something you like so much that you don't have to force yourself to do it — finding work you love does usually require discipline. Some people are lucky enough to know what they want to do when they're 12, and just glide along as if they ... See more

I am aware that I shouldn’t judge how people try to escape the 9-to-5 grind. I am aware that a job’s purpose is money, not emotional enrichment. I know!

What I am instead arguing for is something more expansive. The thing you should work hard at is everything . Finding ways to imbue each moment with meaning and purpose and effort is the only path t... See more

Optimism matters. Ideas matter. But yelling “Be more optimistic!” while pointing furiously at the things happening at the top layer misses some important context that I think an appreciation for the other layers can help fill in.

Nothing is black and white. There are layers to this shit. The stronger our base, the faster we can accelerate.

We’re in... See more

“You may accumulate a vast amount of knowledge but it will be of far less value to you than a much smaller amount if you have not thought it over for yourself; because only through ordering what you know by comparing every truth with every other truth can you take complete possession of your knowledge and get it into your power.”

The best way to control your emotional capital is to fine tune your internal monologue and replace your hunger for approval with a desire to grow.