on playing the game

And this was a good lesson for someone who is used to being self-employed: at an institution, you can’t just do what is best, you also have to build trust and coordinate with others so you are on the same page.

What you see in the biographies of great artists, great writers, great anything is that they are good at figuring out where the vectors align. They are able to keep track of their values and be attuned to themselves, and at the same time be cold-headed about how the world works: not shaping themselves to fit the world, but figuring out how to... See more