on working

Good work should do at least one of these things: fund the life you actually want to live, align with values you can defend at dinner parties, surround you with people who challenge you to grow, or teach you skills that compound like interest over decades. Great work does several of these at once.

Instead of trying to be the best at one thing, try to be "merely" great at two things and then learn to combine them. Not only is this easier, but it will make your skillset more unique, cutting out the competition.

Communication is about what is received, not what is intended. If there is a gap between what you are saying and what they are hearing, you have to find a new way to say it

Celine’s 2nd Law: Honest communication occurs only between equals. If one person has power over another, then the less powerful person can’t risk saying what they really think. Thus, in any hierarchy, honest communication only travels horizontally.

We tell them that if they just find their passion, work will magically transform into endless joy, as if difficulty is just a symptom of being in the wrong job rather than an inevitable part of doing anything worthwhile. As if work were some unfortunate byproduct of insufficient enthusiasm rather than the very engine of human flourishing.

This lie... See more

You have to be utterly ruthless about dodging meetings. When you do meetings, make them walking meetings. Do standing meetings. Keep them short, actionable and small.

Thinking about our career, we might think in abstractions like “a job.” But really a career is made up of a bunch of different things like a salary, an identity, relationships, status, a sense of meaning, and so on. It is often easier to find a fit if you unbundle these things, and think about the parts that matter to you individually. Do you... See more