Optimal grip

Around here I paused to explain this current piece to my wife, and she in turn paused to think about the navigation thing for a while before she agreed. I found myself referencing some events in our personal life and I was slightly surprised (in the ‘huh, oh... oh yeahhh’ sense ) where it led: the idea that you only get to the deepest heart of navi... See more

It doesn’t make sense to continue wanting something if you’re not willing to do what it takes to get it. If you don’t want to live the lifestyle, then release yourself from the desire. To crave the result but not the process, is to guarantee disappointment.

I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and... See more

The explicit premise of the optimal stopping problem is the implicit premise of what it is to be alive. It’s this that forces us to decide based on possibilities we’ve not yet seen, this that forces us to embrace high rates of failure even when acting optimally. No choice recurs. We may get similar choices again, but never that exact one. Hesitati

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Death is not an event in life: we do not live to experience death. If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present. Our life has no end in just the way in which our visual field has no limits.

@nickcammarata I saw someone once say “the easiest way to stop procrastinating is to pretend you’re an NPC who has no choice” and it’s dumb as all hell but also works for me

a lot of people who claim to be exhausted all the time might be better off if they tried to do more

Of course the thing about beginning again — about starting over midway through is that you have to be willing to watch yourself die.