we are shaped by our tools, systems, and environment

Tools encourage default behaviors, they dictate patterns and golden paths. These represent the tool makers’ ideal user experiences. If following along breaks your back, then it’s not because you tried to lift too much, it’s because the tool applied pressure in all the wrong places.

Success is often a product of environment.

While a polar bear might thrive in the Arctic, it would not thrive in a desert. People are no different. The person who excels in one environment fails in another.

Understanding how environments impact performance changes how you hire. Employees who thrive in one environment easily fail in another if their p... See more

The basis for any approach to self-transformation is an ever-increasing awareness of reality and the shedding of illusions,” writes Erich Fromm in The Art of Being. He refers often to awakeness, to making conscious what is repressed. To not just hearing, but listening. Not just seeing, but looking, watching. You can do this anywhere, with anything.... See more

in choosing who you spend time with you choose who you are.

"frictionless experiences with technology mean that we notice less about the tools we’re using and what it is they actually do. This, he thinks, promotes a kind of self-absorption. We don’t see ourselves as being in conversation with our tools or the physical world; instead, we see ourselves as masters of our environment, with the expectation that ... See more

We use the computer to process words, but the ideas that animate those words originate somewhere else, away from the screen. The word processor has changed the way we write, but it hasn't yet changed the way we think.

“the ultimate, hidden truth of the world is that it is something that we make, and could just as easily make differently.”

Scorsese said he wanted to see how the Band’s music was made. Where did it come from? “I wanted to see what that magic was,” he said. “But ultimately there’s a lifestyle, too, that goes along with it. And a lot of it has to do with partying. And, okay: Partying went way out of hand for me. Because I didn’t know how to control it. But, I also wanted... See more