Purpose & Creativity

There’s a piece of advice I still struggle with, but that I’m more and more convinced lies at the heart of meaningful productivity, successful creative work, and a more vibrant life in general. That advice is: act fast. Move quickly. When you get a good idea, make it your default policy to put it into practice as soon as you reasonably can.

feelings are meant to be felt - that’s what they are for. We heal by acknowledging our emotions and test our heart’s resilience by lingering within the unbearable. It is something music can help us do. We find our hearts are much stronger than we presumed, and what we thought was unbearable was nothing of the sort. Music draws forth these subterran... See more

"Let everything happen to you: Beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final." - Rainer Maria Rilke

The philosopher Kierkegaard wrote 150 years ago, and he was one of the first psychological philosophers who really wrote about anxiety. He regarded himself rather useless, all things considered. He wrote a section in one of his books about all the industrialists who were operating in Europe at that time, trying in every possible way to make life ea... See more

“When I get up in the morning and look in the mirror, I reach the same conclusion every time: that there is only one Morten looking back at me, despite my many different titles. We live only one life, in one time.”

I was struck by what Morten says about us having one ‘indivisible’ life, and the dangers of segmenting our life - and our time - into w... See more

Create And Move Toward A Goal To Experience Positive Emotion

There are different types of positive emotion, but enthusiasm and joy — not to be confused with satiation — are fully dependent on observing progression toward a valued goal. Separately, the feeling of satiation, or obtainment, occurs when you obtain something you want and feel satisfied. ... See more

Curation leads to expertise. Through curation, you better understand yourself, history, and unlikely connections across fields. Increasingly, we will curate sources and ideas and let AI handle execution or assembly. Honing an ability to curate and arrange these sources will cultivate depth and meaning in your work—tuning the machine to your specifi... See more

Richard Feynman on passion, curiosity, and living fully:

“ Fall in love with some activity, and do it! Nobody ever figures out what life is all about, and it doesn’t matter. Explore the world. Nearly everything is really interesting if you go into it deeply enough. Work as hard and as much as you want to on the things you like to do the best. Don’t... See more