purpose

"The way to figure out what to work on is by working."

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"I think for most people who want to do great work, the right strategy is not to plan too much. At each stage do whatever seems most interesting and gives you the best options for the future. I call this approach 'staying upwind.' This is how most people who've done great work seem to have done... See more

To illustrate the difference between art and technique, he tells the story of two people who each make a glass cup: the first person designs a fine, functional glass from which one can drink perfectly, but the second person, an artisan, creates another glass cup that is so special, it generates an emotional reaction.

The Greeks would say the second... See more

Kurt Vonnegut on picking a lane:

Find a subject you care about and which you in your heart feel others should care about. It is this genuine caring, and not your games with language, which will be the most compelling and seductive element in your style.

I am not urging you to write a novel, by the way—although I would not be sorry if you wrote one,... See more

Expected elation. Society has built a world that defines what's appealing and what's not. What success should look like. I spent years chasing this idea, and achieved it. And never felt truly happy. Why? It seems so obvious, there are a million songs and movies about how wealth and fame aren't the end all be all for human states. Yet we pursue it... See more

Conviction is an extension of self-knowledge. It emerges from your experiences and prior conditions. To know that is to know yourself. Being someone with conviction is really just living with clarity, and everything else is downstream of this self-knowledge.