purpose

Why should the universe have a purpose? The question of the purpose of the universe is an invention of human minds, and has no significance, except for the way that it illuminates the psychology of scholarly pursuit and of the pursuing scholars themselves. We should not impose human-inspired attitudes and questions on material things. There is a

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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

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.

The five questions in V2MOM are: What do I really want? What’s important about it? How do I get it? What is preventing me from having it? How will I know that I have it?

In the short term a 1-of-1 purpose will almost always fail. Every day is yet another moment that people didn’t follow your vision and the world failed to transform according to your ideas. The failures are literally limitless.

With a longer view, however, this process looks different. Eighty straight days of struggling in the darkness can produce... See more

Approach the chaos of change with the clarity of purpose. Don’t let the machines take your job; put them to work for you. 

You only live once, and you get to live in the most magical time.