Reclaim The Brain

When you reduce yourself to a product, you sacrifice the very essence of what makes you unique. Your quirks, your weirdness, your vulnerabilities, your authentic self-these are the things that resonate with others, not a polished, palatable persona. The impactful creators understand this.

Mary Oliver said, “Attention is the beginning of devotion.”

Most of us have a hard limit on the number of focused sessions we can do each day.

I should just write down and publish all of the best ideas I’ve ever had, as quickly and casually as I can, in succession.

Research has long shown that health and longevity come down to five fundamental lifestyle behaviors: exercising regularly, eating a nutritious diet, eschewing cigarettes, limiting alcohol consumption and nurturing meaningful relationships.

The point Klinenberg wanted to make was this: If there was no such thing as a library, and someone proposed it today, there's a 99.9% chance they and their “radical and crazy idea” would be laughed out of the room.

But, as we know, it’s not a crazy idea.

If you do not deep read, you do not cultivate a capacity to think, imagine, and create; you therefore may not realize that anything more satisfying than a video game even exists.

Basic dynamic in life: there is nothing meaningful enough to make you happy that could not make you sad if you lost it. This is the paradox of feeling, and it’s inherent and existential. If things inspire real positive emotion in you then they are necessarily things in which you are sufficiently invested that you would feel negative emotions when... See more