Process

When I write, I push myself to make definite positive claims. Ambiguity allows thought to remain fluid on the page, floating into a different meaning when put under pressure. This makes it harder to push your thinking deeper. By making clear and sharp claims, I reveal my understanding so that I—or the person I’m writing to—can see the state of my... See more

Over long periods of time spent in physical archives, you develop a holistic picture of a slice of history that is necessarily individual to you, as the researcher, because you can’t control or even fully understand what your brain finds interesting in a set of documents. They’re just ... interesting . Maybe not to anyone else, at first. But over... See more

Take an Avoidance Inventory

We all have them — those seemingly simple tasks that keep migrating from one to-do list to the next: the overdue email response, the financial paperwork, the home repair project. These persistent items don’t just clutter our lists; they create invisible barriers to flow, weighing us down and preventing us from embracing... See more

But I also think that something more profound is happening here. Instead of being a passive consumer of the web, I begin to feel as though the internet is molding itself around my intentions, transforming from a distraction machine into a precision instrument for creativity.

Whenever you’re debating what to do, explicitly ask yourself “what do I predict will happen if I choose option A?” and try to unroll the trajectory. Even if you think you’re already intuitively predicting the results of your choices, I’ve found it helps surprisingly much to be explicit—one of my manager role models asks me this (“what do you think... See more

So what could that look like in our lives? It means rescuing little ideas that gleam for a second in our soul then disappear. Coaxing them back. It means attention to not this or that but possibly both or some other way entirely. This isn’t necessarily easy, being so conditioned as we are to yes or no, black or white. And sometimes that third... See more