Thought provoking

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

Too Much Of A Good Thing

This is known as an inverted-U curve:

In their paper, Too Much of a Good Thing, the psychologists Adam Grant and Barry Schwartz reveal the inverted-U-shaped relationship between nearly everything of consequence. Rooted in the ancient philosopher Aristotle’s famous concept of “the golden mean”—“happiness and success are a fun... 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

October 2024

I'm usually reluctant to make predictions about technology, but I feel fairly confident about this one: in a couple decades there won't be many people who can write.

One of the strangest things you learn if you're a writer is how many people have trouble writing. Doctors know how many people have a mole they're worried about; people who ... See more

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

(“What an astonishing thing a book is,” said Carl Sagan. “It’s a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you’re inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly and silently inside ... See more

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.

Entrepreneur Ben Chestnut on the importance of momentum:

"Never sacrifice momentum. I might know a better path, but if we've got a lot of momentum, if everyone's united and they're marching together and the path is O.K., just go with the flow. I may eventually nudge them down a new path, but never stop the troops mid march."

Source: Learn to Love t... See more

"The key is to enjoy hanging out on the edge. That is, you find it interesting to attempt things one step beyond where you are right now. It could be the edge of your ability or the edge of your knowledge or the edge of your network.

If you reach — but just a little — and you do it every week, then you'll take on challenges that are manageable enou... See more

Art and morals are... one. Their essence is the same. The essence of both of them is love. Love is the perception of individuals. Love is the extremely difficult realisation that something other than oneself is real. Love, and so art and morals, is the discovery of reality.