Thought provoking
A More Reliable And Meaningful Aim Than Happiness
Oshan Jarow • Your mind needs chaos
What Love Really Means: Iris Murdoch on Unselfing, the Symmetry Between Art and Morality, and How We Unblind Ourselves to Each Other’s Realities
Maria Popovathemarginalian.org"When dreaming, imagine success.
When preparing, imagine failure.
When acting, imagine success."
3-2-1: How to learn faster, what you put into the world, and the value of numerous attempts
In his 2012 essay, “More people should write,” writer and programmer James Somers described this process as creating a mental bucket for an idea, thereby unleashing a magnetic force between that idea and the world:
When I have a piece of writing in mind, what I have, in fact, is a mental bucket: an attractor for and generator of thought. It’s like a thematic gravity well, a magnet for what would otherwise be a mess of iron filings. I’ll read books differently and listen differently in conversations. In particular, I’ll remember everything better; everything will mean more to me. That’s because everything I perceive will unconsciously engage on its way in with the substance of my preoccupation. A preoccupation, in that sense, is a hell of a useful thing for a mind.
Once you’ve discovered the right mental buckets, or containers, for your creative work, it’s time to maximize the potential for unexpected connections. But to surface those connections, you also need the right tools.