Things that made me stop and think

Looking closely is valuable at every scale. From looking closely at a sentence, a photograph, a building, a government. It scales and it cascades — one cognizant detail begets another and then another. Suddenly you’ve traveled very far from that first little: Huh.

I’d say that that huh is the foundational block of curiosity. To get good at the huh... See more

Taste is not the same as correctness, though. To do something correctly is not necessarily to do it tastefully. For most things, correctness is good enough, so we skate by on that as the default. And there are many correct paths to take. You’ll be able to cook a yummy meal, enjoy the movie, build a useable product, don a shirt that fits. But taste... See more

I heard on a Peloton ride (Jess King): It isn’t that no matter what you do that I will love you. I will love you no matter how I FEEL. And that is the hard, important work.

When you choose what to watch or read, you are choosing your future thoughts and perspectives. Consume what you’d like to become.

Here’s what has worked for me over the years to stave off boreout :

• Leaning into digressions: Passion projects (like this very one) and side hustles, whether they’re directly related to your work or completely unrelated, create the crackle of energy that boreout can stamp out; rather than be afraid of these things taking time away from your team’s

... See more

This brings us to the deeper point: the value of reading lies less in retention than in integration. A good book tweaks your internal models and you begin to see a familiar problem in a new frame. You revise the assumptions behind a mental shortcut or you absorb a phrase that becomes part of your vocabulary of thought.

These changes are easy to... See more

Boredom is when you do the dishes, run the errand you’ve been putting off, respond to the text you’ve left on read. Boredom is when you bring a book to read on the subway or make small talk with the person in front of you in line about how slow the pharmacy is. Boredom is when you do the things that make you feel like you have life under control.... See more

Likability is evaluated before confidence.