things to ponder

All the grit, persistence, and motivation in the world won’t do you any good if you’re working on the wrong thing. In fact, it will do the opposite.

Choosing what to pursue is more important than choosing how to pursue it. Make sure you’re facing the right direction before you start running.

“The strategy required to find a great opportunity (lots of saying yes and exploring widely) is different from the strategy required to make the most of a great opportunity (lots of saying no and remaining focused).”

“To experience time travel, read.

To achieve immortality, write.”

“The best way to think is to write.”

BRIAN ENO

So what you see when you watch someone surfing is they take control momentarily, to situate themselves on a wave, and then they surrender. They’re carried along by it, and then they take control again, and then they surrender. I think that’s a very good analogy of what we do throughout our lives, actually. We’re constantly moving between t... See more

“Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely and with too high a spirit to be cumbered with your old nonsense.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Letters of Ralph Waldo Emerson

What if the answer to improving your life isn’t to do more? What if the answer is to focus on less?

Poet and novelist Sylvia Plath reminds us that choosing a path means ignoring the rest, but not choosing means squandering them all:

“I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and child... See more