David Pennington

In every organisation, whether in the public or private sector, a great inversion has taken place where the people who do actual, useful work (from surgeons to call-centre staff) find themselves working at the behest of a vast army of box-tickers and pen-pushers who demand that they must conform to a host of metrics and proxy targets so their... See more

In the 1960s, psychologist Jerome Singer, the grandfather of daydreaming studies, identified three kinds of mind-­wandering: the productive, creative “positive constructive daydreaming,” obsessive “guilty–­dysphoric daydreaming,” and “poor attentional control.” Singer believed daydreaming was a positive adaptive behavior—­a bold departure from the... See more

“Your homework is to stop canceling each other, find out about punk, and get laidwhile you’re at it,” I told them. “Punk isn’t a hairstyle; it’s getting your friends together to make useful stories outside approved systems. And it’s still happening right now, all over the world.” MAGA has adopted an authoritarian style of punk that disdains what... See more

Aggressively uncreative practices such as aimless wandering or birdwatching (or, as she perceptively calls it, “bird listening”) offer “an antidote to the rhetoric of growth” that surrounds us every day. There is ultimately a feminist and environmental case to be made for doing nothing: if we can shift our notion of constructive social behavior

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So this is what’s happened to the world: optimization trumps human preference. The people who want to win the argument are effectively prepared to ignore human truths to preserve the integrity of the artificial model.

In a culture obsessed with speed, certainty, and specialization, Leonardo’s secret feels almost rebellious: take your time, learn widely, think deeply.

I concluded that what we call “intelligence” is as much about virtues such as honesty, integrity, and bravery, as it is about “raw intellect.”