Neil

Whenever you meet someone new, ask them what they're most excited about right now. Everyone interesting is excited about something right now, and they'd probably love to tell you about it.

How strange to be here in a little boat! — and not by accident, not cast adrift here from a wreck, but purposely! What purpose, whose? And if I call to mind how I have read of Greenland and for years have longed to go there, how I have read and read again the Iceland sagas and been stirred by them, how I’ve been moved by the strange story of the Gr... See more

Consistency is a superpower.

Those who fear appearing foolish rarely discover anything new. The genius of tomorrow often looks like an idiot today.

The reasons for Kafka’s creative block are various: By turns he finds himself drowning in loneliness, enraged by distraction, physically fatigued and pained by the tuberculosis that would soon take his life, tortured by his era’s version of an overflowing inbox: heaps of unanswered letters. He feels his powers being wasted, feels himself “wretched,... See more

"The world is a malleable place. If you know what you want, and you go for it with maximum energy and passion, the world will often reconfigure itself around you much more quickly and easily than you would think.”

– Marc Andreessen

Creativity requires connecting the dots, and connecting the dots requires allowing time for my subconscious to consolidate my ideas and make associations. This means that, from time to time, I need to just stare out the window and do nothing.

This doesn’t feel productive, even though it is.

What I really want to know is: why do you care? You could have spent your time knitting a pair of mittens or petting your cat or eating a whole tube of Pringles. Why did you do this instead? What kind of sicko closes the YouTube tab and types 10,000 words into a Google doc? What’s wrong with you? If you show me that—implicitly, explicitly, I don’t ... See more

Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation) there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would not otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, r

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