Jay Matthews

The Response Gratitude and reciprocity are the currency of a gift economy, and they have the remarkable property of multiplying with every exchange, their energy concentrating as they pass from hand to hand, a truly renewable resource.

When we think about the future self, the activity falls somewhere in between. The closer that activity is to the current self, the more willing individuals are to wait for future rewards (or to show less “temporal discounting” of future rewards)

Let’s assume that you think you have a choice of eight paths to follow (all pre-defined paths, of course). And let’s assume that you can’t see any real purpose in any of the eight. THEN— and here is the essence of all I’ve said— you MUST FIND A NINTH PATH.

“Most people, if they do something that they feel is important, they want to keep at it, to maintain ownership. When I have an idea that’s successful and popular, that to me is a signal that my work is done. My style is to try to do something important and then abandon it and do something else.”

Psychological-mindedness (the propensity to take responsibility for one’s problems and to look within oneself for the solutions) is considered by many to be an important criterion for analyzability. Historically, these criteria have operated to exclude many who might otherwise have seemed to be potential beneficiaries of psychoanalytic treatment.... See more

This is why science, as a mode of inquiry, is fundamentally antithetical to all monolithic intellectual systems. In a beautiful essay, Feynman (1999) talks about the hard-won "freedom to doubt." It was born of a long and brutal struggle, and is essential to a functioning democracy. Intellectuals have a solemn duty to doubt, and to teach doubt.... See more

Caveats to the "Underdog Strategy" When a really credible person tells you you can't succeed, in some sense, you basically internalize those expectations, your confidence drops, you actually believe them, and you don't perform as successfully. On the other hand, when you receive low expectations from someone who's not seen as credible, you perceive... See more

Finding this sort of internal power is an individual art to master and probably will not be clear when you first start creating online. When people start putting themselves out there fully, they are at peak uncertainty and crave a roadmap. As I like to say, don’t find a niche, find a mode or a state you can keep showing up in.

Therefore, creativity does not happen inside people’s heads, but in the interaction between a person’s thoughts and a sociocultural context. It is a systemic rather than an individual phenomenon.