jenna

To borrow Tim Urban’s analogy, a startup is a place for chefs. A corporation is a place for cooks. Chefs are in the pursuit of the next great recipe that no one has created yet. Cooks spend almost all their time wondering how to turn an old recipe into a dish quicker, cheaper, better.

One works in a lab, the other in a kitchen. There’s a big... See more

Every once in a while, I meet a person who radiates joy. These are people who seem to glow with an inner light. They are kind, tranquil, delighted by small pleasures, and grateful for the large ones. These people are not perfect. They get exhausted and stressed. They make errors in judgment. But they live for others, and not for themselves. They’ve... See more

Our modern world seeks to focus us towards the short term and praises quarterly growth. But in the real world, away from high frequency ledger entries and global capital flows. It takes 100-120 years for an oak tree to grow from seed to full canopy height. It takes three human generations to grow a tree.

800 page novels, 3.5 hour blockbuster movies, 4+ hour podcasts… Not to mention homesteading social media accounts with millions (and millions) of followers, slow food journaling version 2.4 promoting sourdough bread-making, old-school pickling and marmalade making — what’s going on?

Are we experiencing a new and evolved slow revolution? Is this the... See more

Today’s cult of convenience fails to acknowledge that difficulty is a constitutive feature of human experience. Convenience is all destination and no journey. But climbing a mountain is different from taking the tram to the top, even if you end up at the same place. We are becoming people who care mainly or only about outcomes. We are at risk of

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“A simple rule for life and work:

Don’t rush, but don’t wait.

Thoughtful action.”

There are investments you can’t make from a structured, nine-to-five, narrowly teleological environment. You have to let your life go fallow sometimes, like a crop rotation giving the land time to bring forth new fertility.

“Basically, when you get to my age, you’ll really measure your success in life by how many of the people you want to have love you actually do love you. I know people who have a lot of money, and they get testimonial dinners and they get hospital wings named after them. But the truth is that nobody in the world loves them. If you get to my age in... See more