Joseph Hinkle

Sherlock Holmes on consciously curating your inputs:

“I consider that a man's brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with

As a result, the higher you get up in an organization, the further you get from the customer, the problem you've solving, and any of the actual work, and the higher up you get*, the more power you have to change the conditions of the business.* On some level, modern corporate power structures are a giant game of telephone where vibes beget further

Most people are too loyal to their distractions to ever meet their destiny.

The courage isn't in taking on more, it's in cutting off everything that doesn't feed your goal.

Focus requires subtraction.

Whether repressed or managed, avoided emotions don’t go away. They return in a pattern I call the “golden algorithm.” It goes like this:

1. Name an unwanted emotion in your life.


2. List the ways you try to avoid it.


3. Notice that every way you try to avoid it, you actually create it.

Wisdom is how to live. It is the residue of mistakes, metabolized by time and reflection. It can’t be rushed, and it can’t be copy-pasted. It is an embodied—as in felt in the body—experience, guidance from the inside.