"Always produce" is also a heuristic for finding the work you love. If you subject yourself to that constraint, it will automatically push you away from things you think you're supposed to work on, toward things you actually like. "Always produce" will discover your life's work the way water, with the aid of gravity, finds the hole in your roof.
This disconnect between culturally mandated politics and the actual demonstrated preferences of most Americans has created an enormous reserve of unmet needs—and a generational opportunity. Build new things! Create great art! Understand and accept that sensory information is the brain’s food, and that Silicon Valley is systematically starving us of... See more
A personal narrative reflecting on life, death, and the AIDS crisis, exploring fear, societal indifference, the struggle for representation, and the urgency of public acknowledgment of grief and mortality.
Please note particularly that we own publicly-traded stocks based on our expectations about their long-term business performance, not because we view them as vehicles for adroit purchases and sales. That point is crucial: Charlie and I are not stock-pickers; we are business-pickers.
“Give up trying to create something sophisticated,” I told myself. “Why not forget all those prescriptive ideas about ‘the novel’ and ‘literature’ and set down your feelings and thoughts as they come to you, freely, in a way that you like?”
Having discovered the curious effect of composing in a foreign language, thereby acquiring a creative rhythm distinctly my own, I returned my Olivetti to the closet and once more pulled out my sheaf of manuscript paper and my fountain pen. Then I sat down and “translated” the chapter or so that I had written in English into Japanese. Well,... See more
We continue to ask the same questions that were asked by Plato, Machiavelli, Hobbes, and others. We may not accept their answers and it's very likely that we do not, but their questions are often put with a kind of unrivaled clarity and insight. The fact is that there are still people in the world, many people, who regard themselves as... See more