Kechi Ladapo

You build discipline by keeping the promises you make to yourself. Each time you keep these promises, your discipline strengthens. Each time you break them, your discipline atrophies.

These promises don't have to be monumental.

You don't need to practice the same serve 300 times a day. You don't need to sleep in a dorm room. You don't need to wake up

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As people contort themselves to please the algorithm for short-term payouts, there’s even more of the less legible, less liquid, but ultimately more important long-term value up for grabs for you if you continue to just be yourself and talk about whatever lights your fire, algorithm be damned.

People will wonder at your dear brown and the sweet crinkley hair

I now think of myself as a writer. I didn't realize it on my own though. It was after Sula was published; I was talking to my editor (Robert Gottlieb of Knopf) one day, and he said, "This is what you are going to be when you grow up. This is it." I said, "A writer?" He said, "That's right. Of all those other little things you do, this is it. This... See more

Probing a text can be enjoyable but also tiring, even borderline painful. That’s good. Exhausting our mental faculties, such as through deep reading or effortful writing, is what makes them more potent. Physical exercise works the same way. AI, by contrast, promises knowledge without effort, just as many people see in GLP-1 drugs the possibility of

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