Keely Adler

While doing the reporting for my book, I read a postmortem from a successful startup founder. They said something along the lines of: “One of the best things that can happen to you is to achieve professional success when you’re young. That way you can learn that it does little to change your happiness.” For better or worse, achieving your goals

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This process – the elaboration of personal behavioral centers – is the ongoing work of a lazy life.

I thought the real pleasure of mass experience was disappearing into a crowd and blending in.

The art of prompting is pre-scientific. It deals with the imaginal, the subliminal, the “collective unconscious” of billions of minds speaking as one. It requires precision of language and intent, and it produces miracles. There is a word for such a practice: magic.

If you encounter somebody that is different from you, maybe, if you’re good at lingering for a moment or two in wonder at that person, you can postpone the moment of fear or rejection,” she told me. The subtitle to “Vibrant Matter”—“a political ecology of things”—hints at an interpersonal politics: in her view, politics should always include a

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The way to design these things differently is to account for and respect the rhythms that exist in our lives. That means removing streaks from most apps and games: we shouldn’t reward people for running or playing or even writing 100 days in a row. Designers should recognise that people will need breaks and ensure their apps don’t punish people for

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It would be ridiculous, anyway, to have figured so much out at 35. What are you going to do for the next 50 years? Settle deeper and deeper until you’re dead in the ground? It sounds much more interesting to keep being surprised by who you are and what you want.

I’m not arguing that experience doesn’t bring about wisdom, only that wisdom is an... See more