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I write to figure things out for myself, it’s a mode of self-inquiry and revelation I can’t seem to access otherwise. Being unable to write, to put a
I’m going to write, I thought. For the first time in a long time I had a sense of ease in my mind, as though I’d been walking a long time on an unmark
“How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.” ― Henry David Thoreau
Half of Silicon Valley talks about taste now the way sommelier hobbyists talk about terroir: with enormous confidence, zero productive capacity, and t
Taste is accumulated through contact with the world, not through the production of moodboards.
Taste that only consumes produces nothing when you finally ask it to create. We’ve established that real taste is tied to a personal point of view. We
The mainstream conversation about AI and taste is boring. Can machines even have taste? Will AI replace creativity? Is generative art real art? These
My neighbor, a very prolific artist, on what he’s learned about creativity over the last sixty years. If you work hard, you get into a good circle,
Art when really understood is the province of every human being. It is simply a question of doing things, anything, well. It is not an outside, extra
What I am saying is that the work to be done is our work - individually, regularly, because if we are not searching for pieces that fit our changing,
“The colours of Christmas have been exterminated and New Year resolutions are seeping away in to grey and hopeless damp. No colour anywhere. Then to t
It is easy to mistake status-seeking for curiosity.
In this slog of a late-capitalist world, too much tedious work has cut off people from their passions. What can we be interested in, or curious about,
“You may accumulate a vast amount of knowledge but it will be of far less value to you than a much smaller amount if you have not thought it over for
Curiosity is fundamental. Always has been and always will be. We think art comes from trauma because we’re most curious when we’re devastated or in da
“I’m sure there’s mottos I could say that would be aspirational mottos, but the real one is ‘If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing well.’ From being i
The best are always learning. Read like crazy. Think alone. Keep a journal. Write stuff down the moment you see it. Review regularly. Memorize th
Expression is compression It takes 50 gallons of sap to make one gallon of syrup. So whenever I feel like I don’t have enough ideas to create somethin
Michael Nielsen writes about this in an essay where he describes the experience of pushing himself to go deeper than usual in understanding a mathemat
The best are always learning. Read like crazy. Think alone. Keep a journal. Write stuff down the moment you see it. Review regularly. Memorize th
In Italy, shops and offices close midday, which provides time for a languorous lunch, a nap—or both. This period is called riposo, which means “rest”
The problem with quantifying everything is that we can’t ever rest. Our end state is a growth state — a philosophy that defines corporate America boar
Some years ago I was given a life-changing nugget of travel advice: if you visit the same café, bar, or restaurant, at the same time of day, for three
love asking people: - what their “endgame” is - what they’re borderline overconfident about - what they’d want to do if they knew they’d be successfu
"What information, if we had it, would make this decision easy?" Then: "What's the quickest way we can get that information?" (Via Matt Lerner)
If I was a bird, what bird would I be? Am I a cottage with a wraparound porch or a mansion? What about colour: blue, pink, lemon? Would I be a pearl e
Learning is downstream of doing. The order should rarely be reversed. Most real knowledge, knowledge worth attaining, lives in the hands. It must be c
Almost everything that holds meaning, weight, and gravity, cannot be reached by a shortcut, by sheer force alone. But by acceptance. Acceptance that w
In Dan Luu’s 95%-ile isn’t that good, he discusses people who claim they want to get better at a skill (his example is the video game Overwatch), but
“This is a very radical job this dealing with the ideas you get if you are an artist and take your job seriously, this shaping a vision into the mediu
Creating art is… “A universal way to send messages between each other and through time.” — Rick Rubin, The Creative Act
“I have come to understand that the muscle of the imagination is strengthened through resistance, discipline, and order. These institutional bonds ult
The weight of what we make matters.Creative people are restless souls, forever chasing the horizon until they’ve made something substantial. We spend
“I worry friendship is the next territory of consumption and commodification, to the point where you can no longer simply wander with a friend, just t
And yet it seems normal now that plans are made far in advance — scheduled around myriad travel and wedding weekends and kids and work commitments —
“Regardless of what you choose, I’d warn you against glamorizing work that asks nothing of you. As hard as it is to care about something and find it d
“That's one part of what I'm aiming at with soul-making productivity. I want a way of stoking the fire, and not just that — a way of devoting myself t
“ Working Hard Doesn’t Have to Turn You Into an Automaton Earlier on in my life, I noticed that a bunch of extremely hard-working people seem to let t
Care Doesn’t Scale I met a social worker whose job was to look after four orphaned children. She’d alternate with her coworkers spending 24 hours at a
And more often than not, I find that what I need is some friction, some labor, the effort to work things out. Efficiency is an anti-goal; it is at odd
“I hate the part of me that has become impatient. I notice it more these days. I notice it when I create a plan for myself and a friend’s schedule doe
The process of becoming yourself is not a corporate desk job, and it is not homework, and it is not an unticked box languishing on a to-do list. You d
