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Everything I’ve experienced in my life thus far has been my purpose, and that a sense of purpose is no further away than the next inhale or blink. Thi

The most important question you can ask yourself, if you don’t know your question already, is “What question am I trying to answer?” Like with your li

as far as you can manage it, you should make sure your psychological centre of gravity is in your real and immediate world – the world of your family

We all think what we want is answers. We don’t, actually. Answers are dead things. Questions are animating. What we want is great questions. By the t

I believe parenting is an act of witness. All children deserve to be seen for who they are and called into their unique personhood

Taste comes in lanes. To quote Susan Sontag again, “There is taste in people, visual taste, taste in emotion — and there is taste in acts, taste in mo

Taste requires originality. It invokes an aspirational authenticity. Writer George Saunders calls this “achieving the iconic space,” and it’s what he’

When we recognize true taste, we are recognizing that alchemic combination of skill and soul.

You aren’t the same person after a good night’s sleep as you are after a sleepless night. But which person is you?

A large percentage of people’s problems in work, love and life are due to some combination of vagueness and passivity. You don’t know what you want to

(It’s Great to) Suck at Something

I annotated my friend’s book manuscript with scribbles on every page. She annotated mine with a single note: This needs to be better. She trusted that

Here are some other techniques people use to access and maintain the zone:Introducing a long delay between when you do the work and when it is shown t

Start somewhere bad to get somewhere good. A few weeks ago, I interviewed psychologist Adam Alter about his book Anatomy of a Breakthrough. In it, he

Ah newthing, we think. I know what you are. Making you will be easy. The path is straight and sure. The newthing hears your boasts and does not react,

Newthings have a proven proclivity to attract people who love money. When these people get their hands on a newthing, everything that makes the newthi

There is no heaven for newthings. There is no Hall of Fame. There is only memory and change. Nothing (the opposite of newthing) and no one are immune.

Making things is hard and I feel like that’s the most useful thing to say about it. You have to try to be consistent, you have to practice constantly,

We see something that works, and then we understand it “We see something that works, and then we understand it.” (Thomas Dullien) It is a deeper

By some measures you are lucky these days to get 47 seconds of focused attention on a discrete task. “Middlemarch” is tough sledding on that timeline.

But what if the coming revolution is a silent one that will be led by those who, in the face of this increasing activity and ear-splitting noise, choo

Coming of age in the time of social media has inflicted a great deal of psychological trauma upon me and those I love. Nary a birthday goes by without

I don’t love writing; I love having a problem I believe I might someday write my way out of.

When you say that the status quo draws people toward more individuated, personality-driven work, what do you think is causing that, both culturally an

to be truly radical is to make hope possible rather than despair convincing.

iUnlock doors with it.iMeet lovers through it.iOrder food with it.iSummon cars with it.iEven meditate with it.Apple designed the iPhone too well.So we

It is a better world if our most prominent people are moral exemplars with happy family lives. However, after a decade of meeting billionaires, readin

I spent many years telling myself that if I try hard enough and am a talented person, than I should be able to thrive in the work culture that surroun

Some ppl really ruin their lives trying to experience third person feelings in the first person.” Feelings observed are distinct from feelings felt. W

The quality that you’re looking for in most meditation is, I think, best described as collectedness. You can think of this as the opposite of being sc

Moreover, adopting this curious, receptive attitude throughout your life is what will make your practice actually meaningful. Sitting for long periods

There is nothing weaker than a painting that tries too hard. Do what comes easily. When it stops being fun, you’re doomed. If a painting sucks, I quit

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The text actually moves back and forth between all of these. Few novels pay less attention to the rules of fiction than Zen and the Art of Motorcycle

surprise may be a better proxy for creativity than quality. A polished output is not necessarily creative, but a surprising one might be. Yet even sur

"I frequently worry that being productive is the surest way to lull ourselves into a trance of passivity and busyness the greatest distraction from li

“You should sit in meditation for twenty minutes everyday — unless you’re too busy; then you should sit for an hour.” - Dr. Sukhraj Dhillon

If you observe a sabbath, this feeling is not unfamiliar. You are well-acquainted with what others think of as the awkward restraints of just being. Y

Prove you can do hard things When a teenager asks why they need to learn calculus, what should you say? You know they will never use it in adulthood

You have to speak from the diaphragm. That’s the only way that your words carry, is when you give them strength. Belief begins in the body. If you st

if you’re not arguing, you don’t care’. If there isn’t dialogue about what to improve, things never will actually improve. It’s wading among the imper

She also shared that someone very close to her was losing their cognitive functions due to dementia and this was consuming her. She felt that it was t