Marlo Fisken

This startling difference between perceived and actual difficulty isn't random - it reveals the hidden architecture of how we create struggle. We're not just experiencing tasks; we're adding layers of meaning, resistance, and complexity that transform simple actions into elaborate inner battles.

For more than a decade now, I have been using Professor Tim Ingold’s term “thinking with ” rather than, say, thinking about something. I do not think about love. I think with Aphrodite. Communalising the activity taps that infinite font of richness that she both governs and is. Same for Hephaestus and Psyche and Eros and Hermes and all the rest of ... See more

“The difference between motion and action.

Motion:

-talk to a personal trainer

-research your book idea

-explore different types of meditation

Action:

-do 10 squats

-write 1 sentence

-meditate for 1 minute

Motion feels like progress. Action is progress.”

Movement also has an ecology. In wild animals, movement is goal-directed , emotionally motivated , reflex coordinated and absolutely present . This is the natural ecology of movement, to which humans have introduced a new and sometimes destructive species: abstract thought .

How We Learn: The Learning Loop

We tend to think that we learn through having an experience but that’s not how we learn at all. We learn by reflecting on an experience.

It works in a cycle that I call the ‘learning loop’. Think about a clock: at twelve o’clock on the dial, you have an experience. At three o’clock, you reflect upon that experience. A... See more