Michael Brooks

We all live multiple lives in one, and our sense of self continuously dies in the process. So when you feel some fundamental changes occurring within you (i.e. feeling disconnected from certain friends, being discontent with a job you’ve historically enjoyed, questioning your faith, etc.), don’t be too afraid.

Never take an unpaid internship. Ever. It is unethical to be offered one, and in many places, it is illegal. But more importantly, what kind of people would refuse to pay you? Oh yeah, really shitty people.

Our obsession with extracting the greatest future value out of our time blinds us to the reality that, in fact, the moment of truth is always now—that life is nothing but a succession of present moments, culminating in death, and that you’ll probably never get to a point where you feel you have things in perfect working order. And that therefore yo... See more

here is a technique I’ve used with success:

Step 1: identify the versions of yourself most responsible for bad behavior. Assign them names, describe the circumstances where and when they exist and write out their tendencies.

Step 2: list what decisions they are authorized to make, i.e. can they decide whether or not to consume alcohol past 5pm or has... See more

The mismatch between past and present doesn’t seem trivial to me — if the “you” of today can so blithely disregard the “you” of yesterday, then it follows that the “you” I’m talking to now might very well not be the one who shows up for our date tomorrow. There’s a kind of unpredictable change that seems to lie outside of the virtues of growth and ... See more

Stuck on a problem you can’t solve? Go bigger. Expand it. Make it giant. Do not try to contain it, or simplify it, or reduce it. Make it so large that you can begin to see a new pattern. Solve the larger problem and the smaller one will get solved along the way.