Michael Brooks

@mike

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“If you want a new world, start making it right now, in whatever you are doing.”

-Brian Eno.

If you imagine the world you would like to be in and start making objects, systems and collaborations that belong to that world, that world comes into being.

The mathematical genius Alexander Grothendieck once had a metaphor for solving problems. He suggested that instead of forcing open an impossibly hard kernel with a hammer and chisel, one should simply let it sit in water and wait. Over time, the shell softens and opens with ease. This is also true in writing; time is the only non-substitutable... See more

Epiphanies Come From Waiting

on writing

Growth Without Goals | Editorials

admin joincolossus.com

The reason we’re so increasingly intolerant of long articles and why we skim them, why we skip forward even in a short video that reduces a 300-page book into a three-minute animation — even in that we skip forward — is that we’ve been infected with this kind of pathological impatience that makes us want to have the knowledge but not do the work of... See more

Maria Popova • Maria Popova — Cartographer of Meaning in a Digital Age

“Sometimes fear does not subside and you must do it afraid.”

– Elisabeth Elliot

If I look at things that have turned out well in my life (my marriage, some of my essays, my current career) the “design process” has been the same in each case. It has been what Christopher Alexander called an unfolding .1 Put simply:

I paid attention to things I liked to do, and found ways to do more of that. I made it easy for interesting people

Henrik Karlsson • Everything That Turned Out Well in My Life Followed the Same Design Process

work

Communicate like a Senior: Use clear deltas

open.substack.com

communication

Use deltas when talking with stakeholders or when trying to highlight once choice over another.

If the proximate purpose of technology is to reduce scarcity, the ultimate purpose of technology is to eliminate mortality.