Michael Brooks

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

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My heart breaks for would-be homeowners priced out of housing markets across the country. We need to do something to bring the price of all houses down, except the house I own and plan to sell for one (or many) million dollars.

People deserve to buy a home at a price they can afford, a price that will somehow also cover my entire initial investment,... See more

I heard on a Peloton ride (Jess King): It isn’t that no matter what you do that I will love you. I will love you no matter how I FEEL. And that is the hard, important work.

Good writing is meditative writing. It’s a polished and cohesive train of thought, devoid of superfluous babble. If intrusive thoughts make their way into your writing and you neglect to edit them out, your work will suffer. Quality writing does not arise from a stream of consciousness or absent-mindedness. It’s a practice of meditating on a... See more

Get good at asking the right questions. Elon said, the answer is usually the easy part. The hard part is asking the right questions. Questions are the only tool we have to inquire about this reality. It is our pickaxe to inspect the world we live in. It also happens to be the backbone of our cognition, we literally think in questions. Getting good... See more