CLARIFY YOUR INTENTIONS Let all your efforts be directed to something, let it keep that end in view. It’s not activity that disturbs people, but false conceptions of things that drive them mad. —SENEC...
But too often, we proceed like this . . . A flash of inspiration: I want to do the best and biggest ______ ever. Be the youngest ______. The only one to ______. The firstest with the mostest. The advi...
But thinking about and being aware of our mortality creates real perspective and urgency. It doesn’t need to be depressing. Because it’s invigorating.
Booker T. Washington tells an anecdote told to him by Frederick Douglass, about a time he was traveling and was asked to move and ride in the baggage car because of his race. A white supporter rushed...
Blessings and burdens are not mutually exclusive. It’s a lot more complicated.
Blessings and burdens are not mutually exclusive. It’s a lot more complicated. Socrates had a mean, nagging wife; he always said that being married to her was good practice for philosophy.
Blank spaces, begging to be filled in with thoughts, with photos, with stories. With what we’re going to do, with what things should or could be like, what we hope will happen. Technology, asking you,...
Best of all, an honest understanding of what is within our control provides real clarity about the world: all we have is our own mind. Remember that today when you try to extend your reach outward—tha...
Ben Horowitz: There is no silver bullet. . . . No, we’re going to have to use a lot of lead bullets.
Believe me, it’s better to produce the balance-sheet of your own life than that of the grain market. —SENECA, ON THE BREVITY OF LIFE, 18.3b T
Because of the way that blogging is structured—from the way bloggers are paid by the pageview to the way blog posts must be written to catch the reader’s attention—this was all very easy to do. The sy...
Bad companies are destroyed by crisis. Good companies survive them. Great companies are improved by them.
BE RUTHLESS TO THE THINGS THAT DON’T MATTER How many have laid waste to your life when you weren’t aware of what you were losing, how much was wasted in pointless grief, foolish joy, greedy desire, an...
August 21st DON’T BE MISERABLE IN ADVANCE It’s ruinous for the soul to be anxious about the future and miserable in advance of misery, engulfed by anxiety that the things it desires might remain its o...
Attach yourself to people and organizations who are already successful and subsume your identity into theirs and move both forward simultaneously.
Aspiration leads to success (and adversity). Success creates its own adversity (and, hopefully, new ambitions). And adversity leads to aspiration and more success. It’s an endless loop.
As we first succeed, we will find ourselves in new situations, facing new problems.
As a result, we carry all kinds of biological baggage.
As Deng Xiaoping once said, I don’t care if the cat is black or white, so long as it catches mice. The Stoics had their own reminder: Don’t go expecting Plato’s Republic.
Are you angry when someone’s armpits stink or when their breath is bad? What would be the point? Having such a mouth and such armpits, there’s going to be a smell emanating. You say, they must have se...