What I’m Reading

* Why Steve Jobs Stole His Ideas “Innovative ideas have to come from somewhere. No matter how unique or unprecedented a work seems, dig a little deeper and you will always find that the creator stood on someone else’s shoulders.”

* How to Take a Break from Your Mind: “A small amount of imagination-induced pain goes a long way, however. We don’t need to suffer as much as we do.”

* Non-Ideal Productivity: “It’s not a productivity failure to have only 24 hours in the day, and more uses for your time than can ever possibly fulfilled. Instead, productivity failures come from the mismanagement of existing resources: time, energy, motivation.”

* The Polymath Advantage: “Range over mastery — people who embrace diverse skills, experiences and perspectives will increasingly thrive.”

* Preparing for the Unknown: “We’re often advised to excel at one thing. But as the future gets harder to predict, preserving optionality allows us to pivot when the road ahead crumbles.”

* How Rituals and Focus Can Turn Isolation Into a Time for Growth: “The response to COVID-19 suggests one answer: care for yourself and others. So take a breath and take the time to change the daily rituals that make up life. Throw yourself into them as if your life were at stake, which it is.”

* Two Things We Know With High Confidence: “Unknowns exceed knowns even in the best of times. Today, that’s increased exponentially.”

* Time Alone (chosen or not) Can Be A Chance To Hit The Reset Button: “In a culture fueled by fast-paced lifestyles and convenient technologies, we are easily pulled by our devices and our obsession with productivity. When we are alone, we find ourselves working, and when we have a free moment, we want to catch up with what other people are doing by picking up our phones.”

* Take The Long View: “If you’re too close to see the edges of a problem, you lose the sense that there’s anything outside of it, before it, or after it.”

* What You Truly Value: “Our devotion to our values gets tested in the face of a true crisis. But it’s also an opportunity to reconnect, recommit, and sometimes, bake some bread.”

* Self-education: How To Leverage The End of Credentialism: “The average lifespan of a technical skill is roughly 18 months. The world is moving fast. Anything you learn today may become obsolete tomorrow.”

* Kiwi Virtues in a Time of Trouble: “Nothing fancy. Nothing heroic. Just do our part and be there for our mates in trouble.”

* 7 Ways You Sabotage Yourself on the Path to Reaching Your Goals: “Sometimes, you really are your own worst enemy.”

* For The Full Life Experience, Put Down All Devices And Walk: “‘Walking with a purpose’ is usually regarded as a positive thing, taken as a sign that people are focused, with eyes on an end-goal or prize. But the art of walking is not about purpose or aim. The art of walking is all about this purposeless purpose.”

* A Complete Guide To Actually Getting Somewhere With Meditation: “Think of this post as a guide to finally “getting” meditation – to reaching that unmistakable place where you know what you’re doing, and your whole life is better for it.”

* George Carlin on Finding Your True Self (4 minute video): “I didn’t know myself because I was blinded by my dreams.”

* Emotional Agility: How to Build Resilience in Times of Crisis: “While people say that with crisis comes opportunity, the truth is, with crisis also comes uncertainty. Hustle porn and denying how challenging these times are is counterproductive.”

* Using Models to Stay Calm in Charged Situations: “When polarizing topics are discussed in meetings, passions can run high and cloud our judgment. Learn how mental models can help you see clearly from this real-life scenario.”

* Coping with Fatigue, Fear, and Panic During a Crisis: “We are dealing with two contagions — the virus itself and the emotions it generates. Negative emotions are every bit as contagious as the virus, and they’re also toxic.”

* Fear Is Contagious – So Is Courage: “How we feel affects how we think and how we think affects how we feel.”

* Go To The Weak Spots To Get Stronger: “One of the best ways to get stronger is to stop suppressing your fears and weaknesses and instead lean into them, with the support of others when necessary.”

* How To Keep Your Cool (book recommendation): “Your anger is a kind of madness, because you set a high price on worthless things.” 

* A Better Way To Respond To Cravings: “The more familiar you are with the life cycle of cravings, the less trapped you feel by them. You begin to see that cravings aren’t impasses that demand a hard choice, they’re sensory events that arise and pass.”

* 100 Little Ideas: “A list of ideas, in no particular order and from different fields, that help explain how the world works.”

* When to Trust Your Gut: “Our emotions and feelings might not only be important in our intuitive ability to make good decisions but may actually be essential.”

*The Secret To Resilience Is A Good Story: “The stories we tell ourselves about ourselves are extremely powerful. They have a significant and lasting impact on our lives. Craft yours wisely.”

* How to Write Usefully: “The exciting thing is not that there’s a lot left to write, but that there’s a lot left to discover.”

* What We Can Learn From Regret And Nostalgia (audio): “Regret is the second-most mentioned emotion in daily life. It has a negative association but is actually extremely helpful and positive.”

* Having Difficult Conversations: “Productive conversations take real empathy. Empathy works. It’s not only human and caring; it’s practical.”

* How to Practice Loving-Kindness: “I discovered that while loving-kindness is taught in many ways by different teachers, ultimately it is an equalizer. It is a state that can be developed through practices that help us cultivate the unconditional, expansive qualities of the heart.”

* How To Read A Book: Reading a book is a way to temporarily walk into someone else’s shoes. How much you want to understand the way they think and see the world is up to you.”

* Structured Procrastination: “One needs to be able to recognize and commit oneself to tasks with inflated importance and unreal deadlines, while making oneself feel that they are important and urgent.”

* The Curse of Ambition: Steven Pressfield and Ryan Holiday (video): “On Kobe Bryant, Alexander The Great and Ambition.”

* How To Be More Optimistic: “Optimism can be learned.”

* The Power Of Great Feedback (video): “How to give clear feedback to others in order to unleash their potential.”

* Self-Competition: Only Compete With Your Past Self: “When you try to compete with others, you are following rules instead of creating your own game.”

* Financial Advice For My New Daughter: “Her only job now is eating and sleeping. But, one day, when she needs financial advice, here’s what I’ll tell her.”

* I Don’t Know: “The pursuit of ignorance will help you grow. Next time you don’t know the answer, see if you can will yourself to tell the other person ‘I don’t know.'”

* What To Do When It All Goes Wrong: “One of the hardest things to do is to get out of a rut. When things are going poorly, and you know you can do better. And you’re helpless.”

* It’s Better To Focus On Where You Are Going Than How You Are Feeling: “Think of valued living as going about your daily life in the service of values that you find important, whereby engaging in these actions creates a sense of meaning and purpose.”

* The Illusory Truth Effect: “Truth is a precarious thing, not because it doesn’t objectively exist, but because the incentives to warp it can be so strong.”

* How to Create Gratitude: “It’s important that it’s an ordinary moment, because those are the kinds of moments that often seem neutral in value. Abundant and unremarkable.”

* Emotionally Intelligent People Insert a Pause Between Action And Reaction: “Understanding your emotions is great, but what’s even more useful for you is making use of that knowledge.”