What I’m Reading

* How to Think: The Skill You’ve Never Been Taught: “Schools don’t teach you a method of thinking. Thinking is one of those things that can be learned but can’t be taught.”

* A Starter Kit for the Stoicism-Curious: “David Cain provides a list of the best resources he’s found, roughly in order of how accessible they are, although you can start anywhere.”

* Anthony Hopkins Expects Nothing and Accepts Everything: “A conversation about happiness.”

* 99 Additional Bits of Unsolicited Advice

* A Few Short Stories: “It’s easy to underestimate how social norms stall change, even when the change is an obvious improvement. Change eventually comes, but agonizingly slower than you might assume.”

* Your Lifestyle Has Already Been Designed: “A heartfelt rant about how our work makes us so tired and unfulfilled that we give the money right back.”

* Why to Believe in Others – Viktor Frankl (Video Clip): “If we take man as he really is, we make him worse, but if we overestimate him …. If we seem to be idealists and are overestimating, overrating man, and looking at him that high, here above, you know what happens? We promote him to what he really can be.”

* The Ancient Art of Using Time Well: “Most days of my adult life have been characterized by a sort of pervasive disappointment over how I’ve used my time, with little success in adjusting for it.”

* What Information Do You Need In Order to Change?: “Knowing when to ignore feedback that isn’t useful or is badly intentioned can be just as useful as knowing when to seek out the kind of feedback that is instructive.”

* Hiking Is An Ideal Structure For Friendship: “Without this hike … it would have been one of those college friendships where you get together and talk about the old days.”

* How To Avoid Half-Heartedness:

“If you want to be loved, find something you love. People can sense it when you have something dedicated to. No one wants the burden of being the answer to your dissatisfaction.”

* The Big Lessons Of Last Year:

“The big lesson is to realize that you will again be hit by things you didn’t see coming, that no one was talking about, and that will move the needle more than all the things you expected to happen combined.”

* A Lot Of The Woo Probably Works:

“We’re beginning to re-examine some of these hidden assumptions, which is why there even is research on meditation, yoga, and other formerly woo-woo Eastern practices.”

* The Multidisciplinary Approach to Thinking (Audio):

“There may be no better formula for living the best life you could possibly live.”

* Avoiding Bad Decisions: “Our evolutionary programming conditions us to do what’s easy over what’s right. After all, it’s often easier to signal being virtuous than to actually be virtuous.”

* Pure Downside, No Silver Lining: “Pessimism is usually just extrapolating bad events without considering the offsetting reactions that push things in the other direction. That’s why it’s often wrong.”

* On Going Deep Versus Going Broad: “Depth wasn’t so much a game of persistently striving to top myself, it was more like a new lens for looking at the tools and opportunities that had always been there.”

* On Being Alone: “I don’t believe it’s a sign of weakness to feel lonely.”

* The Velocity of Skill Development: “Focused repetitions give you feedback. Feedback makes you better. Each repetition builds upon the ones you’ve already done. This is how greatness happens.”

* Good And Bad Procrastination: “I think the way to “solve” the problem of procrastination is to let delight pull you instead of making a to-do list push you.”

* Goldilocks of Giving: “I encourage everyone to accept themselves and to accept others as they are. However, true growth comes from having a continuous and honest conversation with yourself. Self-evaluation can guide your path, and help you bloom.”

* The Science Behind Journaling: “By knowing who we were, it’s easier for us to reflect on who we want to become, providing us a clearer picture of the future and allowing us to map out exactly how to get there based on all that we’ve learned from before until now.”

* How to Do the Things You Keep Avoiding: “Tasks you’re avoiding never leave your consciousness for long. They hang there like clouds, some distance away, watching you.”

* Solve Problems Before They Happen: “It’s worth asking why, if we think something is worth saving, we don’t put more effort into protecting it ahead of time.”

* Best Story Wins: “Not who has the best idea, or the right answer. Just whoever tells a story that catches people’s attention and gets them to nod their heads.”

* On Regret: “We all have joys, hopes, fears, and longings that never go away no matter how old we get.”

* How To Be Angry: “At its core, your anger is telling you that there’s a problem. One way to productively express it is to use the energy it provides to solve that problem.”

* The Days Are Long But The Decades Are Short: “A friend asked me if I’d figured out any life advice in the past decade worth passing on.”

* The High Price Of Mistrust: “Right now, polarization and social distancing have forced us apart from any sense of community to a degree that can seem irresolvable.”

* Why You Should Practice Failure:

“How many of us make deliberate mistakes? How often do we try to fail in order to learn from it?”

* On Cultivating and Sustaining Love:

“Love is losing yourself in the process of caring about and showing undivided attention to someone or something, through ups and downs. It’s as simple and as hard as that.”

* On Planning For The Ups and Downs of Happiness

“There are time when all the lies you have told yourself about yourself just fall away.”

*Clean the Tiles – Not the Floor:

“The real pain of many tasks is psychological, arising from the way the mind processes them, not so much from the actions that constitute the tasks themselves.”

* We Are What We Remember:

“Which of our memories are true and which are not is something we may never know. It doesn’t change who we are.”

* On Self Doubt:

“Our self-doubt is the inverse manifestation of our artistic dream. The greater the one, the greater the other.”

* How Long To Form A Habit?:

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”

* Luck Relative To Hard Work:

“Absolute success is luck. Relative success is hard work.”