Reflections
Reflections are short essays that are less developed than the stories in the main archive. You can think of them as brief entries in my intellectual journal.
Here they are, in reverse chronological order:
Free yourself from the thought that you deserve anything.
How to balance inner exploration with outer acceptance.
The best way to divorce pain from suffering is to give yourself space to talk about your pain.
The pursuit of status is the antithesis of knowing yourself.
How do we accept what we simply are, while also knowing that there’s something we’re trying to become?
There's a fine line between transcendence and insanity.
Creativity is a virtue because it's the purest form of self-acceptance.
What seems like a “money” question is always a “story” one.
"The goal is not to advance knowledge, but to be in the know."
Knowing how to be alone is an antidote to loneliness.
“If you zoomed out and saw my zig-zagged line, wouldn’t it look beautiful from afar?”
"Whatever I am, that I want to understand."
Focus on the craft before anything else.
Instead of setting goals to desire, reflect on why you desire those goals in the first place.
What does it mean to rest when you're valued by what you produce?
If you have style, any old idea you communicate becomes new.
The more money you have, the more you have to preserve. And the more you have to preserve, the more fear that surrounds its potential loss.
Don't fall in love with your own intellect.
Be open to any data point, but don't let it become your operating system.
The pursuit of meaning is the distinguishing feature of our species. How do we harness it to bring out the best of ourselves?
Our relationship with time defines this strange emotion.
If you can't eradicate it, opt out of it while you can.
If you view knowledge for its utility, you will never fully appreciate it.
Dependency is not love, yet we often confuse one for the other.
Shield yourself against the winds of external response.
Decouple an interest from its practical value. That's how agency is born.
A 2-step framework you can use to unearth ideas worth writing about.
The best game to play is the one that requires no scoreboard in the first place.
If you can master the art of the start, then any creative endeavor is possible.
In a culture so focused on managing time, we have become subservient to it.
We live in a beautiful world where curiosity - not geography - is the bottleneck.
A list of 7 contradictory truths.
A motto that anchors me.
The strangest part of a dream is not the dream itself, but the fact that you don’t recognize its strangeness.
If you don’t do what’s important today, you’re robbing yourself of the gratitude you’ll feel tomorrow.
Don't be fooled by what you can't see.
A video reflection on the nature of burnout, the incessant need to produce, and the overemphasis on consistency.
A reflection on the nature of incentives, and how they test some of our deepest ethical intuitions.
A reflection on pursuing questions as opposed to answers, working on just one thing, and the fluidity of attention.
"Productivity." Some of you may roll your eyes at that word, while others just can’t get enough of it. What have we gotten right about productivity, where have we gone wrong, and what has worked for me?
When you show interest in others, it's only inevitable that everyone will be interesting. This is a reflection on the reciprocal nature of curiosity.
