Amazon link David Epstein interview that compelled me to buy the book What is excellence? Stulberg’s position is that excellence is not merely excelling at an activity, but a biological imperative. As he writes in the introduction: We have an innate drive for progress and growth. It’s why we feel so alive when we channel […]
Category: philosophy
Relaxing into the unconscious mind
I learned a startling fact 30 years ago when I was reading The User Illusion, by Tor Norretranders, that consciousness is limited to processing about 20 bits/second (here’s my summary from that 1995 read). And yet we perceive about 12 million bits/second from our senses (10 million from our vision alone). How could we possibly […]
The Compass Within, by Robert Glazer
Amazon link Subtitled “A Little Story About the Values That Guide Us”, this is a short parable of a young professional at a career crossroads who discovers his core values through a mentor guiding him through the process. By aligning his work and community with his values, he becomes more energized and impactful. I’ve heard […]
Antimemetics, by Nadia Asparouhova
Book site I have been subscribed to Asparouhova’s Substack for a few years, so picked up her new book as soon as it was available. It then took me a couple weeks to read it because I immediately got distracted by re-reading There Is No Antimemetics Division, a sci-fi novel by qntm that inspired her […]
The Unaccountability Machine, by Dan Davies
Amazon link I read an online excerpt of this book and was immediately intrigued by the idea of an “accountability sink”, which is a mechanism by which “The communication between the decision-maker and the decided-upon has been broken – they have created a handy sink into which negative feedback can be poured without any danger […]
Becoming artists in a post-AI world
I have had a couple conversations about AI this week where my perspective was surprising to others, so I wanted to more broadly share my thoughts to seed more possibilities about the future impact of AI. A few articles that prompted these conversations: (Aside: In originally editing this post, I realized the articles below are […]
The Courage to Be Disliked, by Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga
Amazon link Written as a dialogue between a passionate but unhappy youth and a wise philosopher, this book takes on big questions like what it means to be happy, and how to live a meaningful life. It’s based on the work of psychologist Alfred Adler but you don’t need to know anything going in, as […]
Radical Friendship, by Kate Johnson
Amazon link Radical Friendship book site I learned of this book from listening to this podcast episode where Layla Saad, author of Me and White Supremacy (which I found valuable and challenging), interviewed the author Kate Johnson about her new book. Johnson, a multiracial Buddhist practitioner and teacher, based the book around the Mitta Sutta, […]
The Psychology of Money, by Morgan Housel
Amazon link [n.b. I read this a while ago when it came out in 2020, but never got around to writing it up. But I just listened to Housel’s interview with Tim Ferriss which reminded me of the many valuable insights from the book, so I thought I’d spend the time to pull this together. […]
The Present Moment Is Everything You Need
“Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” — Viktor Frankl “Be present now” was one of the maxims I included in my personal operating system a few years ago, and I’m starting to think it […]
