Category: A Matter of Time
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“That’s too bad, but nothing for me to be ashamed of”
Raymond Carver, who worked many jobs (including as a janitor, and a textbook editor), writes: I have friends who’ve told me they had to hurry a book because they needed the money, their editor or their wife was leaning on them or leaving them – something, some apology for the writing not being very good.…
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Three quotes on ordinariness
“We think that if only we get the big things right, everything will magically fall into place. If we choose to marry the right person, it’ll all be okay. If we choose the right career, we’ll be happy. If we pick the right investment, we’ll be rich. This wisdom is, at best, partially true. You…
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Positioning and patience
Maybe your positioning isn’t setting you up to be patient. There is a lot of power in focusing on the long-term. Jeff Bezos says to Wired: If everything you do needs to work on a three-year time horizon, then you’re competing against a lot of people. But if you’re willing to invest on a seven-year…
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The one line paradox
Sometimes it’s much easier to write 1,000 words on a topic than to write 10. As Mark Twain writes, “I didn’t have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.” Or as Arnold Kling writes, “When I finish writing a book review, I will often say to myself, ‘There! Now…
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Endurance
The ability to stick it out is criminally underrated. Not only will you outlast the competition, you will also gain an experience that demonstrates your ability—and bring it to the next thing you do.
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Winning vs. not losing
There are two quotes I really liked from Shane Parrish’s Clear Thinking: “While the rest of us are chasing victory, the best in the world know they must avoid losing before they can win. It turns out this is a surprisingly effective strategy.” “If you find yourself in a hole, the first thing you need…
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Eigenzeit
While I’ve known about the concept of Eigenzeit for a couple of years, which Oliver Burkeman likens to, “the insight that meaningful productivity often comes not from hurrying things up but from letting them take the time they take,” working full-time at Figma has created an opportunity for me to actually practice it. I’ve often…
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Keep faith in the end, accept inconvenient facts
I recently came across Admiral Jim Stockdale, who Jim Collins describes as, “the highest-ranking United States military officer in the “Hanoi Hilton” prisoner-of-war camp during the height of the Vietnam War. Tortured over twenty times during his eight-year imprisonment from 1965 to 1973, Stockdale lived out the war without any prisoner’s rights, no set release…
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2.5 hours with Rising Green
The other day, I spent almost 2.5 hours at The Met with Lee Krasner’s “Rising Green.” The experience felt much less like looking at the work, and more like reading it. I took many notes, and eventually fewer, as the chatter in my brain quieted. I slept very well that night. This experience was prompted…
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“Work on your terms, at your own pace”
Max Alper received a DM from a student who has burned out making a living as a working musician in Brooklyn. For the sake of his mental health, the student told Max he was giving up on music altogether and applying to trade school. Max responds in an excellent letter, which I’m excerpting from: Not…