Category: Life
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Philip Glass, on independence
I had an ensemble at the time. I would go out and play for three weeks. We would come back from the tour, and we usually had lost money so I had to make money immediately. I put an ad in the paper. My cousin and I ran the company, and I moved furniture for…
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Fun is fun, compromised or otherwise
The reality is nobody loves your baby (or pet) as much as you do. We were ceding our sacred Saturday night to something — to age, to a lifestyle we weren’t ready for, to an identity we didn’t claim, to having to be less drunk than we wanted to be because the children were watching…
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Finding a way, with minutes a day
These days, it feels easy to get carried away. Energy from a jolt of inspiration—or constant jolts from social media—build an idea up quickly. The problem with these grand aspirations is when its size gets in the way; when you feel like you don’t have enough time to do something, you put it off into…
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A little flame of talent
At Granta, Kent Haruf writes: When I finished that novel I wrote John Irving to ask if he would connect me with his agent, and he said he would. He said he had sent fifty writers to his agent and he hadn’t taken any of them, but maybe he’d take me. And he did: I…
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Results orientation
Several months ago, the Nintendo Switch became the fastest console to sell 120 million units, and the third best-selling console of all time after the PS2 (158 million) and the Nintendo DS (154 million). Nintendo has also sold over 100 million of its Wii consoles, many millions more than the competitor’s much more polished and…
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The squeeze
Whether it’s rising Uber rates, declining organic reach at Facebook, Netflix cracking down on shared passwords, companies are squeezing now. They do this because they believe they don’t have to worry about customers leaving; people are too used to the service and will endure the new terms, increased prices, or lowered surplus benefits. You can…
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Obviousness fallacy
Obviousness fallacy is the notion that the options that are most convenient, most popular, and most easy to understand and manage, are the best ones. By extension, the less convenient, less popular, and less visible options seem riskier, require more effort, and are just generally lower quality in some way. One example of obviousness fallacy…
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Permission: To wait, or not to wait?
Generally, if you wait around for permission to change in your professional career, to start a creative project, or to improve yourself in some way, you’re going to be waiting a long time. It’s better to try to make a change today, as soon as you can—even now, if possible. The adage, “Ask forgiveness, not…
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Montage fallacy
The training montage of Rocky was the most outstanding part of the story to me. It was inspiring to watch Rocky’s personal transformation, from a bum to a champion, effectively take place in several minutes. This kind of montage is a common element in all sorts of movies. It’s an incredibly boring part of the…
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Stick to the whim
In the early 2010s, after watching the film Pariah, fashion designer and lawyer Busayo Olupona felt an inner call to connect with actor Adepero Oduye and introduce her eponymous emerging fashion line, Busayo. Perhaps, Olupona thought, there might be an opportunity to style Oduye for a future work. The two of them connected on Facebook,…