Category: Life
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You vs. the package of you
Personas are packages for people. But of course, they’re not actually people. When you see someone with a crafted persona, you don’t actually know who that person actually is. Sure—you know that they’re ambitious, chasing status, wealth, and power. You could say that they are “moving up in the world.” But without living up to…
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Find a place where your effort makes an impact
Early in his career, Brian Lee juggled a bunch of projects. This included managing recording artists Dumbfoundead and Breezy Lovejoy. It was Brian who suggested to the latter that he should change his name to something closer to Anderson .Paak. In addition to investing into their two careers, Brian also built a media platform and…
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The leap
In The Dark Knight Rises, a villain defeats Batman and locks him up inside an ancient prison known as the Pit. The Pit bears resemblance to an extremely large well, and all prisoners are free to climb out of the Pit to escape. The only thing standing in the way is a particularly large gap…
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Openness
When I was a senior in high school, my English teacher shared an op-ed she clipped from a newspaper entitled, “Please offend me, and allow me to offend you.” The spirit of the class discussion focused on how important it was for you, me, and everybody else, to be able to say what was on…
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Clocks
Centuries ago, clocks were advanced technology. To the members of the Qing dynasty that ruled China from the Forbidden City in Beijing, clocks did more than just tell time and help them organize their day. These very rare, well-decorated, ornate, devices represented status and wealth. Some clocks could even be wound up and play music…
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I don’t miss RSS one bit…
Because I use it every day. I use NetNewsWire to read new posts. I subscribe to a bunch of newsletters hosted on Substack—you can just type /feed after the URL and you’ll receive Substack through RSS. You can do the same with Medium. For other newsletters, I use Kill the Newsletter to subscribe via RSS.…
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How do you decide what’s worth reading?
Travel brings about a great opportunity: to visit local bookstores. On a trip to Hong Kong, Tokyo, and Shanghai, my family and I had the privilege of visiting these bookstores: Daikanyama T-Site (my favorite in the world and default recommendation to anyone visiting Tokyo), Ginza Tsutaya, Foreign Language Bookstore in Shanghai, Duoyun Bookstore, Shanghai Book…
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Pausing remains powerful
My friend’s dad had a great saying: to “assume” makes an “ass” out of “u” and “me.” For example, if you misspoke to another person and they assume they know your intentions, you look like an ass to them because they think you are being mean—and they will have made an ass of themselves to…