Category: Life
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Hastening gratification
One of the questions executive coach and author Marshall Goldsmith asks himself every day is, “Did I do my best to be happy?” In his book The Earned Life, he elaborates on impermanence, and in contrast, on delayed gratification: “This is the Great Western Disease of ‘I’ll be happy when…’ It is the pervasive mindset…
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Make a map
I recently came across Dishoom’s cookery book, a “highly subjective guide to Bombay with map.” The description very clearly explained a path to becoming a leading thinker or authority on something: make a map. The most obvious place is to start with an area you’re familiar with; where you live, where you work, your favorite…
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I was wrong about audiobooks
In my 20s, I refused to listen to audiobooks. For starters, to me, it didn’t count as actual reading. I also loved, and still love, paper books. To experience an audiobook felt like a betrayal to this admiration. On top of all of that, I also thought it’d be incredibly slow, and I wouldn’t be…
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Aesop (the business), on lists
In their excellent hardcover book titled after their company, Aesop authors Jennifer Down and Dennis Paphitis write about the power of lists in an essay entitled “An Inventory of All Things”: At Aesop, there are lists on how we open and close a store or office each day, lists detailing laboratory processes, lists describing how…
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Make lists
Lots of them. List the moments and experiences that gave you energy, brought you confidence, and made you do what you do now. List the things you’ve done with your life. List the things you want to do with your life, and how you can do them (Can you do a smaller version of it?…
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For productivity geeks, futility is a relief and a starting point
A fascinating thread started at Hacker News about Oliver Burkeman’s latest post entitled, “It’s worse than you think.” There are words like, “pessimism,” “nihilism,” and “futility,” floating around in the comments. I commented in there a couple of times (1, 2), feeling confident after my own submitted blog post gained a bit of momentum. I…
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Overidentification
It really isn’t always your responsibility. Timing won’t always work out right away. It won’t always feel like this. People don’t ignore or reject you, they’re living their own lives. Things will not always turn out as you prefer or expect. It doesn’t always get worse. Things are constantly changing. Just trying is enough. P.S.,…
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Two sides of the same coin
Reality is skewed by perspective. You choose where you look. By accepting reality, and truth—every part of it, the saddest, most empty, hopeless, despairing truths—and not resisting it, you’ll start the journey to finding whatever it is you’re meant to seek.
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Less force, more fun
One rainy night, a couple of years ago, I stayed up late playing Pokemon. If you must know, I was grinding and gaining experience points, motivated by a streak of catches and an increasing multiplier. I knew better than that, because the video game was interrupting valuable sleep and sleep hygiene. Still, I felt like…
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Hotel playlists
Luxury hotels have a problem: choosing the right type of music, so that it sets the right ambience for the service team and for its customers. The Wall Street Journal: “While some cutting-edge independent hotels and hip brands like W Hotels have long focused on music by hiring DJs and producing concerts, the trend is…