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A gym for reading
Yoshitaka Haba, who works as a book curator (!) and started a private library and cafe, Donkou / Kissa Fang, says: “There are lots of things I’m worried about, but the thing I’m most worried about is that the competition for our time is too intense. Right now, it’s possible to surprise, entertain, and impress…
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The failure and the learning
Shane Parrish writes in Clear Thinking: Experts can tell you all the ways they’ve failed. They know and accept that some form of failure is often part of the learning process. Imitators, however, are less likely to own up to mistakes because they’re afraid it will tarnish the image they’re trying to project. Because failure…
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Audiobooks are books
Simon Sarris makes the case we should treat audiobooks as seriously as we treat books, because listening is a skill just as important as reading: If you find audiobooks hard to follow, this is all the more reason to want to practice. After all: How long did it take you to learn to read well?…
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Choose the action, choose the consequence
“When you choose an action, you choose the consequences of that action. When you desire a consequence you had damned well better take the action that would create it.” Lois McMaster Bujold, Memory
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Sweet lemons
I recently took a week off work. The first day off, my nose started running. I got sick. The rest of the week involved me staying in my home, recovering. There are at least two competing truths here: One truth involves me being upset that I didn’t get to do much I wanted to. Another…
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Five life lessons from playing board games
You can learn a lot about life from playing board games. Here are five lessons I’ve picked up from the past few years: The point is to have fun, not to win. If you want to play competitively, then join a tournament—don’t do that with your friends. The point is to enjoy each other’s company.…
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Hold yourself accountable
In Clear Thinking, Shane Parrish writes: Self-accountability means taking responsibility for your abilities, your inabilities, and your actions. If you can’t do that, you might never move forward. You might not have someone in your life who holds you accountable, but that doesn’t matter. You can hold yourself accountable. Others might not expect more from…
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100% off
“There is no product or service more ecological, sustainable and recyclable as the one we do not use.” — Philippe Bihouix (via Rohan Rajiv) Do you really need it? 40% off a product you’re not going to regularly use is not as good as 100% off a product you don’t buy and store in your…
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Deconstructing Pat Riley’s guarantee
In The Optimism Bias, Tali Sharot writes a story about Pat Riley, who was head coach of the Los Angeles Lakers in the 1980s and had just won the 1987 NBA Championship: In the midst of the postvictory celebration, Riley was approached by a reporter. The journalist wanted to know if Riley believed the Lakers…
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Make a book about a person
There’s a niche that doesn’t often get discussed: books about people. This can come in the form of short, unauthorized biographies like Clayton Geoffreys’s sport series, or Jake Brown’s In the Studio series. (I have bought books from both.) These books aren’t long, Caro-sized, biographies; they can be very short books, effectively long introductions to…