If you’re a podcaster—or even just a fan of aural history—you’ll enjoy this, from PRX.
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Worth a listen: An episode on Studs Terkel →
I know what to do →
For me, fully internalizing this one powerful piece of inspiring profanity has been transformative. But I still find that returning regularly to the well makes all this work even better. So I downloaded both of the Goggins’s audiobooks and worked through them in little chunks on my morning walks over the period of a month. Then I moved on to Peter Attia’s Outlive, and Jocko Willink’s Extreme Ownership.
~ Peter Adeney, from The Ultimate Life Coach
I really do know what I should be doing. (I have no idea if you, or anyone else, does too.) But I can tell you that even though I know… it’s still tough to do the soul-crushing work. I’ve not read any of the books above—although Outlive is on my to-read pile.
slip:4umote3.
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On creativity →
A writer—and, I believe, generally all persons—must think that whatever happens to him or her is a resource. All things have been given to us for a purpose, and an artist must feel this more intensely. All this happens to us, including our humiliations, our misfortunes, our embarrassments, all is given to us as raw material, as clay, so that we may sharpen our art.
~ Jorge Luis Borges
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Truth →
Many statements which are accepted as truth because they have been passed down to us by tradition look like truth only because we have never tested them, never thought about them in a more precise way.
~ Leo Tolstoy
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Oh crap now I think I have insomnia →
My dad used to suffer from insomnia, holding imaginary meetings in his head late into the night. I’m the same way.
~ “AllAmericanBreakfast” from, Mental nonsense: my anti-insomnia trick — LessWrong
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I read that short article and now I think I have insomnia. Sometimes, anyway. Clearly I’m a hypochondriac though. But in all seriousness, the author suggests something that—dare I say it?—I almost hope I have trouble getting to sleep tonight so I can try it.
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The source of all human evils →
Why, do you not reflect, then, that the source of all human evils, and of mean-spiritedness and cowardice, is not death, but rather the fear of death? Discipline yourself, therefore, against this. To this let all your discourses, readings, exercises, tend. And then you will know that in this way alone are men made free.
~ Epictetus
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Embarking on writing →
What’s it for?
For as long as I’ve been recording podcasts I’ve wanted to figure out how to learn more, and retain more, from the conversations. An audio recording of a good conversation can be a good experience for the listener; It can be good experiential learning. But the conversations contain so much more—facts sure, but also connections to other people, projects, stories, new perspectives, insights—which I know I’m missing. If something prompts my memory, I can recall the experience of the conversation, but everything else is either never learned, or if it was, I’ve subsequently lost it.
I’m reminded of…
If you remember what an author says, you have learned something from reading him. If what he says is true, you have even learned something about the world. But whether it is a fact about the book or a fact about the world that you have learned, you have gained nothing but information if you have exercised only your memory. You have not been enlightened. Enlightenment is achieved only when, in addition to knowing what an author says, you know what he means and why he says it.
~ Mortimer Adler, author of How to Read a Book, 1972
There are multiple levels of understanding and learning, contained in each conversation. At the root of my feeling that I’m missing out is the knowledge that I’m only retaining the most-superficial level of the experience.
Who’s it for?
It’s obviously for me. But by doing the writing in public everyone who finds a specific episode interesting would be able to capture and retain more of those “levels of experience” for themselves.
(more…)Nothing Fails Like Success →
There are internet companies (like Basecamp, or like Automattic, makers of WordPress.com, where I work) that charge money for their products and services, and use that money to grow their business. I wish more internet companies could follow that model, but it’s hard to retrofit a legitimate business model to a product that started its life as free.
~ Jeffrey Zeldman from, Nothing Fails Like Success – A List Apart
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ahahahahahahahahhahaahahhaaa! Sometimes I like to share stuff just because it makes me happy. (The stuff; not the sharing of said stuff, I mean.) I regularly talk about how this web site is a vehicle for my reflection—I’m quite often literally thinking through things. Writing, (tappity-tap-tapping on the keyboard here,) and writing, (scratchity-scritch-skratching with a pen on paper,) are two of the ways I figure out if the dross I regularly find in my head actually corresponds to reality.
When I read sentences like the ones I quoted above, I leap (sometimes literally) to my feet knocking over my chair in the process. It does my weary—deeply deeply weary it be—heart good just to read sentences like this. And I hope—not in the sense that I little value your ability to think and “hope” you’ll finally get what I’m saying; no. I only hope that sometimes, some of the things I share make you happier.
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What are the odds? →
What does such a statistic have to do with your personal chance of success? Nothing at all.
~ Steve Pavlina from, What Are the Odds of Becoming a Black Belt? – Steve Pavlina
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This has nothing to do with martial arts.
If you—you reading this right now—are NOT making mistakes, you are not learning.
Put another way: If you are always certain—or if you can’t take action until you are certain—then you are not doing the work you need to be doing.
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Day 56/100 – morning run →
train just went past (you can see its tracks) Bad jokes: If i have to suffer, so do you :P
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Day 55/100 – choices →
Surprise return of summer, so running in evening heat. meh.
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Night session. halfway. . . →
Night session. halfway. . .
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…gonna put your body on “manual”? Better bone up on physiology. →
…gonna put your body on “manual”? Better bone up on physiology.
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Have a code →
A man’s got to have a code, a creed to live by, no matter his job.
~ John Wayne
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Flight deck of Endeavor. simply. awesome.