mindsets

By Duncan Anderson. To see all blogs click here . Reading time: 5 mins One Sentence Summary : I want to be the best at getting better, specifically the best at getting from Level 0 => Level 10.  “Aim to be the best in the world at whatever you do professionally.” Sam Altm

3074 quotes from John Steinbeck: 'I wonder how many people I've looked at all my life and never seen.', 'Maybe ever’body in the whole damn world is scared of each other.', and 'All great and precious things are lonely.'

First off, allow me to tell/remind you that new book Four Thousand Weeks, about making the most of our absurdly brief time on the planet, is now available for pre-order in the UK, US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand! (The subtitle is either Time Management for Mortals or Time and How to Use It, depending on where you live.) Pre-orders are hugely important for authors these days: they count towards the first week's sales, giving a crucial signal to publishers and booksellers that a title has momentum. So if you value the writing I do here or elsewhere, by far the most effective way to support my work is to pre-order the book, from any retailer. If you decide to do so: thank you! And hold on to your receipt, pending details of a forthcoming giveaway I'll be announcing exclusively for pre-orderers. For more about the book, and to pre-order, click here. • The therapist and writer Sheryl Paul defines anxiety as "a feeling of dread, agitation, or foreboding associated with a danger that does not exist in the present moment." I'm guessing you can relate; I certainly can. (Holding this sort of feeling at bay is, I think, the secret motive behind many people's interest in productivity techniques, personal development and so on.) Both parts of Paul's definition are crucial: anxiety is the feeling that something very bad might be going to happen – combined with the absence or near-absence of any real evidence to believe it actually will. Which is extremely bizarre, when you think about it, and worth a closer look, if only because – and I speak from experience – going around all day with a pit in your stomach is no way to live. In my last book, The Antidote, I explored a Stoic technique for coping with this sort of worry called "the premeditation of evils" – the practice of soberly envisaging what the real worst-case scenario in any given situation could truly be. Suppose you're anxious about giving a speech. It helps to imagine, in detail, the experience of embarrassing yourself before an audience of hundreds, then shuffling off stage and hiding under the bedcovers – because while that's certainly unpleasant, it's also pretty clearly copeable with. And since anxiety is the fear of a danger with which you couldn't cope, the exercise has the effect of cutting your worries down to size. I still recommend (and use) that practice today. But I've come to see it has a limitation. It risks implying that nothing catastrophically bad could ever really happen. Whereas the anxious person knows, if only subconsciously, that it could. Public humiliation won't kill you, but in fact it's always the case that the next hour or week or month could contain a bereavement, a terrible accident, or a shattering medical diagnosis. So the attempt to reassure yourself that nothing too appalling is coming down the pike will always run up against the gnawing realisation that actually you can't be sure. I think that's part of what Paul means in calling her (excellent) book The Wisdom of Anxiety, echoing the title of Alan Watts's great book The Wisdom of Insecurity. Anxiety isn't a silly mistake about how bad things could get. It's a logical response to what's entailed by the human situation – thrown into the river of time, unable to know what's coming let alone to control it, condemned to the condition the author Robert Saltzman calls "total vulnerability to events", yet obliged to try to build a meaningful and enjoyable life anyway. My partner vividly describes the teenage epiphany when she realised, after a childhood steeped in moviegoing, that if something devastating were to happen to her, it wouldn't be foreshadowed by sinister music so that at least she could mentally prepare. Nope: it would just happen. Anything always could. In this predicament, you won't find the deepest solace in compulsive planning, or from visualising worst-case scenarios. You find it from seeing a) that there's nothing you could ever do to change this state of affairs, so you might as well relax into it if you can; and b) that literally everyone's in the same boat, so at least you needn't worry that, existentially speaking, anyone else is more in command of their lives than you are. And you find it above all, in my experience, not with any kind of mental insight or cognitive exercise, but in action: inching forward into the future, doing tiny bits of the things that are causing the anxiety, committing a little more to the relationships you're feeling tentative about – and discovering, in each moment, further concrete evidence than in fact you can cope with what reality tosses your way. ("It's easier to act yourself into new ways of thinking than to think yourself into new ways of acting.") My life so far provides zero reason to believe I'll ever attain the degree of control over the future I always thought I needed. But then again, my track record of not yet having been entirely overwhelmed by existence suggests that maybe I never needed it to begin with. • I'd love to hear from you – just hit reply. (I read all messages, and try to respond, but not always in a timely fashion: sorry!) If you enjoyed this email, you'd be doing me a big favour by forwarding it to someone else who might like it, or mentioning it wherever you emit opinions online; the "View in a browser" tab will take you to a web version. And if you got this from a friend and would like to subscribe yourself, please do so here. 540 President St, Brooklyn, New York 11215

The author Joan Didion By Joan Didion This piece, about the author's college rejection from her first-choice college, appeared in The Saturday Evening Post April 16, 1968. “Dear Joan,” the letter begins, although the writer did not know me at all. The letter is dated April 25, 1952, and for ...

When I was a kid, there were serious discussions in churches, schools, and in front of Congress about whether the music my friends and I listened to might be satanic. I remember my friend’s mother making him throw away all of his Metallica tapes. I remember hiding the parental warning labels when asking my mom to buy the new Pantera album. I can still see my father breaking my Bone Thugs-N-Harmony CD in half when he realized they dropped more F-Bombs than Nixon in Cambodia. In case anyone asks, this is the album that caused the downfall of human civilization. By the time I reached adolescence, the grown-ups had moved on from offensive music and commenced their hysterics over the corruptive forces of violent video games. The Columbine Massacre in 1999 was peak hand-wringing about violent entertainment. Back then, school shootings were still a rare occurrence. And it was only fitting that such an incomprehensible act be explained by such a new and incomprehensible form of entertainment. Sorry. Correction. This video game is what caused the downfall of human civilization. Today, we chuckle at the hair metal bands of …

Creator of the infamous Hero's Journey, and the man who coined the term 'follow your bliss', these Joseph Campbell quotes will help you slay your dragons.

“The patterns of our lives reveal us. Our habits measure us.”

When I was in the third grade, I learned that being Asian was different.

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And start raising kind ones.

C.G. Jung Letters, Vol. 1: 1906-1950 To Frau V. Dear Frau V., 15 December 1933 Your questions are unanswerable because you want to know how one ought to live. One lives as one can. There is no sing…

Unhappy people fail to recognize what matters, instead becoming overly focused on what they believe is missing from their existence.

I have another birthday, and another bunch of unsolicited advice.    • That thing that made you weird as a kid could make you great as an adult — if you don’t lose it. • If you have any doubt at all

In this guest post by Mark Moschel, learn how meditation, nutrition & gratitude can be forms of biohacking and how to get the most out of these practices!

In 1978, Dr. James H. Austin wrote "Chase, Chance, and Creativity: The Lucky Art of Novelty." In his book, the neurologist —and Zen Buddhist— explained the roles of luck, chance, and serendipity in medical research, and outlines what we know today as the four kinds of luck: 1. Blind luck.

You may have noticed it's practically impossible to contact me. I did that on purpose so I can spend my time how I want to spend it. I don't really use email and I have my private message inboxes on every platform closed. And they have been like that for

How To Invest In Real Estate While Writing Poetry: The BRRRR Method

One of the gifts that I got was the ability to stay positive. I am grateful to my parents, my wife, and my genes (and anyone else responsible too). It is such a superpower. I don’t just mean optimism. I mean saying nice things about people. I mean keeping a smile on your face. I […]

One needs an Arbitrary Stupid Goal: A goal that isn’t too important makes you live in the moment, and still gives you a driving force.

Most people, and most businesses, have no idea what their north star is. They are often guided by short-term outcomes that fail to transcend

In some cultures, kids roll their eyes when asked to do chores. In others, they'll pitch in without even being asked. Researchers have identified two key practices to raise helpful children.

This is the (new) monthly series where I update this public journal about the various goals I'm working towards.

A safety net that’s there to catch you can also restrain you. It can make you believe that you’re safe only above the net.

One of the most useful and flexible models of human interaction that I've encountered is Richard Francisco's Five Levels of Communication (which comprises Chapter 2.6 of the Reading Book for Human Relations Training, 8th edition.) Francisco, a Lecturer at the...

We typically don't think of being an asshole as a good thing, but there's a difference between "good" assholes and "bad" assholes.

Hunter S. Thompson's letter to his friend, Hume Logan, on finding your purpose and living a meaningful life. The most profound advice I've ever come across.

So for the past year I've been exploring what interests me. Cooking with my wife. Long walks. Writing on a blog that no one will find. Figuring out different ways to learn. Taking online courses. Teaching my wife how to snowboard. Doing things that I think are important, not things other people tell me are important. Things that I enjoy intrinsically. Things that I think improve me or that I can improve in the world.