I recently joined Erik Torenberg on the Venture Stories podcast. We had a very wide-ranging conversation including: Why productivity is not an end in and of itself Why content creation (not just consumption) is integral to your career How to better deal with the 11 hours of media a day that the average person consumes…
On a recent Sunday afternoon, while reading on the couch, I was startled to realize that I had a life philosophy. It’s not a very deep or sophisticated one. It’s not rooted in a grand narrative. It doesn’t specify precisely which rules to follow or which decisions to make. But it has served me well….
How does it feel to have a Second Brain? It feels like raw power. Like energy coursing into my mind and body from every source of information I have access to. Like the world is made of ideas, and I have a key to its underlying reality. It feels like I am the master of…
This essay was originally posted on the Ribbonfarm blog. The organizing principle of the modern world is pain. Avoiding it, yes. But also trading in it, taking refuge in it, and using it to justify our actions. Pain has so many uses. Why would you ever give up such a versatile tool? We trade in…
I first started taking notes on a computer at the age of 22, when I came down with a mysterious illness in college. The pain was inconsistent, varying a lot from day to day. At first I thought it was a temporary thing, that it would soon go away. But it grew steadily worse, over…
A few months ago I was wasting time on Twitter as usual, and came across a tweet by an online acquaintance referring to “magick.” I figured it was a typo, and messaged him to find out more. That was the beginning of my introduction to the mysterious, strange, paradoxical world of “real magick.” This isn’t…
I recently sat down with Cody McLain to talk about productivity, achievement, and personal growth. We went deep on the relationship between internal experiences like personal growth and self-awareness, and external measures of success that people usually associate with “achievement.” Click here to visit the Mindhack website for the audio recording and full transcript.
This post now available in German. The Theory of Constructed Emotion offers a radical new take on what emotions are, where they come from, and how they shape our lives. Presented by psychology professor and neuroscientist Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett in her best-selling book How Emotions Are Made (affiliate link), it also contradicts many of…
At the end of every year I perform an “annual review.” It includes a series of exercises and questions designed to close out the previous year and help me plan for the new one. I decided to do it differently this year. Under the guidance of my friend Ting, I took on a process of…
At the end of July, I participated in a two-day workshop in San Francisco called Tide Turners. This is the story of what I discovered there. I first met Joe Hudson, the creator and leader of the program, at a Consciousness Hacking meetup dedicated to building products that contribute to self-awareness and sustainability. He led…
When I moved from San Francisco to Oakland in 2014, I was just trying to pay cheaper rent. I never expected to be influenced by the movements that flow through Oakland’s veins: the movements for social justice, for environmental justice, and for black liberation. I’ve since had the privilege of working with some of the…
I recently read and took notes on You Need a Budget (YNAB-Affiliate Link), a popular book on personal finance and budgeting (with accompanying software for managing budgets) by Jesse Mecham. My interest in this book is three-fold: I’m terrible at budgeting and need help I want to borrow principles and methods for managing money to help people…