7 for Sunday

How can we balance the drive for improvement and creation, with the values of clarity and intentionality? Because my drive is to add things. To add features, capabilities, new options, entire projects. Improvement through addition. Forward progress through consensus building. See something missing? Add something to fill that space. Of course, you see where this…

Why do I continue to write regularly despite the challenges and resistance it entails? Often, I wish that I could figure out why I write these things each week. Often, I put off starting, until much later than I’d prefer. Here I am again this week, in the proverbial last hour. It’s a Sisyphean labor—there’s…

How can we find a sustainable balance between striving for achievement and embracing rest, while addressing our underlying beliefs about worth and productivity? A weakness for me is that with each day, I don’t know when to stop striving. Sometimes I fail to plan; I spend the whole day chasing the next, immediate thing todo.…

How can solitude and intentional detachment from distractions help us cultivate creativity and find clarity in our choices? Sweet, sublime, solitude. Flowers open in solitude. Butterflies emerge from their chrysalis in solitude. We find room for ourselves in solitude. There is a silence at the center of each person — an untrammeled space where the…

It’s only impossible until you’ve done it once. It’s only difficult until you’ve done it twice. The problem isn’t the actual problem; the problems is your attitude about the problem. Outside of military training and sports, Greeks, and later the Romans, celebrated the body’s beauty and strength and embraced physical training as a philosophical ideal…

I have cancer. Although I won’t be sharing specifics, I have stellar care and support, from my family, and from a huge team of the best healthcare professionals. My prognosis is excellent. If one must get cancer, you want to have the experience I’m having. Your intellectual appetites might include knowing the answer to a…

When I was a kid I never thought about how the contents of a museum come to be the actual contents. I had vague notions of Indiana Jones escapades, organized expeditions of discovery, and dusty research to assemble artifacts’ histories. But I never thought about the curation aspect of a museum. I suppose I just…

Is there anything more sublime than the rapture found during creativity? I think not. The act of creation, in your preferred medium, takes you to a realm of serenity and ease. [Tchaikovsky] had just one, temporary analgesic for his misery: “It would be in vain to try to put into words that immeasurable sense of…

The parable of the tortoise and hare is eternal. The simple story illuminates the pitfalls of laziness and hubris. It also suggests there can be important perspective shifts when we ask, “How fast should I be going?” and, “Am I going in the right direction?” Today we live in a society structured to promote early bloomers.…

Have you read Quiet by Susan Cain? It was a quake-book for me; but I think you have to be an introvert to get that effect from it. If I had to summarize its point, it would be that introversion is about how one recharges and not—as commonly described—about how one shows up around others.…