3-2-1: On the shortness of life, what mastery requires, and how to overlap the things you love

As long as you’re filling every hour of the day with some form of striving, you get to carry on believing that all this striving is leading you somewhere – to an imagined future state of perfection, a heavenly realm in which everything runs smoothly, your limited time causes you no pain, and you’re free of the guilty sense that there’s more you nee

if you don’t understand the ins and outs of your discipline, your passion will only get you so far. Because without taking the time to fine-tune your skills, your efforts will be built on a foundation that is bound to crumble once it is put to the test.

What’s needed instead in such situations, I gradually came to understand, is a kind of anti-skill: not the counterproductive strategy of trying to make yourself more efficient, but rather a willingness to resist such urges—to learn to stay with the anxiety of feeling overwhelmed, of not being on top of everything, without automatically responding b

I am in a fair way of having no other tasks than such as I shall like to give my self, and of enjoying what I look upon as a great happiness, leisure to read, study, make experiments, and converse at large . . . on such points as may produce something for the common benefit of mankind, uninterrupted by the little cares and fatigues of business.