Good Work : Reclaiming Your Inner Ambition

July 2023

If you collected lists of techniques for doing great work in a lot of different fields, what would the intersection look like? I decided to find out by making it.

Partly my goal was to create a guide that could be used by someone working in any field. But I was also curious about the shape of the intersection. And one thing this exercise sh... See more

I am aware that I shouldn’t judge how people try to escape the 9-to-5 grind. I am aware that a job’s purpose is money, not emotional enrichment. I know!

What I am instead arguing for is something more expansive. The thing you should work hard at is everything . Finding ways to imbue each moment with meaning and purpose and effort is the only path t... See more

No way was I going to give up on my work simply because it wasn’t “working.” That wasn’t the point of it. The rewards could not come from the external results—I knew that. The rewards had to come from the joy of puzzling out the work itself, and from the private awareness I held that I had chosen a devotional path and I was being true to it. If som

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HOW TO STAY FOCUSED WHEN YOU GET BORED WORKING ON YOUR GOALS After my baseball career ended, I was looking for a new sport. I joined a weightlifting team and one day an elite coach visited our gym. He had worked with thousands of athletes during his long career, including a few Olympians. I introduced myself and we began talking about the process o

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