Reflections on Writing, Grinding, and Money
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Reflections on Writing, Grinding, and Money
The regrettable consequence of justifying leisure only in terms of its usefulness for other things is that it begins to feel vaguely like a chore – in other words, like work in the worst sense of that word. This was a pitfall the critic Walter Kerr noticed back in 1962, in his book The Decline of Pleasure: ‘We are all of us compelled,’ Kerr wrote,
... See moreOliver Burkeman • Four Thousand Weeks: Embrace your limits. Change your life. Make your four thousand weeks count.
Now, with writing, I happily embrace the challenge of getting stuck and feeling frustrated about how to move forward and I don’t seem to tire of it. This is because there is no “should” in my relationship to writing. I care about it. If writing required extreme effort and constant mental contortions, it wouldn't be my good work.
Paul Millerd • Good Work: Reclaiming Your Inner Ambition
The worst kind of company is usually not the one where there's too much real work to do, but the kind where there's not enough. It's in this realm the real monsters appear. Without enough real problems to go around, humans are prone to invent fictitious and dreadful ones.
This is the root of David Graeber's Bullshit Jobs analysis. That a shocking pe
... See moreAs 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 need ... See more