Sublime

The system itself — which, like so many corners of the American labor market, still assumes the support of a partner that does not work full-time outside of the home. If you have that support, you will excel. If you don’t, you either have to make enough money to buy it, or you will (perhaps in slow motion, but inevitably) drown.

If I think back to those corporate meetings I was part of early in my career, it’s easy to see today’s decision-making. A decade ago cultural criticism was a sparkly pixie dust you could spread over a business to give it a veneer of prestige. But in a world where TikToks dwarf all over forms of consumption and a video that someone spent a day makin... See more

A personality sketch of the marginal user

Here’s what I’ve been able to piece together about the marginal user. Let’s call him Marl. The first thing you need to know about Marl is that he has the attention span of a goldfish on acid. Once Marl opens your app, you have about 1.3 seconds to catch his attention with a shiny image or triggering headlin... See more

 Attention is a finite resource, and how we choose to spend our attention online is, in some ways, a direct reflection of where human culture has gone in an era where access to information is basically unlimited. We are very much in our teenage years—that is, we suddenly have all these new capabilities and it’s really easy to just run wild. Bu... See more

“ resisting the pull to work endless hours is as much about keeping ourselves able to sustainably do the work [...] as it is about leaving space in life for other sources of fulfillment.”

Guardrails on the work day — on the work week! — make it possible for you to do the work for longer . Not longer hours, but, like, longer in life . It makes passi... See more