Attention used to mean you were a big deal in a small pond. It was about fitting in and being liked by the people you saw every day. The new attention is about standing out to people you’ll never meet. It’s measured less by affection than by the raw wattage of your ability to entertain and provoke. The homecoming queen wanted to be admired, the influencer wants to be watched.

Most people imagine luck as something that just happens to you, but luck is more like a function of exposure: the number of times you put yourself in situations where something unexpected can happen.

The more you rely on your memory to track open loops, the less mental bandwidth you have to actually do meaningful work.

People treat ideas like their children. So telling someone their idea is wrong feels like an attack on their offspring. But ideas aren't children, they're tools. And like any tool, we should be ready to discard them when we find better ones.

We’re just machines, running programs written by wants we didn’t choose.

Lovely Great Excellent

If you want to maximize your impact, don't just accumulate knowledge. Accumulate relationships.

You can step back and ask: is this something I actually want, or just something I want right now? Most people never ask. They just follow the pull, from one desire to the next, and call it a life. But if you can spot the strings, you might be able to tug back. Even just a little. And that’s the start of freedom.

Desire is the puppeteer, and reason is the puppet’s voice. Watch a child trying to convince you why they need another cookie. The arguments are always creative, but the real reason is always the same: they want the cookie. Adults are just more sophisticated about it.

Dostoevsky on happiness