Knowing Your Work isn't Good Enough

Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who d...

 Sonder

n. the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own—populated with their own ambitions, friends, routines, worries and inherited craziness—an epic story that continues invisibly around you like an anthill sprawling deep underground, with elaborate passageways to thousands of other lives that you’ll never know existed, in which you might appear only once, as an extra sipping coffee in the background, as a blur of traffic passing on the highway, ...

 The Way of Chess

The Way of chess: The best place is the middle of the board, The worst is the side, And the comers are neither good nor bad. This is the eternal law of chess. The law says: "It is better to lose a piece Than to lose the initiative. When you are struck on the left, look to the right, When attacked in the rear, keep an eye on your front. Sometimes the leader is really behind, Sometimes the laggard is really ahead. If you have two 'live' areas do not let them be severed; If you can survive as yo...

 Cooperation VS Capitalism

Finding the right balance between cooperation and competition has been the goal and bane of Western politics for centuries. Adam Smith recognized that the economic needs of the individual are better met by unleashing the ambitions of all individuals than by planning to meet those needs in advance. But even Adam Smith could not claim that free markets produce Utopia. Even the most libertarian politician today believes in the need to regulate, oversee, and tax the efforts of ambitious individua...