Most women have seven to fourteen years of healthy adulthood where they aren’t a caregiver or otherwise on call for death or infirmity.

Stay out. See dawn from both sides. Have another drink. Move somewhere weird. Buy jewelry, fight loudly, be silent for days. Visit a cactus.

Being mad at students for not being more into reading helps no one. They have been trained by their devices to seek quick pleasure hits, not the slow pleasures of reading. I am a writer who grew up in the analog age, and I can't give a book the same attention I once did. 🥺

and I'd ask myself if I could use a good hug right now, and the answer was ALWAYS yes
and just like that the craving would vanish? (probably there was an intermediate step of me mentally giving myself a hug)

one piece of advice that i always give to zoomers on the job:

> communicate proactively 

- just let people know what you’re up to
- keep giving incremental updates
- screenshots, text updates, anything
- performance must be seen to be measured
- radio silence = 0 work done

You'd find him on a Sunday evening poring over the register for ways to help people in it. At age 27, when nobody did anything serious. He did it not for "networking" but because he actually liked people and wanted to look out for them.

Here is a good decision theory, for the kind of guy who just read this and said "what the hell is a decision theory?"

- don't be a dick
- don't be a sucker

What do these mean, in practice?

I will try to explain, WITHOUT assuming that you're some kind of obsessed mathematician:

Every object in your environment is a vibe talisman. Clothing, furniture, home goods, tools, decorative items, walls, floors, everything. The instantaneous impression you get from it is the unique sensorial/attentional imprint it leaves on you, that's what's being transmitted!…

one of the most simple ways to practice respecting your own distrust (NNTD) is to journal about the people in your life and what you think their motives/intentions might be, that they would disagree with (& plan not to show anybody)

if you want to be friends with interesting people, you have to accept that one hundred thousand things coexist in their hours. projects, work, family, recreation, friends and colleagues and interesting strangers, and ofc setting aside time to actually think

text again

If I don’t give my mother constant little side quests she gets depressed and prone to drama. Chaos ensues. “Favors” I never asked for and actively dislike plague our relationship. 

Strange my father never arrived at this simple technique in 25 turbulent years of marriage

I emphasize writing in texts. I teach/review how to annotate a text. Pens or pencils are also required. We start every text by reading aloud in class. The seal is broken, the book is easier to get back into next time. We discuss what the book is telling us about how to enter it.

Captain’s log: you don’t properly mythologize yourself. You come up with incredibly creative lore around the low functioning, low self-esteem version of yourself. But you don’t apply the same creativity to writing lore and that reinforces the high functioning version

If you go somewhere regularly - an office,  a business, a home - get to know the places and people around it. 

Is there someone nearby you’d like to employ you? Or you want to know how their business works? You want to know who made their sign? Knock on the door and ask!

A REALLY interesting thing I discovered a few years ago is that people's range of what they're capable of doing expands WILDLY when you tell them to imitate a self that is not theirs instead of asking them to show you their own range lmao

I wonder how many heartbroken girls dive into attachment theory & trauma healing content, only to get one-shotted by advice like this? 

Overcorrecting with “safe” but incompatible relationships because they’re terrified of love and were told not to trust their instincts.

Talk to the security guard, the tailor, your silent neighbor, the barista, the bodega guy, your mailman, the Amazon person, your cashier, your seat mate. 

No person should be invisible to you. 

You will feel less invisible in turn.

Asking my choir to sing as soft as they can: 50dB
Softer pls: 40dB
Pls even softer pls: 35dB
I'm begging u: 30dB
Asking them to do their best impression of the softest choir of all time: 0.0001dB

if you’re sensitive, it means your environment has more of an effect on you

becuase of this, we want to pay extra attention to what environments give you access to joy, love, confidence and which lead to fear, shame, and doubt

that goes for both internal & external environments

@nopranablem i’m a fan of the quote “discipline is knowing the difference between what you want now & what you want most”

feels like a prompt to reconnect with your truest motivation rather than having to do without it

on a related note, how about a gym for being a good person? 

what skills need to be practiced in a gym like this?

how exactly do you practice them, step by step?

A father's handwritten letter to his daughter from 2009, with her response written on it.

when people ask me why i am the way i am i should really just show them the notes my dad wrote me growing up

@banglani High discipline and motivation!

I know of someone who notes every conversation, key point, etc. runs out of a book a week. Has excellent penmanship to boot.

And my boss remembers career paths of people by memory.

privately writing about, journaling and reflecting on our experiences of other people and social reality, registering and validating our own trusts and distrusts, honors our own experiences and perspectives as they are, affords the possibility of choices in accordance with them,

internal: what kind of self talk & inward attention creates the joy & confidence I want?

external: what kind of people/places/activity make me feel like I’m thriving?

everyone can ask this; being sensitive just increases the effect, which can absolutely be a gift

Things like to “do their thing” regularly, or they get a bit sad. Using a thing for what it’s good at makes the thing happy. Things also need some special care now and then. They are always going through cycles of decay and rejuvenation.

gratitude: documentation helps with this - relationships wax and wane, reflecting on the good helps center you back into why you're with this person. 

your brain wants to normalize your partner bc it's a lazy paper clipper so learn to appreciate little things (life≈wife/etc)

It was powerful for me to realize that I can't miss out on anything. I will experience the entirety of my life. Anything I imagine I'm missing out on is a mental construction. And, since I produced the mental construction, I experienced it

it’s not much of an an exaggeration to say that the top contributor to me not needing to have a job in my 30s is that I spent my bus/train commutes in my 20s writing. it was about 2 hrs a day for 5.5 years

he's 2 now, and he still thinks my iphone is just a phone that calls people

we aren’t planning to be no screens forever –– a linux box is in his near future

been writing a longform tweet on my math arc. tldr is:

> be me
> never was "gifted" at math and showed zero promise at a young age
> one year just decided to become cracked anyway
> succeeded and outpaced 99.9% of other people my age despite having no natural talent

the moral:…

I grew up in a home where tasks were often treated as elaborate/heavy, then I was introduced to a home where most tasks were treated like they were just a thing. Making that appointment, reorganizing that room, planning + going on that trip, etc — they’re all just things. And you…