Marcus Aurelius opens his Meditations by reflecting on the qualities he admires in others. It’s a Stoic technique for understanding your core values and cultivating behavior that will help you become the kind of person you aspire to be. I wanted to share this with you...
I recently developed a habit of taking cold showers in the morning. It didn’t seem that strange until I realized that cold showers make no sense as far as the science of habit formation goes. Typically, a habit forms when there’s a repeat cycle of cue, want, behavior,...
Many see writing as a process separate from thinking. As if, for a writer to write, some thinking had to have already happened. And then it became the writer’s job to report on the results of that process, the way a scientist documents his experiments. This is, as the...
Would you say you’re an overthinker? Or would you have to… you know, think about it first? In my view, there’s something noble in reflecting on your actions, in pausing before making an important decision, in picking your motivations apart to understand what drives...
I first read Meditations by Marcus Aurelius some three years ago, shortly after my wife had been diagnosed with stage IV cancer. The famous Roman emperor has been one of the few true philosopher-kings, an outspoken Stoic, and had to deal with the loss of his beloved...
…A button is invented that blinks precisely one second before its pressed. Nothing and no one can cheat the way it works, which proves that the universe is fundamentally deterministic. The human society collapses. …A robot driven by pure curiosity starts picking...
How is it that the only time I become self-conscious about wearing a hat is when my father’s around? It makes no sense. I’ve been wearing suits, whenever I leave the house, for years, and hats—German Mayser fedoras—since last autumn. It’s the kind of outfit that makes...
