“Writing is a byproduct of hours and hours of reading, researching, thinking and making my notecards. When a day’s writing goes well, it’s got little to do with that day at all. It’s actually a lagging indicator of hours and hours spent researching and thinking. Every passage and page has a prologue titled Preparation.”
Ryan Holiday
“Not smart is a passive act, remedied with learning, experience and thought. Stupid is active, the work of someone who should have or could have known better and decided to do something selfish, impulsive or dangerous anyway. The more experience, assets and privilege we have, the less excusable it is to do stupid things. And at the same time, the more useful it is to announce that we’re not smart (yet).”
Seth Godin
“The act of concentrating on a given subject is, conversely, the act of temporarily forgetting everything else. This is one reason why, in most cases, highly successful people seem to be possessed of great calm and impressive reserves of energy. Capable of intense concentration on basic questions, they are not worn down by superficial difficulties, distracting side issues or the enervating friction of a divided mind. Professionally hard at work, they are psychologically on vacation: this is one case where conventional acheivement is completely in accord with mental and physical health.”
Robert Grudin, Time And The Art Of Living (Page 106)
“If you are fearful of some event in the future, and all reasonable efforts to calm your fear have failed, try worrying about it as intensely, lengthily and specifically as possible. The exhausting experience of worry, which is a kind of preliving of events, may well defuse your anxiety when the event actually occurs. In the same sense, conscious worry encourages us to formulate solutions to the problems we will be facing. At any rate, do not try to repress or stifle your fear of what is to come. This is a sure path to anxiety in action.”
Robert Grudin, Time And The Art Of Living (Page 103)
“Plans made swiftly and intuitively are likely to have flaws. Plans made carefully and comprehensively are sure to.”
Robert Grudin, Time And The Art Of Living (Page 102)
“Each person carries an invisible backpack full of unfinished tasks. These things can weigh on you, especially the ones that you feel like you should do but know you probably won’t make time for. There are two ways to lighten the load: finish the task or let it go. Give yourself permission to stop worrying about the things you’re never going to do. What’s weighing down your backpack that needs to be released?”
James Clear
“The best we can do, I think, is not to pick nits but rather to consult broader purposes, taking time off every few days to review our position in life, evaluating the present in terms of past and future, memories and plans, and determining the ways in which recent and present choices may suggest larger patterns. In so doing, we rise temporarily above the ordinary flow of time and reacquaint ourselves with the larger pattern of forces which is our enduring identity.”
Robert Grudin, Time And The Art Of Living (Page 99)
“One of the chief benefits of games: liberation from all our other concerns. In this sense, games are more relaxing than relaxation: for when we ‘relax,’ we often open ourselves up to a hive of worries and impulses, but when we concentrate on a game, or anything else that is meaningful and definite, our life temporarily becomes simple and pure.”
Robert Grudin, Time And The Art Of Living (Page 94)
“Free space is useless without uncluttered time. Indeed, a nest of time need not require a special place at all: its only two requirements are that it concern some desirable activity and that it be, barring emergencies, inviolable.”
Robert Grudin, Time And The Art Of Living (Page 91)
“Even if we succeed in removing ourselves from the world, we cannot remove the world from ourselves. But with some concentration and stubbornness we can establish for ourselves another sort of nest in time, a refreshing period of solitude or conviviality sanctified by regularity and guarded like sacred ground.”
Robert Grudin, Time And The Art Of Living (Page 90)
“Whenever I go and do something with my kids (like a trip or an activity or an errand) I try to tell myself: Success is wanting to do this again. That is to say, it’s not about accomplishing anything or checking off certain boxes—did we see all the sights, did we get what we needed to get, did we arrive on time or whatever—it’s ultimately whether we got along well enough, enjoyed the experience enough, that at some point in the future they’ll say: ‘Hey, remember when we went to that concert? Can we do that again?’ or ‘Oh, you’re driving across town to grab that thing? Can I come?'”
Ryan Holiday