Farnam Street
Mastering the best of what other people have already figured out
Too often we reward people who solve problems while ignoring those who prevent them in the first place. This incentivizes creating problems. According to poet David Whyte, the key to taking initiative …
One big challenge we all face in life is knowing when to explore new opportunities, and when to double down on existing ones. Explore vs exploit algorithms – and poetry – teach us that …
“We are each a river with a particular abiding character, but we show radically different aspects of our self according to the territory through which we travel.” *** The most difficult of …
“Work-life balance is a concept that has us simply lashing ourselves on the back and working too hard in each of the three commitments. In the ensuing exhaustion we ultimately give up on one or more …
This could be the most beautiful thing I’ve read so far this year. From Lang Leav’s amazing Love and Misadventure: Soul Mates I don’t know how you are so familiar to me—or why it feels …
John Keats coined the term negative capability to describe the willingness to embrace uncertainty, mysteries and doubts. The first and only time Keats used the phrase was in a letter on 21 December …
“I’ve always had the feeling that life loves the liver of it.” The legendary poet and writer Maya Angelou passed recently at her home in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. She was 86. I first …
“If the lion was advised by the fox, he would be cunning.” *** Two excerpts from William Blake’s The Marriage of Heaven and Hell found in The Essential Blake. The Voice of the Devil …
Is Dante still relevant in our new world? As if to prove this point, the most recent season of Mad Men kicked off with John Ciardi’s 1954 translation of Inferno: Midway in our life’s journey, I …
We live in a multi-tasking world, but every so often we get lost in a task. We become so lost in what we are doing that time flies. We miss a meal, not because we are busy, but rather, because we are …
Some more timeless wisdom from Rudyard Kipling: If … If you can keep your head when all about you Are losing theirs and blaming it on you, If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, But …
My Symphony To live content with small means; To seek elegance rather than luxury, And refinement rather than fashion; To be worthy, not respectable, and wealthy, not, rich; To study hard, think …