Insights
#49 Moderate to get more
A neurotransmitter that once helped us evolve and motivated us to go out and explore the world now has us glued to screens and plates filled with sugary food. Dopamine tells us not just to eat, but to eat more. Not just to read a useful article, but click more headlines. Swipe through more videos…
#48 Volume matters
The Pareto principle states that for many outcomes, roughly 80% of consequences come from 20% of causes (the “vital few”). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle I’m okay with publishing 80% rubbish if that’s what it takes to stumble upon something good. But if only 20% of what I publish is any good, and I publish one post a week, then on…
#47 Are we all just animal?
The scientific revolution has left a god-shaped hole in our heartbut where do we find purpose, when we think we are so smart? with all our mightwe try to unhidewhat’s out of sight we fight to forge a light as brightas the one that once brought life without knowing the path that’s rightwe rush to…
#46 Feigned feelings
feigned feelings lead to forced forgingof a bond, brittle, easily broken but when i learn to listento the winds whirling withinstop seeing them as a sin when i hold them back no moreforceful feelings finally roarrevealing a hidden songsung secretly for so long my true self set freesoftly I breathemy melody into your mindfeelings mingle,…
#45 The tragedy of the spoken word
Language helps us describe the world we perceive. Yet in doing so, it closes our eyes, our ears, our touch, and our heart to the parts of the world we don’t have words for. Every language is a lens on a felt reality within and around us – both clarifying and categorizing the world, and…
#44 Choices
I can write today, resent myself for not writing… or stop caring at all about writing. I can publish a blog post today, resent myself for not posting, or stop caring at all about blog posts. Taking action on something I care about is a valid choice. Stopping to care about taking a certain action…
#43 Quick-Start Guide to Stream of Consciousness Journaling (Morning Pages)
On 1. January 2021, I started writing 3 pages of stream-of-consciousness journaling a day. I haven’t missed a day since. That’s 663 days in a row: an inner dialogues of 1989 pages poured in to piles of journals. Stream-of-consciousness journaling is also often called Morning Pages (a term coined by Julia Cameron in her book…
#42 Zooming out
We take action based on the pain we want to escape right – or the pleasure we want to feel – right now, in this very moment… Which often leads to bad long-term consequences. A solution to this: for every pain or pleasure impulse in the moment, zoom out to consider medium- and long-term timeframes….
#41 Unaligned agendas
Benefit and harm all depend on your perspective. The futurist John Smart suggests looking at phenomena, trends, and events through four different lenses (the “Foresight Tetrad“): Personal Organizational (=collective) Global Universal Every level has its own agenda, but their interests are rarely fully aligned. For example: for evolution and natural selection to work, a life…
#40 Pushing a destructive frontier
5 billion years ago, our solar system didn’t exist in its current form – but the laws of our universe already held the promise that one day, an earth like ours would revolve around a sun. That earth has been revolving around the sun long before any human started observing planetary orbits and realized we’re…
#39 Knowledge transfer and time collapse
Knowledge transfer always implies time collapse. Because learning an insight from someone else usually takes less long than figuring it out yourself. Take books. The writer usually spent considerable time researching and distilling the topic and coming to good insights (time I might not be able to dedicate). Thanks to that writer, I can now…
#38 Regret, worry, forget
We regret the past, worry about the future, and forget about the now. What if I: learn from and let go of the past create an empowering vision of the future, informed by your imagination AND lessons of the past act in the now, confident that every action you take brings you closer towards that…