Learn more about productivity with this collection
How to find inspiration in everyday life
How to stay motivated
How to cultivate a positive mindset
"What you should not do, I think, is worry about the opinion of anyone beyond your friends. You shouldn’t worry about prestige. Prestige is the opinion of the rest of the world.
Prestige is especially dangerous to the ambitious. If you want to make ambitious people waste their time on errands, the way to do it is to bait the hook with prestige. That’s the recipe for getting people to give talks, write forewords, serve on committees, be department heads, and so on. It might be a good rule simply to avoid any prestigious task. If it didn’t suck, they wouldn’t have had to make it prestigious."
PAUL GRAHAM
8
53 reads
MORE IDEAS ON THIS
The Secret of Happiness
“Find something more important than you are,” philosopher Dan Dennett once said in discussing the secret of happiness, “and dedicate your life to it.”
But how, exactly, do we find that?
Gathere...
10
123 reads
"The most important thing a creative person can learn professionally is where to draw the red line that separates what you are willing to do, and what you are not.
Art suffers the moment other people start paying for it. The more...
HUGH MACLEOD
7
42 reads
"Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters...
STEVE JOBS
7
35 reads
"What I want to argue for is not that we should give up on our ideas of success, but that we should make sure that they are our own. We should focus in on our ideas and make sure that we own them, that we’re truly the authors of our own ambitions. Because it’s bad enou...
ALAIN DE BOTTON
6
32 reads
"Work is what we do by the hour. It begins and, if possible, we do it for money. Welding car bodies on an assembly line is work; washing dishes, computing taxes, walking the rounds in a psychiatric ward, picking asparagus — these are work. Labor, on the other hand, set...
LEWIS HYDE
6
33 reads
"You will build a body of work, but you will also build a body of affection, with the people you’ve helped who’ve helped you back. This is the era of Friends in Low Places.
If you can… fall in love, with the work, with people you...
ROBERT KRULWICH
7
28 reads
The Holstee Manifesto
This is your life. Do what you love, and do it often. If you don’t like something, change it. If you don’t like your job, quit. If you don’t have enough time, stop wat...
7
42 reads
CURATED FROM
IDEAS CURATED BY
Timeless wisdom collated by the brilliant Maria Popova
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Related collections
Other curated ideas on this topic:
What you should NOT do
- Don't worry about the opinion of anyone beyond your friends.
- Don't worry about prestige. Prestige is the opinion of the rest of the world. If you do anything well enough, you'll make it prestigious.
- Don't be led astray by money
How To Tell If You Have Too Much Meaning?
In politics or in your personal life, you may feel powerless, or there may be situations which are not in your control but you would still get anxious and wouldn't be able to stop thinking about it. This shows an excess in meaning because if you genuinely didn’t feel the situation was significant...
Finding what you love to do
When you're deciding what to do, you have to operate on incomplete information.
- Unless you are fairly sure what to do, choose a type of work that could turn into either an organic or two-job career.
- Early on, seek jobs that let you do many different th...
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