Earlier this week, the writer John McPhee turned 91. One of the nice things about McPhee’s birthday, in addition to it providing an occasion to … Read more
Each month I strive to read five books, from a variety of genres and levels of seriousness. By popular request, I try to list the books I read here in my newsletter. Below are the books I read in February 2022.
[Note: I recently realized that I forgot to write a post about my books for January 2022. Whoops! Fortunately, you can watch me discuss my January reads in this clip taken from my podcast.]
A reader recently sent me a video of a keynote speech, delivered in 2020 by the popular fantasy novelist Brandon Sanderson. The title of the presentation was “The Common Lies Writers Tell You,” but its real message was more general.
Sanderson starts (perhaps channeling a young Cal Newport) by pushing back on our common instinct to tell kids “you can do anything you want to” or “follow your dreams.” He argues that these aphorisms inflict a disservice on impressionable minds as they obfuscate the complexity, and frustration, and nuance involved in actually pursuing remarkable goals.
He retorts that the following claim is much more realistic:
“I can do hard things. Doing hard things has intrinsic value, and they will make me a better person, even if I end up failing.”
Sanderson then proceeds to details three tips, drawn from his experience as a successful novelist, to help structure any attempt to tackle hard things. I found his advice both interesting and refreshingly blunt, so I thought it might be useful to summarize his three tips here, annotated with some of my own thoughts…
Last week, the American figure skater Nathan Chen, a favorite to win gold in the 2022 Olympics, lived up to expectations. In a four-minute free … Read more
A quick administrative note… Life of Focus, the three-month training program I co-instruct with Scott Young, is now open for a new session. We will … Read more
Early in the pandemic, driven by the dislocation that characterized the moment, I began writing about a topic I quickly came to call “the deep … Read more
In the summer of 2020, I launched the Deep Questions podcast. The premise was simple: I answer your questions about all the different topics we … Read more
Each month I strive to read five books, from a variety of genres and levels of seriousness. By popular request, I’ve listed below the titles I completed in December 2021 (for more detailed thoughts on these books see Episode 163 of my podcast):
