Why do we always wish that the New Year will be different from the old year? Why do we believe that we have the power to change future events? Let's stop thinking about how to change the new year, and concentrate on what we can control: today.

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Optimal is ultimately sterile. It leaves no room for much of anything else, including joy.

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We get what we pay attention to. Our narration determines what we experience and what we remember.

So true: with enough white space, deadlines don’t matter.

Make no mistake, real deadlines are irritating impositions upon the desire to be free of any such responsibilities

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When you feel like you’re not productive, it’s not necessarily because you’re lazy or because you have bad habits, it’s because you’re not working on the right projects and you haven’t found the ones that are intrinsically motivating and meaningful to you.

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When you rush you maybe do more. But you also miss more.

Capitalism is an efficient system for surfacing and addressing the needs of consumers. But once it veers toward control over markets by a single entity, those benefits disappear.

Very insightful thoughts on how combat firehosing, burying the truth under a huge pile of low-quality information and even lies:

there is no substitute for teaching actual critical thinking, for good quality journalism, and for scientific literacy.

Far too many people are unaware of the real consequences of giving up their privacy. As Carissa Véliz writes, privacy is not a private problem, privacy is a collective issue.

Because we are intertwined in ways that make us vulnerable to each other, we are responsible for each other’s privacy. I might, for instance, be extremely careful with my phone number and physical address. But if you have me as a contact in your mobile phone and then give access to companies to that phone, my privacy will be at risk regardless of the precautions I have taken. This is why you shouldn’t store more sensitive data than necessary in your address book, post photos of others without their permission, or even expose your own privacy unnecessarily. When you expose information about yourself, you are almost always exposing information about others.

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As you start with your meditation practice, the first thing you’ll notice is that your mind is completely out of control.

Derek Sivers discusses what it is like to live according to your values:

Once you realize that one value is more important to you than another, you have to ask yourself if you’re living accordingly.

What’s ultimately more important to you?

• Learning? Or creating?
• Money? Or time?
• Expanding? Or focusing?
• (… etc.)

Once you know which takes top place, consider taking it to an extreme, to its logical conclusion, and optimizing your entire life around that top priority, letting go of almost everything else.

This is so important. If everything is a priority, nothing is and your output will most likely be mediocre.

What over a decade of number-crunching analytics has taught me is that spending an hour writing, sharing, or helping someone is infinitely more valuable than spending that hour swimming through numbers.

This is so true. I do have statistics, but hardly ever look at them.

Personal effectiveness basics: steps you can take to keep your concentration and accomplish everything faster.

One tidbit I liked:

Creating lists can be a double-edged sword,” cautions Hicks. “Lists can certainly help you keep track of and prioritize tasks, but if a lack of focus is due to feeling overwhelmed with the amount of work that needs to be accomplished, then creating a long list of tasks may make things worse

💬 Visto los acontecimientos de esta semana, esta cita es más actual que nunca:

La no violencia es la mayor fuerza a disposición de la humanidad. Es más poderosa que el arma de destrucción más poderosa concebida por el ingenio del hombre.