Darwin at work and at home
One of the enduring myths of creativity is that creative people who treat their families badly do so because the weight of their genius keeps them from being good spouses and
Charles Darwin on reading page proofs
it's now less than three months before REST comes out. I received a draft of the book jacket yesterday, and it looks fabulous: it's a nice warm, soothing
To create a body of work, you need a body that can do the work
One of the most surprising discoveries I made while writing REST was how many of my subjects-- Nobel laureates, famous novelists, artists, scientists, and others-- were athletes. I had
Stephen Wolfram on Richard Feyman’s avoidance of busyness
Brigid Schulte tweets a link to a Stephen Wolfram talk about "My Time with Richard Feynman." Among other things, it has thing line about Feynman's avoidance of busyness
“we have chosen instead to have overwork for some and starvation for others”
Bertrand Russell's "In Praise of Idleness" will never become obsolete (though it would be great if we could put more of its lessons into practice): In a world
Paul Lafargue on working hours and factory productivity: Less is more
I started reading Paul Lafargue’s 1883 pamphlet The Right to Be Lazy a couple days ago. Lafargue was a Cuban-born French writer, a wealthy plantation owner’s son who got
“Our epoch has been called the century of work. It is in fact the century of pain, misery and corruption”
A strange delusion possesses the working classes of the nations where capitalist civilization holds its sway. This delusion drags in its train the individual and social woes which
Is attention a resource or a relationship?
Tom Chatfield’s short essay, "The attention economy,” raises an interesting question: why do we think of attention as a resource? For all the sophistication of a world in
Americans “equate happiness with high intensity,” and we always have
Emma Seppala, whose new book The Happiness Something Or Other came out this week, is doing an admirable job of hitting the airwaves to promote the book. (I
Abraham Crowley, Of Solitude
It's very old, but Crowley's essay on solitude is still worth reading: The First Minister of State has not so much business in public as a wise man