Ali is addressing meaning crisis

"Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win, by fearing to attempt." Shakespeare

Amid the lost of some loved ones last year, I believe this quote is quote eloquent and helps create space for acceptance of said lsos without the loss feeling overbearing:

"As long as there is love there will be grief because grief is love's natural continuation." - @heidipriebe.bsky.social

"Tell me what you pay attention to and I will tell you who you are" from José Ortega y Gasset...

a reminder to focus attention on valuable and worthy things

"Nowadays public opinion is not the sum of private opinions. On the contrary, private opinions are an echo of public opinion." ... (1977)

they do something better or more ambitious than what they might have in mind. It costs you relatively little to do this, but the benefit to them, and to the broader world, may be enormous.

This is in fact one of the most valuable things you can do with your time and with your life."

really resonate with this aspirational sentiment I read today from @tylercowen.bsky.social:

"At critical moments in time, you can raise the aspirations of other people significantly, especially when they are relatively young, simply by suggesting...

...Is this feeling something you should drink? Or is it more like getting caught in the rain?
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You'll always feel the rain, but you don't have to drink the rain. You can let the thought pass and in a few moments the sun will return. You don't have to claim everything you feel."

an emotional hygiene reminder from @jamesclear.bsky.social that I want to save & share:

"When you drink water from a cup, it becomes part of you. When water falls on you like rain, it evaporates a few minutes later.
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Similarly, thoughts can be consumed or dismissed. Is this thought nourishing?...

I first dismissed Aristotle as "probably not that interesting" until I read him in a college philosophy class. He blew me away.

1 that immediately resonated with me was virtue ethics. appreciate my good friend Lorenzo's newsletter surfacing it this morning in his newsletter. 1st time i've seen it

it frustrates me how often smart, well-intended people will use negative associations and reinforcements instead of positive associations and reinforcements.

i've been on a quest to clear up my email inboxes this year, and that includes catching up on piled up newsletters that i like. here's a quote from one that stuck out this morning:

"the innate telos of the human animal; which is to create, to grow, and to strive."

I loved that. Anything you'd add?

Something I've been saying to myself a lot since the start of the new year:

365 days is not a long period of time

Does anyone else hate walking into the gym and everything is in a different spot?
It's like I no longer have any idea what to do. I mean I do but it's disorienting like a dream or speaking a different language.

Are there interesting places where you uniting or "bundling" occur? Are there exceptions where it doesn't occur?

“The empire, long divided, must unite; long united, must divide. Thus it has ever been.”

so @notion.com founder Ivan Zhao thinks about these opening lines from The Romance of 3 Kingdoms (a historical book about Chinese empires) applying it other concepts.

Are there interesting...

"The strangest and most fantastic fact about negative emotions is that people actually worship them."

Erik Larson beautifully captures a thought and idea I wish i could tatoo in my brain:

"Time lost can never be recovered...and this should be written in flaming letters everywhere."
@exlarson.bsky.social

Very captured and nerd sniped by this chart via @tedgioia.bsky.social and @andrewchen.skystack.xyz about the transition from slow to fast culture.
Are there examples of culture that rebuke this? Are there any arguments that this is good thing that go beyond "we're just giving people what they want"?

Julie Gurner on the power of better questions:

"The questions you ask yourself will largely determine the answers you get.

"Why am I not successful?" You'll get answers that berate you.
"How can I succeed here?" You'll get answers that push you.

“This—the way you are living right now—is your one life."

A voice memo in your car. Anything that moves the emotional load out of working memory and into the world.

Clear the bandwidth before you try to use it.

It occupies the same cognitive real estate you need for focus and problem-solving. The result is hijacked attention that blocks you from dropping into flow.

Scott’s solution was straightforward: externalize it first. Five minutes of journaling.

another good one:

Working memory can handle only a handful of concepts at once. Emotion can consume all of them.

When you're carrying unprocessed emotion—anger, anxiety, guilt—it doesn't sit quietly in the background.

But it's an expensive trade. The intensity you get in the moment leaves you depleted afterward. And the more you rely on urgency to start, the harder starting becomes without it.

Bottom line: procrastination is a fuel source that costs more than it delivers."

Useful reminder

Steven Kotler says:

"Procrastination delivers a cheap neurochemical hit. Delay long enough and urgency kicks in—a surge of norepinephrine that sharpens focus and heightens alertness. It feels like performance. It feels like you work better under pressure....

Human choices shape planetary futures

Smartphone Ownership, Age of Smartphone Acquisition, and Health Outcomes in Early Adolescence - PubMed Smartphone ownership was associated with depression, obesity, and insufficient sleep in early adolescence. Findings provide critical and timely insights that should inform caregivers regarding adolescent smartphone use and, ideally, the development of public policy that protects youth.

link to study: pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41324306/
disclaimer: I've only gotten access to parts of the article so far. I'll update if I learn more interesting things.

If you made it this far, I'm curious about your experiences. If you're a parent or teen, do you think all smartphone usage is unhealthy? Are there healthy use cases? Are those worth the risk?

We use tech as an aid for the reflection and action to aid in the most human experiences we know: creating a sense of meaning in the world, forming genuine relationships, pursuing goals that matter, and living a flourishing life.

My nonprofit, The Net Project, is working on imagining and creating healthy digital experiences. I don't think we can put the genie (technology) back in the bottle, but I do think we can be thoughtful about how we build and use it.