Colin Wright's Blog, page 19
April 4, 2019
Whatever Happens Next
I’m often asked where I envision myself, my career, my life in five years. But I don’t have a good answer for this.
Looking back five years, I was in a very different place from where I am today. My lifestyle, my priorities, my hopes and dreams, my relationships and work: it’s all changed.
In small and dramatic ways, I’ve iterated, I’ve grown, and the idea of making decisions today, based on my wants and needs of back then, makes little sense.
Why would I prioritize the concerns and goals of...
March 1, 2019
Comparative Value
It’s not always easy to tell if the work you do, the way you spend your time, is a net value-add for the world. Part of the difficulty is that most types of potential value and anti-value are measured using non-comparable metrics. For instance, if you spend your work hours each weekday helping the homeless, […]
February 18, 2019
Things
We tend to use things to fill perceived gaps in ourselves and in our lives. Feeling unhappy? Buy a thing. Feeling incompetent? Buy a thing. Feeling incomplete in some currently unnamed way? This thing will complete you; buy one. We use new acquisitions, new things, to introduce change into our lives. I’m not feeling great […]
February 11, 2019
Exposure
Every new experience we have is a camera with a light attached to it. That camera allows us to see a side of ourselves—an ultra-specific angle, a super-distinct composition—that we may never have seen before. That we may not have even suspected existed. The light on the camera can expose new folds in our skin, […]
February 3, 2019
Flexible Structures
This essay was originally published on my Patreon. I try not to get too caught up in ritual. I enjoy routine and predictability on a visceral level as much as anyone, and being able to plan around lazy mornings or afternoon workouts makes it simpler to distribute other tasks throughout my day. But I also […]
January 18, 2019
High-Temperature Searches
I came across an interesting concept that touches on both neuroscience and artificial intelligence, recently. My first contact with this concept was in a book about psychoactive substances, but the notion branches out to encompass a wide-variety of fields, depending on how you think about it. The idea is that some thinking requires more brain […]
January 6, 2019
Success
Most of us possess a broad, subconsciously felt definition of success. This definition is compiled over the course of our lives, and iterated and updated as we learn more about the world, as we learn and work, as we receive advice and acquire accolades. It also evolves as we achieve flavors of success along the […]
December 6, 2018
Consumption
Buying things, owning things, consuming things isn’t wrong or bad or unhealthy. Our tendency to rely on consumption for balance, for nourishment, for happiness, however, can be. Or at the very least, it can be antagonistic to our personal goals and ambitions. We exist within an economic structure that determines how we exchange value, often […]
October 29, 2018
Thoughtful Pause
After learning anything, being exposed to new information, encountering art or any other type of cultural artifact, take a moment to yourself and quietly process what you’ve just intellectually imbibed. This heuristic—to pause and think after taking something in—serves multiple purposes. Doing so allows us to slam that new information up against things we already […]
October 12, 2018
Training
The saying “Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life” has been (incorrectly) attributed to a variety of people over the years. But regardless of who originally coined the phrase, it has become something of a North Star for folks looking to build a better, more […]
