Notes on a Nervous Planet

by Matt Haig

The problem was that I was viewing my own face through the prism of my insecurity.

If we are feeling bad about our looks, sometimes the thing we need to address is the feeling, not our actual physical appearance.

I don’t care about your body. I am a beach. I literally don’t give a fuck.

There are billions of different versions of an older you. There is one version of the present you. Focus on that.

We often find ourselves wishing for more hours in the day, but that wouldn’t help anything. The problem, clearly, isn’t that we have a shortage of time. It’s more that we have an overload of everything else.

By the way, “touched a raw nerve” is an irrelevant phrase if you have anxiety. Every nerve feels raw.

“we are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful who we pretend to be.”

The more stimulation we have, the easier it is to feel bored.

Multitasking creates a dopamine-addiction cycle, rewarding the brain for losing focus.

One 2017 study from the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas concluded that the mere presence of your smartphone can reduce “cognitive capacity.”

if it doesn’t make sense, I hope it makes nonsense in ways that might get you thinking.

When normality becomes madness, the only way to find sanity is by daring to be different. Or daring to be the you that exists beyond all the physical clutter and mind debris of modern existence.

Reading isn’t important because it helps to get you a job. It’s important because it gives you room to exist beyond the reality you’re given. It is how humans merge. How minds connect. Dreams. Empathy. Understanding. Escape. Reading is love in action. It doesn’t need to be

Planning for the future is just planning for another present in which you will be planning for the future.

The act of wanting things we don’t need makes us feel a lack we didn’t have.