Paul Graham:

When you're young, you're given the impression that you'll get enough information to make each choice before you need to make it. But this is certainly not so with work.

Thomas Wells:

The ability to easily choose prudently is something we take for granted. We'd like to think that it is something about us, but in general it turns out to be a feature of the framing of the choices we face, like the rumble strips on motorway exit ramps designed to make you feel how fast you are still going and slow down. The idea that freedom consists in figuring all this out for yourself is a strange and unsustainable one.

Anna Della Subin:

Whatever you're doing, aren't you by nature procrastinating from doing something else? Seen in this light, procrastination begins to look a lot like just plain existing.

The voice -- societal or psychological -- urging us away from sloth to the pure, virtuous heights of productivity has become a sort of birdlike shriek as more individuals work from home and set their own schedules, and as the devices we use for work become alluring sirens to our own distraction. We are now able to accomplish tasks at nearly every moment, even if we prefer not to.

Paul Graham:

History is full of examples of young people who were working on important problems that no one else at the time thought were important, and in particular that their parents didn't think were important. On the other hand, history is even fuller of examples of parents who thought their kids were wasting their time and who were right. So how do you know when you're working on real stuff?

Penelope Trunk:

I try to celebrate each time I give something up, because then I know I'm a little closer to meeting my goals.

I am trying to figure out what it looks like to be the ideal nothing. And I'm trying to frame that in a way that makes me feel great about everything. After all, I'm the one who makes the choices. And I can pretty much choose anything, just not everything.

Peter Thiel:

The history of progress is a history of better monopoly businesses replacing incumbents.

Adam Gopnik:

The best argument for reading history is not that it will show us the right thing to do in one case or the other, but rather that it will show us why even doing the right thing rarely works out.