📜 Pay attention
By Jonathan Haidt | 5 minute read
Once you’re in control of your attention, you can start to ask yourself one of life’s most exciting questions: “What do I want to do?”
Of course, the answer to this question is going to be different for each of you. But looked at in another way, I think the answer may be the same for all of you. What should you do? You should do hard things.
This is among the most universal pieces of advice from our ancestors. In the words of two great philosophers—Friedrich Nietzsche and Kelly Clarkson—what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. The psychological foundation of this great truth is that humans, and especially young people, are not fragile. They are antifragile, to use a term coined by NYU professor Nassim Taleb. Fragile things break when they get knocked over or challenged, so we need to protect them vigilantly. Antifragile things grow stronger, so we need to expose them to challenges, diligently.
Reading time: 5 minutes.
’El jaleo’ by John Singer Sargent.