Reflection №daily-reflection-298-the-thief-of-joy
Theodore Roosevelt is supposed to have said that comparison is the thief of joy. I notice the theft in myself regularly, and the peculiar thing is how arbitrary…
21 September 2026
Reflection №daily-reflection-297-teach-it-if-you-want-to-learn-it
Early in my career as a professor I labored under a comfortable misconception: that teaching was the act of transferring what I already knew into the heads of…
18 September 2026
Reflection №daily-reflection-296-when-did-you-last-change-your-mind
I sometimes ask people, usually in a workshop setting where they cannot easily escape, to tell me about the last time they genuinely changed their mind about something…
17 September 2026
Reflection №daily-reflection-295-discipline-is-freedom
The phrase belongs to Jocko Willink and it sounds, on first hearing, like a contradiction or a piece of motivational sloganeering. Discipline is constraint. Freedom is the absence…
16 September 2026
Reflection №daily-reflection-294-in-praise-of-pressure
I have watched myself write a paper over six leisurely weeks and I have watched myself write a paper in the four days before a deadline. Often the…
15 September 2026
Reflection №daily-reflection-293-getting-things-done-feels-good
There is a particular kind of satisfaction that I do not think we talk about enough, and it is the plain, uncomplicated pleasure of finishing something. Not finishing…
14 September 2026
