Because if time can’t be managed, nothing else can be managed. — Marcus Aurelius once observed, “Most of what we say and do is not essential. If you can eliminate it, you’ll have more time and more tranquility. Ask yourself at every moment, ‘Is this necessary?’” Excellent advice! And never more relevant than now! It’s often said, we live in an attention…

Because I’ll never buy a lottery ticket. Here’s why…. — Sean Kernan’s article on the story of Tonda Dickerson, the waitress who won $10M on a lottery ticket a customer left her as a tip and then saw her life fall apart, got me thinking. What began as a comment intended for his page quickly grew too long. …

Increase the range of what you can control … but do it ethically! — Stoicism begins by urging us to focus on what we can control, setting aside what we can’t control. We can’t control the majority of the events around us, other people and their thoughts and responses, or what they believe and do, any more than we can control the weather, or…

Will you let this happen to you? — Imagine this scenario. Warning: it’s not going to be comfortable. You’re on your deathbed. The specifics of how you got here don’t matter. It could have been something sudden and unexpected. Shit happens. The point is, you’re going to die, and soon. It could be tomorrow, the next day, or…

Can we talk? — I wasn’t sure I wanted to start this year off writing about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. For one thing, I’m white. For another, it might come off as virtue-signaling. For a third, surely others will have done it, and probably better. But I looked at my two Medium feeds…

It is up to us to find a way to an open future that fixes the problems of the present. — Part 3 of 3 (Part 1, Part 2) “You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” -R. Buckminster Fuller “I have become convinced that we need to decentralize our political and economic structures and broaden our…

Is our Age of Decadence dooming us? — Part 2 of 3. (Read Part 1 here; Part 3 to come.) Review: from Breakout to Collapse. Going back quickly: Sir John Bagot Glubb, British military writer and historian who had both assimilated into and studied Arab civilization and its history, developed the view that empires / civilizations (most civilizations become empires, after all) go…

Is “doom and gloom” justified? What history tells us. — Part 1 of 3 (Parts 2 and 3 coming soon; stay tuned). “Frannie,” he said, and turned her around so he could look into her eyes. “What, Stuart?” “Do you think… do you think people ever learn anything?” She opened her mouth to speak, hesitated, fell silent. …

Doing this is no guarantee of success, but not doing it guarantees failure. — Do you want to make money on Medium? Or more money, perhaps? I’m assuming you do, whether you’ve been around here a while or you’re a newbie, or you wouldn’t have clicked. There are hundreds of articles on this, of course, and a handful of writers are succeeding. …