The Journal archive, page 2 of 9
Practical, unhurried writing on Stoicism, Taoism, ADHD, focus, productivity and the age of AI, from the authors behind our books. Search the journal.
How to Make Friends After 60
Nobody teaches this, because for forty years you did not have to learn it. Work supplied people. You saw the same faces daily, complained about the…
Why Can't I Focus Anymore?
You sit down to work, and thirty minutes later you have read four things you did not intend to read and none of the one you did. The usual…
Which AI Skills Are Actually Worth Learning?
Every few months a new list appears telling you which AI skills to learn immediately. Most of the items on it are features of one product, and…
Solo Female Travel Safety: What Actually Reduces Risk
Search this topic and you get two answers. One says the world is dangerous and you should stay home. The other says nothing bad will happen if you…
What to Talk About on a First Date
Two people sit down, exchange job titles, compare commutes, and forty minutes later say we should do this again in the tone of colleagues ending a…
The Retirement Honeymoon, and What Comes After
The first months are wonderful: sleeping without an alarm, the permanent Saturday, the trip you postponed for a decade. Then, somewhere between month…
Satori: What Zen Awakening Actually Means
The word enlightenment conjures permanent bliss on a mountaintop. The Zen word, satori, points at something both smaller and stranger: a sudden…
The Uncarved Block: Taoism's Case for Simplicity
Before the wood becomes a spoon, it can still become anything. Taoism's name for that state is pu, the uncarved block, and it is the tradition's…
Premeditatio Malorum: Rehearsing the Worst, Calmly
The Stoics kept a habit that sounds like anxiety and works like armour: briefly imagining, in advance, the things that could go wrong. Premeditatio…