Why I Love Learning Chinese

It slows down time. People love to say that the years fly by as you get older. But every hour I spend on Chinese feels slow and methodical. When I spend time on Chinese I’m squeezing every drop of life out of these hours, all pointed at a shared purpose. It’s the exact antithesis of mindless scrolling on Twitter.

It lets me use my time for me. Every hour I spend on Twitter or YouTube gives most of the “juice” of that hour away to someone else. Studying Chinese allows me to keep my juice for me.

It makes me feel gratitude. Every hour I spend on Chinese makes me thankful for my past self already spending time on Chinese. I started at zero. Yes it’s hard work to listen to native speakers at full-speed for an hour. But I’ve already come so far. I’m thankful for that.

It feels good to do something over and over. Just stacking up consecutive days listening feels good. Looking at my record of days feels good. It’s living proof I can put my mind toward a goal and do it.

Because I’m already this far, and I can. Very few people have the chance to learn Chinese fluently. I happen to have already spent ~8 years on this crazy pursuit. Just because this grand accomplishment is accessible to me is reason enough to go do it. I’ll be so proud. 

No one else gets to tell me what to do or how to do it. I am the world-class expert on learning Chinese on the Internet. Every day Twitter floods my brain with thousands of “experts” telling me how to live, what to think or what to do. I’m sick of it! I don’t care what you think about your life, or AI, or investing or whatever else. I’m sick of hearing advice from others. In my daily listening habit, I get to be the expert.

It feels good to aim at something. My goal is so simple: I want to speak fluent Chinese. I’m not trying to facilitate my effectiveness of high-leverage growth opportunities using cutting-edge…..blah blah blah. No! I want to speak fluent Chinese. That is all! The clarity of my aim is refreshing. It’s freeing. Having such a pure aim is life-giving.

It’s relaxing. The hour I just spent listening to Chinese was one of the happiest hours of my year. It was a comfortable flow-state bliss for 60 uninterrupted minutes. I was exactly where I needed to be, doing exactly what I needed to do. It’s so simple. It’s relaxing and it makes me happy to practice Chinese. 

It’s mine. My ability to speak Chinese is my gift to myself. No one told me to do this. No one showed me how to do this. No one did it for me. It’s mine, all mine. No one can pay to have what I’ve earned through hard work. It’s rare, precious and valuable.

I get to be autonomous. I don’t have to rely on anyone else’s permission or advice. I’m learning Chinese on my own terms, my own way. I’m carving my own path.

I get to chase excellence. Who doesn’t want to be exceptional at something? Truly world-class? I know I do. And at 30 years old I’m already on the brink of exactly that. I, Will Mannon, speak fluent Chinese. I, Will Mannon, am going to be exceptional. I’ll be so good they can’t ignore me. Step by step. Brick by brick. Hour by hour. Ferociously. You are your choices. I choose to speak fluent Chinese. 

Who Will I Become?

Who will I become? The answer to this question depends on my choices.

I stand at the edge of 30 proud of how I’ve grown. I started the decade drunk and confused. Exploding with energy but unsure where to direct it. Now I’m a co-founder, writer, and fluent Chinese speaker. I’m on fire with ideas, filled with vision. Transcendent visions of who I can become, of the impact Write of Passage and Will Learns Chinese can have on the world.

I love grappling with our human condition. I choose to stare the awesome glory and terror of life square in the eyes. I’m not afraid. Give me the full, unvarnished truth. Give me the majesty of art and the abject terror of Nothingness, that unfillable void at the center of subjective existence. 

Death is a glorious tool when wielded well. Death reifies life. It infuses each minute with rich significance. Wander to death’s edge and take a peek — feel the exhilarating gust rip through you. 

We’re going to die. But not tonight! 

Today we live with every ounce of force our biology can muster. Today springs fresh and vivid. This singular jewel rises reliably each morning. From where, we don’t know. For what purpose is ours to decide. We greet the new dawn clear-headed, with waves of fresh vitality coursing through our rivers of blood and air. 

I’m a knot of meaning against an infinite backdrop, a 90-year frame of emotion and significance set against eternity. Behold the borderless blur of Being within you and without you! What’s really there, past our perception? Endless sludge of time and space, forever expanding in all directions. And from this glopping grayness we sculpt our lives, choice by choice. 

I sit here at my desk as more than a man. Just like my heroes — Woolf and Pessoa, Camus and Emerson – I am a conduit to the infinite. Eternity erupts across space and time. Somewhere in this endlessness, slivers of the infinite tangled themselves together into me. Three decades on, my one wet kilogram spins its universes of hopes, fears, visions and voids. Here I now sit, detangling my messy web of self, packaging it into language, and freezing it forever in these humble bits of phrase.

Who I'll Be By 32

Note: This piece was written on May 7th, 2023.

Today — May 7th, 2023 — I’m 29 years old. Today I’ll share a few thoughts about who I’ll be when I’m 32.

Sharing this vision flows out of me so naturally, the way this fresh new keyboard allows the words to effortlessly spill out of my mind.

As I sit here typing on my new computer, I can feel limitless potential in my fingertips. The world is open, malleable. I am free. I’m free to pursue the goals and vision I find most meaningful and fulfilling. I have my freedom of time, freedom of money, freedom of relationships, and freedom of purpose.

On July 29th, 2025, I will turn 32 years old. There are three things I want to accomplish by then.

ONE: I will have recorded 300 episodes of the “Will Learns Chinese” podcast.

I’m already on track to hit this goal. I’m not starting from scratch. I’m not starting from zero. I’ve already recorded 74 episodes of the “Will Learns Chinese” podcast. I just need to record around two episodes per week moving forward to hit this target. That means 76 more episodes this year (for 150 by the end of the year), then 100 episodes in 2024, and then 50 more episodes by July 2025. I’ll be at 300 episodes. And then Will Learns Chinese podcast will be a force in the world.

Centering around the podcast makes my Chinese efforts direct and focused. It also makes my efforts legible to the outside world — people get podcasts. They understand the idea of building a podcast, interviewing guests, and growing an audience slowly but surely.

This goal also focuses my attention properly. My long-term dream is not to make 60 second videos. That might be a means to an end. But my ultimate end if to have long conversations exploring the topics that make me feel most alive, all in Chinese. I’ll post videos to XiaoHongShu and BiliBili in addition to my podcast. But the Will Learns Chinese podcast will be my main focus. It’s the most fun to create, it’s the most legible to the outside world, and it’s most aligned with my long-term goals.

TWO: I’ll write and publish a book called “Will Learns Chinese”> I love studying Chinese. It’s my soul-mate activity. In a world of lost souls, I’ve found my passion, beyond a shadow of a doubt. I know exactly where I’m going. I’m going to speak fluent Chinese. I’m going to build a Chinese media empire. I’m going to carve my own unique path through life.

Til now, I’ve thought that the English-speaking world won’t care much about my chase of Chinese. Not so. My Tweet last week made me realize — my pursuit of Chinese is remarkable. People are captivated even if they can’t understand a single word. By writing my story, I’ll inspire others to find the things they find most enjoyable and pursue them mercilessly.

Writing this book will also serve myself. I feel this passion so strongly, but til now, I’ve only shared it in fragments — brief screenshot essays, passing journal entries, or frenzied conversation with close friends and loved ones. Writing this book will help me to crystallize the essence of my journey — how I got started, where I’ve been, and where I’m going. I’ll publish a series of Substack articles over the next 18 months, and then spend the first half of 2025 tying it all together into a single book. If my audience grows quickly in the next 18 months, I’ll look a formal publishers. Otherwise I’ll self-publish.

THREE: I’ll write and publish a book called “Mundane Miracles”. This book will be a summary of my life’s philosophy through the first 32 years of my life. I’ll draw from the rich variety of books and articles I’ve read over the past decade, as well as my own writing and ideas that I’ve developed. Each chapter will be a new coined phrase. I’ll weave together my phrases and ideas into a central argument for wielding the sword of ignorance to slash away the pesky and elevate the grand.

I’m bursting with ideas about how to live a good life in the Age of Abundance. This book will be my foundational theory of how to wrangle the web for good, and how to harness and savor your time without getting tossed by the waves of endless information. I’ll explore themes like the Outward Tug, the Inward Turn, You Are Everest, and the Infinity hiding within. Through small perceptions, all of us can transform the mundane into the miraculous. And now, thanks to the Internet, it’s easier than ever before. 3,000 generations trudged along the earth, craning their necks up at the sky. Now, thanks only to our lucky birth years, we get to fly. Ladies and gentleman, lift the plastic and take a glorious look!

From now until I’m 32, I won’t celebritize others. I will reify myself, my ideas, my enthusiasms, my great devotions. I will reify the people I love, and ignore the noise of the world. I am Everest. People I love are the mighty Himalayas. All else is pebbles.

The Internet and the Infinite

Picture infinity. You can't do it. Our brains break down when we wrestle with endless time or infinite space.

We usually don't think about infinity –– we're more focused on calling an Uber or scarfing a salad. But infinity is always there, patiently waiting beneath the surface of typical Thursdays and Tuesdays. When I dip below for a peek, here's what I see:

Everything we see is a frame on an underlying infinite. An infinite what? We don't know. My best mental image is the black-and-white static of old box TVs. Remember? When your cables weren't plugged in, your 4:3 JVC television would scream at you, an offensive, noisy, chaotic, chrhhrchrhcrhkchrhchhchrhhhhkchrhhhhh. That's infinity.

We receive the world in clear, crisp images. People, parking lots, lime green parakeets. Each a frame on top of messy infinity. Your shoes are foot-long frames on the infinite –– three octillion atoms of rubber and nylon lassoed from utter totality into fresh new Nikes that ferry your feet around Trader Joe's.

You're losing me. Hang on –– infinity is a proxy for the mystery of existence. None of us had to exist! The world didn't have to exist. We all forget this, almost always, but something existing, rather than nothing, is pretty rad. If existence is a glorious mystery, so is every thing within it –– cups, Gmail, salsa packets, sticks of butter. Infinity shimmers inside supermarkets and SaaS apps if you really look.

It's hard to see the radiant whole in a shopping cart. But we all have conduits to the infinite –– access points that allow us to glimpse this mirace more easily. Mine is language, great books and quotes that shiver my spine. For others, it's music, mathematics, kite surfing, indie films, or sweeping natural vistas. Whatever melts your mind and smacks you with wonder will do.

Most of our time isn't spent reading great books or hiking in Banff. We spend way more time joining Zoom calls, clearing Slack threads and diving down YouTube holes. Miraculous existence is crowded out by mundane digital schlep. But what if –– just maybe –– our digital devices are hidden portals to the glorious all?

Picture the Internet. You can't do it. Our brains break down when we try to wrangle the web. This vast sum of electric connection is effectively infinite, especially from our point-of-view. We bury our faces in phones and laptops a dozen hours each day. But maybe, just maybe, when seen properly, the Internet is the ultimate conduit to the infinite. A purple-white beam of Internet burst into the sky three decades ago just south of Palo Alto. And now ten billion devices all link back to this same infinite core.

As we live on the Internet, we interface with the infinite. Next time you're scrolling, glance up and notice the purple-white thread that tethers you (and everyone) back to the same infinite beam of Internet. You just might glimpse the magnificent all.

I Dream of Opportunity

Last night I dreamed I was a high school football quarterback. I was the starter, but I wasn't sharp. I ran for a touchdown early in the game, but I felt slow and I barely cleared the two yards necessary to cross the plane.

While my team played defense, I didn't stand with my team. Instead I left the sideline, meandered around, stared at my phone and started chatting with people in the stands. At one point I wandered into the tunnel and found a box odd-looking footballs. These kept my attention for a minute. This one's jumbo. This one's flat like a saddle.

After enough poking around, I realized "Woah! I need to get back in the game!" I ran out onto the field, but the game was going withiout me. The teams had moved on while I wandered. I sprinted across the field, trying to make it to my team on the far sideline. But I was running extremely slowly. My feet were heavy and plodding. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't pull myself across to the other side any faster. I hated how slowly I ran. I despised myself for not moving faster.

Then suddenly, about 2/3 of the way through my slow-motion trek, my heart sank. I was running toward the wrong sideline. All this pain and struggle trying to drag my sorry, slow self across the field, and all that time I was running toward the team in black. My team, in burgundy, was behind me the whole time. My painful slog was moving me further and further away from where I wanted to be.

I woke up from this dream feeling out-of-shape and upset with myself for running the wrong way. Something was off. Why hadn't I been on the sidelines with my teammates? What was I doing messing around with my phone and poking around the stands? Why did I run to the wrong side? Why had I squandered such a priceless opportunity? The game had moved on while I messed around. My chance to play quarterback might never come again.

My lesson? Playing starting quarterback represents opportunity: the opportunity I have in front of myself right now, to build Write of Passage. To create Liftoff. Leading a team, building a company. I scored a touchdown early in my dream, yes, but it wasn't my best effort. I didn't run fast. In fact, I barely crossed the goal line. I wasn't living up to my full potential.

My time spent messing around in the tunnels and scrolling my phone in the stands are the daily distractions that drip away life: Twitter, YouTube, even goddamn LinkedIn. Running slow-as-molasses represents my inability to sit down and focus when it counts. It represents my tendency to stay up late, feel tired, and get distracted. Running toward the wrong sideline is me chasing the wrong goals, while the right thing was behind me the whole time.

I woke up from this dream galvanized to install non-negotiables in my life that build character, get me in shape, and eliminate distractions:

• Phone and my computer out of my apartment by 9:30pm

• 30 minutes of cardio every day, for character

• Drink 1,000 mL of water every day when I wake up

• Clean my apartment every Sunday

• No food delivery, ever (bad for the soul)

• No YouTube

Trying to work at night is like dead money. Like burning cash, once you've spent it, it's dead time. Working at night doesn't help your future self. Replying to Slacks or checking emails after dinner doesn't contribute to any greater system that serves my future self.

Sleeping at 9:30pm (screens off and away) allows me to become my future self. I wake up the next morning ready to attack my day. I get quality sleep which helps me focus all day. I'm way more likely to exercise and eat healthy if I've slept well. The system reinforces itself. Serves itself. Builds character.

High performance is a checklist. What's my 9:30pm checklist? See above.

One simple decision, leaving my computer at work, produced my earliest wake-up of the year. That led to a productive morning where I wrote nearly 1,000 words. That's not a coincidence. You are your choices, so choose well. Choose to wind down at 9:30pm and wake up early. It just might change your life.

My Take on Heidegger

Here's my off-the-cuff rendition of Heidegger's thinking:

As we live, our minds are immersed in the day-to-day stuff of our lives. Good things happen, bad things happen. Big things happen, small things happen. We notice a never-ending stream of events passing by, and since our lives are simply what we focus on, these events become our life. Our lives are a ceaseless stream of happenings.

These happenings are all beings (with a lower-case "b"). We're subjects focused on lower-case-b beings, objects that interact with our subjectivity. We're internal subject colliding with external objects. At least, that's how most people receive the world.

Hediegger calls us to Zoom way, way out. We're awash in a world of objects. But, he says, let's start from the beginning: Why does anything exist at all?

Once more: Why does anything exist at all? Why do Playstations and Mack trucks and chocolate exist at all? Where did everything come from? Why is anything here at all? Why are we alive? Why does the world exist?

Heidegger shakes readers by the collar. Look around! Look at all this stuff! Look at it all! Why is any of this here? Why are we here?  Why aren't you amazed?!

If these questions land with a thud, it's because in the modern world, we've forgotten how to ask them. In fact, we've forgotten these questions even can be asked at all. 2500 years ago, before even Socrates, Ancient Greek philosophers pondered these questions. Heidegger tells us "reach back into the oblivion of history", remember to ask these big-picture questions in the first place, and then ponder away.

We're not sufficenitly amazed by existence.

In fact, our entire conception of existence is wrong. We're not discrete, independent subjects interacting with a world of objects. That collapses all of existence into independent lower-case-b beings. All of existence is capital-B Being. Being encompasses this world that for some mysterious reason exsists. Our day-to-day experience of life is Being-in-the-world. Each individual is the sum of their selves and everything they interact with each day. You're not an independent point, separate from other people and things. You are a cloud of activity – there's a mutual interdependence between you and all you encounter.

The opposite of Being is Nothingness. All of Being is surrounded by Nothingness on all sides. It's utterly remarkable that all of this Being exists against the backdrop of so much Nothing. It could have just all been Nothing!

The problem with not being amazed with existence is that we miss this miracle. We're so lucky to be alive at all! And yet, how do most live their lives? With a fearful eye, glancing around at others, seeing what others do and following along, not wanting to make a mistep. But look around – nada surrounds you on all sides. You've got your slice of Being-in-the-world, your little stack of decades against the backdrop of eternity. How will you fill those years? As a fearful follower? Or with the courage and conviction to blaze your own unique trail of thought and action?

The choice is yours. Choose well. And while you're choosing, don't forget to look around and say "Wow."

My 2022 Mid-Year Review

Written on July 1st, 2022

This memo will summarize where I’ve been in 2022, and where I’m headed. 

At the start of the year, I identified five areas of focus for 2022:

• Write of Passage 

• Reading 

• Writing

• Chinese

• Friends and family 

I’ll take each area in turn: what went well, what can be improved, and where I’m heading next. 

Write of Passage

It’s been a whirlwind six months for our business. In January David and I hired Michael Dean as our fourth employee (myself, David, and Becca, David’s producer, being the other three). We held a team retreat in Sedona, Arizona the first week of January to outline our plans for the year. Our big goal: build a Write of Passage media company to help draw attention to our flagship Write of Passage cohort, thereby increasing revenue, while also highlighting our best students’ writing. We hired Michael as Director of Content to pioneer this effort and work with top Write of Passage students 1:1 to develop the best essays of their lives. 

We ran the 8th cohort of Write of Passage from March 2nd - April 6th. The cohort was a massive success, with roughly 300 students participating (200 new, 100 returning) and a slew of new improvements. We ran our strongest-ever Alumni Mentor program, David and I made curriculum improvements, we added a secondary social hub for real-time video and text chat (Geneva), we shifted all course materials away from Teachable onto our Circle community, we created a refreshed “Build Week” schedule to help onramp students into the course, and we had a big team of Editors guarantee that every student article received high-quality writing feedback. 

After 18 months of stellar work, our Write of Passage producer, Becca Olason, left the company for a rare-in-a-lifetime chance to travel Europe for six months with her partner. We miss Becca’s rare mix of attention-to-detail and perennially upbeat attitude. As Becca transitioned out of the company, we hired Dan Sleeman to work as Director of Course Operations. Under our shared cost partnership with Forte Labs, Monica Rysavy helped us run operations for Cohort 8. Monica passed the baton to Dan in March and April, and Dan joined the team as our fourth full-time employee. He brings a rare depth of skills in education and no-code tools that has helped him grow into an indispensable team member. 

Soon after Cohort 8 ended, we hired two new team members – all-star WOP mentors Simone Silverstein and Tommy Lee joined the team full-time as Video Producer and Creative Director, respectively. Their first day coincided with our biggest-ever team retreat. We spent a week in the sunny Bahamas planning our two newest products: Write of Passage Liftoff (for high schoolers), and Write of Passage Business (for teams / companies). These are exciting new product lines that I’ll have plenty more to say about in the coming months. 

My role has shifted from jack-of-all-trades Course Director to my new official title of “co-founder and Chief Product Officer”. Fancy title aside, I’m laser-focused on hiring a team of skilled teams to develop our two new product lines, while ensuring all three of our products (Write of Passage flagship, Write of Passage Liftoff, Write of Passage Business) maintain our exceptional quality standards and the singular, je ne sais quoi Write of Passage vibe that students have come to expect from our programs. My job is simple: build and deliver the best educational experiences on the Internet for high school writing and business writing. Unlike with past cohorts of Write of Passage, however, I’ll have teams of several employees to help us build on each front. I’m already working with two of our top Write of Passage alums, who happen to be high school students, on developing a high school-oriented curriculum for Liftoff. 

I’m thrilled to take on my new responsibilities, which includes direct reports, hiring, and leadership huddles with David and our excellent new COO, Chris Monk. Chris joins us after nine years building the education company Decoded. I’m also excited to be working with Matt Tillotson, another all-star WOP Mentor who joins us as Director of Customer Success. Matt will be hiring and running our Cohort 9 mentor program, plus our other part-time teams for the WOP cohort (Editors, Ambassadors). These programs have a major impact on the quality of the Write of Passage student experience. Matt will also help shape our Write of Passage student experience, and he’s currently helping us build a robust hiring system. 

I’m proud of the work I’ve done on Write of Passage during the first half of the year. These include: 

• Running a successful Cohort 8

• Hiring five new employees (which took dozens of hours of interviews)

• Creating the vision for two new product lines 

• Starting to create these new product lines

My Work Habits 

Working with a team feels a lot different than running Write of Passage only with David and Becca. We’ve graduated from Google Chat to Slack. We’re implementing an org chart, performance reviews, and two-week work sprints. We track all project lists in Monday.com. Adding these new systems is a relief – David and I are both right-brained creatives, and scheduling and planning doesn’t come naturally to us. In the past, we would meet for planning sessions between cohorts and write up hundreds of sticky notes of new ideas for the course. Generating ideas was never a problem, but implementing these changes tended to happen in intense bursts in the few weeks before a cohort started. Our new systematic approach to project execution helps to spread the work out evenly through the WOP “offseason”. 

I’ve identified three ways I can improve in the second half of 2022: 

Work faster

Sam Altman and Tyler Cowen often tout the importance of working quickly. Successful people move fast. They respond to emails promptly, they finish their work ahead of deadlines. They act decisively and course-correct quickly in the face of new information.
I began working on Write of Passage in October 2019. Generally speaking, I’ve learned to move fast. In less than three years, between Write of Passage and Building a Second Brain I’ve built and delivered ten cohorts to more than 2500 students. For many of those cohorts I was the only full-time employee working on the student experience. Between emails and internal memos I’ve written hundreds of thousands of words. I’ve replied to over 10,000 student emails. We wouldn’t have made it this far if I didn’t move fast. 

That said, I can get better. At times I’ve felt fatigue from sprinting so hard over the past two-plus years. In recent months, I noticed places I can move faster, whether that’s my message response time or completing projects ahead-of-schedule. My commitment for the second half of 2022 is to move even faster in all areas of our business. We won’t build phenomenal products moving slowly. 

Be more focused

Focus is IQ for the 21st century. When I sit down and focus, I can crank out work (for instance, in less than 45 minutes I’ve written 1200 words of this memo). That said, my focus varies too much day-to-day. Some days I wake up at 6am and plunge into Deep Work with blistering focus. Nothing can stop my momentum. Other days, petty tasks in email or Slack drag me into distraction. Twitter tugs at my attention while the sun is still coming up. My attention flits between writing, email, and petty Internet distractions.

To improve my focus in the second half of 2022, I’m adopting a new rule: no Twitter or YouTube before 5:00pm. I’ve limited my time spent on Twitter this year – it’s a much smaller part of my life – but lately I’ve been pulled back into recent spirals in politics and the culture wars. YouTube has also slowly crept back into my life. That algorithm knows me spooky well. My new rule will free my work hours from my two biggest sources of Internet distraction. 

Learn proactively

Reading Talent by Tyler Cowen and Daniel Gross highlighted a major area for improvement: What am I practicing at work similar to how a pianist practices scales? To develop a strong answer to this question, I’m going to create a flywheel of learning around my work:

• Consume high-quality information about product building, business, and learning design (articles, books, videos, podcasts, Reddit threads)

• Write internal memos summarizing what I’ve learned

• Share the best ideas I learn in-public 

It’s not enough to work hard. I need to spend additional time outside of official work activities making myself a better thinker in product building, learning design, and business-building. What new mental frameworks will I uncover and adopt in the coming months? Keep following my writing to find out. 

Reading 

I’ve spent thousands of hours reading since I graduated college (as my vanity book list and apartment decor will attest). Were money no object, I’m confident I could fill a happy life simply reading great books. That said, I’ve read less in the first six months of 2022 than at any point in the past six years. The only books I read: 

• The Moon and Sixpence (W.S. Maugham)

• Irrational Man (William Barrett)

• Niels Lyhne (Jens Peter Jacobsen)

• Nietzsche (Stefan Zweig)

• The Myth of Sisyphus (Albert Camus)

• Talent (Tyler Cowen, Daniel Gross)

I’ve also read parts of other books, including Emily Dickinson, Fernando Pessoa, Michel de Montaigne, George Eliot, Nietzsche, Emerson, and John O’Donohue.

Compared to how much I’ve read in the past, my list of books feels thin. And that’s okay. In past years I’ve sometimes read too much. I want to be focused on creating, not just consuming. Most of my reading time has been converted into Chinese studying time, as you’ll read below. 

Going forward, I have a few tweaks to my reading system:

Read high-quality articles

Recently I found an article titled Crony Beliefs by Kevin Simler. A quick skim made it clear: I want to read more of this type of article. It’s a 5,000 word exploration of a hyper-relevant topic. I’ll walk away with a new mental model for receiving the world. A worthy investment! 

Often the best ideas are found in high-quality articles rather than books. I used to devour sources like Ribbonfarm, Tim Urban, David Cain, and Zat Rana. But I’ve fallen out of the habit of reading high-quality online articles. I’ll resume this process for the rest of 2022. My focus will be on articles related to my work, or new mental models for seeing the world. 

Review past books

What I’m doing with what I’ve read matters more than the total number of books I’ve read. I’ll spend the rest of 2022 reviewing books I’ve read – using Readwise to scan my favorite sections into Evernote for review. I’ll use these notes to fuel my future writing. I have a glut of books I’ve read but haven’t processed or written about. I won’t be able to review every book I’ve read in the next six months, but with focused attention, I can put a sizeable dent in my “to be reviewed” stack. 

Writing

Time to face the brutal truth: I haven’t written in public nearly as much as I would have hoped over the past six months. In fact, I’ve only published six articles on my website this year. This Mid-Year Review counts as my seventh. As former Redskins coach Steve Spurrier once said: “Not very good!” 

Before I mentally flog myself too much, a few thoughts: first, I’ve written tens of thousands of words for work this year. No, this writing doesn’t count as “writing in public”. But I’ve kept my writing skills sharp, even if I’m not sharing much of it publicly. Second, I have shared nearly 500 pieces of content in Chinese in 2022 (see next section). So while I haven’t shared nearly as much writing in public as I would’ve liked, I have been creating in public, albeit in a different domain. 

I write in two different modes: Artist Mode and Business Mode. My articles on my site are Artist Mode: I write lyrically and stylistically, some have said poetically. I’m proud of my best work. I love writing as an art, but it’s slow. I’ll spend 30 minutes crafting the perfect rhythm and cadence of my opening paragraph. The sentences don’t sing by accident. 

Meanwhile, this memo is written in business mode. It’s the casual, approachable tone I use in all of my internal memos. My Business Mode writing is imperfect but blazing-fast (I’ve now written 2,000 words here in under 90 minutes). My goal for the rest of 2022: write way more in public using Business Mode, with the occasional Artist Mode piece sprinkled in. I’ll focus my writing on the following topics: 

• Writing about learning (sharing what I learn about about product building, business strategy, and learning design)
  

• Writing about Write of Passage (updates on what we’re doing as a business)
  

• Weekly writing about Chinese (I’ll create a Substack or Ghost account to share weekly updates on my Chinese learning process)
  

• Long-form articles (I’d like to write three long-form articles in the next three months: What Existentialism Makes Me Feel, Chasing Chinese: My Chinese Learning Journey, and the Creative Cosmos)
  

• Book Twitter threads (summaries of favorite books I’ve read, presented in an *original* manner)

How much will I write in the second half of 2022? Follow my website or Twitter to find out. Or just check in at my Annual Review article. 

One thing I won’t be doing, for now: focusing on building a Twitter audience. I have just over 4,000 Twitter followers, based on past Tweets about books and course-building. More and more people these days are writing high-value threads with catchy headlines to grab followers. Why haven’t I joined the Great Thread Game? Three reasons:

1. I want to spend way, way less time on Twitter (I’m easily addicted to doom-scrolling, so I’ve made a focused effort to stay off the platform in 2022).
   

2. There’s no value in winning games that don’t matter to you. I have enough credibility on Twitter to message people if I ever need a connection. I don’t have any short or medium-term business goals tied to building a Twitter audience, so I haven’t felt a desire to spend hours crafting threads to build an audience.
   

3. Time spent on Twitter takes away time spent on work or Chinese. And I’d much rather play the Infinite Chinese Game than the Great Thread Game. 
   

Maybe I’ll join in the Great Thread Game someday. For now, I plan to use Twitter to share my article writing, book reviews, and not much else. 

You Shouldn't Always Learn from Others

The Twittersphere offers floods of ways to learn from others. Valuable skills are open-sourced in online articles, Twitter threads, and "How-To" clips. How many of these Tweetstorms have you seen lately: "Seven copywriting secrets" or "98% of people are BLIND to these marketing hacks!" You can build skills and grow a six-figure income, all from viral threads and some Gumroad guides.

This is a useful trend worth celebrating. Gatekeepers no longer hoard knowledge. Wifi and work ethic offer free avenues to a better life.

But learning from others has its limits. Here's a story: In my free time I'm pursuing fluent Chinese. When work isn't busy, I study five hours per day. Few things make me happier. Recently I hit play on a new podcast: The "I'm Learning Mandarin" show. Chinese-speaking guests share their language-learning secrets. What a chance to learn from others!

The first guest talked about working and living in China. His twenties were spent on trains and buses, criss-crossing the Chinese countryside, chatting with locals at noodle shops and coffee stands. All told, he'd lived in China for close to a decade, and he still wasn't fully fluent.

As I listened, pangs of doubt rippled through my mind. This guy lived in China for a DECADE and he still doesn't speak fluent Chinese. You only lived there for a few months in college. You have no chance! You'll never become fluent. Studying Chinese is hopeless.

Comparison. That familiar thief of joy, this time podcast-induced. My attempt to learn study tips from an expert instead whacked my self-confidence at the kneecaps.

To kickstart a skill or enter a new industry, you should learn from others. But I'm not a beginner. I've studied Chinese for thousands of hours over nearly ten years. At this point, my personal language-learning process matters more than secondhand advice. At this point, I am an expert. I don't need tricks and tips – I need to forge my own unique path forward, using my own instincts as my guide.

Learning from experts is valuable – others' advice can set your sails and start your journey. But keep note of your span from shore. Sail long enough and you'll enter waters unmapped by others. On distant seas you don't need a helper. Close your manual. Silence your Twitter. Turn and face the horizon. Feel the spray on your skin. Steer confidently by the starlight above and your own internal sun. Savor the silence as you press on alone.

How It Feels to Learn Chinese

When people ask me why I study Chinese, I tell them my primary motivation is internal. Learning this language brings me joy like nothing else. Here's a small example of what I mean.

Flight home from Denver. Listening to Write of Passage alum Camellia Yang's "Chiwi Journal" podcast. The episode covers a topic I'm familiar with (mental models). I understand 70-80% of what's being said. In certain sections, my understanding jumps up to a thrilling 95 or 100%.

Fourteen minutes in, Camellia's guest starts to explain the idea of  "First Principles Thinking." I understand him as he defines the concept.

It's worth mentioning – I've reached the point where, while listening to two natives speakers, I can distinguish every word I hear. This wasn't true a few years ago. As a mid-level language learner, full-speed native conversation sounded like a blurry slur of non-distinct sound, broken up by a smattering of familiar words and phrases. Now the opposite is true – while listening to this episode, I know the meaning of well over half of the words. For words I don't know, I can still hear what they are phonetically. I could write the "pinyin" version (the phonetic equivalent – think ni hao) for all the words in this 45 minute episode.

Distinguishing words is one thing. Knowing what they mean is another. This is my top limiting factor right now – for plenty of words, I simply don't know their meaning. I can carry a conversation for hours with no trouble. And yet, every day I'm humbled by the sheer volume of words I still don't know yet.

Back to the podcast. Camellia's guest starts to riff on an example of first principles thinking in action. I don't recognize a few words, so I'm not sure what example he's describing. I listen on. As he wraps up a sentence, I a crisp two-word phrase enters my ears: xingcheng jielun. "Shing | Cheng | Jay | Loon" is a direct translation of the sounds. These words sound familiar, but I don't know their meaning. I take a quick pause and jump over to my trusty Pleco dictionary app. Xingcheng means to "form" or "take shape". Jielun means "conclusion". Just like that, I've learned a brand-new phrase: xingcheng jielun means "to form a conclusion".

But the fun doesn't stop there. Each definition contains a slew of examples phrases beneath it. While looking up xingcheng, I see the phrase xingcheng xianming de duizhao: "to form a sharp contrast". Boom, there's two more new words: xianming means sharp, and duizhao means contrast.

Let's go even further: duizhao will be an easy word to remember, because it's made up of two building blocks of words I already know. Duibi means "comparison", zhaopian is a Chinese 101 word that means photograph. Duibi + zhaopian (comparison + picture) = Duizhao (contrast). Learning this newfound word is like discovering two old lego bricks fit perfectly together to form a beautiful new shape you'd never considered.

And don't forget xianming. Xian comes from xinxian, which means "fresh". Ming comes from shuoming, which roughly means "to illustrate". Xinxian + shuoming (fresh + illustration) = xianming (sharp).

Last one: while looking at xianming, I see the phrase goucheng xianming de duibi. I already know duibi means "comparison". I just learned that means xianming means "sharp".  But I've now learned that goucheng is another way to say "to form". I already know two similar words: jigou means structure, chengwei  is "to become". Therefore, jigou + chengwei (structure + become) = goucheng (to form).

For those keeping score at home, I've now learned:

• Xingcheng (to form)

• Jielun (conclustion)

• Duizhao (contrast)

• Xianming (sharp)

• Goucheng (to form)

All in a matter of about two minutes!

I find immense joy in piecing these words together. But I'm not just having fun in the moment. Learning these words has transformed my time into a renewable resource

By listening to Chinese in seat 9D of this bumpy Delta flight, I've converted two minutes of my life into five small gems (xingcheng, jielun, duizhao, xianming, goucheng). Assuming good health and fortune, I'll speak Chinese for at least the next five decades. These five words are five gifts that I'll  give myself in countless conversations, thousands of times, for the next fifty or sixty years.

Learning Chinese is an infinite game that gets better and better, forever.

Why Do You Love Quotes?

We're surrounded by language, like a school of fish submerged in an endless blue ocean. We're awash in words, so surrounded that we forget their power. We assume that words describe the world. But in fact, they do so much more. Language doesn't just describe reality. It generates reality. The words you use to wallpaper your mind become your world. Always complaining? Your world will shrink to the confines of your linguistic cell.

“Be careful of how you interpret the world; it is like that.”

Erich Heller

This I know: I'm over-calibrated to appreciate language. Others feel this way about music, movies or adrenaline-inducing sports. For me, it's words. Certain strung-together phrases imprint themsleves on my mind and never leave. My own personal collection of quotes, both on my website and committed to memory in my mind, becomes a reserve to draw on, a source of inspiration and guidance, a trusty lantern slicing through the shadows ahead.

“Select and collect all the words and sentences that in all your readings have been to you like the blast of a trumpet.”

Emerson

The right turn-of-phrase becomes a small encapsulation of life. A microcosm of a worldview, a small summary of a way to approach the world. The best quotes are the distillations of dozens of books, hundreds of hours of podcasts, entire Ted Talks compressed down into two lines and ninety-six characters. How many words have been spoken, songs have been sung, conversations held late into the night analyzing, dissecting, unpacking the intricacies of a relationship between two people? And then Emerson arrives with this ten-word gem:

"A friend is someone with whom I may be sincere."

Emerson

Infinite wisdom packed into a finite and memorable line.  A one word razor to measure the people in your life, and determine who clears the "true friend" bar. And who we surround ourself with matters. Your world is nothing more than the swirling combination of everything you allow into your mind. This simple truth flattens me with its importance.  Where do you put your precious attention? What's your standard? How do you direct  your one wild and precious beam of focus? Steady as a lighthouse, or spastic as a strobe?

“Your world is a living expression of how you are using—and have used—your mind.”

Earl Nightingale

We sacrifice so much life on the altar of petty details. No, no, no. We must resist the pull of the pesky. I want to live a grand life, so I choose to fill my mind with grand thoughts. Dazzling minds, rousing achievement, stirring prose, stunning images. Ditch the mundane and give me the marvelous. Skyscrapers, space exploration, The Sovereign Individual, Sarah Bakewell, Self-Reliance, Shackleton, Sartre, God's Debris by Scott Adams, fill my life with that!

"Do not lose time on daily trivialities. Do not dwell on petty detail. For all of these things melt away and drift apart within the obscure traffic of time. Live well and live broadly. You are alive and living now. Now is the envy of all of the dead."

World of Tomorrow

And the Pesky Fades Away

You’ve felt them, I’m sure. 

Little pricks of concern. Those worrisome wants that pester our minds the moment we wake. How will next week go? What do they think of me? Did I reply? No, I forgot. I suck, I’m the worst.

I would be terrified to see a yearly ledger of my time. How many hours have been lost swatting at the gnats of nonsense swirling in my head?

Time is our most precious gift. Everyone’s heard. But here’s the problem: while I constantly think about time’s tremendous value, my actions rarely reflect what I know to be true. I bleed away minutes to Internet distractions, then I drown further minutes in internal concern. Endless pondering of a detail, a text, a tiny fear about what may or may not happen. 

Call it “The Pesky.” 

Pesky, pesky, pesky. So much of my life is lost to the pesky. Trivial noise generated by my mind and amplified by my phone. Past generations at least took breaks. I’ll see them tomorrow. We’ll deal with it Monday. We find ourselves tethered to a blinking, beeping pesky machine that never skips an hour. Our world shrinks to a five-inch screen and a five-minute window, our time split into ever smaller shards.

What a waste! We’re the lucky few (billion) alive for the Internet Age. What a time. The world is ablaze with marvelous change, but only if you mute your mind and look around. Too often we miss our glorious present for pesky mental chatter. While a sky full of stars erupts overhead, we pass the hours flicking mud off our shoelaces. 

We become what we behold. Attend to the small, live a small life. In an uncertain world, of this I’m sure: I reject the small. I refuse to let my treasured hours splinter into empty fragments. I want to live a fulfilling life. A focused life. A life well spent.

That’s right: I want to live a life focused on the grand. Therefore I must dwell on the grand, not the pesky. Great writing, bold thinkers, exhilarating ideas that expand my world and stir my soul. There’s a rich buffet of calorie-dense information available every moment, and endless ways to meet others with shared enthusiasms, but only if we properly direct our attention. It’s so easy to fall back into the pesky.

This is our challenge. Can we treat our time like a glowing puddle we hold in our hands, making sure not to spill a single drop? Can we chill our overactive minds, freeze those gnats of nonsense, and feast on the fulfilling? Can we heed the wisdom of Emerson, grandest thinker of them all? 

Build therefore your own world. Unfold your mind’s greatest proportions. So fast will disagreeable appearances, spiders, snakes, pests, enemies, vanish: they are temporary and shall be no more seen. The sun shall dry up and the wind exhale.

Amen. May we silence the noise and broaden our minds. May we fill our lives with the grand, and let the pesky fade away.

An Uncommon Fire

You have an uncommon fire within. A vision for what life will look like when you speak fluent Chinese. From the moment you set foot in Shanghai, you realized you are on fire for this language. Learning it, speaking it with others, connecting with others in a foreign tongue. The rush of losing yourself in the flow of a conversation in Mandarin. What else can compare?!

You have a singular desire to learn to speak Chinese fluently. You will achieve this goal. That’s what’s so exciting about your vision: When you spend five hours per day over the next two years speaking Chinese and practicing Chinese, you will reach your goal. You will be able to speak fluently. Let me repeat: you will get there. Five hours per day for the next two years. You’ll still be 29. And you’ll speak fluent Chinese. At that point, a world of opportunity awaits. Who knows what could come next? 

It’s impossible to say. But your true inner fire isn’t for external outcomes. They will be nice, and they will be many. But the greatest gift, the most precious outcome will be the joy you feel along the way. Think of how you feel after you finish an hour of Chinese class: filled to the brim with joy and excitement. A rush of feeling within your chest and throughout your body. A felt, embodied certainty that this is what you’re meant to do. 

Think of the feeling as you sit for an hour and listen to a Chinese podcast: such a rich flow state that you begin to lose your sense of self. Just pure focus on the words filling your ears, surfing the perfect wave of known and unknown, certainty and certainty. You ride that wave with skillful balance. You’re good at it. And you love it. It’s what you do. 

In a world designed to keep us shallow, I want to acquire a skill and make it deep. I want to master the skill of speaking Chinese. I want to devote my time, energy, and attention to something that fills me with joy and makes my life rich. 

I love speaking Chinese the way a mountain biker loves hitting the trail, the way musicians love writing a song, the way a basketball player gets on a hot streak. I feel alive as the words tumble out of my mouth, as I listen and understand, as I learn new words that I’ll use forever. No one else on the planet knows exactly what my flow state feels like when I’m speaking Chinese. Constant learning, endless communication, the perfect level of challenge. I feel lucky to have found an activity that brings me so much joy. 

No one has ever made me learn Chinese. It has always been my choice, something that I’ve been drawn to on my own, something I inherently love. Love for its own sake. In a world that constantly tells us how to be, and who to be, I am taking a stand and saying, “Hey world, listen up. This is who I am! I, Will Mannon, practice Chinese five hours per day. I, Will Mannon, speak fluent Chinese.”

Nothing can stop me. It’s the Age of Abundance, baby! Information rests a thumb tap away. The stakes for how we spend our attention are higher than ever, and yet we toss our attention around more flippantly than ever before. 

Not me. When I study Chinese, it’s Christmas every day. Dòngchálì ! Kuàngjià ! What’ll be waiting under the tree tomorrow morning?! It’s an infinite game with infinite gifts, and infinite room for creativity. A life of infinite learning, infinite opportunity, infinite connections awaits. 

Five hours per day for the next two years. And I’ll be able to say: “I, Will Mannon, speak fluent Chinese.”

Trojan Horse Course

Write of Passage is a writing course. 

Or is it? 

Our website touts the benefits of writing online: publish quality content. Build a following. Grow your influence. These are true. Publishing your ideas unlocks opportunities. The syllabus describes how you’ll build your writing infrastructure, develop a system to write consistently, and distribute your ideas to an ever-growing audience. You’ll learn how it all aligns with your emerging Personal Monopoly of skills, experience, and interests. 

But ask any WOP alum: you leave the course with far more than articles. In our final live session last night, dozens of students shared how they grew over five weeks. All of them published, but few essays were mentioned. Instead, they spoke from the heart. Stories about challenges overcome, layers of self discovered, close friendships made. They described the courage it took to press publish as the pesky Resistance screamed at them to stop. Goals were shared, thank-yous were given. A few tears were shed. 

We don’t flaunt these moments publicly. And that’s by design. 

See, Write of Passage is a trojan horse course. In our public materials, we focus on tangible, career-related value. As we should! Write of Passage is expensive. Incoming students need to have a clear sense of the expected ROI. Writing online does open doors and help you stand out professionally. WOP alums grow their influence in their industries, and sometimes even launch new career trajectories. 

But beyond this professional exterior lies the hidden, heartfelt core. Students who keep showing up discover the depths of growth that even career-focused writing unlocks. Sharing your views with the world is an earnest act. Sincerity exposes you to irony, imposter-itis, and cold crickets of indifference. To overcome these hurdles you must become a fuller version of yourself. This growth journey happens among supportive peers: breakout rooms and mentor sessions filled with discussions, confessions, and encouragement. Open and honest feedback that flows from day one. Members overcome challenges and improve their craft while building close bonds with fellow students. 

On the surface, Write of Passage is a writing course. But our most committed students discover a rich swirl of personal growth and Internet friends well beyond initial expectations. 

Connections sparked. Fears shattered. New identities declared: I am a writer. You have to be there to feel it firsthand. The real Write of Passage is hiding within. 

Thanks to Julia Saxena and Simone Silverstein for conversations and feedback that helped lead to this piece.

Language Learning as Applied Trivia

I didn’t choose trivia. From a young age, trivia chose me. 

Who was president in 1843? What battle ended World War I? What’s the capital of Azerbaijan? 

Memorizing these mental morsels brought me joy. I learned names and dates with the uncommon enthusiasm of childhood obsession. I knew every US president in order at eight, every country’s capital by twelve. No ulterior motives – I wasn’t thinking about college applications back then – just an instinctive love for knowing about wars, countries, presidents. 

High school brought a new frontier: the quizbowl team. Think high school Jeopardy with skinny teenagers. After final bell, we pored over stacks of past questions and “Ya Gotta Know” lists, honing our skills while getting to know lots of girls (and by girls I mean Nobel-Prize winning authors). We won local tournaments and made noise on “It’s Academic”, a long-running trivia TV show in DC. 

My trivial pursuit stopped at college. As a new chapter began, I started to see my old hobby in a startling new light: was it all a big waste of time?

Learning and recalling each new fact brought a visceral pleasure, a satisfying action loop that, once completed, left me craving more. But to what end? What purpose was served by knowing Chekhov titles or impressionist paintings? Had I been hooked on an onanistic knowledge loop with no greater meaning? 

These musings stayed with me, as did the craving for learning. Thankfully, in my second year of college, I found a new outlet in an unlikely place: language learning. 

After an uninspired high school Spanish career, I stumbled my way into Chinese 101 on a whim. The first year was tough. But after a summer in Shanghai at nineteen, I was hooked. Each new word I learned fired the same trivia loop in my brain, satisfied the same well-worn mental grooves. Chinese vocab was trivia. But it was trivia I could use. I racked up two months of conversations with patient strangers. Learning new Mandarin words unlocked a world of people to meet and topics to explore.

In the near-decade since, I’ve continued to study Chinese well beyond the classroom. I have dozens of tutors and hundreds of YouTube clips to prove it. Learning Chinese is applied trivia, scratching the itch while building real compounding value. I have grand plans for where Chinese will take me, but each new word brings me joy in the present.

I didn’t choose trivia, trivia chose me. But I’m thankful each day for Chinese. Learning this language transformed my love of scattered facts into knowledge of language that bursts out of me, begging to be used.

What Novels Make Me Feel

“I like nonfiction books.”

A common sight in the Twittersphere. And it makes sense. People want to get ahead. There are ladders to climb, companies to build, mental models to acquire. I like nonfiction books, too. 

But hearing someone specify that they only like nonfiction books makes me feel ever-so-slightly sad. When I glance over my vanity list of books I’ve read, my eyes always fall back on the novels. Long after I’m done reading, novels are the ones I still feel. 

I love reading novels. Here’s why: 

You can live multiple lives.
We learn best from firsthand experience. Personal lessons learned resonate more than secondhand advice from others. This brings a problem: we only get one life to live. We can’t run 100 Monte Carlo simulations to see how different life paths turn out. We must commit. That’s the game of life.

Novels offer a cheat code. You get a glimpse of other life paths – where decisions lead, and what they feel like. You learn from others’ mistakes. When facing a difficult decision, you have a stable of lived lives in your mind from which to draw insights. 

You’ll be humbled.  

I’m not sure how internal life feels across the decades, but my 20s have been turbulent. I swing from driven and practical to breathlessly idealistic. Late-night talks with friends feel urgent, like we’re closing in on some solid-ground answers buried within, if we could just get out what’s inside. And on we talk, and up becomes down, and suddenly we’re searching for patterns in a Jackson Pollock painting. 

By now I get it: the racing thoughts can never be fully expressed. No matter how earnestly we share, we’re all asymptotes, growing slightly closer while remaining infinitely far apart. Rainer Maria Rilke puts it best: 

Things aren’t all so tangible and sayable as people would usually have us believe; most experiences are unsayable, they happen in a space that no word has ever entered. 

So what’s the solution? How to respond to the mix of exhilaration and despair that comes when you lock eyes with the big paradox? I’ve found meeting characters in classic books helps. It’s humbling to read a description of the human condition from the 1880s so poetic as to make you feel like a JV schlub admiring a big leaguer. Not only have others felt similar emotions before – they’ve also been described in far richer language than I’ve ever even come close. Reading great fiction knocks me off my navel-gazing pedestal and into the applauding crowd. 

You channel the enthusiasm of youth.

I once saw a tweet about reading fiction when you’re young. I forget the author but remember the message: 

Read novels when you’re young, when your passion for life burns strongest. Novels help you channel fiery feelings. Don’t face the swirling emotions alone. See your questions through the eyes of great characters who already lived them. 

I’m not sure what life looks like at 50 or 75. I hope wild desires for the big picture never go away, and I’m sure for some they never do. But I realize that practicalities (mortgages, college funds) might one day douse these embers into a foolish pile of ash. For now, though, they still burn bright. And so I read novels to stir my internal self and fuel the search.

An Antidote to Attention Hell

Last night I gorged in Attention Hell.

If you've dined there before, this will feel familiar: late night. Can't sleep. Pull up YouTube. One click and I'm in. An endless buffet of candy-coated clips on which to feast. Sports highlights, podcast clips, podcast clips commenting on other podcast clips. All dripping with syrupy titles uniquely appealing to my taste buds. Each promising that sweet hit of dopamine.

I inhaled this fiber-less feast for more than an hour. At the end I felt empty, as is required. But I also left with a new level of despair for where we're headed. There's a certain swirl of internet-celebrity-TikTok absorbing more and more stations of the sugar buffet. Names like Portnoy and Paul dominate serve as ringleaders for this mad Attention Economy Hell-on-Earth.

And here's the thing: it's delectable. These internet-famous new-media moguls know how to blend the perfect mix of hype, shock, and controversy into honey-coated cotton candy dusted with pixie sticks and slathered in strawberry syrup. I know it's a one-way to mental diabetes, and I often still can't avoid a quick bite, and then three more.

Today, I found an antidote to the sucrose smorgasbord. The heavenly contrast to Attention Hell. As opposite a type of content as the ever could be. I found it in a 103-year-old book.

The novel is the spiritual opposite of the internet-celebrity-TikTok swirl. Internet sugar hits are extreme, ephemeral, and trivial. Great novels are nuanced, timeless, and profound. I've been drawn to novels more in the past year. Today I decided to review a powerful books I read recently, My Antonia by Willa Cather. Re-reading my favorite passages not only struck me with their depth and beauty. I also realized that novels are rich just as internet puff pieces are impoverished.

I'll leave you with a few favorite of Cather's breathtaking work. My hope is that I can train my mind to always seek out fibrous prose rather than the empty temptations of the Attention Hell buffet.

The earth was warm under me, and warm as I crumbled it through my fingers. Queer little red bugs came out and moved in slow squadrons around me. Their backs were polished vermilion, with black spots. I kept as still as I could. Nothing happened. I did not expect anything to happen. I was something that lay under the sun and felt it, like the pumpkins, and I did not want to be anything more. I was entirely happy.

Perhaps we feel like that when we die and become a part of something entire, whether it is sun and air, or goodness and knowledge. At any rate, that is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great. When it comes to one, it comes as naturally as sleep.

___________

Antonia lent herself to immemorial human attitudes which we recognize by instinct as universal and true. I had not been mistaken. She still had that something which fires the imagination, could still stop one's breath for a moment by a look or gesture that somehow revealed the meaning in common things. All the strong things of her heart came out in her body, that had been so tireless in serving generous emotions.

It was no wonder that her sons stood tall and straight. She was a rich mine of life, like the founders of early races.

Clubhouse is Jet Fuel for Language Learning

Travel used to be slow. New York to LA in 1950 meant five days of driving. Then, jet planes arrived. Distances shrunk. Five days became five hours. A revolution! 

Clubhouse is jet fuel language learning.

Let me explain: I study Chinese. My dream is to speak like a native. I've chased this summit for untold hours. I know the best Chinese podcasts. You'll find 35 Mandarin playlists on my YouTube. Sometimes I fall asleep to live radio from Beijing.  A month ago, I had the perfect listening practice system. 

Then, I tried Clubhouse.

Within 30 minutes I found a room with Chinese speakers. They were talking about Tesla. As I listened, I started to smile. Casual conversation. Clear language. Interesting topic. Yes!  Soon the algorithm delivered a few more Mandarin-only rooms: Future of Bitcoin. Tips for students. Creator economy.  With each new group, my smile grew.

One month in, I'm convinced: Clubhouse will revolutionize language learning. Here's why:

• Instantly available. Language practice on Clubhouse isn’t low-friction. It's zero friction. It’s three steps: tap, tap, listen. Chinese-speaking rooms are available 24 hours a day. Thanks to Clubhouse, I'm 10 seconds away from fluent Mandarin in my ears, at any moment, forever.
  
  It's not that the old system was that hard (open YouTube, find a video, hit play, repeat).  It's that Clubhouse is even easier. No more curating playlists, translating titles, or skipping through ads. No more indecision on which episode to choose next. Clubhouse vaporizes that mess, and instead serves you native dialogue that never ends.
  
  

• Natural conversations. Any language learner will tell you – natural conversation is best for listening practice. It’s also the hardest to find. The internet is filled with lessons, tutorials, news clips, and game shows. But it’s surprisingly hard to find sources of native speakers talking normally. That’s exactly what Clubhouse delivers.
  
  

• No more searching. Pre-Clubhouse, finding quality listening sources took time. Once I found a playlist, I drank in every last drop. I treated Phoenix TV’s Shishi Bianlun Hui like the Ogallala Aquifer. After exhausting a playlist, it was time to refill: search, test, translate, start listening.

  
  With Clubhouse, there’s no more searching, and no more refills. The you can glide between rooms at will, and they're already running when you get there. Rather than finding individual clips with start and end points, Clubhouse is an infinite flow. Would you rather haul a jug of dirty water back from the well each morning, or dip your cup in a pristine river that never ends?

• More relevant content. YouTube specializes in two sources of listening practice: news reports and reality TV shows. Both are fine, but not ideal. Chinese news shows cover obscure topics with hyper-specific vocab. Dating shows like Fei Cheng Wu Rao are too casual. Sure, it’s everyday language, but mixed in with silly gags, goofy sounds, and constant laugh tracks. Not exactly Evian.
  
  Clubhouse gives you dinner-table conversation. People talk the way they talk to their friends. It's extremely difficult to find this type of content anywhere else on the internet. Some YouTube channels offer 1:1 dialogues, but even these feel forced and unnatural. Clubhouse offers dozens of real native conversations in seconds.
  
  

• Structured for repetition. The way people share on Clubhouse leads to commonly repeated phrases. Recently I listened to a meta-room where Mandarin speakers were taking turns sharing how they used Clubhouse.  I wrote down seven different ways to say "Ok, thanks everyone, I'm done sharing, who else has something they want to say?" I already know how to convey that meaning. But I now have seven native-speaker-approved twists on that same phrase. Knowing how to convey meaning and sounding like a native (rather that straight from a textbook) is a gulf apart. Clubhouse offers colloquialisms and slang not found on Google translate or your dictionary app.

• Live brings an edge. Knowing that the Clubhouse conversation you're hearing is happening now, rather in some pre-recorded time and place, gives the listening a noticeable sense of urgency. Also, the potential option to join the stage and speak helps keep you focused. After listening for several days, I finally leapt up on stage in a Mandarin room and started to talk. I’ll save the full story for a future piece, but Clubhouse is the perfect place to speak your language of choice, not just listen. The more you hop on a Clubhouse stage, the less you’ll need to spend on expensive tutors.
  

• It's just getting started. Clubhouse today is like Twitter in 2009. It's early. Once they release the Android app, the Clubhouse user base will explode. More users means: 1) stronger network effects for your language of choice; 2) more experimentation and creative ways to use Clubhouse.

If you can understand some portion of the language, but you’re not yet fluent like a native, this system is for you. And these principles apply far beyond Mandarin. You’ll find dozens of other language rooms and clubs on Clubhouse. Calling all Spanish speakers, Francophiles, and Deutsche Duolinguists.

Listening to Chinese is challenging, but it brings me joy. It's right in the Goldilocks Zone of not-too-easy, not-too-hard. As Mandarin hits my ears, I’m whisked away to a blissful Flow state. Clubhouse is like an intravenous drip of Flow, free to plug in anytime, anywhere, forever. It’s available for you too – you just have to join the Club.

Language learning will never be the same.

Lessons from Losing

Tonight I feel like Kevin from The Office.

No, I didn't flunk an IQ test. No buckets of chili were spilled. I'm talking Casino Night Kevin.

You might remember the scene. A charity event in the warehouse. The whole Office looking fancy for some drinking and gambling. No one more excited than big-ol' Kevin, rocking his shimmering gold bracelet. Remember, he won the 2002 No-Limit $2,500 Deuce-to-Seven Draw at the World Series of Poker in Vegas. So...yeah. He's pretty good at poker.

The same scene unfolded tonight among family: I got a poker set for Christmas. My family doesn't play poker. I do. No gold bracelets on my wrist, but I did play poker every day for a week recently. Meanwhile, my mom and sister don't even know the rules. So...yeah. I'm pretty good at poker.

That's how I felt tonight while teaching the basics. Straights beat pairs, but flushes beat straights. It's easy, you'll learn as we go. Dealing the first hand, I surveyed my prey. I couldn't wait to stack up my chips and end their nights early.

First hand. Lost. Second hand. Lost. Third hand. Fold. Slow start to the night. Fine. We're just getting going. My cards will come.

Fourth hand. Fold. Fifth hand. Outbluffed by my Dad. Ok, that one stings. Too many losses to brush away. My ego's a tire with a slow leak. Still sturdy, but air pressure moving in the wrong direction.

Ten hands in. Still no wins. But finally, like a slurpee in the desert, here's my ace-seven two pair. I play slow at first, dial up my bets each round, and shove a pile of chips to the center after the final card. Only my mom is left. My sweet mother, bless her heart. She's had a lucky start, but it's time for her lesson in poker hard knocks. With my monster raise, she'll probably fold. Either way, my ace-high two pair has me covered.

How many chips did you bet, Will? 36? Sure, I've got that many. Why not! Out go her chips. My heart leaps with excitement. The pot size just doubled. This win should launch me into first place.

You ready for your lesson Mom? Let's flip our cards. Three, two, one...I triumphantly slap down my ace-seven two-pair. She can only match the ace. My ego floods with a double-swirl of relief and pride. I start scooping my chips.

Wait a second! my sister cries out. Mom, you have a 10! That's a 10! I can't believe it. Neither can she. Hiding in her hand was an ace-ten two-pair, enough to trump my ace-seven. Without her glasses she saw the ten as a nine. Wow, that is a ten! How cool! The tire collapses. Air gushes out. My poker player pride dissolves into the sky. Mom owns biggest pot of the night, while I'm down to single digits.

Suddenly I'm Kevin Malone on Casino Night, getting worked by a newbie. Look at all the clovers.

We play on. I bottom out twice and get dealt back in. With each loss, my ego stings worse. As the night began, I identified with being a skilled poker player. I planned to massage my ego with a mountain of chips. Instead I'm negative, while my mom and sister crack jokes about making change with their towers of singles. My mind twists stories to explain away the failure: Bad timing. Worse cards. Good fundamentals with rotten luck.

Incredibly, I bottom out yet again. Time to embrace my fate. No story can save me: tonight is a capital-L Loss. I refuse another charity round and offer to deal full-time. And suddenly, I feel better. Way better. I watch the hands unfold, free from whims of fate on plastic rectangles. Instead of feeling burning frustration toward my opponents, I feel love for my family members as I help them deal. My ego melts. I lost, and I'm...happy? What happened?

Some lessons here:

Accepting my loss dulled the sting. As my poker night collapsed, my frustration grew. The more I resisted my failure, the more my ego squirmed for excuses and justifications. As soon as I accepted my results, my ego vanished. Acknowledging defeat without resistance felt downright pleasant. I'm reminded of a Mark Manson line: "The desire for more positive experience is a negative experience. And, paradoxically, the acceptance of one's negative experience is a positive experience."

This doesn't mean don't compete, or let others win. We will play poker again tomorrow night, and I won't go easy. I'll be fiercely competitive. But I'll be competitive without neediness. I won't need to win to enjoy myself. I will give my best, control what I can control, cherish the competition, and see where things finish. My pride won't be tangled up in some straight draw.

Don't overly identify with any activity. Did I pull some bad cards tonight? Sure. Did I also play some bad poker? Definitely. Poker is a mix of luck and skill. But any semi-pro player would have owned the room with my same cards. I'm no expert. I played poker a bit in college and then zilch til earlier this month. But the way my ego felt tonight, you'd think I'd been playing for decades. I linked my self worth with my poker hands, needlessly.

Here I'm reminded of Timothy Galleway's classic book The Inner Game of Tennis. He urges new players to approach their tennis game how they'd teach an infant child to walk. Galleway explains:

"A child's progress in learning to walk is never hindered by the idea that he is uncoordinated. Why shouldn't a beginning player treat his backhand as a loving mother would her child? The trick is to not identify with the backhand. If you view an erratic backhand as a reflection of who you are, you will be upset. But you are not your backhand any more than a parent is his child. Remember that you are not your tennis game."

Wise words. You are not your poker game. (Or any other result you overly identify with.)

Don't get too high, either. A few weeks ago I hit a hot streak. Playing Hold-'Em one-on-one with a friend, I won nine out of ten hands. This felt good. Really good. I saw myself as a natural born card shark, brimming with talent. Tonight zapped this image completely.

In a sense, I'm thankful for my colossal loss. If I had owned the room tonight, my self-pride would've swelled back up. Head would've hit pillow re-convinced of my poker greatness. It's funny how we're skilled when we win, and unlucky when we lose.

Instead, some bad bets and bleh cards brought a dollop of humility. There will be future days when I run the table. But after tonight, I'll be quicker to notice the luck that helped me get there.

As Casino Night ends, Kevin has lost all his chips to Phyllis. "I suck," he mumbles into the camera.

No Kevin. You don't suck. You'll win again, soon. In the meantime, disentangle your results from your pride. Say it with me, Kevin: you are not your bad beat. Or your chili spill.

10 Days of Pure Solitude

Gravel crunched beneath my tires as my car slowed to a crawl. I could just glimpse a structure through the midnight. I think that looks right. I killed the engine, stepped outside, and was immediately blasted by a deafening silence. I breathed deep and smiled. Go time.

I'd arrived at my new home: a one-room speck on the vast foothills of eastern Idaho. Closest town Driggs, population 871. Phone off, auto-responder on. Let the 10 day plunge into solitude begin. 

Back up for a second.

Why did I spend 10 days alone in the most desolate part of the US?

Since joining Forte Academy as Course Manager in January, my life had been a blur of communication. I love my work because I love to meet others. By October, I’d met thousands of students. I’d held hundreds of 1:1 calls. My total emails sent was north of five digits. After a year of nonstop interaction, my work life felt enriched, but my inner landscape felt vacant. Constant pings left me dreaming of uninterrupted silence.

And so, one Saturday afternoon, I set the Airbnb search filter to "western US" and scanned the land for remote stays. A few days browsing flyover states led me to two small cabins, spaced five hours apart. Perfect. I booked the spots, grabbed flights, and started a countdown.

For 10 days I would be intensely alone. No emails. No calls. Just time and space to visit my interiority and see what I found. It would be an experiment in selfhood. A chance to look myself square in the eyes and see who looked back. How would I respond to total isolation and no electronic stimuli?

Finally the day arrived.

My first cabin lay in the foothills of the Grand Teton mountains. After my midnight arrival, I spent two glorious days in total quiet. Day 3 was a five-hour drive through gorgeous Yellowstone, which led to my next stop: 22 empty acres in northern Wyoming. I stayed for seven more days before heading home.

In total, I spent over 250 hours completely alone. What happened? 

• I lived screen-free. I read. I wrote. I listened to the silence to see what it said. I cooked and cleaned. I journaled. I walked for miles. I ate steak and kettle corn and drank chilled lemonade. I pondered the past and sized up the present. I tried (and failed) and tried again to lose myself in the infinite Now. I listened to the grandest symphonies ever written. I watched the sun cross the sky. I kicked an anthill and saw it rebuild. I lay flat on my back as day turned to night. I hoped for future. I was grateful. 

• I felt still. Each day was filled with my own observations instead of the internet's. The absence of swipes and clicks brought a subtle sense of calm. I breathed and thought deeply. Meals were slow and deliberate. I walked in the afternoon sunlight, reflecting on my life, aiming to be present. At night I read, taking occasional breaks to stare at the stars and ponder my existence. My busy mind still buzzed, but slower than before, as if it had been placed on ice.

• I chose books that made me feel deeply. I brought a suitcase full of books along. Novels, memoirs, essays, nonfiction, even a book of poetry. I let my feelings in the moment guide me, an experiment to see what I would chose. I mostly went for novels and essays, plus two books about presence. My winner was Letters to a Young Poet, perhaps the most powerful words I've read so far. Other favorites include Remains of the Day, My Antonia, and Walking. You'll find my full list of books here.
  
  

• I found riveting music. There's a quote I like: "Attention without object is prayer in its supreme form." To make these words real, I limited myself to classical music, attending to music without the object of lyrics. Did you know Beethoven's Eroica symphony is considered the greatest music ever created by man? Neither did I, until my time away. I listened to it six times. I also discovered this seven-minute gem from Mozart's Oboe Concerto in C Major. I swear the meaning of life is hiding in those notes.
  
  

• I severed bad habit loops. I’ve read enough Cal Newport to know the importance of unbroken focus. But knowing and doing are a gulf apart. I had slipped back into compulsive phone checking this year. The usual vices: Twitter, CNN, ESPN, Twitter again…if each day is a blank canvas of possibility, my creations were stained with black splatters of wasted time.
  

  This trip was a stint in screen rehab. I did not surf the web for 10 days. I used my computer exclusively to write. And the all-addictive iPhone? I barely touched that slab of glass. Other than a few hellos to loved ones, I hid it on top of the kitchen cabinets. Out of reach, out of sight, out of my life.
  

  Since returning home, I'm happy to report my bad habit loops haven't returned. I haven't checked CNN or ESPN once since my trip. My Twitter feed is empty, with all my follows muted for now. I'm relishing the break from inputs. I'm focused on creating, publishing, and spending more time alone.

• I reconnected with the magnificence of mornings. I watched the sun rise from a porch rocker each morning. I can't think of the last sunrise I'd seen; it had been years. It's a breathtaking moment of majesty. I did my clearest self-reflection while the sun woke up. As the dark sky slid into yellow, pink, and orange, I realized I had traded mornings for evenings in past years. Recent late nights were due to work or web browsing. Before that it was bars and drinking, late into the night, waking up bleary-eyed and cloudy the next day. All this time, the clarifying stillness of mornings had been hiding, invisible to me, waiting patiently to be rediscovered.

After months tossed in choppy digital seas, my seclusion in Idaho and Wyoming felt like finding solid land. For ten days I caught my breath and found my bearings. The dizziness began to fade. I took stock of who I am, what I've done, and where I'm going next.

I believe that nearly everyone alive today thirsts for time alone, free of inputs. We only get the smallest sips of solitude amidst our hectic, phone-filled days. My trip was like guzzling the good stuff straight from the pitcher.

Maybe you can’t carve out gallons of alone time right now. That's fine. But don't forget to pour yourself a glass.

Finding Flow: Your Life is the Sum of What You Focus On

Every person who ever lived has wanted it.

We all chase it.

So what’s the secret to getting it?

In Flow, Mikhail Csikszentmihalyi (Cheek-sent-me-high) explains that enjoyment, not pleasure, paves the path to happiness. He even reveals how to find rich enjoyment in your life. It all starts with how you pay attention.

Optimal Experience

The human brain processes 126 bits of information every second. That equates to 7,560 bits per minute, or over 185 billion in an average lifespan. When it comes to creating joy in your life, Csikszentmihalyi emphasizes that it matters how you spend this attentional currency. You become what you behold - for better and for worse. Several definitions underly this section of the book:

• Attention, or psychic energy, determines what does/doesn’t appear in consciousness​

Depending on how you invest your attention, entirely different realities emerge. We create ourselves based on how we direct our psychic energy.

• Psychic entropy is the inner disorder that results from information that threatens your goals, scares your ego, disrupts your consciousness (disorganization of self)

You know those dreadful 3am worries? Maybe it’s your mind chewing on past mistakes, or the “Sunday Scaries” as the weekend ends and Monday looms. Csikszentmihalyi helpfully places all our fears and regrets into a bucket labeled psychic entropy. Any thoughts that scare your ego and bring anxiety are simply the mind’s natural process of moving toward disorder. When I first read this, I felt a great sense of liberation. Rather than needing to engage with my worries or regrets when they arise, I can label them all psychic entropy -- this natural process of mental decay. Instead of wrestling with the specific content of my anxiety, this gives permission to step back and see the mental noise properly. Everyone defaults to disorder when not directing their attention more productively. Which leads to….

• Optimal experience, or Flow = intrinsically rewarding process where attention is freely invested to achieve a person’s goals (opposite of psychic entropy)​

The big kahuna. A Flow experience stretches your body and mind to their limits. Imagine a skilled person learning a tricky new violin piece, skiing the Matterhorn, or rock climbing in Yosemite. These challenging activities require deep concentration and offer a “Goldilocks” challenge - hard enough to be interesting, but reasonable enough to encourage progress without quitting. Engaging in this type of perfectly challenging activity leads to a Flow state, which Csikszentmihalyi describes as an optimal experience. These states have lots of positive benefits:

• Moment-to-moment enjoyment

• Increased complexity of self (growth)

• Attention fully invested in pursuit of goals (no disorder to fix/threats to defend against)

• Deep concentration —> well-ordered consciousness​

Rather than stewing in unpleasant worry, entering Flow pushes you toward a chosen goal while paying a second-by-second dividend of delightful enjoyment. Challenging yourself feels good, and is also an effective use of your time. The deep concentration required for Flow brings order to your consciousness, leaving you feeling calm and satisfied. With your attention freely invested in pursuing your goal, you have no mental disorder to straighten out, and no external threats for your self (ego) to defend against. All your energy goes toward growth and improvement. Do this enough, and your quality of life will inevitably improve.​

Enjoying Your Life

Flow was published in 1990. In the following 30 years, these ideas liberated mankind from their tortured ego minds, jump-starting an unprecedented era of peace, achievement, and enjoy—

Just kidding. Obviously people still have plenty of fear and stress in their lives. Perhaps more today than ever. What gives? Why don’t most people combat their entropic worries with enjoyable, Flow-inducing activities? You can thank the Path of Least Resistance principle. People largely quell their gnawing worries with pleasure.

Sleep, food, entertainment, and sex are all sources of pleasure. While they’re an important part of life, they don’t bring lasting happiness. Csikszentmihalyi explains that while pleasure can restore order to your mind, and quiet your psychic entropy, they don’t create new order in consciousness. They largely don’t help you grow, or add to your “complexity of self”. Flow does. Following an optimal experience of deep concentration, you emerge a more complex person. After finishing a Flow activity, Csikszentmihalyi explains:

The self that the person reflects upon is not the same self that existed before the Flow experience: it is now enriched by new skills and fresh achievements.

Successfully focusing during a Flow activity not only creates order in consciousness. It also strengthens your structure of self. Critically, Csikszentmihalyi explains that this process is an end to itself: Flow activities are intrinsically rewarding and enjoyable. He defines this as an autotelic experience, meaning a self-contained activity done simply because the doing is the reward. Autotelic activities lead to day-to-day enjoyment in your life.

Finding Flow

Thanks to innovations in transportation, household appliances, and communication, we have more free time than ever before. Csikszentmihalyi proceeds to ask why, given our tremendous advancements, few of us are happier than our ancestors? He argues that we fail to turn our free time into true enjoyment. Unfortunately, our culture leaves so much of our precious attention wrapped up in ourselves (looking at you, Instagram) that we lack the “attentional fluidity” to relate to intrinsic goals. Our attention rigidly serves the needs of our self-centered ego, rather than fully immersing ourselves in enjoyable activities for the sake of them. Only by centering our attention on external objects and goals can we build an autotelic personality so devoted to the present task that we’re indifferent to our perceived shortcomings and threats against the self.

Csikszentmihalyi mentions that Flow activities engage your mind and often your muscles, embodying you in the world. He calls the body an “instrument that puts us in touch with the rest of the Universe.” Without developed skills, our bodies are merely flesh. By learning how to use our bodies in complex, intricate ways, the capabilities we develop can be a source of limitless enjoyment.

Call to (Focused) Action

Much of Flow contrasts the enriching joys of optimal experience with the relatively empty pursuit of pleasure. In the nearly thirty years since its publication, opportunities for wasteful distraction have risen exponentially. Candy Crush, TikTok, and Netflix binges beckon constantly, not to mention legalized drugs and unlimited porn. While these outlets distract the mind, they do not lead to growth in our complexity of consciousness. They simply mute your psychic entropy. Flow activities, meanwhile, actually create new order and structure in your mind, both metaphorically and neurophysiologically speaking. You’re not just pausing the mental decay, you’re actively counteracting it.

Unfortunately, in our age of abundance, opportunities for mind-numbing pleasure abound. Csikszentmihalyi explains that the tremendous leisure industry that has emerged to fill our free time is not primarily designed for us, but to make money for others. He goes on:

Many leisure activities — especially those involving the passive consumption of mass media — are not designed to make us happy and strong…If we allow them to, they can suck out the marrow of our lives, leaving only feeble husks.

Between unstimulating consumption and unproductive time at work, we collectively waste the equivalent of millions of years of human consciousness each year. But we have a choice. By seeking out perfectly challenging Flow activities, we can deeply enjoy our lives and grow the complexity of our minds. Csikszentmihalyi explains that “the future belongs to the man who learns to use his leisure wisely.​

The autotelic, intrinsically motivated person sets proactive goals that lead to more enjoyable Flow, whereas the average person’s goals are set by social conventions and biological drives. Csikszentmihalyi outlines four steps for developing an autotelic self:​

• Set clear goals to strive for (your own goals)

• Become immersed in the activity

• Pay attention to what’s happening to you, without worrying about outside perceptions

• Learn to enjoy immediate experiences

When we pursue our own goals for intrinsic reasons, we bring harmony into our consciousness. Our feelings, thoughts, and actions snapping into alignment only reinforces this harmony. Rather than letting ourselves be pulled around by social conventions or threats to our ego, we can find Flow and boldly pursue goals that enrich our lives and the world around us. Not only does Flow bring enjoyment to our lives through optimal experience, we serve others in untold ways through our focused, purposeful achievement. Which could just be enough to make us truly happy.​

Next time you’re preparing to binge a show or a six pack, consider the more enjoyable Flow activity you’re sacrificing on the altar of immediate pleasure.