Category: Stoicism

The Default Trap: What We Don’t Say About Growing Old

This is the long, slightly nerdy version: what forty years in quality assurance taught me about how people lose their independence. If you want the human version first, it’s on Medium: I’ve Watched People Retire for 40 Years. Most of Them Never Really Left. Or watch the nine-minute video below.… Read the rest “The Default Trap: What We Don’t Say About Growing Old”

This is the long, slightly nerdy version: what forty years in quality assurance taught me about how people lose their independence. If you want the human version first, it’s on Medium: I’ve Watched People Retire for 40 Years. Most of Them Never Really Left. Or watch the nine-minute video below.… Read the rest “The Default Trap: What We Don’t Say About Growing Old”

The Uncomfortable Quotes That Fixed My Life (After Ruining My Ego)

I found a blue Post-it stuck to the inside cover of a notebook I abandoned around 2011. Marcus Aurelius, I think. Something about the obstacle becoming the path. I had pressed the ballpoint hard enough to dent the paper underneath. Clearing out a spare room last month, shifting damp cardboard boxes and old coats, I read the quote again.… Read the rest “The Uncomfortable Quotes That Fixed My Life (After Ruining My Ego)”

I Spent 40 Years Stopping Catastrophic Failures. Willpower Never Once Made the Fix List. (Here’s What Did.)

The night a batch of transmission housings failed because one exhausted operator trusted his own discipline instead of the checklist, I stopped believing in routines — and started believing in systems over willpower.

It was 11:40 p.m., second shift, on the floor at a transmission plant outside Dayton, when my best line lead made a call his training told him not to make.… Read the rest “I Spent 40 Years Stopping Catastrophic Failures. Willpower Never Once Made the Fix List. (Here’s What Did.)”

The Quiet Life Is the Ultimate Leverage: How to Test Your Inherited Dreams Before They Steal a Decade

Quiet life. That’s the phrase I never once tested before nearly spending a decade chasing its opposite. It was 11:42 PM on a Tuesday, and I was doing arithmetic on a life I had never once sampled.

My laptop screen cast a cool blue glare across the desk. Open in front of me were three tabs: a real estate listing for a high-rise city apartment, a speculative financial model calculating the revenue needed to justify a London zip code, and a draft of a pitch deck for a business expansion I wasn’t even sure I wanted.… Read the rest “The Quiet Life Is the Ultimate Leverage: How to Test Your Inherited Dreams Before They Steal a Decade”

I Stopped Renting My Own Mind (a Dead Emperor Fixed It for Free)

A rented mind never really rests. The going rate for calm is $200 an hour. Marcus Aurelius wrote the manual in a tent, on campaign, and never charged a soul. Some debts never show up on a statement. This is one of them.

A shorter version of this ran on Medium, and there’s a video walkthrough on YouTube if you’d rather watch it than read it.… Read the rest “I Stopped Renting My Own Mind (a Dead Emperor Fixed It for Free)”