In The Four-Hour Work Week Tim Ferriss tells a story about a Mexican fisherman and an American businessman. Not many people know that there is actually a second half to this fable. I was lucky enough to hear it from a wandering shaman in a Berlin nightclub, and with his permission I have reproduced it here.

Don’t choose something (a class, a book, a job, a partner) based on its headline – choose it based on what you want to get out of it, then engage in a way that makes this happen.

The sad/rain fallacy: situations in which you’ve have the causal relationship backwards, in a way that denies your own agency. (I believe I am the first to identify it, although I would be happy to be corrected!)

Lots of household objects don’t get constant use. For many, in fact, for most of the year their main function is to form part of the junk mountain preventing the closet from closing properly.