I was listening to a recent episode of Founders, where David Senra was covering The Creative Act by Rick Rubin. During the episode he referenced a quote attributed to Tom Sachs that particularly spoke to me:

“The reward for good work is more good work.”

We live in a world of contradictions. One such, is that many people say they want to succeed, grow and reach the highest levels professionally, personally, physically, or financially. Yet, at the same time few seem willing to accept that to achieve those outcomes you have to battle through hard work, pressure, effort, and sustained discomfort

The topic of work/life balance is an interesting one. It’s a phrase we use frequently, often as a starting point for conversation, yet not necessarily pushing far enough into the detail. We raise it, nod along in agreement that we probably haven’t found it and then move on as if the very meaning is self-evident.

But is it?

I’m not sure whether philosophy is having a resurgence over recent years or I’m just seeing things through my own somewhat biased filter. I tend to listen to a lot of podcasts and content that drift into philosophical musings, so perhaps it’s self-selection bias rather than a cultural shift underway.

With every passing day, it feels like we’re finding it more and more difficult as a society to discuss real, complex issues with the depth and nuance they demand. Not just to understand the challenges we face but also to understand each other.

Money should, in theory, be a relatively easy thing to understand. We interact with it every day after all. Unfortunately, it’s not quite as simple as just ‘the money in your account’. That being said, just because something isn’t straightforward doesn’t mean we should seek to make it harder than it needs to be.

It feels as though as more time passes, we’re drifting further into an age where true independent thinking is quietly fading away. It’s not that we’ve lost intelligence or the capacity to think, at least, not yet.

I hadn’t planned on writing about this topic, but in light of the recent government proposal to introduce digital ID’s, and the social chatter that followed, I wanted to put down a few of my views.

Over the past decade or so, Stoicism has undergone something of a renaissance. Social media and online platforms have no doubt played a large part in this, not least because it’s easy to lift a quote from a philosopher and stick it on an image or post to drive engagement.