ask how big the loss would be if you failed. So long as it would be tolerable, that's all you need to know. Take that next step, and see what happens. - Oliver Burkeman

At the end of your life, looking back, whatever compelled your attention from moment to moment is simply what your life will have been. So when you pay attention to something you don't especially value, it's not an exaggeration to say that you're paying with your life.

Inspiration is for amateurs,' the artist Chuck Close once memorably observed. 'The rest of us just show up and get to work.

The quest for certainty blocks the search for meaning,' argued the social psychologist Erich Fromm. 'Uncertainty is the very condition to impel man to unfold his powers.' Uncertainty is where things happen. It is where the opportunities – for success, for happiness, for really living – are waiting.