My Musings – Not your ordinary tales

What Elon Actually Does Differently

Most takes on Elon split the room before you finish the headline.One camp sees a wizard who bends physics. The other sees a lucky asshole with too much leverage and zero scruples. Both arguments end up being about the man, which is the least useful thing in his life. The method is the actual prize, and the method is genuinely odd in ways the commentary keeps skipping over, because it's easier to fight about his politics than to look at how he runs a Tuesday afternoon. He's smart, well above average, but the IQ delta between him and a …

Continue Reading about What Elon Actually Does Differently →

The Hole Doesn’t Fill From The Outside

A confession, mostly I was sitting on a wooden bench at the edge of a botanical garden last Sunday. The one you sit on when you've walked further than you meant to and now your knees are negotiating with you. And that's when I saw a child trying to feed a a piece of pretzel to a duck. The duck wasn't interested. The child held out the pretzel anyway. The duck looked at it, looked away, looked at it again, and then waddled 3 feet to the left as if to make the rejection clearer. The child followed. The duck waddled 3 more feet. The child …

Continue Reading about The Hole Doesn’t Fill From The Outside →

Most Adults Are Still Working For A Parent’s Approval They’ll Never Get

A founder I know sold his company last year for enough money that his great-grandchildren will never work a day. He called me the week the wire cleared. I expected champagne. What I got was a hollowed-out man asking in a meek voice, whether he should start a new company immediately or wait another six months. He said the floor was giving way underneath him, and a new company was the only thing he could think of that might hold him up. I asked him the question I've learned to ask these guys. What did your father say when he heard about the …

Continue Reading about Most Adults Are Still Working For A Parent’s Approval They’ll Never Get →

My Friend Waited 12 Years for a Phone Call

The Call That Isn't Coming She became a name partner on a Tuesday. Her father didn't ring. We went to dinner that night. She'd ordered the steak, which she never does, and she had this tired half-smile going — the one people do when they've finally worked out something they already half-knew and are trying to be civilised about it. Halfway through the main course she looked at me and said,"I didn't do this for the firm. I did it for him. He's not going to ring, is he?" She laughed a little. I laughed a little. I ordered us another …

Continue Reading about

→

The People Who Hurt You Are Already Paying For It

She said it so simply I almost missed it. My grandmother was in her late eighties, sitting in the same chair she'd sat in for 20 years. I asked her whether she'd ever forgiven her sister — the one she hadn't spoken to in thirty-one years, over something involving a piece of land and a phone call in 1974 that neither of them disclosed to anyone in the family, ever. She looked out of the window for a moment and said, "I don't think either of us ever really let it go. We just… didn't know how to go back."That was it. That was the whole …

Continue Reading about The People Who Hurt You Are Already Paying For It →

The Invisible Filter Running Your Life (And How to Hack It)

I bumped into a woman last year who was genuinely convinced she was cursed. She wasn't making a scene; she told me this with the sort of flat, matter-of-fact tone you'd use to describe the weather. That made it harder to brush off. When someone is hysterical, you can blame the mood. When they’re calm, you start to wonder if they’ve actually found a fundamental truth. But then I watched her live.Someone offered her a life-changing introduction, and she just... let it go. An idea landed in her lap that could have solved her biggest …

Continue Reading about The Invisible Filter Running Your Life (And How to Hack It) →

Additional menu