"If the path before you is clear, you're probably on someone else's." – Joseph Campbell
Much of what we consider progress is measured against stories that have already been written.
The irony in benchmarking ourselves against things we already know have been accomplished: we reduce the likelihood of writing a story of our own.
If you are building something, it is far more useful to focus on the work you are doing to produce the result than the result itself.
The constraint we apply to package our idea determines their reach & resonance. "Make 1 decision to eliminate 1,000 decisions."
To help understand this idea, consider the contrast between the two concepts ancient Greeks used to think about time.
It should be relatively simple to identify when we aren't accumulating net new experience, but in practice, it doesn't seem to be.
Language is an incredible tool. It makes it possible for us to externalize what we think and communicate it to others.
