And what you should do instead.
The Mayersdorff Bar (1966) by François-Xavier Lalanne via Sophie Richter
Welcome to today’s issue of Other Life. If you received this from a friend, subscribe here. If you love the newsletter, become a member.
In this issue:
How Bertrand Russell saved months of time by delegating to his unconscious
What a writer should really desire according to William Gaddis
Where My Books Go by W.B. Yeats
The Independent Scholar: A Practical Guide
The Independent Scholar: A Practical Guide
Is now available to download, for free. It’s not fancy, it’s super specific and practical. Just 47 pages of everything I’ve learned after making a lot of mistakes, wasting a lot of time, and ultimately finding a few heuristics, routines, and systems that seem to work reliably and sustainably—after 4 years of experimentation.
I’m calling this v0.1—the final three chapters need some more work before I can add them. Anyone who grabs it will get an email whenever the final chapters are added. I’m aiming for asap.
How Bertrand Russell Saved Months of Time by Delegating to His Unconscious
“My own belief is that a conscious thought can be planted into the unconscious if a sufficient amount of vigour and intensity is put into it. Most of the unconscious consists of what were once highly emotional conscious thoughts, which have now become buried. It is possible to do this process of burying deliberately, and in this way the unconscious can be led to do a lot of useful work. I have found, for example, that if I have to write upon some rather difficult topic the best plan is to think about it with very great intensity—the greatest intensity of which I am capable-for a few hours or days, and at the end of that time give orders, so to speak, that the work is to proceed underground. After some months I return consciously to the topic and find that the work has been done. Before I had discovered this technique, I used to spend the intervening months worrying because I was making no progress; I arrived at the solution none the sooner for this worry, and the intervening months were wasted, whereas now I can devote them to other pursuits.” —Bertrand Russell in The Conquest of Happiness (1930)
If You Can Articulate, You’re All Set
“The things I want are not in any country, nor in any job. As yet I am not quite sure where they are, but am coming nearer to the conclusions that they are latent in myself, and that through reading the thoughts, the impressions, and the creations of responsible minds I shall come nearer to discovering them. And then if I can articulate I shall be set. No hurry about that—my only thought now is to make progress as a human being.” —William Gaddis to Francis Henderson in 1946, Letters of William Gaddis
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