I was at the World Trade Center when it fell. I write about it every year on 9/11.
Nino and I are eating dinner while Y buzzes around the kitchen looking for something to take to his room.
Nino says to me, “What are you going to write about for 9/11? Read more
Nino says he’s having a heart attack. I laugh. He walks into my apartment and says, “I’ll just sit here a little.”
I have to put my head in my hands to give myself time to get rid of my smile. He asks if I’m crying. Read more
My son’s personality type is ISFJ. I’m an ENTJ. We’ve always worked well together: I could see where to climb, and he could see how to do it. I offended people, and he smoothed things over. At first his people-pleasing, detail-oriented nature made me think I was failing as a parent. Then I worried that we were such a good team that we’d become codependent.
Now that he’s in college, he doesn’t trust my plans. He relies on advice from friends at school who are obsessed with positioning themselves well for an AI-infused workforce. Read more
When you think about doing something remarkable, remember that remarkable results come from paths most people aren’t on.
Passion comes from hard work
Passion does not lead to hard work. So don’t tell yourself that you’re picking a path of hard work if you don’t know what you’re passionate about. Here are some examples in my life where this has been true:
My oldest kid didn’t choose to play violin. I chose it when they were three years old. But when they were twelve and I said they could quit, they didn’t want to. All that complaining about practice led to a passion for playing.
I didn’t choose to play volleyball. I was the tallest kid in my freshman class at college. The volleyball coach recruited me during orientation week. For the next two years I practiced on the side of the gym with a coach. No playing. By the time I graduated from college, all I wanted to do was play volleyball.
Many people who have exciting, engaging careers will tell you they “fell into it.” What that really means is that someone asked them to do something, and they decided to work hard at it. (One of the best stories of this phenomena is pro basketball player Khaman Maluach. An NBA scout in Uganda saw Maluach, age 14, and suggested he try basketball. So Maluach taught himself how to play from YouTube videos.)
Yearning for a result is not a passion
If you are not working very hard at something, you probably have a yearning (author, inventor, speaker, athlete, entrepreneur, influencer, etc.)
Passion is specific. Yearning is vague. Sometimes people say they are passionate about something so broad as to be meaningless. Like travel. Health. Writing. If you’re talking about something in such vague terms, then you have not spent a lot of time on it.
Passion is process
People who have a passion are constantly adjusting their process to get better and better at the daily tasks. Michael Jordan is famous for how he practiced. Mark Zuckerberg was writing code when he was a kid. Beyonce has been performing since childhood. When you focus on process every day, you are in the world of specifics and minutiae.
Passion and fun are not the same.
Going to a movie is fun. Taking a trip is fun. Fun people get invited to a lot of stuff. But passionate people are dangerous. They prioritize their passion before everything else. They are preoccupied. They are often a little crazy. This is why Michael Jordan wasn’t interested in his family, and Mark Zuckerberg wasn’t interested in college. And Beyonce is performing at her kid’s school fundraiser instead of just donating money.
Growth mindset is a disorder
The world is obsessed with growth mindset. We know that growth mindset is a combination of grit and passion. Which means that people with a growth mindset are the crazy, preoccupied, distracted types. Humanity would die if everyone had a growth mindset because we need most people to be caring about each other. So we’re lucky that most people don’t have a growth mindset.
Growth mindset is misogynist
The origin of growth mindset was a professor who was obsessed with her research and concluded that everyone should be like her. Twenty years later, educators and executives are beating the growth mindset drum like their lives depend on it. And they fork over millions in dollars a year to train everyone to have a growth mindset.
Men are much more likely to have a growth mindset than women. Someone who does not have a growth mindset has a fixed mindset. Both have equal levels of grit, but they apply that grit differently. How much passion you have determines if you have a fixed mindset or growth mindset.
People with a fixed mindset prioritize stability over personal growth. In fact, a fixed mindset is protective against terrible parenting. Because it’s impossible to be devoted to your kids if you’re devoted to your passion.
So why don’t we all shut up about growth mindset and passion? The people who have that type of brain already know it. And the people who have yearning and a fixed mindset are the ones who are caring, dependable, and connected.
Book art by Jodi Harvey-Brown
Patty says she’s been reading my writing for a long time and she’s sick of reading about parenting. So I feel like the time is ripe for me to slip in stuff I’d normally leave on the chopping block:
The specialty of Gen X is to see a disintegrating mess and take advantage of it. Think: post-Civil War robber barons and their monopolies. Or the speculating and hustling during the morally precarious roaring 20s. If tearing down institutions is cyclical, so is the resulting opportunistic cynicism.
Gen X created a data frenzy and picked up everything they could get their hands on. But today it’s like we’re at a party where the piñata broke two hours ago; there’s not much more candy to find. Read more
Childcare is not a mystery, or a math problem for the elite. Every developed country except the US guarantees paid maternity leave, because science has shown that the majority of a baby’s brain forms after birth, and the baby needs a single, primary caregiver during that formation. Read more
Detail of Watermelon & Knife by Wayne Thiebaud (1989)
The setting: I’m buried—raising kids while running a startup. It’s 2010 and I’m one of the only female founders getting funded. I feel obligated to speak up, so I write blog posts telling women: startups are BS, just say no.
The Real Housewives of Venture Capitalists
Alexa Tsotsi said I was terrible for women. Jessica Wilson said I was tone-deaf to feminism.
So where are they now? Both married venture capitalists. Both talk about their amazing businesses—built with their husbands’ money and networks. If they get bored, they stop. They use their husbands’ money for schools and childcare, then write about their accomplishments as if they’re on a level playing field. Read more
We are way past professors using AI to write their papers. Now professors feed a set of papers into AI and ask where the gap is in the logic so they can write a paper to fill it. When submitting, AI tells them who will likely be reviewing the paper for publication so they can strategically cite that person’s work. Spoiler: it’s working.
And really, why does this matter? Academic papers were never known for stellar writing anyway. Read more
When I was younger and using my job to escape from the scary parts of my life, I did interviews all the time. I was always on my phone. So smart and scintillating.
I don’t feel that now. I used to think it was my job to make everyone like me. So I’d be really chirpy. I was telling a friend that I think I lost that zing, and she reminded me that I’ve always been a pain in the butt to interview. Then she sent me this post. Read more
I thought my post yesterday was absolute genius, and I asked myself if I shouldn’t hold off on publishing it so that I could submit it as an op-ed to the New York Times. Or as political analysis to the Atlantic. Instead I posted it here, because immediate feedback is like crack. And then the post bombed. Read more