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The internal debate about confidence calls to mind a well-known concept from the radio pioneer Ira Glass, which could be called the Taste/Talent Gap. All of us who do creative work . . . we get into it because we have good taste. But it’s like there’s a gap, that for the first couple years that you’re making stuff, what you’re making isn’t so good . . . It’s really not that great. It’s trying to be good, it has ambition to be good, but it’s not quite that good. But your taste—the thing that got you into the game—your taste is still killer, and your taste is good enough that you can tell that what you’re making is kind of a disappointment to you. It is in precisely this gap that ego can seem comforting. Who wants to look at themselves and their work and find that it does not measure up? And so here we might bluster our way through. Cover up hard truths with sheer force of personality and drive and passion. Or, we can face our shortcomings honestly and put the time in. We can let this humble us, see clearly where we are talented and where we need to improve, and then put in the work to bridge that gap. And we can set upon positive habits that will last a lifetime.
Ego Is the Enemy
Ryan Holiday
It’s safe to say that The Origin of Species (as it became known after Darwin himself dropped the On from a later edition) is one of the most influential books ever written. What printed works surpass it in reach and impact? Maybe the Bible, the Qur’an, the Mahabharata, and a few other scriptural texts that have inspired millions of people to piety and bloodshed. What stands in the same category? Maybe De revolutionibus orbium coelestium by Copernicus, maybe Newton’s Principia, and maybe, if you count journal articles, the two papers of 1905 and 1916 in which Einstein described special and general relativity. Unlike those other great works of science, though, The Origin is a book written in plain everyday language and meant by its author to speak to any attentive reader.
The Reluctant Mr. Darwin
David Quammen
The more we use these substances, the less dopamine we produce naturally in the brain, and the more habituated our brain cells become to the dopamine that is produced—the number of “dopamine receptors” declines. The result is a phenomenon known as dopamine down-regulation: we need more of the drug to get the same pleasurable response, while natural pleasures, such as sex and eating, please us less and less.
The Case Against Sugar
Gary Taubes
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