The Klugne Newsletter

Knowing the difference between wanting something, even wanting it badly, and needing it in order to feel happy, is useful in life.

We can be just as wrong about something when we are absolutely convinced it’s true as when we’re uncertain.

We are not entitled to unlimited freedom at the expense of our fellow citizens.

You will always outcompete someone who is not willing to put in the same time as you. I refer not just to hours spent working, but in learning how not to waste time, and how productively to use the time you have focused on the right priorities.

Is there any way to become mindful without age and experience? I believe philosophy holds a potential key, and Stoicism in particular. It is mindfulness itself that grants us agency over our thoughts. We can think ourselves unwell, or well.

Perhaps we should wish for something other than more of the promotions, wealth, and possessions that haven’t seemed to make us happier yet.

We often mistake advances in technology with advances in the human condition itself.

Here’s where things get difficult fast: identifying which problems are worth focusing on, and which solutions are worth pursuing among many possible approaches.

Let’s call the first group the Shit Happens adherents and the other group I Make Things Happen. Do you count yourself among either group? Here’s how to tell.

When it comes to achieving good health, people have followed physical hygiene practices for over a century with good results, dietary hygiene practices for half that time with decidedly mixed results, and mental hygiene practices for a few decades with promising results.

I’d argue that the single greatest problem in government is lack of accountability: we look only to the desirability of the policy objective and not to how well our policies achieve the intended result.

When we delegate to politicians our obligations as citizens, we are at the mercy of our politicians faithfully executing our wishes.

Ideas spread and become influential because they win over new adherents. If you want your ideas to gain traction you must expose them to people who do not yet agree with you.

The more you are willing to look honestly at the ugliness in modern life, the more vital it is you add optimism to your mix.

Only one in ten Americans trust themselves to file their tax return without outside help.

Is it because we’re pressed for time that we don’t want to get out of our cars? Or because we don’t want to walk?

We still believe that women today are disadvantaged compared to men

There is much we don’t know or can’t be sure of. And what we do know with certainty is not comforting.

Bellerjeau’s Law of Human Potential explains why humanity’s future has never looked better