Boundless #27d: Should we have more kids? Or focus on achieving less?
This week's letter includes a powerful essay, a provocative question, some interesting quotes to ponder and an offer to test out a new 3-week self-employment challenge I created. Enjoy!
Your Real Biological Clock Is You’re Going to Die
I wanted to share this essay I read this past week. I found a few of the quotes pretty powerful as a way to reflect on what matters. I will say I connected more with the obsession with the idea that we "accumulate" accomplishments rather than any sort of nudge that I should have kids right away (perhaps I missed the point too...):
“In our social world, in our cultural class, at our point in history, people are brought up to take the opposite view, to structure their lives as if time were something a person accumulated. One is wary of getting married too soon, of having children too young. Adulthood is a condition to enter cautiously and gradually”
The author argues that we structure our lives “as if time were something a person accumulated” and among other things, this causes us to delay marriage and kids much longer:
"If you intend to have children, but you don’t intend to have them just yet, you are not banking extra years as a person who is still too young to have children. You are subtracting years from the time you will share the world with your children."
…and how all of this is fine, as long as you are young and healthy:
“Our civilization is remarkably hostile to the needs of life, from the helplessness of babyhood to the frailty of old age. The system is set up for healthy, productive, independent individuals, and one absorbs the lesson that one should try to stay in this class as long and as securely as one can. “
From this
What first comes to mind when you hear the phrase “future of work”? Do you think the phrase is overused?
What do you think?
Kate shares her perspective: "I sometimes said that instead of thinking about this future of work, we should think about its pre-industrial past. Humans do not by nature prefer to earn more and more rather than working less" and shares a pretty amazing article she wrote...
Answer the question and join 62 other creative and curious path-makers. Join here.
"My Name Is Nemo And I Don't Do Small Talk"
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He is a fan of inviting people to be their full selves in the world and challenges people to think about how they can be “1% more themselves” each day. In order to help people as a coach, he is very tactical about creating the understanding and space for such conversations. He typically outlines three core agreements with his conversations partners:
“I choose to hide nothing and hold nothing back”
“I choose to serve, rather than please”
“I have a track record of having life-changing conversations, and at this point, I refuse to have anything less than that, are you open to having a life-changing conversation?”
Quotes
“If others examined themselves attentively, as I do, they would find themselves, as I do, full of inanity and nonsense. Get rid of it I cannot without getting rid of myself. We are all steeped in it, one as much as another, but those who are aware of it are a little better off — though I don’t know.”
- Montaigne
"It has often been remarked that manufacturers and merchants are inordinately addicted to physical gratifications, and this has been attributed to commerce and manufactures; but that, I apprehend, is to take the effect for the cause. The taste for physical gratifications is not imparted to men by commerce or manufactures, but it is rather this taste that leads men to engage in commerce and manufactures, as a means by which they hope to satisfy themselves more promptly and more completely."
- de Tocqueville
Reads
3-Week Self Employment Challenge
SI've been experimenting with building a few digital online courses as part of what I'm tentatively calling BoundlessU.
The first one I'm launching is a FREE 3-week challenge with exercises I've used with clients. I was motivated to create this after helping a couple friends work through similar exercises last week.
I hope you find them useful and would appreciate any feedback!
Jiufen Old Street, Jiufen, Taiwan