Having touched on translations the other day, I’ve just read a piece in this week’s Economist; Why Translators Have The Blues. It discusses the challenges facing the profession from machine-learning and globalisation. Lessons here for writers, too.  

I read somewhere (now lost) that the Victorian writer and critic Matthew Arnold was responsible for bringing Marcus Aurelius to a broader, modern audience. Here’s Arnold’s essay, originally published in The Victoria Magazine in 1863, and here republished by the University of Adelaide. For the impatient, the real discussion starts at paragraph 9: “[Aurelius] is perhaps […]

A timely (for the UK) post from Steven Pressfield: “Candidates for office in all lands and in every century make the same promise to the voters they hope to attract: ‘I will get you what you want and it will cost you nothing.’” But, it’s more important than simply a political health warning. That thinking […]

Two more essential sets of basics from Nicholas Bate: Simple Meditation 7 A time to be not just do. … Sit somewhere quiet. Be quiet. Creativity 7 7. … practise the skill of creativity daily. Related? Quite possibly.

Sage words from Execupundit’s Michael Wade: “I find that I get more work done by slowing down…” The rest, here. Click slowly.

From Eclecticity Light’s long-running series: A Clean, Well-Lighted Place to Blog …

“It is reason and wisdom which take away cares, not places affording wide views over the sea.” Horace (65BC – 8BC), Epistles I, xi,25-6

Sound advice from Seth, here. And who can resist a tasty pun: “Those bedrock institutions, the foundational supports you take for granted–they rarely last forever. Nurturing and investing in the things we need and count on needs to be higher on the agenda.”    

Psychologist Ellen Jackson offers five tips – along with the psychology behind them – to beat the demon of procrastination. “1. Have a plan 2. Make planning a separate exercise 3. … I love the fact that she explains WHY these work.

“Vex not thy spirit at the course of things; They heed not thy vexation.” Marcus Aurelius (121 – 180), Meditations (Book 7)