Author and speaker. New book - How To Live: Rules For People Who Don't Like Rules (Oct 2026).
Seattle, WA
Joined April 2009
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It took a lifetime to write this book. You can read the first chapters for free here in minutes. #howtolive
scottberkun.com/howtolive-ex…
Scott Berkun retweeted
A Brief History of Philosophy:
• 375 BC: Plato is wrong
• 323 BC: Aristotle is wrong
• 311 BC: Epicurus is wrong
• 225 BC: Chrysippus is wrong
• 364 AD: Hypatia is wrong
• 413 AD: Augustine is wrong
• 1020 AD: Avicenna is wrong
• 1180 AD: Averroes is wrong
• 1250 AD: Aquinas is wrong
• 1320 AD: Ockham is wrong
• 1641 AD: Descartes is wrong
• 1675 AD: Spinoza is wrong
• 1739 AD: Hume is wrong
• 1781 AD: Kant is wrong
• 1807 AD: Hegel is wrong
• 1843 AD: Kierkegaard is wrong
• 1844 AD: Marx is wrong
• 1887 AD: Nietzsche is wrong
• 1903 AD: Russell is wrong
• 1921 AD: Wittgenstein is wrong
• 1927 AD: Heidegger is wrong
• 1966 AD: Foucault is wrong
Scott Berkun retweeted
Working at a museum taught me that ticket stubs, church fans, and handwritten letters can become precious artifacts. They tell stories that might otherwise be forgotten. Hold on to the ordinary evidence of your life. One day, the people who love you may need it to remember you.
Funny how we act like physical pain is the worst when it's wounds from people we care about that we fear more than anything.
Perhaps the best advice I've received is that all advice is only as good as your ability to apply it at the right time.
Flying cars are what you get when you ask an 8 year old “what’s cool?” instead of “what’s good?”
It's perhaps the dumbest perenial projection of preferring fantasy escapism to improving anything in the real world. #mythsofinnovation
The attention economy weaponized media against our brains. It's not an accident we read less.
Billions were spent to create apps that hijack our brains. It's no accident. Netflix openly said they are competing against sleep (!).
The good news is all of these things have off switches. We can choose to go outside, to pick deep media (movies, books) and talk to other people in person.
Scott Berkun retweeted
one of the highest forms of self-respect is refusing to organize your entire life around avoiding temporary discomfort.
Scott Berkun retweeted
A truly wealthy neighborhood isn't gated; it's interconnected. Imagine a child walking down their street knowing they have a warm meal at one house, a listening ear at another, and safety everywhere. That's the type of abundance we need.
"You know, the very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common: they don't alter their views to fit the facts, they alter the facts to fit the views, which can be uncomfortable...if you happen to be one of the facts that needs altering"
- Doctor Who
Scott Berkun retweeted
The Italians get this—courtesy of AI —but this ain’t slop:
•Word: Dolce far niente (pronounced dōl-chē-ˌfär-nē-ˈen-tē)
•Literal Translation: "The sweetness of doing nothing"
Book launch for How To Live is two weeks away. You can pre-order now: scottberkun.com/how-to-live-…
“A fresh, contrarian take on the big questions of life. Written for people who want more depth, humility, and true wisdom from their self-help books.” –Booklife #howtolive
Why do we become more afraid of fear as we age, when we should have more experience with it and how to use it to our advantage?
Complacency can be a disease of affluence. If our lives were worse perhaps we’d be desperate enough to take chances, since we’d be less afraid of what we have to lose.
My best essays from 20 years of writing:
scottberkun.com/2013/best-of…
Rereading and rewatching lets you discover how much you have changed. Great works are worthy of return trips.
Hundreds of thousands of books are published in the U.S. each year, and even best sellers can get lost in the deluge, Bethanne Patrick wrote in 2022. Patrick recommends 15 fiction titles that are still worth picking up, years after they were popular. theatln.tc/hZ6LyCvY
