I’ve just started David Brook’s new book The Second Mountain – The Quest for a Moral Life. I’m not very far in, but I can tell that I’m going to savor this book like I did with Cal Newton’s Deep Work. Both speak to a need to go deeper, stay longer and do the work. More to come on deep work strategies another time.

In the Second Mountain, one term that captured my attention immediately was “acedia.” A centuries old concept, Brook’s summarizes acedia as the quieting of passion, a lack of care, sluggishness of the soul, an oven set on warm. I see this all around and within and I don’t like it nor am I willing to accept it as just being the way it is. We need to turn up the heat and focus on the right things.