A life of one's own
by Marion Milner · first published 1934
12mentions
4recommended by
5HN commenters
2016–2024first – last mentioned
80% recommend20% neutral
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…a Relationship' list. Equally important for other areas of life. Deep Work on different ways people like/need to work. On Not Being Able To Paint (1950) by Joanna Field (Marion Milner). I read her A Life Of One's Own and An Experiment in Leisure (both from the 1930s) 25+ years ago, and loved them dearly. A Life Of One's Own is about her using her diary to learn about herself, something I'd started doing at the time.…
on “Ask HN: What is the best non-tech book you read this year?” ↗…where necessary), Wayne Dyer's first two books Your Erroneous Zones and Pulling Your Own Strings (similar to Ellis), Louise Hay on loving yourself, SARK's first 8 books, everything by Robert Fulghum, A Life of One's Own and An Experiment in Leisure by Joanna Field/Marion Milner (psychological self-explorations). Emerson's essays. Also keeping a diary was very useful for seeing patterns, e.g. I'd describe some emotion…
on “Ask HN: What do you do socially that you learned from a book?” ↗Severely underappreciated (IMO) is British psychiatrist Marion Milner's A Life of One's Own[1] (1934, as "Joanna Field") - an extraordinary recounting of the author's subjective yet diligent observational study of her own awareness and mental processes from first principles and with as few assumptions…
on “Ask HN: What are the best unknown books you have read?” ↗…person, to the sounds in your backyard, to a thought or a memory. Covert attention is the virtual movement of deep processing from one item to another. very much put me in mind of an unusual book: A Life of One's Own (Marion Milner, 1934) - in particular, this: At any moment there exist in the fringes of my thought faint patternings which can be brought to distinction when I look at them. Like a policeman with…
on “A New Theory of How Consciousness Evolved” ↗…Everyone has their own favourites, but some that helped me - SARK's first half-dozen books, Paul Kurtz Exuberance, Carol Lloyd Creating a Life Worth Living, Joanna Field/Marion Milner's books starting with A Life of One's Own, Richard Bach books, Austin Kleon books, Zen and the Art of Making a Living, Tristine Rainer The New Diary, Ben Zander The Art of Possibility, Gracian's The Art of Wordly Wisdom. Montaigne. Plutarch.…
on “Ask HN: Is it possible to escape mediocrity?” ↗…and it turned out that the quote was the only interesting thing in it. But what a quote. I don't know of anything more relevant. If any of you want to explore Marion Milner, the place to start is "A Life of One's Own"- a work of original genius: https://www.amazon.com/Life-Ones-Own-Marion-Milner/dp/041555.... Everyone says "think for yourself" but she actually did it. Oh and her brother won the Nobel Prize in physics.…
on “Tell HN: Happy Thanksgiving” ↗A Life of One's Own by Marion Milner.
on “Ask HN: What Books Do You Recommend Reading for 2022?” ↗I came across A Life Of One's Own as a teenager, and she became one of my heroes in courage and self-exploration, a great inspiration. The sequels An Experiment in Leisure and On Not Being Able To Paint are also excellent. On Not Being…
on “Ask HN: What are the best unknown books you have read?” ↗…paper and unfortunately that quote was the only interesting thing in it, as far as I could tell. But Milner is fascinating and did many other things - for example she wrote a brilliant book called "A life of one's own" about experiments she did with self-observation. She was already using the word 'mindfulness' in 1934.
on “Tell HN: Ever think of applying to YC? Do it this weekend for S24” ↗A Life of One's Own is a great book, far ahead of its time (she was using the word 'mindfulness' 90 years ago), and a classic in 'thinking for oneself', something that used to be popular to recommend but has never been easy…
on “Hilary Mantel Reviews “A Life of One's Own/An Experiment in Leisure” (1986)” ↗A Life of One's Own is incredible, and is one of two books I credit with changing my life. I reviewed it partially here: https://superbowl.substack.com/p/how-to-enjoy-things
on “Hilary Mantel Reviews “A Life of One's Own/An Experiment in Leisure” (1986)” ↗…exclusively as the object of your focus. In other words, awareness might be compared to flood lights while attention might be more like a spotlight. This is very much in line with Marion Milner's book A Life of One's Own and Les Fehmi's work on "open attention" that have been discussed on HN recently.
on “A New Theory of Distraction (2015)” ↗