October - December 2023 Collected Snippets and Thoughts

Live in the paradox. You are a marvel of the universe and the universe doesn't care

Great way to travel - “He always includes some elements of art, architecture, and adventure in the itinerary whenever he travels.“

Tim Ferriss asks the question slightly differently: “What would this look like if it were easy?” That puts the focus on specifics, on actions you could undertake. And the point, obviously, isn’t to imagine a parallel universe in which things were easy, but to raise the possibility that they might in fact be easy, here and now.

It’s amazing, frankly, which projects end up getting classified as difficult, if you don’t pause to remind yourself they might not be. I’m responsible for a five-year-old’s birthday party this weekend, and I’ve found myself getting all furrow-browed about it. Yet all the evidence suggests that keeping a bunch of five-year-olds entertained for two hours is incredibly easy, provided you’re allowed to use cake, pizza, noisy games with prizes, and balloons with LEDs inside. Approaching this as a daunting challenge isn’t a reflection of any objective facts, but more like a default bad habit, one I can drop the moment that I notice I’m doing it.

One of my roles is to make people feel better about themselves

A Few Lessons on Showing Up: https://moretothat.com/a-few-lessons-on-showing-up/

When I'm fully engaged I don't need much personal development stuff

Read. Write. Listen. Think.

I'm sometimes afraid that nothing will change.

"A person of strong character is like gold—rare but invaluable. They can adapt, learn, and improve themselves. Since your success depends on the people you work with and for, make their character the primary object of your attention. You will spare yourself the misery of discovering their character when it is too late." (Robert Greene, The Laws of Human Nature)

"Our natural enthusiasm trains us to be people pleasers, to say yes to other people. But if you aren’t saying a permanent no to anything, giving anything up, then you probably aren’t diving into anything fully. A life of commitment means saying a thousand noes for the sake of a few precious yeses." (David Brooks, The Second Mountain)

Oliver Burkeman - What Do You Do

“This came into focus for me recently when I read a very good essay, Admitting What is Obvious, by Dan Shipper at Every. Shipper describes how freeing it was to admit to himself the obvious truth that he was a writer, instead of always needing to think of himself as a startup founder, then find ways to make sure writing was involved. Unsurprisingly, this reminded me of the time I abandoned a PhD after it struck me that my semi-unconscious goal had been to become one of those academics who’s always writing for newspapers and magazines – when it would be far simpler just to admit that I wanted to be journalist. (Most of my self-knowledge continues to arrive painfully slowly, but luckily that one hit me at 23.)

Shipper invokes Robert Bly’s image of the “invisible bag” we carry through life, into which we stuff all those parts of ourselves that other people imply aren’t what’s wanted by the world.

For instance, I think I’ve been way better off accepting that I’m not a hugely gregarious person. Not only do I feel less guilty for ring-fencing time alone; it also actually makes it easier and more fun to socialise in big groups, which now strikes me as a fascinating adventure in, to misuse a phrase, how the other half lives.(I suspect this also accounts for much of the appeal of personality models like the Enneagram: by identifying your ‘type’, they give you permission to accept that in certain ways, you just are as you are – so you’re excused from the ceaseless struggle to try to change that situation.)

Think about it: there’s probably something you subconsciously know to be true about yourself – something about your interests and preferences and sources of meaning – that you could do with admitting to yourself more consciously. What if you went ahead and did so? What if you took all the time and energy you put into not being who you are, and poured it into being that person instead?”

4 steps to learn from podcasts:

1. Carefully curate your podcast feed

2. Immerse yourself fully in 1 podcast a time

3. Add a note-taking app to your phone to capture ideas on the go

4. Summarize every episode into 3 takeaways & share publicly

Do I collect information to a) survive or b) thrive?

Those that do not move, do not notice their chains.

Am I operating from my future self?

My guess is that we’ll revert to our habits and take an intentional stance with AI. Perhaps, though, this might be a moment to think hard (whatever that means in a world without active consciousness) about the fact that we might be exactly like an AI… that we’re nothing but wet electricity, and the intentional stance is an evolutionary hack, the product of living in a complicated world, not the cause of it.If our brains are embeddings plus probabilities… if what we are doing is processing inputs and creating outputs, that might be all there is. And that could be fine. If it helps us find peace of mind and acceptance of our situation, it could end up being a net positive. It could be that when we drop the story and simply focus on what is in front of us, we’re able to make the impact we seek. The noise in our heads might just be noise.

What are you bullish on?I'm bullish on people and business experiments. Success comes from the people you work with and the things you try during your business journey.​What are you bearish on?Negative people who I try to avoid in my daily life.

"We look for every option apart from the one that’s so obvious and right in front of us — work harder and stop looking for easy answers from other people.

The easy road traveled never leads to a place no-one’s ever been before. And that’s where startups are meant to head, into the unknown. Successful entrepreneurs use every minute they have to advance their business. They don’t perform for others. They don’t waste time on trivialities. They focus on the next milestone, the next goal, the next thing that needs to be done in order to get even a fraction of an inch closer to the goal." From here.

"Honestly, all I really think about is this:

- Give people something they want

- That they can’t get anywhere else

That’s the game.”

“All the beautiful sentiments in the world weigh less than a simple lonely action.” —JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

“He has not learned the lesson of life who does not every day surmount a fear.” —RALPH WALDO EMERSON

And yet we seem desperate for some system that could save us – for the productivity trick or morning routine or life philosophy that would make everything run smoothly at last, so long as we kept following it. Thus a person encounters, say, a book of practices derived from Stoicism, and rather than thinking “How useful, some Stoic techniques to add to my collection!", instead concludes: “I’ll become a Stoic, which will fix all the ways I feel problematic, and then life will be plain sailing!”

We do this, I suppose, for the same reason people join cults or embrace rigid political ideologies: because it’s more scary to acknowledge the reality, which is that you’re in charge of your own life, whether you like it or not, and there’s no system or method that could lift that responsibility from your shoulders. You have to choose the tools for each job, day in day out, and you can’t wriggle out of that by resolving to use time-blocking or the Pomodoro Technique or bullet journalling to run your life. (Nor by becoming a devotee of Zen meditation or Pilates or the Alexander technique, if that’s more your thing.) There’s no system that will live life on your behalf. The master key is never going to be found.

Instead, you get to play with time-blocking or bullet journalling or Zen meditation or any other method or philosophy you encounter, free of any sense that your experimentation must be part of a grim and increasingly hopeless hunt for a final and definitive approach.

Creativity is just more fun?

When one is excited, introspection goes away.

But how does one get excited?

The most difficult thing is the decision to act; the rest is merely tenacity - Amelia Earhart

"Every problem on the individual or collective scale is a call to adventure"

Practical tip: Create a "tenacity mantra" to repeat during challenging times, reminding yourself to keep pushing forward.

“If thou workest at that which is before thee, following right reason seriously, vigorously, calmly, without allowing anything else to distract thee, but keeping thy divine part pure, as if thou shouldst be bound to give it back immediately; if thou holdest to this, expecting nothing, fearing nothing, but satisfied with thy present activity according to nature, and with heroic truth in every word and sound which thou utterest, thou wilt live happy. And there is no man who is able to prevent this.”We're excited to offer Meditations through Standard Ebooks. If you haven’t already, explore their collection of high quality, carefully formatted, accessible, open source, and free public domain ebooks here.” - Aurelius

Munger on self-pity

"Generally speaking, envy, resentment, revenge, and self-pity are disastrous modes of thought.

Self-pity gets pretty close to paranoia…

Every time you find your drifting into self-pity, I don’t care what the cause, your child could be dying from cancer, self-pity is not going to improve the situation. It’s a ridiculous way to behave.

Life will have terrible blows, horrible blows, unfair blows, it doesn’t matter. Some people recover and others don’t.

There I think the attitude of Epictetus is the best. He thought that every mischance in life was an opportunity to behave well. Every mischance in life was an opportunity to learn something and that your duty was not to be immersed in self-pity, but to utilize the terrible blow constructively. That is a very good idea."

No diamonds without pressure

And I wasn't that good a mind. You know? I was in the top 1%, but no prodigy. So I never would've succeeded in a field that required a mind to be that of a prodigy. But it was a much better mind than ordinary people had. And I recognized that quite early. And I just played the hand I was dealt in order to get as much advantage as I could. And that's what everybody else does too. They play the hand that was dealt to get as much advantage as they possibly can.

And in reviewing my life, what your grandchildren have to realize, it was his version of Robinson Crusoe, he told every grandchild, "Is when they give you a real opportunity, the world's not gonna do it very often. And you're only gonna get three or four of these invitations to the pie counter. And when you get your invitation, for God sakes, don't take a small helping." He basically said, "Lever up when you're sure you're right." And of course that's good advice. But be sure you're right is what makes it hard. How can you be sure you're right? Well, but you can't. That's the point. You can't do it very often. There's a few times in life that even if you're Grandpa Ingham or Warren Buffett, you only get a few trips to the pie counter. - Charlie Munger

Desire to seem clever, to be talked about, to be remembered after death, to get your own back on the grown-ups who snubbed you in childhood, etc., etc. It is humbug to pretend this is not a motive, and a strong one. Writers share this characteristic with scientists, artists, politicians, lawyers, soldiers, successful businessmen—in short, with the whole top crust of humanity.—George Orwell, Why I Write

An equally ancient concept, that received a direct name in the 1960s, is 生き甲斐 (ikigai)—a motivating force that gives someone a reason for living:… ikigai … usually means the feeling of accomplishment and fulfillment that follows when people pursue their passions. Activities that generate the feeling of ikigai are not forced on an individual; they are perceived as being spontaneous and undertaken willingly, and thus are personal and depend on a person’s inner self. (Wikipedia)

Morgan Housel

Manage your circumstances but manage your expectations as much, or more

We take things for granted too easily and compare what we don't have to what ours peers do have

The Goal

Build a business where you can: - Own your story - Put your family first - Volunteer on Tuesdays - Live anywhere you want - Forget what day & time it is - Go out to lunch with your spouse - Take your kids to school every day Forget "scale" and "winning". Go live life!

When you follow your bliss, you walk a sort of path that just feels right. Doors open, opportunities arise. Bliss, law of attraction, your inner self, a higher power, God. Doesn’t matter what you call it. We all have that ability to walk down the right path. You just have to trust yourself. Follow your bliss.

37 Signals on life

8 hours for work, 8 hours for life, 8 hours of sleep. That’s a fair formula. It’s not work/life balance — it’s work/life/sleep balance. A lack of sleep isn’t a badge of honor, it’s a mark of stupidity — literally. Go read Matthew Walker’s Why We Sleep.

DeMello

"You must cultivate activities that you love. You must discover work that you do, not for its utility, but for itself, whether it succeeds or not, whether you are praised for it or not, whether you are loved and rewarded for it or not, whether people know about it and are grateful to you for it or not. How many activities can you count in your life that you engage in simply because they delight you and grip your soul? Find them out, cultivate them, for they are your passport to freedom and to love.”

Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi on the value of daily surprises:

"Try to be surprised by something every day. It could be something you see, hear, or read about. Stop to look at the unusual car parked at the curb, taste the new item on the cafeteria menu, actually listen to your colleague at the office. How is this different from other similar cars, dishes or conversations? What is its essence? Don't assume that you already know what these things are all about, or that even if you knew them, they wouldn't matter anyway. Experience this one thing for what it is, not what you think it is. Be open to what the world is telling you. Life is nothing more than a stream of experiences — the more widely and deeply you swim in it, the richer your life will be."

13. It’s important to know when to walk away. Life’s too short to have someone else make you feel shit about yourself.

Gaining knowledge and not applying it is the ultimate form of procrastination

Eg A podcaster gets a new mentor every week on the pod - and he is not acting on the knowledge that they are passing thru to him - a crime!

What would the ideal biz opp look like?

Joseph Campbell on bliss (from Power of Myth on PBS)

The moral is that the realization of your bliss your true being comes when you have put aside the uh what might be called passing moment with its terror and with its uh temptations and its statement of uh requirements of life that you should live this way

off have you ever read uh sinclair lewis's babbitt not in a long time do you remember the last line i've never done the thing i wanted to in all my life that's the man who never followed his bliss well i heard that line i was living in bronxsville when i was teaching at sarah lawrence before i was married.

well you may have a success in life but then just think of it what kind of life was it what good is it you've never done the thing you wanted to in all your life

if you do follow your bliss you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while waiting for you and uh and the life that you ought to be living is the one you're living somehow when you can see it you you begin to deal with people who are in the field of your bliss and they open doors to you i say follow your bliss and don't be afraid and doors will open where you didn't know they were going to be you ever have sympathy for the man who has no