Month: May 2022

I want you to know that it’s okay if you only save one person, and it’s okay if that person is you.

Taken from @visakanv’s Friendly Ambitious Nerd, and he is quoting someone else who was quoting someone else.

Sometimes I look back at what I have accomplished and I think I only did 10% of what I set out to do.

For the most part, it was the 10% that mattered, though.

A reorientation thought: be prepared to shed 90% of goals in service of reaching the 10% that matters.

My standard operating procedure has been to overcommit, then fail to accomplish everything I overcommitted to.

Reorientation: fewer commitments, frequent pruning and discarding.

the stuff you joke about (even ironically or whatever) has a way of shaping your reality so be careful and deliberate with that stuff. a lot of people out here fumbling their own bags by joking about outcomes they don’t want. you might as well joke about the outcomes you do want

https://twitter.com/visakanv/status/1394772091660951555?s=21&t=1hVT3DDwm9b7lvVky0kKgw

Everything you allow to remain in your head shapes your reality. Music. Jokes. Images. Conversations with others. Internal dialog with self.

Dick Whittington’s tale goes here as a reminder.

The customary English theatre story, adapted from the life of the real Richard Whittington, is that the young boy Dick Whittington was an unhappy apprentice running away from his master, and heard the tune ringing from the bell tower of the church of St Mary-le-Bow in London in 1392.[5] The penniless boy heard the bells seemingly saying to him “Turn again Dick Whittington”. Dick returned to London upon hearing the bells, where he went on to find his fortune and became the Lord Mayor of London four times.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whittington_chimes

No joke there, but he heard what he needed to hear and nurtured the thought in his heart. Those who have ears to hear, etc.

A story from 1392. Relevant today and as fresh as it was 600 years ago.

Music is closer to guided meditations than we want to admit. They’re selected to be invasive, then get stuck in our head and eventually merge with us. Make sure they’re the messages you want to be part of you

https://twitter.com/nickcammarata/status/1468000584796020736?s=21&t=R9w-CkyReiAqLCycH8RiyA

Self-programming.

At the moment it’s Palestrina and Purcell.

I am asking myself “what job is my business’s website supposed to do?” I don’t have a good answer.

No one gives me good answers. They just want to build sites on WordPress. “Tell me what you want! I will make it for you!”

No. Fuck you. Tell me what I need.

The world cries out for someone who is more than an order-taker.

Out of desperation I have set up a meeting with a guy next week, just to ask the question “Why does this website even exist? And what should a website do?” No more.

He does not build websites, but I think he may have some wisdom. If not, on to the next person.

To write in concrete terms about what I’m actually doing in real life.

I fear that I’m launching in a dumb direction. dumb meaning it takes me away from where I want to go.

The usual shower thought arose this morning, unbidden. I am actively doing strategic planning for my business.

The planning is designed to build and grow the business with a definite aim: open up time for me to do one of the essential business functions that (a) I have a special talent for, and (b) I actually love doing.

I will, if I proceed down this path, be doing many things I don’t want to do. And in fact a foreshadowing occurred yesterday at the end of the business day. I got a question from an employee: “I know this process is in place for a damned good reason, but please let me ignore the process.”

(General, handwaving explanation here: I want nothing less than absolute excellence. This process achieves absolute excellence in a customer-facing transaction but requires us to absorb a bit of complexity in order to deliver bulletproof confidence to the customer. The request corrodes our confidence—and the customer’s confidence—in the completion of the task.)

Here is the shower thought: why do all of the work to create time in my life to do what I want to do? Why not just do it?

I am going to put myself in the firing line of 10,000 whiny requests for “Can I be lazy, boss?” No. 10,000 times no.

Answer. I have people relying on me. Employees. Including this employee who wants to undercut the process. Customers. I’m building the strategic plan to serve them, not me.

Why? Two reasons. One good, one bad. The good reason is the extreme self-satisfaction of doing Deeply Competent Work. The bad reason is money. I want money.

That’s about as specific as I will get here. Anything more will reveal my business, location, etc. And will identify people (employees and customers) too. They didn’t sign up for that.

I need an alt where I can rant. And a person IRL I can talk to.

From the bird place.

You got to entertain the dumb ideas. Otherwise they’ll never invite their smart friends over.

https://twitter.com/temujin9/status/1257797596845879296?s=21&t=uUMgzYoXtzZQcCaDlmHk3w

It’s a feeling I have. Frequently. Even now. I’m not doing enough. I’m not moving fast enough with what I’m doing. I should be doing more. I’m not smart enough and I should learn more. I’m not like able enough, and I should figure out how to change that.

Note that there are no upper bounds to these feelings. I could put on my running shoes, go outside, and run nonstop to Arizona at 40 mph. Guaranteed my head would say I should have stretched for 45 mph.

Single steps, one at a time.

Baby steps, tiny increments.

In reality these are the only actions I can take. I can only do one thing at a time. I can only make extremely modest progress in the next 10 seconds.

These are features of being human. I cannot change this.

Note: what can happen in 10 seconds and will have monumental impact?

An idea. A decision.

This dichotomy is where my distress comes from. In 1989 I made a single, pivotal decision. Every day since then has been slow, incremental progress on that decision.

Make the decision. Change the mindset. Instantly, you’re a new man.

But accept the physical limits of what will happen today, the day that you’re in right now. The me of today knows more than the me of 1989. The me of today is capable of more than the me of 1989. This is precisely because I (mostly) gave 100% of whatever I had going for me, in the day I was in. Some days I was running at 92% efficiency. Some days I was a depressed slug running at 4%. On both days, I gave 100% of 92% and 100% of 4%. Manifestation can take decades, and I am proof of that.

What you have is Enough. Just do what you can, today. It is Enough.

Baby steps are the only steps.

Now I know why Richard Feynman was right. It is the Principle of Explosion. Let a Twitter stranger explain it to me:

one of the first things you learn when you start writing mathematical proofs is the principle of explosion: from a single false premise you can derive any conclusion, true or false. interesting to reflect on how this has shaped my thinking and orientation towards truth

https://twitter.com/qiaochuyuan/status/1527334796900245504?s=21&t=WRjsggNP7Xr2YJk02b8E6g

One undiscovered lie. That’s all it takes. From that seed you can justify anything you want.

The perceptive Twitter stranger explains the end result:

i do think though that the principle of explosion correctly points towards the consequences of holding a false belief sufficiently rigidly and globally. if there’s a thing you’ve decided is always good or always bad, and you’re committed to ignoring exceptions…

https://twitter.com/qiaochuyuan/status/1527336093216956449?s=21&t=WRjsggNP7Xr2YJk02b8E6g

…then the principle of explosion suggests, correctly imo, that there’s no upper limit to how insane your beliefs or your behavior can get, starting from that false, rigid, global premise. the more universally and rigidly you apply your pet falsehood the worse things get

https://twitter.com/qiaochuyuan/status/1527336095179935749?s=21&t=WRjsggNP7Xr2YJk02b8E6g

It’s a good thread. I think it’s hard sometimes to spot a lie you’re telling yourself in the present moment. Yes, there are tells. There is cringe, for instance, or intense desire. Both are emotions signaling danger. But they are routinely overridden by impulse. We want the end state.

It’s like certain legal opinions I have seen, where a desire to justify an end result in a transaction will contain, for the careful reader, a paragraph that can only be interpreted as “and then a moment of magic occurs.”

Everything before and after that paragraph sounds sober and sane. Even your grandmother would understand the logic. But that one pivot on a moment of magic takes the argument to a funhouse mirror conclusion.

But it’s easier to look backwards from an unexpected and crazy conclusion (you find yourself saying, in a whiny voice, “why did this happen to me?”) and lie you told yourself. If you’re rigorously self-honest.

Not easy. Easier.

Yeah. Really. That’s the secret they don’t teach you in school.

Just do stuff.

The secret to staying on The Path is . . . making your own path.