𪴠Essays that COULD change your life
niche, dense, and worth every minute..
Most of the best things youâll ever read, youâll never find. The algorithm isnât optimized for things that change how you think.
Some of these are niche, youâd need to dig to find them organically. So whether youâre unsure what to do with your life or just need something to read on the train home - Iâve got you.
Some essays you read. Some essays read you.
These are the second kind.
Remarkable doesnât mean remarkable to you. It means remarkable to me. Am I going to make a remark about it? If not, then youâre average, and average is for losers.
Being noticed is not the same as being remarkable. Running down the street naked will get you noticed, but it wonât accomplish much. Itâs easy to pull off a stunt, but not useful.
When you can't decide which path to take, it's almost always due to ignorance. In fact you're usually suffering from three kinds simultaneously: you don't know what makes you happy, what the various kinds of work are really like, or how well you could do them.
What if you're not sure what you want? What if you're attracted to the idea of making money and more attracted to some kinds of work than others, but neither attraction predominates? How do you break ties?
Most people set a surface-level goal, hype themselves up to remain disciplined for the first few weeks, then go back to their old ways without much struggle, because they were trying to build a great life on a rotting foundation.
The bodybuilder has to grind to eat unhealthily. The CEO has to force themself to lie in bed past their alarm clock, and they hate every second of it.
It turns out that when I graduated from high school, I had already used up 93% of my in-person parent time. Iâm now enjoying the last 5% of that time. Weâre in the tail end.
When you look at that reality, you realize that despite not being at the end of your life, you may very well be nearing the end of your time with some of the most important people in your life.
If you lived in any of the 2 million small towns on Earth you might be the only one in your town to crave death metal music, or get turned on by whispering, or want a left-handed fishing reel. Before the web youâd never be able to satisfy that desire.
Whatever your interests as a creator are, your 1,000 true fans are one click from you. There is nothing â no product, no idea, no desire â without a fan base on the internet.
Every event you get invited to. Every request to start a new project. If youâre not saying âHELL YEAH!â about it, say no.
Weâre all busy. Weâve all taken on too much. Saying yes to less is the way out.
Learning how to think really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think. It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience.
Because if you cannot exercise this kind of choice in adult life, you will be totally hosed.
If you join a company where someone else is already making those decisions well, youâll never get the type of practice that you need in order to build your own models and heuristics.
Youâll end up with a good, but not perfect, model of âwhat would my boss do?â â a model that can make the 95% of easy decisions, but not the 5% of hard ones that add the most value.
Most people are primarily externally driven; they do what they do because they want to impress other people.
The most successful people I know are primarily internally driven; they do what they do to impress themselves and because they feel compelled to make something happen in the world.
If you do not work on an important problem, itâs unlikely youâll do important work. Itâs perfectly obvious.
The average scientist, so far as I can make out, spends almost all his time working on problems which he believes will not be important and he also doesnât believe that they will lead to important problems.
What we have now are the greatest technocrats the world has ever seen, people who have been trained to be incredibly good at one specific thing, but who have no interest in anything beyond their area of expertise. What we donât have are leaders.
What we donât have, in other words, are thinkers. People who can think for themselves. People who can formulate a new direction.
Do new things often. Not only does doing new things seem to slow down the perception of time, increase happiness, and keep life interesting, but it seems to prevent people from calcifying in the ways that they think.
Aim to do something big, new, and risky every year in your personal and professional life.
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