An online commonplace book
Certainly read the whole piece, but here is the print-it-out-and-hang-it-above-your-monitor version:
Be audacious.
Do grunt work.
Do the boring things.
Learn undefined skills.
Work hard.
Bring a sense of urgency & move fast.
Improve things.
Ask your naive questions.
Simplify things.
Follow up.
Show up during the hard times.
Figure out the first step.
Finish things.
No excuses then?
Self Criticism
Curiosity
Concentration
Perseverance
to further appreciate the power of self-criticism, consider where lies the grave of that very “ungifted” undergraduate, Charles Darwin. It is in Westminster Abbey, right next to the headstone of Isaac Newton, perhaps the most gifted student who ever lived, honored on that headstone in eight Latin words constituting the most eloquent praise in all graveyard print: “Hic depositum est, quod mortal fuit Isaaci Newtoni” — “Here lies that which was mortal of Isaac Newton.
– Charlie Munger
Munger, Charles T.. Poor Charlie’s Almanack: The Essential Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger. N.p., Stripe Matter Incorporated. pp176
Most people who are talented or smart are scared of doing things. I’m not sure why that is, but it’s more often than not the case. The ability to do scary things on their behalf is extremely powerful, both in terms of advancing the goal/project and also getting them to better utilize their talents.
– Adaobi
It’s early 2024, but Adaobi’s piece How to do things if you’re not that smart and don’t have any talent is my favorite on-line piece of the year.
Audacious: recklessly daring. – origin, from L. audax, audac- ‘bold’
I can’t help but think of this in terms of football, but I find being audacious helps build confidence. Having an approach of I’m going to take this defender on, regardless of the result, can help steady the nerves.
Applicable elsewhere I’m sure.
In this age, the mere example of nonconformity, the mere refusal to bend the knee to custom, is itself a service. Precisely because the tyranny of opinion is such as to make eccentricity a reproach, it is desirable, in order to break through that tyranny, that people should be eccentric. Eccentricity has always abounded when and where strength of character has abounded; and the amount of eccentricity in a society has generally been proportional to the amount of genius, mental vigour, and moral courage which it contained. That so few now dare to be eccentric, marks the chief danger of the time.
– John Stuart Mill
Had to capture this one…
I tell people who want to write they should try to write every single day without exception. They don’t all like hearing that. Obviously, it’s not how every writer works, but it’s a good initial test to see whether you really want to be a writer.
– Tyler Cowen
This a good test of how badly one wants to write. Also, I’d take this as you don’t have to publish said writing.
You can keep it to yourself. Remember writing is a powerful method of thinking.
This from Tyler’s latest conversation with Rebecca F. Kuang:
The trunk of an elephant might feel cool to the touch. Not what one expects, perhaps, from 200 pounds of writhing muscle, strong enough to uproot a tree, which tapers down to two “fingers,” giving it enough delicacy to detect the ripest berry on a shrub, and pluck it. Feeling an elephant’s trunk draws you to her other great feature: melancholic eyes that are veiled by long and dusty lashes. This combination of might with the suggestion of serene contemplation is surely the reason that elephants seem to embody a special state of grace.
I appreciate this description of an elephant’s trunk. It’s a surprising, captivating way to open a letter. Note the focus, the detail. Wang could have described the entire elephant, but instead he honed in on one appendage.
Good writing is specific.
Also, he recounts this admonition about learning he wrote in his 2017 letter.
“Knowledge can compound. I’d like for us to think more about how to accelerate the growth of learning. The traditional method of reading more books and trying to improve professionally are good starts, but it’s not enough to stop there. One can learn more by traveling to new places, being social in different ways, reading new types of books, changing jobs or professions, moving to a new place, by doing better and by doing more.”
– Dan Wang
Learning can compound.
Dan’s letters are beyond bookmarking. They are worth printing out and reading in hand.
Skip to the full 2023 letter below:
Fate guides the willing; it drags the unwilling behind it.
Ducunt volentem fata, nolentem trahunt. (letters, CVII)
– Seneca
If reading Meditations seems like a slog, maybe Sentences from Seneca would be more accessible.
It’s pamphlet sized, with some of Seneca’s most revered tweets, sentences.
A good entry point if you’re stoic shy.
If you do everything, you’ll win.
This from Dwarkesh Patel’s podcast/blog post: Lessons from The Years of Lyndon Johnson by Robert Caro
It describes a harrowing, gut twisting, loss-of-innocence-preview of how power really works via Patel’s journey reading Robert Caro’s Lyndon Johnson biographies.
Patel summarizes three types of extraordinary attempts one can attempt:
1. In the first, a person perfectly executes on the 20% of things which will produce 80% of results.
2. In the second, a person extends that same care and diligence to the remaining 80% of tasks, because every marginal drop of result, no matter how diminishing, is worth the squeeze.
3. And the third is exemplified by Lyndon Johnson, where a person not only does every single thing that might reasonably help his odds, but even the unreasonable – he accepts the assignment which has only the remotest possibility to make the difference, and he completes it with the same intensity and attention as the task which will make all the difference. If you do everything, you’ll win.3
– Dwarkesh Patel
There’s much to despise about Johnson, but also something to admire: work ethic. How often do we take the first no, and give up?
Cheating. Bribing. Threatening. Leave those on the back doormat. Do not take the first no and cower. Do ask yourself, am I doing everything I can? Answer honestly.
Do persist.
Lastly a cool substack feature for capturing a quote:
Most of all, at Harvard, John Adams learned to be a child of the Enlightenment. What does that mean?
Thomas E. Ricks
Many books are filled with answers. I like the ones that ask questions.
Ricks, Thomas E.. First Principles: What America’s Founders Learned from the Greeks and Romans and How That Shaped Our Country. United States, HarperCollins, 2020. pp55
Floodlights and Goalposts 