Don’t be the best. Be the only.
Kevin Kelly
Kelly, Kevin. Excellent Advice for Living: Wisdom I Wish I’d Known Earlier. United Kingdom, Penguin Publishing Group, 2023.
h/t – David Perell’s podcast below:
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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 CowenThis 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:
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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 WangLearning can compound.
Dan’s letters are beyond bookmarking. They are worth printing out and reading in hand.
Skip to the full 2023 letter below:
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Fate guides the willing; it drags the unwilling behind it.
Ducunt volentem fata, nolentem trahunt. (letters, CVII)
– SenecaIf 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.
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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 PatelThere’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:
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Every great movement in history has been prepared for and partly carried out through preaching.
Martin Luther King Jr.It’s easy to dismiss this idea, but the text book Dr. King annotated from lists the following movements:
– The Christian church
– The Crusades
– The abolition of slavery
– The reformation
– The labor movement
– Marxian Communism
Read the insightful post in full here
Hess, J. (2024, January 22). Martin Luther King Jr.’s Organizational Strategies and Tactics. [Blog post]. Jillian Hess Blog. Retrieved from https://jillianhess.substack.com/p/martin-luther-king-jrs-organizational
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Adams loved the speeches of Cicero, reading them aloud to himself at night. He wrote in his diary that
The Sweetness and Grandeur of his sounds, and the Harmony of his Numbers give Pleasure enough to reward the Reading of if one understood none of his meaning. Besides I find it, a noble Exercise. It exercises my Lungs, raises my Spirits, opens my Porr, quickens the Circulations, and so contributes much to Health.
Why in Adams’s diary did he capitalize seemingly random words?
What piece of literature, or reading, do you have that raises your spirits like Cicero’s speeches did Adams?
If none come to mind, find one.
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. pp50
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Most of all, at Harvard, John Adams learned to be a child of the Enlightenment. What does that mean?
Thomas E. RicksMany 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
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This subterranean fire has its altar in each man’s breast, for in the coldest day, and on the bleakest hill, the traveller cherishes a warmer fire within the folds of his cloak than is kindled on any hearth. A healthy man, indeed, is the complement of the seasons.
Henry D. ThoreauThoreau, Henry D.. Essays: A Fully Annotated Edition. Italy, Yale University Press, 2013.
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Spend each day trying to be a little wiser than you were when you woke up. Discharge your duties faithfully and well. Step by step you get ahead, but not necessarily in fast spurts. But you build discipline by preparing for fast spurts. Slug it out one inch at a time, day by day, and at the end of the day—if you live long enough—like most people, you will get out of life what you deserve.
Life and its various passages can be hard, brutally hard. The three things I have found helpful in coping with its challenges are:
Have low expectations
Have a sense of humor
Surround yourself with the love of friends and family.
Above all, live with change and adapt to it. If the world didn’t change, I’d still have a 12 handicap.
Charlie Munger
Floodlights and Goalposts 