In the middle of the desert you can say anything you want
Very well summarized by the title :)
These are excellent, pasting them here in case the apocalypse happens:
It’s my birthday. I’m 68. I feel like pulling up a rocking chair and
dispensing advice to the young ‘uns. Here are 68 pithy bits of
unsolicited advice which I offer as my birthday present to all of
you.
• Learn how to learn from those you disagree with, or even offend you.
See if you can find the truth in what they believe.
• Being enthusiastic is worth 25 IQ points.
• Always demand a deadline. A deadline weeds out the extraneous and the
ordinary. It prevents you from trying to make it perfect, so you have to
make it different. Different is better.
• Don’t be afraid to ask a question that may sound stupid because 99%
of the time everyone else is thinking of the same question and is too
embarrassed to ask it.
• Being able to listen well is a superpower. While listening to someone
you love keep asking them “Is there more?”, until there is no more.
• A worthy goal for a year is to learn enough about a subject so that
you can’t believe how ignorant you were a year earlier.
• Gratitude will unlock all other virtues and is something you can get
better at.
• Treating a person to a meal never fails, and is so easy to do. It’s
powerful with old friends and a great way to make new friends.
• Don’t trust all-purpose glue.
• Reading to your children regularly will bond you together and
kickstart their imaginations.
• Never use a credit card for credit. The only kind of credit, or debt,
that is acceptable is debt to acquire something whose exchange value is
extremely likely to increase, like in a home. The exchange value of most
things diminishes or vanishes the moment you purchase them. Don’t be in
debt to losers.
• Pros are just amateurs who know how to gracefully recover from their
mistakes.
• Extraordinary claims should require extraordinary evidence to be
believed.
• Don’t be the smartest person in the room. Hangout with, and learn
from, people smarter than yourself. Even better, find smart people who
will disagree with you.
• Rule of 3 in conversation. To get to the real reason, ask a person to
go deeper than what they just said. Then again, and once more. The third
time’s answer is close to the truth.
• Don’t be the best. Be the only.
• Everyone is shy. Other people are waiting for you to introduce
yourself to them, they are waiting for you to send them an email, they
are waiting for you to ask them on a date. Go ahead.
• Don’t take it personally when someone turns you down. Assume they are
like you: busy, occupied, distracted. Try again later. It’s amazing how
often a second try works.
• The purpose of a habit is to remove that action from
self-negotiation. You no longer expend energy deciding whether to do it.
You just do it. Good habits can range from telling the truth, to
flossing.
• Promptness is a sign of respect.
• When you are young spend at least 6 months to one year living as poor
as you can, owning as little as you possibly can, eating beans and rice
in a tiny room or tent, to experience what your “worst” lifestyle might
be. That way any time you have to risk something in the future you won’t
be afraid of the worst case scenario.
• Trust me: There is no “them”.
• The more you are interested in others, the more interesting they find
you. To be interesting, be interested.
• Optimize your generosity. No one on their deathbed has ever regretted
giving too much away.
• To make something good, just do it. To make something great, just
re-do it, re-do it, re-do it. The secret to making fine things is in
remaking them.
• The Golden Rule will never fail you. It is the foundation of all
other virtues.
• If you are looking for something in your house, and you finally find
it, when you’re done with it, don’t put it back where you found it. Put
it back where you first looked for it.
• Saving money and investing money are both good habits. Small amounts
of money invested regularly for many decades without deliberation is one
path to wealth.
• To make mistakes is human. To own your mistakes is divine. Nothing
elevates a person higher than quickly admitting and taking personal
responsibility for the mistakes you make and then fixing them fairly. If
you mess up, fess up. It’s astounding how powerful this ownership is.
• Never get involved in a land war in Asia.
• You can obsess about serving your customers/audience/clients, or you
can obsess about beating the competition. Both work, but of the two,
obsessing about your customers will take you further.
• Show up. Keep showing up. Somebody successful said: 99% of success is
just showing up.
• Separate the processes of creation from improving. You can’t write
and edit, or sculpt and polish, or make and analyze at the same time. If
you do, the editor stops the creator. While you invent, don’t select.
While you sketch, don’t inspect. While you write the first draft, don’t
reflect. At the start, the creator mind must be unleashed from
judgement.
• If you are not falling down occasionally, you are just coasting.
• Perhaps the most counter-intuitive truth of the universe is that the
more you give to others, the more you’ll get. Understanding this is the
beginning of wisdom.
• Friends are better than money. Almost anything money can do, friends
can do better. In so many ways a friend with a boat is better than
owning a boat.
• This is true: It’s hard to cheat an honest man.
• When an object is lost, 95% of the time it is hiding within arm’s
reach of where it was last seen. Search in all possible locations in
that radius and you’ll find it.
• You are what you do. Not what you say, not what you believe, not how
you vote, but what you spend your time on.
• If you lose or forget to bring a cable, adapter or charger, check
with your hotel. Most hotels now have a drawer full of cables, adapters
and chargers others have left behind, and probably have the one you are
missing. You can often claim it after borrowing it.
• Hatred is a curse that does not affect the hated. It only poisons the
hater. Release a grudge as if it was a poison.
• There is no limit on better. Talent is distributed unfairly, but
there is no limit on how much we can improve what we start with.
• Be prepared: When you are 90% done any large project (a house, a
film, an event, an app) the rest of the myriad details will take a
second 90% to complete.
• When you die you take absolutely nothing with you except your
reputation.
• Before you are old, attend as many funerals as you can bear, and
listen. Nobody talks about the departed’s achievements. The only thing
people will remember is what kind of person you were while you were
achieving.
• For every dollar you spend purchasing something substantial, expect
to pay a dollar in repairs, maintenance, or disposal by the end of its
life.
•Anything real begins with the fiction of what could be. Imagination is
therefore the most potent force in the universe, and a skill you can get
better at. It’s the one skill in life that benefits from ignoring what
everyone else knows.
• When crisis and disaster strike, don’t waste them. No problems, no
progress.
• On vacation go to the most remote place on your itinerary first,
bypassing the cities. You’ll maximize the shock of otherness in the
remote, and then later you’ll welcome the familiar comforts of a city on
the way back.
• When you get an invitation to do something in the future, ask
yourself: would you accept this if it was scheduled for tomorrow? Not
too many promises will pass that immediacy filter.
• Don’t say anything about someone in email you would not be
comfortable saying to them directly, because eventually they will read
it.
• If you desperately need a job, you are just another problem for a
boss; if you can solve many of the problems the boss has right now, you
are hired. To be hired, think like your boss.
• Art is in what you leave out.
• Acquiring things will rarely bring you deep satisfaction. But
acquiring experiences will.
• Rule of 7 in research. You can find out anything if you are willing
to go seven levels. If the first source you ask doesn’t know, ask them
who you should ask next, and so on down the line. If you are willing to
go to the 7th source, you’ll almost always get your answer.
• How to apologize: Quickly, specifically, sincerely.
• Don’t ever respond to a solicitation or a proposal on the phone. The
urgency is a disguise.
• When someone is nasty, rude, hateful, or mean with you, pretend they
have a disease. That makes it easier to have empathy toward them which
can soften the conflict.
• Eliminating clutter makes room for your true treasures.
• You really don’t want to be famous. Read the biography of any famous
person.
• Experience is overrated. When hiring, hire for aptitude, train for
skills. Most really amazing or great things are done by people doing
them for the first time.
• A vacation + a disaster = an adventure.
• Buying tools: Start by buying the absolute cheapest tools you can
find. Upgrade the ones you use a lot. If you wind up using some tool for
a job, buy the very best you can afford.
• Learn how to take a 20-minute power nap without embarrassment.
• Following your bliss is a recipe for paralysis if you don’t know what
you are passionate about. A better motto for most youth is “master
something, anything”. Through mastery of one thing, you can drift
towards extensions of that mastery that bring you more joy, and
eventually discover where your bliss is.
• I’m positive that in 100 years much of what I take to be true today
will be proved to be wrong, maybe even embarrassingly wrong, and I try
really hard to identify what it is that I am wrong about today.
• Over the long term, the future is decided by optimists. To be an
optimist you don’t have to ignore all the many problems we create; you
just have to imagine improving our capacity to solve problems.
• The universe is conspiring behind your back to make you a success.
This will be much easier to do if you embrace this pronoia.
A classic :)
Table of Contents
1. Don’t forget to take care of yourself
2. If necessary, make mental health your top priority
3. Deal with your physical health (not forgetting your back!)
4. Apply scientific research into happiness
5. Improve your basic social skills
6. Surround yourself with great people
7. Consider changing where you live
8. Use these tips to save more money
9. Try out this list of ways to become more productive
10. Learn how to learn
11. Be strategic about how to perform better in your job
12. Use research into decision-making to think better
13. Consider teaching yourself these other useful work skills
14. Take these steps to master a field and make creative
contributions
15. Work on becoming a better person
How to be successful: the compounding benefits of investing in
yourself
TL;DR basics -> science -> extraversion -> either hubs or Thailand -> actual productivity
Short story, The Thing written from the POV of The Thing itself, loved it.
List of examples of various ways communication can go wrong :)
Yoruba culture of Western Nigeria, girls are required to kneel down and bow while boys are required to prostrate fully on the ground while greeting elders.
Very nice questions to ask oneself from time to time. Pasting here for completeness:
Love
What can I do to find my soul mate?
How will I know when I’ve found my soul mate?
Which of my personality traits are most likely to attract love?
What obstacles must I overcome to find love?
How can I strengthen my relationship with the one I love?
Career
Where am I likely to be in 10 years time?
What is preventing me achieving my full career potential?
What can I do to progress my career?
What are my key career weaknesses?
Which skills should I use to progress my career?
Friendship
How can I make more friends?
How can I nurture my friendships?
What can I do to ensure my friendships last a lifetime?
What should I do if I want to end a toxic friendship without causing an
argument?
How can I be a better friend?
Wealth
What can I do to overcome financial struggles?
How can I create a life of wealth?
Which of my personality traits should I use to become wealthy?
Which skills should I develop to make more money?
What’s standing in my way and preventing me from building wealth?
Health
What should I be doing to improve my overall health?
How can I create a life of health and happiness?
How can I boost my energy levels?
What is standing in my way of optimum health?
How can I find the courage to cope with a serious health issue?
Grief
What can I do to overcome grief?
How is my loved one doing?
If they could pass a message to me, what would they say?
How can I make the person I lost proud?
How can I find happiness again and achieve a life of joy?
People perform better on tests of delayed free recall if learning is followed immediately by a short wakeful rest than by a short period of sensory stimulation.
Testing the superstition that movies with question marks in their titles do worse on the IMDB dataset. Hollywood Superstitions vs. Data Science: Post-mortem • Zachary and Andrew Burchill is the more technical writeup.
After a rough initial period, the store proved to be very successful. Warren’s goods were much cheaper than competitors', though he maintained that he was not trying to put other stores out of business. Another store in the neighborhood converted to Warren’s methods. The fact that prices for goods rose the more time a customer spent with Warren resulted in very efficient transactions. Warren said that he was doing more business in one hour than normal businesses do in one day, leading him to close shop part of the day to rest.
[..]
Nonetheless, at the time it was the most popular mercantile institution in Cincinnati
See also Time-based currency - Wikipedia
One of the more creative I’ve seen, but still extremely hard to navigate.
But these are just conveniences of language, and they’re both incomplete pictures. An electron is neither a wave nor a particle. An electron is an electron.
Marx believed that religion had certain practical functions in society that were similar to the function of opium in a sick or injured person: it reduced people’s immediate suffering and provided them with pleasant illusions which gave them the strength to carry on. Marx also saw religion as harmful, as it prevents people from seeing the class structure and oppression around them, thus religion can prevent the necessary revolution.