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June 29 - July 23, 2020
“All those artists and writers who bemoan how hard the work is, and oh, how tedious the creative process, and oh, what a tortured genius they are. Don’t buy into it. . . . As if difficulty and struggle and torture somehow confer seriousness upon your chosen work. Doing great work simply because you love it, sounds, in our culture, somehow flimsy, and that’s a failing of our culture, not of the choice of work that artists make.”
“Thoreau writes, ‘The really efficient laborer will be found not to crowd his day with work, but will saunter to his task surrounded by a wide halo of ease and leisure. There will be a wide margin for relaxation to his day. He is only earnest to secure the kernels of time, and does not exaggerate the value of the husk.’ Think of what a beautiful metaphor this is for not mistaking the husk—the outer accoutrements of productivity like busyness, or a full calendar, or a clever auto-responder—not mistaking those for the kernel, the core and substance of the actual work produced. And he then says,
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“Ours is a culture where we wear our ability to get by on very little sleep as
a kind of badge of honor that symbolizes work ethic, or toughness, or some other virtue—but really, it’s a total profound failure...
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“This should be a cardinal rule of the Internet (and of being human): If you don’t have the patience to read something, don’t have the hubris to comment on it.”
“When Kurt Vonnegut wrote ‘Write to please just one person,’ what he was really saying was write for yourself. Don’t try to please anyone but yourself. . . . The second you start doing it for an audience, you’ve lost the long game because creating something that is rewarding and sustainable over the long run requires, most of all, keeping yourself excited about it. . . . Trying to predict what [an audience will] be interested in and kind of pretzeling yourself to fit those expectations, you soon begin to begrudge it and become embittered—and it begins to show in the work. It always, always
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Out of more than 4,600 articles on Brain Pickings, what are Maria’s starting recommendations? “The Shortness of Life: Seneca on Busyness and the Art of Living Wide Rather Than Living Long” “How to Find Your Purpose and Do What You Love” “9 Learnings from 9 Years of Brain Pickings” Anything about Alan Watts: “Alan Watts has changed my life. I’ve written about him quite a bit.”
* What is the worst advice you see or hear given in your trade or area of expertise? “‘Follow your dreams.’ It’s impossible to do without self-knowledge, which takes years. You discover your ‘dream’ (or sense of purpose) in the very act of walking the path, which is guided by equal parts choice and chance.”
“The culture of news is a culture without nuance.”
“My mantra is a very simple one, and that’s ‘Discipline equals freedom.’”
“Two Is One and One Is None.” This is a common expression among SEALs. Jocko explains: “It just means, ‘Have a backup.’” If you have two of something, you will break or lose one and end up with one remaining; if you have one, you will break or lose it and be screwed. One of my favorite Franz Kafka quotes is related: “Better to have, and not need, than to need, and not have.” Where can you eliminate “single points of failure” in your life or business? Jocko adds, “And don’t just have backup gear—have a backup plan to handle likely contingencies.”
“I think that in order to truly experience the light and the bright, you have to see the darkness. I think if you shield yourself from the darkness, you’ll not appreciate—and fully understand—the beauty of life.”
“If you want to be tougher mentally, it is simple: Be tougher. Don’t meditate on it.”
“The Commodore would say: ‘Jocko, what do you need?’ and I would say, ‘We’re good, sir.’ The implication is obvious: If I have problems, I’m going to handle them. I’m going to take care of them, and I’m not going to complain. I took extreme ownership of my world. The way that worked was twofold. When I did need something, it was something significant, it was something real. And when I told the Commodore, ‘Hey, boss, we need this right here,’ I would get it almost instantaneously because he knew that I really, truly needed it. “You can’t blame your boss for not giving you the support you need.
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“I’m up and getting after it by 4:45. I like to have that psychological win over the enemy. For me, when I wake up in the morning—and I don’t know why—I’m thinking about the enemy and what they’re doing.
When I wake up in the morning, I’m thinking to myself: What can I do to be ready for that moment, which is coming? That propels me out of bed.”
What Makes a Good Commander? “The immediate answer that comes to mind is ‘humility.’ Because you’ve got to be humble, and you’ve got to be coachable. . . .
A good leader would come back and say [something like one of the following], ‘I lost it, I didn’t control it. I didn’t do a good job. I didn’t see what was happening. I got too absorbed in this little tiny tactical situation that was right in front of me.’ Either they’d make those criticisms about themselves, or they’d ask, ‘What did I do wrong?’ And when you told them, they’d nod their head, pull out their notebook, and take notes. That right there, that’s a guy who’s going to make it, who’s going to get it right. The arrogant guys, who lacked humility, they couldn’t take criticism from
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that’s what you need to do: step back and observe.’ I realized that detaching yourself from the situation, so you can see what’s happening, is absolutely critical.
“It sounds horrible, but it’s almost like, sometimes, I’m not a participant in my own life. I’m an observer of that guy who’s doing it. So, if I’m having a conversation with you and we’re trying to discuss a point, I’m watching and saying [to myself], ‘Wait, am I being too emotional right now? Wait a second, look at him. What is his reaction?’ Because I’m not reading you correctly if I’m seeing you through my own emotion or ego. I can’t really see what you’re thinking if I’m emotional. But if I step out of that, now I can see the real you and assess if you are getting angry, or if your ego is
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“The special forces guys were the opposite [of those in the non-elite divisions]. As soon as they heard they were about to experience an overwhelming attack, their cortisol levels dropped. They got super calm. The reason their cortisol levels dropped was because it was stressful for them to wait for the unknown, but as soon as they knew they were going to be attacked, they had a plan of action. They started filling sandbags. They started cleaning their rifles. They started stockpiling their ammo, getting the plasma bags ready, whatever they do before an attack. All of that busyness gave them a
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“That feeling of ‘us,’ it buffers many people from their psychological demons.”
—Sebastian discussing why unifying disasters and crisis, like 9/11 or the World War II Blitz bombings on London, often results in dramatic decreases in suicide, violent crime, mental illness symptoms, etc.
“You guys are programmed to succeed. The hardest thing you’re ever going to do in your life is fail at something, and if you don’t start failing at things, you will not live a full life. You’ll be living a cautious life on a path that you know is pretty much guaranteed to more or less work. That’s not getting the most out of this amazing world we live in. You have to do the hardest thing that you have not been prepared for in this school or any school: You have to be prepared to fail. That’s how you’re going to expand yourself and grow. As you work through that process of failure and learning,
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* What advice would you give your younger self? “I would say to myself, ‘The public is not a threat.’ When you realize that we all need each other, and that we can all learn from each other, your stage fright goes away.”
* What would your 70-year-old self advise your current self? “The world is this continually unfolding set of possibilities and opportunities, and the tricky thing about life is, on the one hand having the courage to enter into things that are unfamiliar, but also having the wisdom to stop exploring when you’ve found something worth sticking around for. That is true of a place, of a person, of a vocation. Balancing those two things—the courage of exploring and the commitment to staying—and getting the ratio right is very hard. I think my 7...
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Preface Being wise includes knowing how to defend yourself or disappear when needed. Step one is becoming aware of the threats.
This is why I use Uber or pseudonyms for any car service pickups around the world. By using a made-up name for your car reservation, if you see a placard with your real name on it, you know it’s a set-up. If you become successful—or simply appear successful on the Internet—and travel a lot overseas, this is not paranoia.
“The future is already here—it’s just unevenly distributed.”—William Gibson
To get in the zone, Samy likes to code to AudioMolly.com, The Glitch Mob, and Infected Mushroom. Based on his recommendation, I found some of my current favorites—Pegboard Nerds (“Blackout”) and David Starfire (Karuna)—on AudioMolly.
Use BitLocker on Windows or FileVault on OS X. Your data will be encrypted when the machine is off or suspended. Encrypt your hard drive using “full disk encryption” in order to keep your confidential data protected in case your machine is ever lost or stolen, preventing others from extracting data from your device without the password.
A great amount of software will make outbound connections to the Internet, typically for legitimate purposes, though not necessarily. If you wish to prevent or at least learn when an application is doing this, you can use NetLimiter on Windows or Little Snitch on OS X to detect and decide to allow or block when a specific application is connecting out, and learn where it’s connecting to. You can use Wireshark for further analysis, mentioned below. You can use BlockBlock on OS X, which notifies you if a program is trying to install itself to run upon startup, even when it’s hiding itself in a
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Tor is a free, cross-platform software that allows you to browse the Internet anonymously and helps you defend against network surveillance. It will help change your IP address each time you
use it as well as encrypt your network communication, however the last “hop” in the chain of Tor will always be able to see your unencrypted traffic, though [it will] not be able to detect your IP address. I would trust Tor over any VPN service as no Tor node knows both your IP and what you’re accessing, unlike a VPN, which could be compelled to share that data.
In Chrome (similar tools exist in Firefox and Safari), you can go to View → Developer → Developer Tools, click on the Network tab, refresh the page, and see all content going across. You can then right-click any file, such as an image that the site wouldn’t otherwise let you download, and click Copy Link Address to get the direct URL. The Elements tab is also particularly useful. [TF: You can also use this to easily copy and paste good quotes that some sites like to prevent you from copy and pasting.]
“The Purpose of Life Is a Life of Purpose.” This is Stan’s answer to “If you could put a billboard anywhere and write anything on it, what would it say?” It is a quote from Robert Byrne.
As we describe it, sometimes a plan can end up being a string of miracles, and that’s not a real solid plan. So red teaming is: You take people who aren’t wedded to the plan and [ask them,] ‘How would you disrupt this plan or how would you defeat this plan?’ If you have a very thoughtful red team, you’ll produce stunning results.”
Who do you think of when you hear the word “successful”? CHRIS: “I’ll answer it this way, and I don’t know if this gets to the exact point. I had a great mentor early on in my career give me advice that I’ve heeded until now, which is that you should have a running list of three people that you’re always watching: someone senior to you that you want to emulate, a peer who you think is better at the job than you are and who you respect, and someone subordinate who’s doing the job you did—one, two, or three years ago—better than you did it. If you just have those three individuals that you’re
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Three Practices for Mental Toughness The following was in response to “What are three tests or practices from the military that civilians could use to help develop mental toughness?”: STAN: “The first is to push yourself harder than you believe you’re capable of. You’ll find new depth inside yourself. The second is to put yourself in groups who share difficulties,
discomfort. We used to call it ‘shared privation.’ You’ll find that when you have been through that kind of difficult environment, that you feel more strongly about that which you’re committed to. And finally, create some fear and make individuals overcome it.”
“You can tell the true character of a man by how his dog and his kids react to him.”
Ultimately, it was the simple that worked. He didn’t need sophisticated answers. They were right in front of him the whole time. What advice are you ignoring because you think it’s trite or clichéd? Can you mine it for any testable action?
‘Work will work when nothing else will work.’”
Shay explained to me how posting daily videos or “vlogging” (video + blogging) was cheap therapy: “Physiologically, I could feel my body was different. . . . Just by sitting up straight, putting a smile on my face, and faking it until you make it, you actually do feel better. There’s real power in this.”
It’s about the relationship you build, not the production quality.
“Follow Your Passion” Is Terrible Advice “I think it misconstrues the nature of finding a satisfying career and satisfying job, where the biggest predictor of job satisfaction is mentally engaging work. It’s the nature of the job itself. It’s not got that much to do with you. . . . It’s whether the job provides a lot of variety, gives you good feedback, allows you to exercise autonomy, contributes to the wider world—Is it actually meaningful? Is it making the world better?—and also, whether it allows you to exercise a skill that you’ve developed.”
Advice to your 20-year-old self? “One is emphasizing that you have 80,000 working hours in the course of your life. It’s incredibly important to work out how best to spend them, and what you’re doing at the moment—20-year-old Will—is just kind of drifting and thinking. [You’re] not spending very much time thinking about this kind of macro optimization. You might be thinking about ‘How can
I do my coursework as well as possible?’ and micro optimization, but not really thinking about ‘What are actually my ultimate goals in life, and how can I optimize toward them?’
In A Christmas Carol, Scrooge is visited by the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future. In the Dickens Process, you’re forced to examine limiting beliefs—say, your top two or three handicapping beliefs—across each tense. Tony guides you through each in depth, and I recall answering and visualizing variations of:
What has each belief cost you in the past, and what has it cost people you’ve loved in the past? What have you lost because of this belief? See it, hear it, feel it. What is each costing you and people you care about in the present? See it, hear it, feel it. What will each cost you and people you care about 1, 3, 5, and 10 years from now? See it, hear it, feel it.
