ZeV > Recent Status Updates

(On Napoleon) "Destiny was what he'd always believed in, it was how he justified his boldest, most ambitious ideas. It was also why he overreached time and time again, until his real destiny was divorce, exile, defeat, and infamy. A great destiny, Seneca reminds us, is great slavery."

"Paul Graham ... explicitly warns startups against having bold, sweeping visions early on." Start with a small bet and iteratively scale your ambitions as you go. Also "Keep your identity small." Make it about the work and the principles behind it--not about a glorious vision that makes a good headline.

"Crafting stories out of past events is a very human impulse. It's also dangerous and untrue. Writing our own narrative leads to arrogance. It turns our life into a story--and turns us into caricatures--while we still have to live it."

"We want so desperately to believe that those who have great empires *set out* to build one. Why? So we can indulge in the pleasurable planning of ours. So we can take full credit for the good that happens and the riches and respect that come our way. Narrative is when you look back at an improbable or unlikely path to your success and say: I knew it all along. Instead of: I hoped. I worked."

Bill Walsh (the SF 49's coach)'s Standard of Performance. "It would be a mistake to think this was about control. The Standard of Performance was about instilling excellence. These seemingly simple but exacting standards attered more than some grad vision or power trip. In his eyes, if the players take care of the details, "the score takes care of itself." The winning would happen."

"Myth becomes myth not in the living but in the retelling." -- David Maraniss

"Take the theory of disruption, which posits that at some point in time, every industry will be disrupted by some trend or innovation that, despite all the resources in the world, the incumbent interests will be incapable of responding to. Why is this? Why can't businesses change and adapt? ... A large part of it is because they lost the ability to learn. They stopped being students."

"Humility engenders learning because it beats back the arrogance that puts blinders on. It leaves you open for truths to reveal themselves. You don't stand in your own way. ... Do you know how you can tell when someone is truly humble? I believe there's one simple test: because they consistently observe and listen, the humble improve. They don't assume, 'I know the way.'" -- Wynton Marsalis

Genghis Khan (the Mongol)'s openness to learning and new ideas for its success.

"what is truly ambitious is to face life and proceed with quiet confidence in spite of the distractions. Let others grasp at crutches. It will be a lonely fight to be real, to say "I'm not going to take the edge off." To say, "I am going to be myself, the best version of that self. I am in this for the long game, no matter how brutal it might be." To *do*, not *be*.

"The best plan is only good intentions unless it *degenerates into work*." -- Peter Drucker

"Every time you sit down to work, remind yourself: I am delaying gratification by doing this, I am passing the marshmallow test. I am earning what my ambition burns for. I am making an investment in myself instead of in my ego. Give yourself a little credit for this choice, but not so much, because you've got to get back to the task at hand: practicing, working, improving."

"At the end, this isn't about deferring pride because you don't deserve it yet. It isn't "Don't boast about what hasn't happened yet." It is more directly "Don't boast." There's nothing in it for you."

"It's worth saying: just because you are quiet doesn't mean that you are without pride. Privately thinking you're better than others is still pride. It's still dangerous. "That on which you so pride yourself will be your ruin," Montaigne had inscribed on the beam of his ceiling. It's a quote from the playwright Menander, and it ends with "you who think yourself to be someone."

"The question to ask, when you feel pride, then, is this: What am I missing right now that a more humble person might see? What am I avoiding, or running from, with my bluster, franticness, and embellishments? It is far better to ask and answer these questions now, with the stakes still low, than it will be later."

"Pride takes a minor accomplishment and makes it feel like a major one. ... From the start, it drives a wedge between the possessor and reality, subtly and not so subtly changing her perceptions of what something is and what it isn't. It is these strong opinions, only loosely secured by fact or accomplishment, that send us careering toward delusion or worse."

"Pride blunts the very instrument we need to own in order to succeed: our mind. Our ability to learn, to adapt, to be flexible, to build relationships, all of this is dulled by pride. Most dangerously, this tends to happen either early in life or in the process--when we're flushed with beginner's conceit. Only later do you realize that that bump on the head was the least of what was risked."

"Christians believe that pride is a sin because it is a lie--it convinces people that they are better than they are, that they are better than God made them. Pride leads to arrogance and then away from humility and connections with their fellow man."

"What successful people do is curb such flights of fancy. They ignore the temptations that might make them feel important or skew their perspective. General George C. Marshall ... refused to keep a diary during World War II despite the requests of historians and friends. He worried that it would turn his quiet, reflective time into a sort of performance and self-deception."

"It is natural for any young, ambitious person ... to get excited and swept up by their thoughts and feelings. Especially in a world that tells us to keep and promote a "personal brand." We're required to tell stories in order to sell our work and our talents, and after enough time, forget where the line is that separates our fictions from reality. ... Ultimately this disability will paralyze us."

"Out of the left speaker will be the rap songs of self-loathing, the lists of all the things one doesn't do well, of all the mistakes one has made today and over an entire lifetime, the doubt, the assertion that everything that one touches turns to shit, that one doesn't do relationships well, that one is in every way a fraud, incapable of selfless love, that one had no talent or insight, ..." -- Anne Lamott

"If you are not careful, station KFKD (K-Fucked) will play in your head twenty-four hours a day, nonstop, in stereo. out of the right speaker in your inner ear will come the endless stream of self-aggrandizement, the recitation of one's specialness, of how much more open and gifted and brilliant and knowing and misunderstood and humble one is." (con't)

"A person who thinks all the time has nothing to think about except thoughts, so he loses touch with reality and lives in a world of illusions." -- Alan Watts

"you're not able to change the system until *after* you've made it. In the meantime, you'll have to find some way to make it suit your purposes--even if those purposes are just extra time to develop properly, to learn from others on their dime, to build your base and establish yourself."

"Our own path, whatever we aspire to, will in some ways be defined by the amount of nonsense we are willing to deal with. Our humiliations will pale in comparison to Robinson's, but it will still be hard. It will still be tough to keep our self-control."

Canvas strategy:

- Maybe it's coming up with ideas to hand over to your boss.
- Find people, thinkers, up-and-comers to introduce them to each other. Cross wires to create new sparks.
- Find what nobody else wants to do and do it.
- Find inefficiencies and waste and redundancies, Identify leaks and patches to free up resources for new areas.
- Produce more than everyone else and give your ideas away.

"Greatness comes from humble beginnings; it comes from grunt work. It means you're the least important person in the room--until you change that with results."

"Make other people look good and you will do well. ... It's about providing the support so that others can *be* good. The better wording for the advice is this: Find canvases for other people to pain on. Be an *anteambulo* Clear the path for the people above you and you will eventually create a path for yourself."

"Passion is form over function. Purpose is function, function, function. ... It'd be far better if you were intimidated by what lies ahead--humbled by its magnitude and determined to see it through regardless. Leave passion for the amateurs. Make it about what you feel you *must* do and say, not what you care about and with to be."