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"Knowledge speaks, but wisdom listens."
-- Jimi Hendrix
Speak less and listen more.
"People don’t listen, they just wait for their turn to talk."
-- Chuck Palahniuk
"Know how to listen and you will profit even from those who talk badly."
-- Plutarch
"A fool is known by his speech, and a wise man by silence."
-- Pythagoras
"A silent man is the best one to listen to." (...)
"Say a little and say it well." (...)
"Silence cannot be misquoted."
-- Proverbs
"If you want to be interesting, be interested."
-- David Ogilvy
Be interested to be interesting. Don’t debate at all. Just listen. The point of a conversation is not to win. You don’t need to have an opinion about everything. Get fewer opinions about way fewer things and then interrogate your stronger opinions.
Hints:
- Listen. Mirroring or paraphrase: Repeat the last 1-3 words the person just said as a question or repeat what they just said in your own words. (Yes, it’s that simple). Seek to understand before seeking to be understood. Don’t worry about what you’re going to say next. Speak what’s in your mind, sometimes it backfires, but be real. The best conversationalists are the best listeners. Be interested to be interesting. How do I get them talking about themselves? It gives their brain as much pleasure as food or money. And when they open up, don’t judge..
- Ask questions. Ask a question. Listen to the answer. Respond in the form of a statement. No one is boring. They’re only boring because you haven’t asked the right questions. But you must be curious, asking questions without paying attention is worthless. Making good/unusual questions will make people interested in you. Can be as simple as «what is your favourite book» or as deep as «why is your best friend, your best friend?». It’s hard to fake an answer. “What kind of challenges did you have at work this week? What kind of challenges do you have living in this part of the country? What kinds of challenges do you have raising teenagers?” Everyone has got challenges. It gets people to share what their priorities in life are at that point in time. Talk about your passions instead of your accomplishments. Look for external catalysts as hints for stories and questions. Pick up on often-ignored (but cF\rucially important) nonverbal cues. Best subjects to discuss: ask stuff outside of their expertise where you can add value, travel, sincere compliments or asking for advice.
- Stop trying to impress. Focus on being interested instead of being interesting. Controlling the impression that you make on others takes a large amount of cognitive bandwidth and it will appear as fake. Smile and relax. Warmth comes from smiling while you speak. Popular people always smile more. Calm is largely a matter of slowing your speech down. Treat new aquaintances as old friends. Don’t be stubborn. Make your point and leave it. Let go. Is more productive to say «yes and» instead of «yes but». Get rid of ego and add value. Don’t judge. Know how to lead a conversation and how to go with the conversational flow. Emphasize Similarity, we like people who are like us.
- Keep a journal and write about what you’re looking forward to and excited about in life. That’ll keep ideas on the tip of your tongue, ready to discuss. It’s okay to write the same thing over and over each day.
- People believe in everything, if you whisper it.
"The more you say, the less people remember."
-- François Fénelon
"Admit when you’re wrong. Shut up when you’re right."
-- John Gottman
Don't raise your voice. improve your argument.
Listen as you’re wrong. Ask the person trying to convince you of something to explain how it would work. If they can explain why they are correct, you’ll learn something. If they can’t you’ll soften their views. The more we disagree, the more chance there is that at least one of us is right.
"Never argue with a fool, onlookers may not be able to tell the difference."
-- Mark Twain
"With truly logical people, most arguments are very short and based mainly on differing assumptions."
-- Naval Ravikant
"Tact is the ability to tell someone to go to hell in such a way that they look forward to the trip."
-- Winston Churchill
"Be curious, not judgmental."
-- Walt Witman
"Cinema is just life with the boring parts cut out."
-- Alfred Hitchcock
Good stories condense a massive amount of details into a consumable and shareable form. Its primary purpose isn’t accuracy, but entertainment.
"To tell a good story, you must reveal a surprise; otherwise is just a report."
-- Kevin Kelly
"Eloquence is logic on fire."
-- Lyman Beecher
Hints:
- You don’t need to answer their questions. You can say whatever you want if it’s interesting but learn when to answer boring on easy to misinterpret questions.
- Agree as much as you can without lieing. Ask questions instead of desagreeing.
"A good speech should be like a woman’s skirt: long enough to cover the subject and short enought o create interest."
-- Winston Churchill
"The secret to public speaking is to speak as if you were alone."
-- Naval Ravikant
"Always say less than necessary."
-- Kevin Kelly
"The enemy of excellence is isolation."
-- Aaron Walker
Make networking an habit. Who you know and whether they like you will determine what opportunities you get.
"To develop your intellectual powers at the expense of the social is to retard your own progress to mastery."
-- Robert Greene
"Money is the ultimate network effect."
-- Naval Ravikant
"Being alone never felt right. Sometimes it felt good, but it never felt right."
-- Charles Bukowski
It is astonishing what foolish things one can temporarily believe if one thinks too long alone."
-- John Maynard Keynes
"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." (...)
"When introduced to someone make eye contact and count to 4. You’ll both remember each other."
-- Kevin Kelly
Be useful, not important. Listen to people, get their goals and help them. It’s not about you, it’s about the impact you have on others.
Hints:
- Social adeptness is balancing two seemingly opposing social strategies: competing and cooperating.
- Building new connections is important but it’s even more important to remember the connections that already exist.
- Form relationships with those who seem like they’ll give as much than they take. The best way to get value was to start giving it away even by giving validation.
- You’ll start to live when you can live outside yourself. Being in the moment instead of being in your head.
- Social inadequacy (creepiness) is based on unpredictability. Staring isn’t staring if you’re smiling or if you say hi.
- Field tactics:
- «Rescue people instead of «cold calling». Include people to gain allies. Become the conduit in your circle — the one who makes sure introductions are made. It really is as simple as asking, “Have you met my friend, Johnny?” Take that responsibility and welcome strangers into your group, and you’ll help everyone feel like they’re part of the conversation. That’s all anyone wants when they’re out – to feel included.
- Eye contact builds trust. Don't hide yourself. Don't wait to start talking. A group or a double might be an easy place to start.
- Small and open groups. Opening line: "Hi, I’m X and I dont know anybody in this party."
- Go to the bar and meet people there or help the hosters to serve food.
- You should go on after 10 or 15 minutes, think about it as exploring. How to politely end conversations:
- «Excuse me but I must to talk with somebody that entered the room.»
- «Excuse me I have to make a phone call.»
- Human sacrifice... Introduce him and leave.
- To rude people: «My mum always told me not to speak with strangers.»
- Forget those who forget you. Those who want to stay in your life, will always find a way.
"You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you."
-- Dale Carnegie
"If you expect magic in every encounter, you’ll find it."
-- Adam Robinson
"Give me the gift of a listening heart."
-- King Solomon
Handling rejection is hard. Period. We don’t like people that see us in a way that doesn’t resonate with how we see ourselves.
"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."
-- Kevin Kelly
"Being honest may not get you a lot of friends but it’ll always get you the right ones."
-- John Lennon
Choose truth or your self-mythology will seduce you.
"When it comes to the story of our own lives, we’re more like novelists, not journalists. We’re not reading from our confessional journals, but recounting a polished story we’ve rehearsed over years. So a bio becomes a highlight reel of pedigree and accomplishments. Most of the stories we hear about people’s success are nothing more than clever myth-making: a way of reconfiguring their past as they wish to remember it, shaping it into a compelling and effective narrative, and weaponizing it into a personal propaganda tool. That story might be «rags to riches», «rising from the ashes», «one yes after a thousand nos», «crazy till I wasn’t» or any one of the familiar narratives we’ve heard from our heroes."
-- Jordan Harbinger
"I think the role of the entrepreneur in the world is to find ways to do things better or more efficiently and then try to do that as many times over with the help of other people."
-- Santiago Nestares
Focus on what you can easily give that empowers others.
Validate your business by finding paying clients. If something is worth doing, sales will come easy and dollars will be high. If you have to drag people along kicking and screaming, you’re wasting your time. The more they pay, the more they value it - the consumer votes with his wallet. It’s not about what you know, it’s about who trusts you to solve their problems. Often, it requires the technical skills. Always, it requires the persuasion skills.
"What you need to start a new business: generosity."
-- Derek Sivers
"Without customers, you don’t have a business. You have a hobby."
-- Don Peppers & Martha Rogers
"Your margin is my opportunity."
-- Jeff Bezos
"A business is simply an idea to make other people’s lives better." (...)
"If you can change people’s lives you have a business."
-- Richard Branson
"You can obsess about serving your customers or you can obsess about beating the competition. Both work, but of the two, obsessing about your customers will take you further." (...)
"Ask funders for money, and they’ll give you advice; but ask for advice and they’ll give you money."
-- Kevin Kelly
"There is no skill called business. Avoid business magazines and business classes." (...)
"Anyone who attempts to serve a customer at a new level of quality and scale is an entrepreneur. Anyone who does not, is not." (...)
"You are not building a product. You are solving a problem." (...)
"Startups are a theory about something the market wants, but doesn’t yet exist." (...)
"You’re doing sales because you failed at marketing. You’re doing marketing because you failed at product." (...)
"Startups don’t die when they run out of cash, they die when the founders run out of energy."
-- Naval Ravikant
"Don't find customers for your products. Find products for your customers."
-- Seth Godin
"Constantly think how you can do things better." (...)
"If things aren't failing you're not innovating enough." (...)
"Great companies are built on great products." (...)
"Any product that needs a manual is broken." (...)
"Pursue what you are passionate about." (...)
"It's important to like your coworkers."
-- Elon Musk
First try to sell it. Than build it.
If you build something that people say they’ll pay for and then they don’t then this is problematic, but also normal and doesn’t make you a «wannapreneur». At that point it’s just part of the struggle.
Hints:
- If you have an idea, test it and launch now. It’s called putting out a “minimally viable product” or MVP. Timing is the most important factor in startup success (quick to start but not the first). Team and execution came next. Find the 80/20 solution. Don’t put a bunch of effort to find out there’s no paying demand.
- The bottleneck for success often is not knowledge of the tools, but lack of understanding of the customer needs. It’s easier when YOU are the customer. Start with something you’re interested in. Don’t worry about the theory, focus on solving the problem.
- Do the math. When evaluating an idea make sure the math scales. E.g. If you’re looking for a restaurant location, look at how many seats, average price of meal, average turnover time, multiply it out. Will even max capacity pay the rent? How many potential sales, how much does it cost to reach them, what is a conversion rate to expect? How much can you produce in an hour, will that ever pay you enough?
- In some complex and mature markets if you start small you my never be able to compete with existent players.
- Create a culture that rewards killing ideas. Nobody gets fired. In fact, people get praised when we kill something, we saved a lot of money.
- Do things manually at first. Don’t scale your team/product until you have built something people want. Only after you are over running your ability to do things manually you do have to worry about automation.
- Focus on revenue generating activities: if it is not going to earn you money, then don’t do it or outsource them so you have more time to work on your cash flow.
- Deliver a little bit more than expected. That’ll help to get you some recommendations.
- «Fire» nasty, time consuming and time wasting clients.
- Entrepreneurs are more risk averse than general population. Budget pessimistically using the worst case scenario.
- There’s the myth that failure makes you a better entrepreneur. This is true only if you study your failures.
"What one piece of advice would you give someone starting a company? Do something that most people think is hard. If you try something easy, there will be five other companies doing the same thing two months later. But if you try something that’s difficult at first, everything gets much easier as soon as you make it through those initial challenges. Competition will be lower, because everyone else thought it was too hard. Recruiting good people will be easier, because good people like doing hard things. And when you have better people and less competition, raising capital gets easier, too."
-- David Velez (Nubank)
"A startup isn’t really a company at all. A startup is a set of founders with hopefully a set of proprietary insights that are a result of them living in the future. Most of the great startups come from a great insight and a great insight usually occurs when someone is living in the future and they notice something that’s missing."
"Don't open a shop unless you know how to smile."
-- Proverb
"Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don’t need."
-- Chuck Palahniuk
"A man who stops advertising to save money is like a man who stops a clock to save time."
-- Henry Ford
We’re all in sales. To sell is to deal with objections.
Sales used to be about information asymmetry but now it’s mostly applied persuasion and keeping relationships. Best sellers are now ambiverts. Being recomendend is the best marketing.
Traditional selling: hunters (extroverts)
- Intruding (to get your foot in the door)
- Pitching (to persuade the customer to buy)
- Persisting (to push until you make the sale)
Modern selling: farmers (ambiverts and introverts)
- Research (to understand the customer - time spent alone on the web, reading and analyzing information)
- Listening (to understand individual needs - being patient and quiet while remaining open to new ideas and perspectives)
- Reacting (to adapt to the identified needs - letting the other person set the pace and the agenda)
"Marketers don’t convince. Engineers convince. Marketers persuade. Persuasion appeals to the emotions and to fear and to the imagination. Convincing requires a spreadsheet or some other rational device." (...)
"Don’t find customers for your products, find products for your customers."
-- Seth Godin
"You don’t convince people by challenging their longest and most firmly held opinions. You find common ground and work from there. Or you look for leverage to make them listen. Or you create an alternative with so much support from other people that the opposition voluntarily abandons its views and joins your camp."
-- Ryan Holiday
"Stop selling, start helping." (...)
"Every sale has five basic obstacles: no need, no money, no hurry, no desire, no trust."
-- Zig Ziglar
"If it doesn’t sell, it isn’t creative." (...)
"You can’t bore people into buying your product." (...)
"If you can’t advertise yourself, what hope have you being able to advertise anything else."
-- David Ogilvy
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you. If you really make them think, they'll hate you."
-- Don Marquis
"Nobody reads advertising. People read what interests them, and sometimes it’s an ad."
-- Howard Luck Gossage
"Advertising serves not so much to advertise products as to promote consumption as a way of life."
-- Carl Lash
"You can tell the ideals of a nation by its advertisements."
-- Norman Douglas
"I never had to sell anything that I wouldn’t buy myself."
-- Naval Ravikant
"Negotiations are won by whoever cares less."
-- Naval Ravikant
You don’t get what you deserve in life, only what you negotiate.
Negotiation establishes the price (exchange rate between money and value). That said, a good negotiation means that you are giving less money (or value) than receiving value (or money).
Hints:
- You can only negotiate with integrous people.
- To negotiate you need to have options.
- To go fast, let the other part go first.
- Tone of voice is a big clue to know with whom we are negotiating. The analytical cold guy is very patient. The assertive guy wants to make it fast. For the accomodator, the relationship is the most important.
- Be playful and smart. Your counter-part will often mirror your good mood.
- Mirroring by repeating the last few words of the other person. It opens up people’s brain. It tests the firmness of what they want.
- Show arbitrage: If they pay X, now they are buying something worth X * Y. That is the only way to sell.
- Saying no: «How am I supposed to do that?». «How» gives people an opportunity to show how smart they are.
- Never negotiate with binary questions: prefer «What can you do?» instead of «Will you do this?»
- Close it: «What’s your best out-the-door price? (...) Can you do X% below that? If you can reach my price, I’ll buy today.»
- The more you take, the more you can give back in meaningless concessions. When people feel they have a choice, they «walk into your trap» that much more easily.
- People buy better versions of themselves, not products.
- Females buy male products. Males don’t buy products targetted to females.
- Instead of details use interesting testimonials that allow people to relate.
- Marketing is a symptom of excess production.
"When asking for help, appeal to people’s self-interest, never to their mercy or gratitude."
-- Robert Greene
"Flattery is the infantry of negotiation."
-- Lord Chandos
"People may or may not say what they mean but they always say something designed to get what they want."
-- David Mamet
However always strive to achieve a win-win situation. When both sides don’t take what they need from it, the deal may fall. The most dangerous negotiation is the one you don’t know you’re in.
"When negotiating, dont aim for a bigger piece of the pie; aim to create a bigger pie."
-- Kevin Kelly
"Zero-sum games tend towards conflict. Positive-sum games tend towards cooperation."
-- Naval Ravikant
"You can’t make a good deal with a bad person."
-- Warren Buffett
"Peace cannot be kept by force. It can only be achieved by understanding."
-- Albert Einstein
"One time a college far away in Ohio, about a 12-hour drive, asked what I would charge to do a two-hour show. I said, «$1500». She said, «Oh, that’s a bit too much. What would you charge to do just a one-hour show?» I said, «$2000». She said, «No, wait, you’ll be performing less, not more!» I said, «Yeah! Exactly! What you’re paying me for is to get there! Once I’m there, playing music is the fun part! If you tell me I have to get back in the van after only an hour, and drive home, then I’m going to charge you more than if you let me play for a couple hours first.» She liked that so much she came up with the $1500."
-- Derek Sivers
"The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it."
-- Henry David Thoreau
"Price is what you pay, value is what you get."
-- Warren Buffett
Price is a filter. Set it to choose the customers you prefer to work with. If they can’t pay, walk away.
"Pay too much for everything. The effort spent getting a deal is only a distraction and attention is your most limited resource."
-- Allen Tucker
"Pay double and insist on ten times the quality."
-- Naval Ravikant
"When you don’t know how much to pay someone for a particular task, ask them «what would be fair» and their answer usually is."
-- Kevin Kelly
"Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing."
-- Oscar Wilde
/
"To know the road ahead, ask those coming back."
-- Proverb
Feedback from mentors speeds up improvement. Even if you can’t understand the logic behind their wisdom, they’ll show you the door. Don’t take criticism from people that you would never go for advice.
Be generous and share your strengths. Impact the world. When you teach, you do something useful. When you do research, most days you don’t.
"You don’t need mentors, you need action." (...)
"Take feedback from nature and markets, not from people." (...)
"A good scare is a great error-correcting mechanism." (...)
"Remove grading to see who is really interested in the topic."
-- Naval Ravikant
"He who asks is a fool for five minutes, but he who does not ask remains a fool forever." (...)
"I’d rather have criticism from a genius than praise from an idiot."
-- Proverbs
"A critic is a legless man who teaches running."
-- Channing Pollock
"If something is too early to criticize, it’s also too early to evangelize."
-- Kelsey Hightower
"Good advice helps you find the solution to your problem. Great advice helps you find you were solving the wrong problem."
-- Merlin Mann
"When the student is ready the teacher appears. When the student is truly ready the teacher disapeers."
-- Lao Tzu
Look for the «silver medalist». He has more availability, and sometimes, a better attitude than «the golden child».
"Those who know do. Those that understand teach."
-- Aristotle
"One repays a teacher badly if one remains only a pupil."
-- Friedrich Nietzsche
"A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in."
-- Proverb
"I was always ready to share, but before external success, nobody cared to listen."
-- Naval Ravikant
"If you think you’re too small to make an impact, try to go to bed with a mosquito in the room."
-- Dalai Lama
"Don’t follow your mentors; follow your mentors’ mentors."
-- David Leach
"Teach your children early what you learned late."
-- Richard Feynman
"If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales."
-- Albert Einstein
"The only thing worse than a boy who hates you: a boy that loves you."
-- Markus Zusak
Your father is your first mentor.
Don’t tell your kids how to live. Live fully and let them see. Spend only half the money you think you should, but double the time with them.
Hints:
- Generosity: «What did you do this week for somebody?»
- Responsability: «Bedtime at 8.30 and I turn off the light or 9 and you have the responsability to turn off the light?»
- Self improvement: «Did you give your best today?» «Ask good questions today. In future you’ll be able to know anything you want, anytime you want. So the quality of the questions you learn to ask will be more important than memorized knowledge.»
- Autority: «Kid: why do I have to do this? You: I was a boy myself. I know why is important.»
- Money management and healthy habits: pay your son for each mile he rides his bike (with interest on what he decides not to spend).
- Deal with failure: «How did you fail today?» The best gift you can give your children is failure. By treating everything like a major risk, we prevent kids from learning how to judge the truly dangerous, from the simply unfamiliar. Parents prevent their kid from dying but as they get older they shouldn’t prevent them from living.
"My father always said there are four things a child needs: plenty of love, nourishing food, regular sleep, and lots of soap and water. After that, what he needs most is some intelligent neglect."
-- Ivy Baker Priest
"I cannot think of any need in children as strong as the need for a father’s protection."
-- Sigmund Freud
"One of the greatest things a father can do for his children is to love their mother."
-- Howard W. Hunter
"Nothing affects the life of a child so much as the unlived life of its parent."
-- Carl Jung
"My father didn’t tell me how to live. He lived and let me watch him do it."
-- Clarence Budington Kelland
"Every father should remember one day his son will follow his example, not his advice."
-- Charles Kettering
"Children need models rather than critics."
-- Joseph Joubert
"Don’t force your children into your ways, for they were created for a time different from your own."
-- Plato
"The father who does not teach his son his duties is equally guilty with the son who neglects them."
-- Confucius
"When you teach your son, you teach your son’s son."
-- Talmud
"My advice is my autobiography not slogans. People relate better like that."
-- James Altucher
"It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men."
-- Frederick Douglass
"A parent will always worry about the wrong child."
-- Don Alt
"To a father growing old nothing is dearer than a daughter."
-- Euripides
"Some day you will know that a father is much happier in his children’s happiness than in his own. I cannot explain it to you: it is a feeling in your body that spreads gladness through you."
-- Honore de Balzac
"No man can possibly know what life means, what the world means, what anything means, until he has a child and loves it."
-- Lafcadio Hearn
"The nature of impending fatherhood is that you are doing something that you’re unqualified to do, and then you become qualified while doing it."
-- John Green
"Fathering is not something perfect men do, but something that perfects the man."
-- Frank Pittman
"Dads are most ordinary men turned by love into heroes, adventurers, story-tellers, and singers of song."
-- Pam Brown
"Life doesn’t come with an instruction book — that’s why we have fathers."
-- H. Jackson Browne
"Children are a poor man’s riches." (...)
"A father is someone you look up to no matter how tall you grow."
-- Proverbs
"Be nice to your children because they are going to choose your nursing home." (...)
"Children totally accept — and crave — family rules. «In our family we have a rule for X» is the only excuse a parent needs for setting a family policy. In fact, «I have a rule for X» is the only excuse you need for your own personal policies." (...)
"To keep young kids behaving on a car road trip, have a bag of their favorite candy and throw a piece out the window each time they misbehave."
-- Kevin Kelly
"If raising children was less rewarding than not doing it, the human race would have gone extinct." (...)
"Either have children or become a saint, because eventually, you have to find something you love more than you love yourself."
-- Naval Ravikant
"The most difficult thing in the world is to know how to do a thing and to watch someone else doing it wrong, without commenting."
-- T.H. White
"Your naked body should belong only to those who fall in love with your naked soul."
-- Charlie Chaplin (in a letter to his daughter, Geraldine)
However some people are not ready to accept your vision. And «givers» attract «takers»: remember that you don’t owe them anything.
"Do not teach a starving man to fish."
-- Proverb
"No one has ever become poor by giving."
-- Anne Frank
"A bit of fragrance clings to the hand that gives flowers." (...)
"A candle loses nothing by lighting another candle."
-- Proverbs
No one on their deathbed has ever regretted giving too much away.
Hints:
- If you can afford the dinner you can afford the tip.
- Always give best in class: practical luxuries make better gifts than merchandise branded with your company’s logo.
- A low value gift may have the opposite effect.
"He that gives should never remember and he that receives should never forget."
-- Talmud
"The last time I saw my uncle, I asked how he could be generous, and yet not be taken advantage of or stuck with horrible people. He said that what he’d learned to do was to condition whatever help he was offering on the person taking some tiny step first. Often, it was as simple as «make up a budget for you and your wife to go on a three day getaway, send it to me, and I’ll write you a check». Almost everyone who was just in it for the handouts couldn’t be bothered. My uncle also mixed a lot of his giving with encouraging young people’s talents. He’d hire students who were excited in X, to do X for him in some way. He hired students to take photos, make music, decorate houses, build apps, archive things, paint, and who knows what else. He even hired a student to make memes. This way the students not only got money, but grew in their skills and were excited that someone wanted their work. There were, of course, some rude and uncaring people in his life. But those people didn’t want to spend time with him so there was never really a conflict there." (...)
"My uncle died suddenly this year. He was unbelievably caring - and not just to family - but to everyone he ever met. His funeral was jam packed with everyone from homeless people to executives of multi-billion dollar companies. I always thought that his ability to always have you, and whatever you had last talked about with him, on his mind at any moment was some kind of supernatural gift. I was surprised to find out at his funeral that he actually kept an excel spreadsheet of everyone he met and what they needed and were going through. He reviewed this constantly. It didn’t lessen his genuine love for everyone, just let him be a little more super human."
-- HN_danielvf
"Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity."
-- Weil
"If you are more fortunate than others, build a longer table rather than a taller fence."
-- Kevin Kelly
"A guest and a fish stink in three days."
-- Proverb
"In nature there are neither rewards nor punishments, there are consequences."
-- Robert G. Ingersoll
Powerful people give freely, buying influence rather than things.
Hints:
- We learn complex behaviors via continuous reinforcement, in which the desired behavior is reinforced every time it’s performed. After the behaviour is learnt, continuous reinforcement becomes intermitent reinforcement.
- Instead of punishments extingue rewards.
- The people who love you most can care less about how much money you make or what gifts you can send them. What they really want is your presence and attention.
"If you want to know who controls you, look at who you are not allowed to criticize."
-- Voltaire
"No one can make you feel inferior without your permission."
-- Eleanor Roosevelt
Everything is hierarchy. Only comedians can speak the truth without consequences.
However don’t vow to the gatekeepers. Someone’s position does not make them important. You can replace them as quickly as they can replace you. It’s a business relationship.
"Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence."
-- Leonardo da Vinci
"Care about what other people think and you will always be their prisoner."
-- Lao Tzu
"The internet doesn’t care about your title." (...)
"I don't believe in hierarchical relationships. I don't want to be above anybody and I don't want to be below anybody. If I can't treat someone like a peer and if they can't treat me like a peer, I just don't want to interact with them."
-- Naval Ravikant
"When you are on the bottom you can’t afford to look like you belong there."
-- Mike Downey
"When the mouse laughs at the cat there is a hole nearby." (...)
"The sun doesn't forget a village just because it is small."
-- Proverbs
"For the friends: everything. For the others: the law."
-- Niccoló Machiavelli (paraphrased)
Politicians hate risk. Decisions are made on the lowest risk of offending people, specially their voters.
Hints:
- Politicians don’t get educated, they get bought.
- The opposite of corruption is patriotism. To reduce corruption diminish people involved on analogic processes.
- Taxes are a membership fee that most of us are voluntarily overpaying.
- Inequality is a problem. Equality is not the solution. That’s the dilemma.
- Changes from within are more sustainable than revolutions. We don’t need great individuals, we need institutions that work.
- Popper came to the seemingly paradoxical conclusion that in order to maintain a tolerant society, the society must be intolerant of intolerance.
- The moment you cross a second border, you are an economic migrant, not a refugee.
- Multicultural is by absurdum the true monocultural.
"Politics is not the art of the possible. It consists in choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable."
-- John Kenneth Galbraith
"Love your neighbour, yet don’t pull down your hedge."
-- Benjamin Franklin
"Good fences make good neighbors."
-- Robert Frost
"All bad precedents began as justifiable measures."
-- Julius Caesar
"Love your country, but never trust its government." (...)
"Never appeal to a man’s «better nature». He may not have one. Invoking his self-interest gives you more leverage." (...)
"If you are part of a society that votes, then do so. There may be no candidates and measures you want to vote for... But there are certain to be ones you want to vote against. In case of doubt, vote against. By this rule you will rarely go wrong. If this is too blind for your taste, consult some well-meaning fool (there is always one around) and ask his advice. Then vote the other way. This enables you to be a good citizen (if such is your wish) without spending the enormous amount of time that truly intelligent exercise of the franchise requires."
-- Robert A. Heinlein
"The disease of 20th century is utopianism, that of 21th century is hypernaive utopianism: libertarianism, wokism, cryptoism, techno-salvationism, etc, are identical in spirit to Communism." (...)
"Independent is what people call you if your opinions don’t upset anybody."
-- Nassin Taleb
"I love individuals. I hate groups of people. I hate a group of people with a «common purpose». Because pretty soon they have little hats. And armbands. And fight songs. And a list of people they’re going to visit at 3am. So, I dislike and despise groups of people. But I love individuals." (...)
"Political correctness is America’s newest form of intolerance, and it is especially pernicious because it comes disguised as tolerance. It presents itself as fairness, yet attempts to restrict and control people’s language with strict codes and rigid rules."
-- George Carlin
"Free people make free choices. Free choices mean you have unequal outcomes. You can have freedom or you can have equal outcomes. You can’t have both." (...)
"Populism is what we call democracy when we don’t like the outcome." (...)
"Groups search for consensus. Individuals search for truth." (...)
"Most of the culture wars are a struggle between what’s best for the children and what’s best for the childless." (...)
"All tyranny begins with the desire to coerce others for the greater good." (...)
"The road to socialism via inflation: Print money, crash the reserve currency, destroy savers and force them into inflated assets. Asset inflation leads to inequality. Demonize asset holders and tax the nominal gains, thereby confiscating the real value of the assets."
-- Naval Ravikant
"When people fear the government, there is tyranny. When government fears the people, there is liberty."
-- Thomas Paine
"I would rather have questions that can’t be answered than answers that can’t be questioned."
-- Richard Feinman
"The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum."
-- Noam Chomsky
"The Tree of Liberty must, from time to time, be watered with the blood of patriots."
-- Thomas Jefferson
"The more you have to define freedom the less freedom you have."
-- Alexander Bickel
"If you plan is for 1 year, plant rice. If you plan is for 10 years, plant trees. If you plan is for 100 years, educate children."
-- Confucius
"Inflation is how democracies die."
-- Charlie Munger
"Democracy has got nothing to do with who should rule. Democracy is the system which allows you to remove policies and rulers most efficently without violence. and that’s how you judge different democratic systems."
-- Karl Popper
"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the people discover they can vote themselves largess out of the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that democracy always collapses over a loose fiscal policy–to be followed by a dictatorship."
-- Alexander Fraser Tytler
"If a law is unjust a man is not only right to disobey it, he is obligated to do so."
-- Thomas Jefferson
"Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws."
-- Plato
"Aim and object of the law and lawyers was to defeat justice."
-- Mark Twain
"Justice will not be served until those who are unaffected are as outraged as those who are."
-- Benjamin Franklin
"Everybody wants to see justice done, to somebody else."
-- Bruce Cockburn
"I guess the only time most people think about injustice is when it happens to them."
-- Charles Bukowski
"Mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent."
-- Adam Smith
"90% of the politicians give the other 10% a bad reputation."
-- Henry Kissinger
"Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful."
-- George Orwell
"The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule it." (...)
"Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under."
-- H.L. Mencken
"The price of apathy towards public affairs is to be ruled by evil men."
-- Plato
"The first responsibility of any bureaucracy is the preservation of itself. The second is to expand its responsiblities."
-- Mort Halperin
"Thank God we don’t get all the government we pay for."
-- Milton Friedman
"When you have an efficient government, you have a dictatorship."
-- Harry Truman
"The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal."
-- Aristotle
"Favors granted always become defined as rights."
-- Saul Alinsky
"A conservative is a fellow who thinks a rich man should have a fair deal."
-- Frank Dane
"The comfort of the rich depends upon an abundant supply of the poor."
-- Voltaire
"Mimicking the herd, invites regression to the mean."
-- Charlie Munger
Society is run by peer pressure, not intelligence.
Most people are other people. People accept the defaults very easily. Our thoughts are someone else opinions and we jump to conclusions. Our insecurities drive us to excess and overcompensation. We are, at heart, animals and we are easily manipulated, especially in groups.
Groups of people behave differently than individuals. The larger the crowd, the less responsibility people have for their behaviour. This effect is known as mob behaviour. This is also why individuals should make decisions. Groups never admit failure.
"My first thought, is never my best thought. My first thought is always someone else’s; it’s always what I’ve already heard about the subject, always the conventional wisdom."
-- William Deresiewicz
"Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong."
-- Oscar Wilde
"If everybody is thinking alike, then somebody isn’t thinking."
-- George S. Patton Jr.
"The more neatly you fit into society, the less free you actually are." (...)
"Individuals rarely admit mistakes. Groups never do." (...)
"«Consensus» is just another way of saying «average»." (...)
"A group operates through consensus. the consensus will be set by the most intolerable minority. So you’ll the intolerable minority will control the group." (...)
"If your opinions line up neatly with those of your friends and colleagues, they’re not your opinions."
-- Naval Ravikant
"The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.’
-- Bertrand Russell
"If your opinions on one subject can be predicted from your opinions on another, you may be in the grip of an ideology. When you truly think for yourself your conclusions will not be predictable." (...)
"When someone tells you something is wrong, they’re usually right. When someone tells you how to fix it, they’re usually wrong."
-- Kevin Kelly
"In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule." (...)
"And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music."
-- Friedrich Nietzsche
"When you do as everyone else does, don’t be surprised when you get what everyone else gets."
-- Peter Kaufman
"Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen."
-- Albert Einstein
"Everyone is born a genius, but the process of living de-geniuses them."
-- Buckminster Fuller
"Just because people tell you it can’t be done, that doesn’t necessarily mean that it can’t be done. It just means that they can’t do it."
-- Anders Hejlsberg
"Gold rushes make the shovel sellers rich, not the gold seekers." (...)
"One cow breaks the fence and a dozen leap it."
-- Proverbs
"No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible."
-- Voltaire
"In our infinite ignorance we are all equal."
-- Karl Popper
"Too often we enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought."
-- John F. Kennedy
"You can make (most) human beings believe the most absurd ideas provided you manage first to convince their friends; you will fail to sway them with the most compelling arguments if you don’t first persuade their closest comrades."
-- Nassim Taleb
"The quicker you want something, the easier you are to manipulate."
-- Shane Parrish
"A fact is information minus emotion. An opinion is information plus experience. Ignorance is an opinion lacking information. And, stupidity is an opinion that ignores a fact."
-- twitter@sgrstk
"Stupidity is overlooking or dismissing crucial information."
-- Adam Robinson
Stupidity is the cost of intelligence operating in a complex environment and it’s almost inevitable. Most people don’t actually think, they just take their first thought and go. There are no smart people or stupid people, just people being smart or being stupid. Being smart means thinking things through trying to find the real answer, not the first answer. Being stupid means avoiding thinking by jumping to conclusions. Jumping to a conclusion is like quitting a game: you lose by default. That’s why saying «I don’t know» is usually smart, because it’s refusing to jump to a conclusion. So when someone says «They are so stupid!», it means they’ve stopped thinking.
"When a wise man points at the moon, the imbecile examines the finger."
-- Confucius
"Talk sense to a fool and he calls you foolish."
-- Euripides
"Nothing is more terrible than to see ignorance in action."
-- J.W. Goethe
"Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by neglect."
-- Hanlon’s Razor
"I have long held that stupidity is very largely the result of fear leading to mental inhibitions."
-- Bertie Russell
"Great things are not accomplished by those who yield to trends and fads and popular opinion."
-- Jack Kerouac
"A stupid man's report of what a clever man says can never be accurate, because he unconsciously translates what he hears onto something he can understand."
-- Bertrand Russell
"When a clown moves into a palace, he doesn't become a king. The palace becomes a circus."
-- Proverb
It’s easier to recognise stupidity in others than ourselves but don’t take for granted that others are acting stupid. Common sense is not so common.
"Don’t ever take a fence down until you know the reason why it was put up."
-- G.K. Chesterton
"Two economists are walking along the street, and one says, «Hey, someone dropped a $20 bill!» and the other says, «Well, it can’t be a real $20 bill because someone would have picked it up already.»"
-- Proverb
"Even a foolish person can still be right about most things. Most conventional wisdom is true." (...)
"Every person you meet knows an amazing lot about something you know virtually nothing about. Your job is to discover what it is, and it won’t be obvious." (...)
"You can reduce the annoyance of someone’s stupid belief by increasing your understanding of why they believe it."
-- Kevin Kelly
"The only thing more dangerous than ignorance is arrogance."
-- Albert Einstein
"Judge a man by his questions, not by his answers."
-- Voltaire
We judge ourselves by our thoughts but society judges us by what we can do for them.
Hints:
- When you don’t create things, you become defined by your tastes rather than ability.
- Every word someone says is the tip of the iceberg. Underneath that word are thoughts, fears, emotions. Underneath those emotions is history and experiences. A single word is the final outcome of all of that history.
"We should not judge people by their peak of excellence; but by the distance they have traveled from the point where they started."
-- Henry Ward Beecher
"We don’t judge people when we feel good about ourselves."
-- Brené Brown
"A man is as big as the things that make him angry."
-- Winston Churchill
"You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him."
-- J.W. Goethe
"Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power."
-- Abraham Lincoln
"I’m suspicious of people who don’t like dogs, but I trust a dog when it doesn’t like a person."
-- Bill Murray
"A drunk man’s words, are a sober man’s thoughts." (...)
"When the character of a man is not clear to you, look at his friends."
-- Proverbs
"A great man is hard on himself; a small man is hard on others." (...) "What the superior man seeks is in himself; what the small man seeks is in others."
-- Confucius
"I have never met a man so ignorant that I couldn’t learn anything from him."
-- Galileo Galilei
"You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation."
-- Plato
"If a man gets lost in the mountains, hundreds will search and often two or three searchers are killed. But the next time somebody gets lost, just as many volunteers turn out. Poor arithmetic, but very human. It runs through all our folklore, all human religions, all our literature—a racial conviction that when one human needs rescue, others should not count the price. Weakness? It might be the unique strength that wins us a Galaxy."
-- Robert Heinlein
Most people approach each and every year in the exact same way while expecting drastically different results.
"How to write compelling characters? It’s easy, just make them contradictions. To be human is to be a contradiction."
-- Unknown
"The problem with people who have no vices is that generally you can be pretty sure they’re going to have some pretty annoying virtues."
-- Elizabeth Taylor
"I am lonely, yet not everybody will do. I don’t know why, some people fill the gaps and others emphasize my loneliness. In reality those who satisfy me are those who simply allow me to live with my «idea of them»."
-- Anaïs Nin
"I always worried someone would notice me, and then when no one did, I felt lonely."
-- Curtis Sittenfeld
"I don’t want to be alone, I want to be left alone."
-- Audrey Hepburn
"Everybody has a secret world inside of them. I mean everybody. All of the people in the whole world, I mean everybody — no matter how dull and boring they are on the outside. Inside them they’ve all got unimaginable, magnificent, wonderful, stupid, amazing worlds... Not just one world. Hundreds of them. Thousands, maybe."
-- Neil Gaiman
"People aren’t either wicked or noble. They’re like chef’s salads, with good things and bad things chopped and mixed together in a vinaigrette of confusion and conflict."
-- Lemony Snicket
"If there is one thing you can count on, it’s human greed. And I’m not pretending I’m above it myself."
-- Unknown
"The three brick masons. When the first man was asked what he was building, he answered gruffly, without even raising his eyes from his work, «I’m laying bricks». The second man replied, «I’m building a wall». But the third man said enthusiastically and with obvious pride, «I’m building a cathedral»."
-- Unknown
"Monkeys are superior to man in this: when a monkey looks into a mirror, he sees a monkey."
-- Chazal
"The American people don't believe anything until they see it on television."
-- Richard Nixon
"There is no exception to the rule that everybody likes to be an exception to the rule."
-- Malcolm Forbes
"Only the truth is funny."
-- Rick Reynolds
"Comedy is the art of telling forbidden truths, without getting beat out."
-- Naval Ravikant
"A serious and good philosophical work could be written consisting entirely of jokes."
-- Ludwig Wittgenstein
Comedians are the modern day philosophers. They observe the hidden life truths that everyone knows but nobody has ever quite articulated. The truer the things they say, the funnier they are.
"The only intelligent tactical response to life’s horror is to laugh defiantly at it."
-- Soren Kierkegaard
"The world is a tragedy to those who feel, but a comedy to those who think."
-- Horace Walpole
"I miss being the age when I thought I would have my shit together by the time I was the age I am now." (...)
"Sex, like pizza, when it’s good is good. When it’s bad it gets in your shirt." (...)
"There’s a great joke about an automated car plant in Japan, where the machines work in the dark and there are only two living things authorized to be on the factory floor – a man and a dog. What’s the man there for? His job is to feed the dog. What’s the dog for? The dog keeps the man from touching any of the machines." (...)
"Society: Be yourself. Society: Not like that."
-- Proverbs
"I couldn’t be a doctor... it doesn’t change the world enough and you don’t actually earn that much."
-- Unknown (in San Francisco)
"Mathematicians look down on physicists, who look down on engineers, who look down on designers. And designers look down on everyone."
-- Naval Ravikant
"«If i was your wife I would poison your coffee».
«If i was your husband I would drink it.»"
-- Winston Churchill
"The grass is always greener on the side that is fertilized with bullshit."
-- Morgan Housel
"Give me a museum and I’ll fill it."
-- Pablo Picasso
"When you’re up to your nose in shit, keep your mouth shut."
-- Jack Beauregard (fictional)
"Home is where the bra isn’t."
-- Unknown
"Home is where the parking lot is."
-- Unknown
"What you call love was invented by guys like me to sell nylons."
-- Don Draper
"I really don’t know what «I love you» means. I think it means «don’t leave me here alone»."
-- Neil Gaiman
"I am a cage in search for a bird."
-- Franz Kafka
"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."
-- Kevin Kelly
"Never allow someone to be your priority while allowing yourself to be their option."
-- Mark Twain
Focus on what you can give. However, after taking first steps, mirror their behavior. Don’t cross oceans for people who wouldn’t even jump puddles for you.
Hints:
- If you are lonely when you are not alone, you are in bad company.
- If a person is nice to you and to nobody else, that person is not nice.
- Trust and vulnerability are correlated. Don’t hide your feelings from people who show you theirs.
- Supporting helps people grow and builds healthy relationships. Fixing manipulates people and builds resentment and/or co-dependency.
- Sometimes connections grow. Sometimes they stay the same. Sometimes they collapse.
"Never waste your time trying to explain who you are to people who are committed to misunderstanding you."
-- Dream Hampton
"Play long-term games with long-term people. The secret to a happy relationship is two happy people. If you loose somebody for being yourself, then you never had them to begin with. Find a relationship where you, naturally being you, makes the other person happy and viceversa. The worst way to build a relationship is to try to build a relationship. The people you most want to impress can read your intentions."
-- Naval Ravikant (paraphrased)
"Faults are thick where love where love is thin."
-- Proverb
"Your friends are the ones that go to your funeral in a day of rain."
-- Proverb
"True friendship can exist only between equals."
-- Plato
"If everybody loves you, something is wrong."
-- Paulo Coelho
Life is meant to be lived in community but don’t settle for a place where you’re tolerated. Go where you’re celebrated.
Be independent from your family but loyal at the same time. Keep your friends for friendship but work with the skilled and competent. Resist the temptation of working with family and friends. Peers are peers, not boss and employee. You will waste your life trying to make those around into who you want them to be.
"When everything goes to hell, the people who stand by you without flinching, they are your family."
-- Jim Butcher
"It is easier to forgive an enemy than to forgive a friend."
-- William Blake
"To lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness." (...)
"A bore is someone who deprives you of solitude without providing you company."
-- Oscar Wilde
"I have nothing to offer anyone, except my own confusion."
-- Jack Kerouac
"At your funeral people will not recall what you did; they will only remember how you made them feel." (...)
"Each time you reach out to people, bring them a blessing; then they’ll be happy to see you when you bring them a problem." (...)
"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."
-- Kevin Kelly
"Routinely greeting six neighbours maximizes wellbeing."
-- Mr. Rogers
You are the average of your friends.
If you’re always the smartest in the room, you’re in the wrong room. When you enter a workplace, think that you will become like them and not the opposite.
Hints:
- If your absence doesn’t bother them, your presence never mattered.
- Surround yourself with people who challenge you to be better, not people who are enamored with who you already are. People who genuinely want the best for you are very rare and they are usually already wealthy, loved and happy.
- Divide up your life. Spend 33% of your time around people lower than you, you can mentor them. Spend 33% of your time with people that are on your level – your friends and peers. Spend 33% of your time with people that are 10-20 years ahead of you. Those are your mentors.
- Find somebody smarter to teach you, somebody equal to challenge you and somebody less developed that you can teach. Remember that sometimes people wind up in our lives not because we judged them as high-quality individuals, but because of circumstance and nothing more.
- You’re never too old to make a friend. Look for people with the same interests as you. Second step is inviting them to do something. If a buddy calls and needs to get a drink, go. You know someone is a friend when you can go long stretches without talking and the talk is right where we left off.
- It’s ok to unfollow people in real life. Don’t let your loneliness tempt you to reconnect with toxic people. You wouldn’t drink poison just because you’re thirsty.
- Pay attention to who you’re with when you feel your best.
- Be suspicious of people who like being owed a favor. Especially if it is not a favor you requested.
- Maintain old friendships.
- Bad friends will prevent you from having good friends.
- You only grow apart from people who don't grow.
"Cultivate 12 people who love you, because they are worth more than 12 million people who like you." (...)
"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." (...)
"Don’t loan money to a friend unless you are ready to make it a gift."
-- Kevin Kelly
"Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you too can become great."
-- Mark Twain
"Anybody can sympathise with the sufferings of a friend, but it requires a very fine nature to sympathise with a friend’s success."
-- Oscar Wilde
"When you’re in jail, a good friend will be trying to bail you out. A best friend will be in the cell next to you saying, «Damn, that was fun»."
-- Groucho Marx
"Don’t make a man feel too indebted to you. With many persons it is not necessary to do more than overburden them with favours to lose them altogether: they cannot repay you, and so they retire, preferring rather to be enemies than perpetual debtors."
-- Balthasar Gracian
"I don’t like that man. I must get to know him better."
-- Abraham Lincoln
"Brothers love each other when they are equally rich."
-- Unknown
"Spend your time in the company of geniuses, sages, children and books."
-- Naval Ravikant
"We accept the love we think we deserve."
-- Stephen Chbosky
You attract what you are.
Love is what happens to men and women that don’t know each other. Love doesn’t hurt, expectations do. Every person feels loved in a different form.
Hints:
- We fall in love with someone because of how they make us feel about ourselves.
- We’re always looking for somebody that looks for us. First parents, then a lover. Screens give us 100% attention. Tech is a compensation.
- Man’s loyalty is tested when he has everything. Woman’s loyalty is tested when her man has nothing.
- Arguing and insecurity is anti-seductive. Familiarity is the death of seduction.
- Relationships start with «can we talk» to «we need to talk». Once you start disliking someone, everything they do is irritating to you. A dirty dish by the sink can be a big marriage problem.
- Keep separate bank accounts. Spouses should have the freedom and autonomy to buy what they want but only after bills are automatically paid. People value things differently. Having to justify every expense makes you feel like you’re being watched. This breeds resentment. Most marriages end in divorce, most of them over money.
"The free soul is rare, but you know it when you see it basically because you feel good, very good, when you are near or with them."
-- Charles Bukowski
"A man usually falls in love with a woman who asks the kinds of questions he is able to answer."
-- Ronald Colman
"The first sign of love: for men is timidity, in women it is courage."
-- Voltaire
"You haven’t been in love, if you haven’t let it ruin your life."
-- Sarah Hildebrand
"Real love doesn’t meet you at your best. It meets you in your mess."
-- J.S. Park
"Unless you love someone, nothing else makes any sense."
-- E.E. Cummings
"Warriors and worriers. Human males form cooperative groups to compete against out-groups, while human females exclude other females in their quest to find mates, female family members to invest in their children. This challenges the familiar wisdom that women are more sociable than men and men are more competitive than women."
-- Joyce Benenson
"Love is the absence of judgement."
-- Dalai Lama
"Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence."
-- H.L. Mencken
"Love is a flower, friendship a sheltering tree."
-- Samuel Taylor Coleridge
"The highest function of love is that it makes the loved one a unique and irreplaceable being."
-- Tom Robbins
"It gives me strength to have somebody to fight for; I can never fight for myself, but, for others, I can kill."
-- Emilie Autumn
"The measure of love is peace." (...)
"You can’t buy a real kiss."
-- Naval Ravikant
"Romance is the glamour which turns the dust of everyday life into a golden haze."
-- Elinor Glyn
"The very essence of romance is uncertainty."
-- Oscar Wilde
"The love that lasts the longest is the love that is never returned."
-- W. Somerset Maugham
First you see the virtues. Then the flaws. For a long and deep relationship, values must match.
"That’s what careless words do. They make people love you a little less."
-- Arundhati Roy
"You must love in such a way that the person you love feels free."
-- Thich Nhat Hanh
"Our story has three parts: a beginning, a middle, and an end. And although this is the way all stories unfold, I still can’t believe that ours didn’t go on forever."
-- Nicholas Sparks
"True, unconditional love is the province of parents and saints."
-- Naval Ravikant
"Men experience many passions in a lifetime. One passion drives away the one before it."
-- Paul Newman
"Both men and women are desperate to revive a broken relationship, to re-create the great love affair they had at the beginning. The difference is that women try to do it while it is ongoing, and men try to do it when it is over."
-- Zan Perrion
"When poverty comes in the door love goes out the window."
-- Proverb
"A gentleman holds my hand. A man pulls my hair. A soulmate will do both."
-- Alessandra Torre
Women like a gentleman who knows when not to be gentle and exhibits grace under pressure.
"Man is loved mainly because of two virtues: courage first, loyalty second."
-- Gaius Lucilius
"The classical definition of a gentleman: he never insulted anyone unintentionally."
-- James Crow
"If you can make a woman laugh, you can make her do anything."
-- Marilyn Monroe
"Why are women so much more interesting to men than men are to women?"
-- Virginia Woolf
"A suit to women is like lingerie to men."
-- Unknown
"Women sometimes forgive a man who forces the opportunity, but never a man who misses one."
-- Charles de Talleyrand-Perigord
"What do women want? (...) Every woman wants to be in a love story."
-- Zan Perrion
"No matter how plain a woman may be, if truth and honesty are written across her face, she will be beautiful."
-- Eleanor Roosevelt
Trust, style, nice to my family, ambitious and adventurous, must like burritos and road trips.
Every boy wants a good girl to be bad just for him. Every girl wants a bad boy to be good just for her.
"An old friend of mine, a journalist, once said that paradise on earth was to work all day alone in anticipation of an evening in interesting company."
-- Ian McEwan
"Men marry women with the hope they will never change. Women marry men with the hope they will change. Invariably they are both disappointed."
-- H.Harwood and R. Gore-Bro
Marry an happy person. Unhappy spouse, unhappy life.
"Marriage is the triumph of imagination over intelligence. Second marriage is the triumph of hope over experience."
-- Oscar Wilde
"He who marries for love without money has good nights and sorry days."
-- Ani Difranco
"You don’t marry a person, you marry a family."
-- Kevin Kelly
"If Apple sold you a product that failed 50% of the time, would you buy it?"
-- Esther Perel
"Don’t do it. You’ll regret it. The things you love about him now, you’ll hate in a few years."
-- Tom Ford (Movie)
"If men acted after marriage as they do during courtship, there would be fewer divorces and more bankruptcies."
-- Frances Rodman
"When a man steals your wife, there is no better revenge than to let him keep her."
-- Sacha Guitry
"It doesn’t much signify whom one marries, for one is sure to find out next morning it was someone else."
-- Will Rogers
"The happiest time of a person’s life is after his first divorce."
-- J.K. Galbraith
"When women hold off from marrying men, we call it independence. When men hold off from marrying women, we call it fear of commitment."
-- Warren Farrell (psychologist)
"As long as the bed shakes, the house will remain stable." (...)
"When poverty comes in the door, love goes out of the window." (...)
"Happy the marriage where the husband is the head and the wife the heart." (...)
"A good husband should be deaf and a good wife should be blind."
-- Proverbs
"Science without religion is lame. Religion without science is blind."
-- Albert Einstein
"The main purpose of religion is not to affirm that there is a God, but to prevent humans from thinking they are Gods."
-- Nassim Taleb
And on the first day, men created god. Religion simplify ideas. Against facts there are no arguments. Against faith there are no facts.
"I’d rather be in the mountains thinking of God than in church thinking about the mountains."
-- John Muir
"We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further."
-- Richard Dawkins
"God has no religion."
-- Mahatma Gandhi
"My religion is simple, my religion is kindness."
-- Dalai Lama
"Here the ways of men part: if you wish to strive for peace of soul and pleasure, then believe; if you wish to be a devotee of truth, then inquire."
-- Friedrich Nietzsche
"When you renounce something, you’re stuck to it forever."
-- Anthony de Mello
"Believe in the religion that has no name." (...)
"Modern society will shame you for earning money, shame you for being happy, shame you for being raised well, shame you for having children and ultimately shame you for existing. It isn’t just religion that controls you by declaring you a sinner."
-- Naval Ravikant
"People who want to share their religious views with you almost never want you to share yours with them."
-- Dave Barry
"Morality is the way that we would like the world to be, economics is the way that the world actually works."
-- Steven Levitt
"Conscience is what hurts when everything else feels so good."
-- Unknown
"The cash register did more for human morality than the congregational church."
-- Charlie Munger
"The teachers of morality speak like angels, but live like men."
-- Sam Johnson
"Compassion is the basis of morality."
-- Arthur Schopenhauer
"Morality, like art, means drawing a line someplace."
-- Oscar Wilde
"There are causes worth dying for, but none worth killing for."
-- Albert Camus
"The first thing a man will do for his ideals is lie."
-- Joseph Schumpeter
"Men never do evil so cheerfully and completely as when they do it from religious conviction."
-- Blaise Pascal
"The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in times of great moral crisis, maintain their neutrality."
-- Dante Alighieri
"Fanaticism is always a sign of repressed doubt."
-- Carl Jung
"The aim of philosophy is the logical clarification of thought. Philosophy is not a theory but an activity."
-- Ludwig Wittgenstein
Philosophy improves your intellectual rigor.
"Some ideias are so stupid that only intellectuals believe them."
-- George Orwell
"The whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of everyday thinking." (...)
"The grand aim of all science is to cover the greatest number of empirical facts by logical deduction from the smallest number of hypotheses or axioms."
-- Albert Einstein
Science is the study of truth. Science is about disproving, not proving. Everything that is not a law of nature is just a shared belief.
Technology is applied science.
"Scientific discovery consists in seeing what everyone else has seen and thinking what no one else has thought."
-- Albert Szent-Gyorgyi
"The most exciting phrase to hear in science is not «Eureka!» but «That’s funny...»"
-- Isaac Asimov
"The imagination of nature is far, far greater than the imagination of man."
-- Richard Feynman
"Technological progress is like an ax in the hands of a pathological criminal." (...)
"Science is a wonderful thing if one does not have to earn one’s living at it." (...)
"If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?"
-- Albert Einstein
"What is research but a blind date with knowledge?"
-- Will Harvey
"Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed."
-- Francis Bacon
"Science advances one funeral at a time."
-- Max Planck
"Aha moment: The moment of understanding when two smaller truths connect and a greater truth is revealed." (...) "Science requires skepticism. Religion requires belief." (...)
"Scientists who support silencing opposing voices are actually priests."
-- Naval Ravikant
"The price of success in philosophy is triviality."
-- C. Glymour
"Everything that can be invented has been invented."
-- Charles Duell (director of us patent office)
"Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life."
-- Immanuel Kant
"Science is what we understand well enough to explain to a computer. Art is everything else we do."
-- Donald Knuth
Art is a meditation and design is a negotiation. Art is just another form of screaming, it should confort thedisturbed and disturb the confortable. Life imitates art. Creators don’t separate from their work, because they are their work.
Artistic death is made by consensus.
"All art is erotic." (...)
"Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life." (...)
"Art is the lie that enables us to realize the truth."
-- Pablo Picasso
"Opera is when a guy gets stabbed in the back and, instead of bleeding, he sings."
-- Robert Benchley
"Poets are damned but see with the eyes of angels."
-- Allen Ginsberg
"Poetry is what gets lost in translation."
-- Robert Frost
"Art is the absence of fear."
-- Erykah Badu
"Art is the elimination of the unnecessary."
-- Pablo Picasso
"If you create it for yourself, it’s art. If you create it for others, it’s business."
-- Naval Ravikant
"Art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the confortable."
-- Banksy
"No artist tolerates reality."
-- Friedrich Nietzsche
"The role of the artist is to ask questions, not to answer them."
-- Anton Chekhov
"To be an artist, you have to give up everything, including the desire to be a good artist."
-- Jasper Johns
"An artist is not paid by his work but by his vision."
-- James Whistler
"An artist discovers his genious the day he dares not to please."
-- Andre Malraux
"Anybody with artistic ambitions is always trying to reconnect with the way they saw things as child."
-- Tim Burton
"To be an artist, you need to live in a world of silence."
-- Louise Bourgeois
"Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away."
-- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Most people with good taste are young and poor.
The more «art» you allow in, the less commercial success you’ll have. People don’t want «art» they want entertainment.
"Form follows profit is the aesthetic principle of our times."
-- Richard Rogers
"Good taste is easy. What’s challenging is to be close to vulgarity."
-- Adam Caruso
"Simplicity is a great virtue but it requires hard work to achieve it and education to appreciate it. And to make matters worse: complexity sells better."
-- Edsger Dijkstra
"There is no exquisite beauty without some strangeness in the proportion."
-- Edgar Allan Poe
"Sharpness is a bourgeois concept."
-- Henri Cartier-Bresson
"Limit everything to the essential but do not remove the poetry."
-- Dieter Rams
"Journalism is printing what someone else doesn’t want printed. Everything else is public relations."
-- George Orwell
News are the first draft of History but he human brain was not designed to process all of the world’s emergencies in realtime. Journalism is now activism. It’s the only way to get eyeballs. Media companies harvest your attention and transform it into revenue.
"The clash of ideas is the sound of freedom."
-- Lady Bird Johnson
"The goal of media is to make every problem, your problem." (...)
"Journalists aren’t neutral, they’re the cavalry of culture wars." (...)
"The more people in the conversation the harder it becomes to speak the unconfortable truth. Social media puts everybody in the same conversation." (...)
"If you’re writing for your followers, your followers are worthless."
-- Naval Ravikant
"Your job is to get your audience to care about your obsessions."
-- Martin Scorsese
"The media is always accurate, except when they are talking about things I know."
-- Knoll’s law
Privacy is power. What people don't know they can't ruin.
"We build our computer (systems) the way we build our cities: over time, without a plan, on top of ruins."
-- Ellen Ullman
We’ve grown dependent on three simple features that just aren’t available in the analog world: search, sort and filter.
"As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain, as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality."
-- Albert Einstein
"If people do not believe that mathematics is simple, it is only because they do not realize how complicated life is."
-- John von Neumann
"Mathematics is not a careful march down a well-cleared highway, but a journey into a strange wilderness, where the explorers often get lost. Rigor should be a signal to the historian that the maps have been made, and the real explorers have gone elsewhere."
-- William S. Anglin
"Computers are useless. They can only give you answers."
-- Pablo Picasso
"One of the biggest mistakes we made was trying to automate things that are super easy for a person to do, but super hard for a computer to do." (...)
"We're already cyborgs. Your phone and your computer are extensions of you, but the interface is through finger movements or speech, which are very slow." (...)
"When I was a little kid, I was really scared of the dark. But then I came to understand, dark just means the absense of photons in the visible wavelenght - 400 to 700 nanometers. Then I thought, well, it's really silly to be afraid of a lack of photons. Then I wasn't afraid of the dark anymore after that."
-- Elon Musk
"He who does not desire power is fit to hold it."
-- Plato
"Raise your words, not your voice. It is rain that grows flowers not thunders."
-- Rumi
"An army of sheep led by a lion is better than an army of lions led by a sheep."
-- Alexander the great
"To lead people walk behind them." (...)
"A leader is best when people barely know he exists, when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say: we did it ourselves."
-- Lao Tzu
Leaders are team makers. There are no bad teams, only bad leaders.
Being a leader is different from being a boss: it requires to be a manager and a psychotherapist. Leadership is based on emotional intelligence, people don’t follow robots, they follow the strongest person. The secret to motivating people and maintaining their morale is to get them to think less about themselves and more about the group. Leadership is the ability to locate yourself.
Hints:
- Leaders are embassadors of their teams. They can delegate culture keeping but not culture creation.
- If you want to lead, simply act with confidence and others around you will pick up on that energy and fall in line. No explicit statements needed. If someone fails to fall in line, either your leadership needs improvement or you need to excise them from your group.
- Best leaders are leaders that grew up in the hierarchy.
- People seek leadership because they want autonomy and influence. Influence is more powerful than money. The reason millionaires are depressed is that they don’t know the difference.
"Leadership is not about being followed, is about being first."
-- Dan Munro
"You can tell a bully from a leader by how they treat people who disagree with them."
-- Miles K. Davis
"The person who clears the path ultimately controls its direction, just as the canvas shapes the painting."
-- Ryan Holiday
"If you wish to control others you must control yourself."
-- Miyamoto Musashi
"A politician who reads aloud speaches written by others is an actor, not a leader." (...)
"The leader doesn’t take charge of the tribe. The leader takes responsability for the tribe." (...)
"The highest status people in human history are those that asked for nothing and gave everything." (...)
"Charisma is the ability to project confidence and love at the same time." (...)
"If you aren’t willing to get mocked, you’ll never be able to lead." (...)
"You lead by willing to walk alone."
-- Naval Ravikant
"The only thing that gives orders is balls."
-- Tony Montana
"Only the guy who isn't rowing has time to rock the boat."
-- Jean Paul Sartre
"Don’t postpone to tomorrow what other people can do for you today."
-- Warren Buffett
Managing is delegating. A great manager is a great facilitator. His responsability is to make his team better.
Hints:
- A manager should answer two questions a day: «What is important to accomplish?» and «Where was I uncomfortable the day before?» The speed that you offload your stuff will be the speed of your team.
- Your productivity as a manager is measured as the productivity of your team. Being seated making stuff is not productive. The key principle is putting your team’s productivity first. Remember, you are a communication hub and a multiplier. Think about the things you can delegate vs. the things that only you can do. If you truly work for your people instead of being busy pretending you’re occupied, just tell yourself: what I accomplished today is not yet visible, but it will be.
- Spend one hour a day communicating to your people and everything will be OK.
- Instead of generalizing and saying «management is useless», it’s more correct to say «bad management is counterproductive». The only reason there’s so many awful managers is that people like you refuse to do the job.
"The best teams are made up of a bunch of nobodies who love everybody and serve anybody and don't care about becoming a somebody."
-- Phil Dooley
"If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together."
-- Proverb
People should feel as part of a tribe. While the tribe is cohese, external threats will pass.
Hints:
- Always be clear and specific about what you expect from other people. You cannot expect from them what you haven’t articulated, usually many times and in writing. Also plan for them to fail you.
- A chain is only as strong as its weakest link.
- Like animals, humans also seem designed to work in groups of a particular size. The ultimate group: Amazon’s «two-pizza teams».
"I divide my officers into four groups. There are clever, stupid, diligent and lazy officers. Usually two characteristics are combined. Some are clever and diligent -- their place is the General Staff. The next lot are stupid and lazy -- they make up 90 percent of every army and are suited to routine duties. Anyone who is both clever and lazy is qualified for the highest leadership duties, because he possesses the intellectual clarity and the composure necessary for difficult decisions. One must beware of anyone who is stupid and diligent -- he must not be entrusted with any responsibility because he will always cause only mischief."
-- Kurt von Hammerstein-Equord
"There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it."
-- Edith Wharton
"Every person in your company is a vector. Your progress is determined by the sum of all vectors."
-- Elon Musk
"When working surround yourself with people more sucessful than you. When playing surround yourself with people happier than you."
-- Naval Ravikant
"Nothing will kill a great employee faster than whatching you tolerate a bad one."
-- Perry Belcher
"The goal is to move everyone up from «unconfident and incompetent» to «confident and competent»."
-- HN_exelius
Ask instead of telling.
Continue, or consider. You give feedback that says either «continue doing X» or «consider changing X to make it better». If the delivered work is not good enough give a reason. It’s really simple, fast and actionable.
Hints:
- «Why did you decide to do X in that order?» This creates a dialog, instead of a debate where each side first stakes out positions. Lead your people to discover what you would have suggested. Smart people will get to the same place you were going, or if you are humble enough to listen, you may learn something.
- «Can you take another look at this for XYZ reasons?». This gives the employee ownership of the final deliverable, while still prompting them to deal with problems they overlooked. «Because» is a great motivator.
- «Interesting, how do you feel about it? And your team? Is that the best you can do?»
"Praise by name, criticize by category."
-- Warren Buffet
"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." (...)
"Work on your tone. Often ideas are rejected because of the tone of voice they are wrapped in. Humility covers many blemishes."
-- Kevin Kelly
"Good advice is something a man gives when he is too old to set a bad example."
-- La Rouchefoucauld
Giving appropriate feedback makes your juniors feel like what they are doing is important. Pounding directives down or not giving any direction are demotivators. Howewer, don’t do it daily.
Default to «no» for all meetings. Meetings are the death of productivity.
If you can’t say no, schedule for the afternoon and preferably as walking meetings (exercise and sunlight; less pleasantries; more dialogue, less monologue; no slides; end easily by walking back).
Hints:
- Start with an overachieving question: «how can we raise sales by 20%?».
- Do not share your opinion before asking for input from your team. Lower ranked people should speak first.
- Tell the bad news promptly. Good news can wait. (Berkshire policy)
- People can’t remember more than 3 points from a speech.
- Instead of PowerPoints use «narratives» — four-to-six page memos that employees read and discuss together. (Jeff Bezos)
- Leave one seat free - for your customer. (Jeff Bezos)
- Text me when you’re ready for the call but then give me 15 minutes.
"Look for the job that you would take if you didn’t need a job."
-- Warren Buffett
"The world will ask you who you are, and if don’t know, the world will tell you."
-- Carl Jung
"Don’t be the best. Be the only." (...)
"A good sign that you are doing the kind of work that you should be doing is that you enjoy the tedious parts that other people find tortuous."
-- Kevin Kelly
Nobody can compete with you on being you. Most of your life is a search for who and what needs you the most.
"If the title matters to you, you don’t belong to a startup." (...)
"If you want to be part of a great tech company, then you need to be able to sell or build. If you don’t do either, learn." (...)
"Creative teams should be colocated. The rest of the company can be distributed." (...)
"There are 7B people in the world. someday, I hope, there will be 7B companies." (...)
"What feels like play to you and work to others?" (...)
"Following your genuine intellectual curiosity is a better foundation for a career than following whatever is making money right now." (...)
"Be the best in the world at what you do. Keep redefining what you do until this is true." (...)
"You get rewarded for unique knowledge, not for effort. Effort is required to create unique knowledge." (...)
"Give the world what it need and it will give you what you want." (...)
"You don’t have 8 creative problem-solving hours in the day - you have 2. Spend your time wisely." (...)
"Knowledge workers function like athletes - train and sprint, then rest and reassess." (...)
"If the work doesn’t require creativity, delegate it, automate it or leave it." (...)
"Set and enforce an aspirational hourly rate." (...)
"Rich people get paid by the project and pay by the hour." (...)
"To get paid in the future, live in the future."
-- Naval Ravikant
"The interesting jobs are the ones that you make up."
-- Chris Young
"Learn to sell. Learn to build. If you can do both, you’re unstoppable."
-- Naval Ravikant
Become the best at one specific thing or very good at two or more things.
Hints:
- You don’t get anywhere, and for more money, sitting in the same seat.
- Happy, smart, and useful. Work smart not harder but hard still. It’s good to be better, but is better to be different.
- Metaknowledge (instead of asking, journal higher hierarchy than you).
- Deliver more value than expected.
"While deep work will promote you, shallow work will only prevent you from being fired."
-- Cal Newport
"Oh, this is an easy one. When people say a child is talented they mean he or she is a good learner. But a talented adult is a good do-er. High potential people who fail to make an impact are stuck in child-mode, because that is what they were always praised for."
-- HN_goatinaboat
"I had a manager who once said the people who were terminated were those who question too much and do too little."
-- HN_??
"The moment you rigidly follow a plan set in your youth, you lock yourself into a position, and the times will ruthlessly pass you by."
-- Robert Greene
You will either pivot or get pivoted.
Avoid the trap of following one set career path, focus on being useful. My passionate interests have changed many times since I graduated college. You are a learning machine, not an occupation. Your work is the greatest mean at your disposal for expressing your social intelligence.
"Jobs are like clothes. There is no "wrong job". There are jobs which fit now."
-- Unknown
"My luggage is always ready."
-- Jorge Jesus (soccer coach)
You make yourself rare by combining two or more relevant «pretty goods». Capitalism rewards things that are both rare and valuable.
- use your transportable soft (e.g. persuasive communication: pitching and change somebody’s opinion, emotional intelligence, ability to read the room, ability to build trust, ability to retain talent) and hard skills (write a pitch, can you change somebody else opinion, make a 2 minute youtube, etc)
- stuff that looks fun for you and looks like work for others.
- take risks to boost your immune system.
"Your income is directly proportional to the need for what you do and your ability to do it."
-- Jim Rohn
"Be so good that they cannot ignore you." (...)
"Career capital is the unique skills that make you rare and valuable."
-- Cal Newport
Employees have no control over their futures. The economy forces all the risk on them.
Hints:
- When you sell your ability to deliver results nobody asks about your skillset. When you sell your time, you need to fit into a role that someone can comprehend and already knows they need.
- Rich people get paid by project and pay by the hour.
- The boss wants the most sophisticated talent he can get, and he doesn’t want to pay anything for it. Every penny he pays, and every second of your life he doesn’t get for it, is a failure in his eyes.
"A taste of freedom can make you unemployable." (...)
"An entrepreneur without drive is just an unemployed." (...)
"Earn with your mind, not with your time." (...)
"You’re never going to get rich renting out your time." (...)
"Trade money for time, not time for money. You’re going to run out of time first."
-- Naval Ravikant
Hints:
- To be an entrepreneur you need to know a little about a lot of things.
- To be employed, if you pick the right specialization, you’ll do better as a specialist.
- Startups are (by necessity) filled with generalists; big companies are filled with specialists.
Ask employers why did they asked you for an interview - they will describe your strengths.
"Our best work is the work we find ourselves doing, when there is no obligation to do so."
-- Naval Ravikant
"He who works with his hands is a laborer.
He who works with his hands and his head is a craftsman.
He who works with his hands and his head and his heart is an artist."
-- St. Francis of Assisi
Trial most but only hire likable persons that «get shit done».
Your goal should be to «fire» yourself and hire people who are better at your job than you are. Leaders must become masters at finding and hiring talent.
Hints:
- When applying for a job be more of a consultant than an applicant. Don’t do interviews, do discussions.
- Employers are just trying to find somebody they like, that’s what «culture fit» is. Often is not how good you are, you just have to be liked while being sufficiently good. Go into job interviews with a story in mind. All an interviewer really wants to know is if he can spend eight hours a day around you. And people like people like themselves.
- Good interview questions:
- «Problems you’ve solved and how did you solve them?» (Elon Musk)
- «What did you get done this week?» (Elon Musk)
- «What do you own and why?» (Sandy Gottesman, investor)
- «What do you believe that most people don’t?»
- Remember that I’d hired them to do things that I could not. As such, they knew their job better than I did. If I could have done it myself, I’d not have had to hire them. 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.
- Companies hire for a problem and not general optimizations. Even if they need a generalist. Growing companies are always hiring.
- Decide in advance what your time is worth. Do not let others tell you how much you will be paid. They may make offers, but it is never their decision. It is yours.
- A job search is both a numbers game and a quality game. You can control how many jobs you apply to, and how good your skills and portfolio are.
"Bad professionals make money off their customers, good professionals make money for their customers."
-- Jacques Mattheij
"We value “T-shaped” people. That is, people who are both generalists (highly skilled at a broad set of valuable things—the top of the T) and also experts (among the best in their field within a narrow discipline—the vertical leg of the T) (...) An expert who is too narrow has difficulty collaborating. A generalist who doesn’t go deep enough in a single area ends up on the margins, not really contributing as an individual. Where you choose to be deep should be an area of interest to you and which the market values."
-- Valve employee book
"Your best job will be one that you were unqualified for because it stretches you. In fact only apply to jobs you are unqualified for." (...)
"Being enthusiastic is worth 25 IQ points." (...)
"The best time to negotiate your salary for a new job is the moment AFTER they say they want you, and not before. Then it becomes a game of chicken for each side to name an amount first, but it is to your advantage to get them to give a number before you do." (...)
"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."
-- Kevin Kelly
"In looking for people to hire, you look for three qualities: integrity, intelligence and energy. And if they don't have the first, the other two will kill you." (...)
"Your salary is the bribe they give you to forget your dreams."
-- Warren Buffett
"If you can’t see yourself working with someone for life, don’t work with them for a day." (...)
"Mercenaries work for money. Missionaries build for others. Artists create for themselves." (...)
"Management is mostly hiring well and firing quickly."
-- Naval Ravikant
"Your real resume is a painful recounting of all your struggles."
-- Naval Ravikant
Hints:
- Your resume should tell the reader why you more valuable to the company than the next person. You’ll show that with your experience. Tell HOW you accomplished your responsibilities better than the next person. ie. You are responsible for selling cars (so is every other car salesperson). You sold more cars than anyone else in the dealership for six months out of the last year. Which person would you hire.
- There are two skill levels: still learning or confident.
"Whatever makes you weird is probably your greatest asset."
-- Joss Whedon
Respect them. You’ll never respect them if you don’t reward them accordingly.
Hints:
- Use «golden handcuffs» offering your new hires the ability to earn as much as they want, provided that they are earning you even more income in the process. Usually people leave managers, not companies.
- Smart people will not work extremely hard just for money.
- Good employees are not easy to find. It takes some real chutzpah to make someone do your work for insufficient compensation while you rake in the big bucks.
- Asking for a raise. Don’t get discouraged if you get a «no». Simply thank them for their time and ask «What specific outcomes would be required to receive this raise within the next 3-6 months?» If they can’t answer this question, you should probably find another employer.
"Train employees well enough they could get another job, but treat them well enough so they never want to."
-- Kevin Kelly
"Everybody wants to hire the best. Few of them actually pay them like they’re the best."
-- Naval Ravikant
"Fools and wise folk are alike harmless. It is the half-wise and the half-foolish, who are the most dangerous."
-- J.W. Goethe
Beware of all players.
People are amazing optimizers and will find any loopholes or gaps to their advantage. Only your parents will help you in a way that is prejudicial to them.
"The world is divided between victims and predators, and you have to defend yourself against both."
-- Florenz Baron
"The enemy is fear. We think it is hate, but it is fear."
-- Ghandi
"Any person capable of angering you becomes your master."
-- Epictetus
"Who lies for you will lie against you." (...)
"Talkers aren’t strong. The strong don’t talk."
-- Proverbs
"Because she competes with no one, no one can compete with her."
-- Lao Tzu
Easy players are often just deceiving you. However - if you can identify them - there are people acting stupid that are easy wins.
"Despise the free lunch."
-- Robert Greene (law of power)
"Sometimes one pays most for the things one gets for nothing." (...)
"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the the universe."
-- Albert Einstein
"«El dorados» are never drawn in the map."
-- Unknown
"If you’ve been in the game thirty minutes and you don’t know who the patsy is, you’re the patsy."
-- Warren Buffett
"Never assume that loud is strong and quiet is weak."
-- Gurubogsa
"Necessity knows no law." (...)
"Fear can make a donkey attack a lion."
-- Proverbs
Beware of sad people.
Desperate players will risk everything in a fight. This gives them a huge advantage, they have nothing to lose.
"Don’t fight a starving animal. Never contend with a man who has nothing to Lose; for thereby you enter into an unequal conflict. The other enters without anxiety; having lost everything, including shame, he has no further loss to fear. He therefore re-sorts to all kinds of insolence."
-- Balthasar Gracian
"Beware the fury of a patient man."
-- John Dryden
The thougest competition is a good enough competitor.
Besides outworking them, you’ll need all weaponry. Sometimes even the «dirty stuff»: «pawn sacrifices», bribes and lying are examples of «dirty stuff». They may be effective but use them only on desperate situations: it’s a scar for life.
"Put all the meat in the barbecue."
-- Jorge Jesus (soccer coach)
"Get others to do the work for you, but always take the credit." (...)
"Keep your hands clean."
-- Robert Greene (Law of power)
"The best fighter is never angry."
-- Lao Tzu
"Of all the bad men, religious bad men are the worst."
-- C.S. Lewis
When nothing else works, surrender. Only use anger and go all in if you can see the end already.
"Do I not destroy my enemies when I make them my friends?"
-- Abraham Lincoln
The human strenght is the ability to cooperate. Heros are fictional stories. Anyway your follower is not always your fan.
Hint:
- Buy from your community. Sell to outsiders.
"Competition is the law of the jungle, but cooperation is the law of the civilization."
-- Peter Kropotkin
"United we are rock, divided we are sand." (...)
"The sheep will spend its entire life fearing the wolf, only to be eaten by the shepherd." (...)
"Hungry dogs are never loyal."
-- Proverbs
"If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and man."
-- Mark Twain
"Help a man who is in trouble and that man will remember you when he is in trouble again."
-- Paul Alexander
"Friendships change. Trust the friends of today as if they will be enemies tomorrow, and that of the worst kind. As this happens in reality, let it happen in your precaution."
-- Balthasar Gracian
"The worst thing about betrayal is that it never comes from your enemies."
-- The godfather
"I learned a long time ago the wisest thing I can do is be on my side."
-- Maya Angelou
"Every society honors its live conformists and its dead troublemakers."
-- Marshall McLuhan
"You either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain."
-- Harvey Dent
Our heros are our idealized selfes.
"Show me a hero, and I’ll write you a tragedy."
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald
"War is what happens when language fails."
-- Margaret Atwood
Avoiding conflict will not keep peace, will rot it. Rotten peace builds resentment.
Small (but relevant) conflicts will grow into big conflicts. What could have been very small is now a real problem that may compromise your relationship.
You’re either part of the solution or part of the problem.
Hints:
- Use «we». Mean it and take responsability.
- Bring options to the table. It’s easier to negotiate down.
"To quiet a crowd or a drunk, just whisper. Calm is contagious." (...)
"Your best response to an insult is «you’re probably right». Often they are."
-- Kevin Kelly
"Think before you speak. There is always time to add a word, never to withdraw one. Talk as if you were making your will: the fewer words the less litigation."
-- Balthasar Gracian
"A quarrel is quickly settled when deserted by one party; there is no battle unless there be two."
-- Seneca