1. ~book(s) that have greatly influenced your life: The Fountainhead, by Ayn Rand, because of the two main characters in the book—Howard Roark and Peter Keating.
-I think the key to life is to figure out when it makes sense to save mental energy and be like Keating (I’m super conforming in my clothing choices because it’s not something that’s important to me) and when in life it really matters to be like Roark and reason independently (choosing your career path, picking your life partner, deciding how to raise your kids, etc.). ~it’s not actually as scary as it seems to reason independently and act on it. P 41-42
2. ~don’t get daunted out of shooting for something you want, especially by potentially unfounded assumptions. P 43-44
3. I think humans can only feel real hatred of people they’re able to dehumanize in their heads. As soon as someone is exposed to reality and reminded of the full humanness of someone they hate, the hatred usually fades away and empathy pours in. P 44
4. Most people do their best work in the morning, and I’m no exception.
I think we all have two main characters in our heads: a rational decision-maker (the adult in your head) and an instant gratification monkey (the child in your head who doesn’t care about consequences and just wants to maximize the ease and pleasure of the current moment). For me, these two are in a constant battle, and the monkey usually wins. But I’ve found that if I turn life into a yin-yang situation—e.g., “work till 6 today, then no work till tomorrow”—it’s much easier to control the monkey in the work period. Knowing he has something fun to look forward to later makes him much more likely to cooperate. In my old system, the monkey was in a constant state of rebellion against a system that never really gave him any dedicated time. P 46
5. Obsess over figuring out the funnest, most exciting, most natural shape of yourself as a writer and start doing that. I started out basically imagining I was writing for a stadium full of replicas of myself—which made things easy because I already knew exactly what topics interested them, what writing style they liked, what their sense of humor was, etc. I ignored the conventional wisdom that online articles should be short, frequent, posted consistently—because I knew the Tims in that stadium didn’t care about those things—and instead focused on a single type of topic. By focusing inward on yourself as a writer instead of outward on what you think readers will want to read, you’ll end up creating the best and most original work, and that one-in-a-thousand person who happens to love it will end up finding their way to you. P 47-48
6. Epitaph Test. When I find myself with an opportunity, I ask myself whether I’d be happy if my epitaph had something to do with this project. If the answer is a clear no, it probably means it’s not actually very important to me. Thinking about your epitaph, as morbid as it is, is a nice way to cut through all the noise and force yourself to look at your work from a super zoomed-out perspective, where you can see what really matters to you. ~the Epitaph Test is usually a reminder to focus my time and effort on doing the highest-quality and most original creative work I can.
Deathbed Test. We all hear about these studies where people on their deathbed reflect on what they regret most, and the cliché is that nobody ever says they regret spending more time in the office. That’s because a deathbed offers people a level of zoomed-out clarity that’s hard to get to in our normal lives, and it’s only when we’re lacking that clarity in the fog of our day-to-day rush that we’d think it makes sense to neglect our most important personal relationships. The Deathbed Test pushes me to do two things:
i. Make sure I’m dedicating my time to the right people with the question, “Is this someone I might be thinking about when I’m on my deathbed?”
ii. Make sure I’m spending enough high-quality time with the people I care about most with the question, “If I were on my deathbed today, would I be happy with the amount of time I spent with this person?” An alternative is thinking about other people’s deathbeds—“If X person were on their deathbed today, how would I feel about the amount of quality time I’ve spent with them?”
The people who matter most are always in competition for your time with both your work and with other people, and the Deathbed Test can be a good reminder that the only way to dedicate the proper amount of time to your key people is by saying no to a lot of other stuff and a lot of other people.
The point of both the Epitaph Test and the Deathbed Test is that by the time you’re on your deathbed and your epitaph is being drafted, it’s too late to change anything—so we want to do whatever we can to access that magical end-of-life clarity before the end of life actually happens. P 48-49
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wait_But_Why
https://www.ted.com/speakers/tim_urban
https://www.amazon.com/Elon-Musk-Blog-Wait-But-ebook/dp/B01CF5FY4E/ref
https://www.amazon.com/Wait-But-Why-Year-reader-ebook/dp/B00TXYJOZG/ref
TIM URBAN is the author of the blog Wait But Why and has become one of the Internet’s most popular writers. Tim, according to Fast Company, has “captured a level of reader engagement that even the new-media giants would be envious of.” Today, Wait But Why receives more than 1.5 million unique visitors per month and has over 550,000 email subscribers. Tim has gained a number of prominent readers as well, like authors Sam Harris and Susan Cain, Twitter co-founder Evan Williams, TED curator Chris Anderson, and Brain Pickings’ Maria Popova. Tim’s series of posts after interviewing Elon Musk have been called by Vox’s David Roberts “the meatiest, most fascinating, most satisfying posts I’ve read in ages.” You can start with the first one, “Elon Musk: The World’s Raddest Man.” Tim’s TED Talk, “Inside the Mind of a Master Procrastinator,” has received more than 21 million views.
-I think the key to life is to figure out when it makes sense to save mental energy and be like Keating (I’m super conforming in my clothing choices because it’s not something that’s important to me) and when in life it really matters to be like Roark and reason independently (choosing your career path, picking your life partner, deciding how to raise your kids, etc.). ~it’s not actually as scary as it seems to reason independently and act on it. P 41-42
2. ~don’t get daunted out of shooting for something you want, especially by potentially unfounded assumptions. P 43-44
3. I think humans can only feel real hatred of people they’re able to dehumanize in their heads. As soon as someone is exposed to reality and reminded of the full humanness of someone they hate, the hatred usually fades away and empathy pours in. P 44
4. Most people do their best work in the morning, and I’m no exception.
I think we all have two main characters in our heads: a rational decision-maker (the adult in your head) and an instant gratification monkey (the child in your head who doesn’t care about consequences and just wants to maximize the ease and pleasure of the current moment). For me, these two are in a constant battle, and the monkey usually wins. But I’ve found that if I turn life into a yin-yang situation—e.g., “work till 6 today, then no work till tomorrow”—it’s much easier to control the monkey in the work period. Knowing he has something fun to look forward to later makes him much more likely to cooperate. In my old system, the monkey was in a constant state of rebellion against a system that never really gave him any dedicated time. P 46
5. Obsess over figuring out the funnest, most exciting, most natural shape of yourself as a writer and start doing that. I started out basically imagining I was writing for a stadium full of replicas of myself—which made things easy because I already knew exactly what topics interested them, what writing style they liked, what their sense of humor was, etc. I ignored the conventional wisdom that online articles should be short, frequent, posted consistently—because I knew the Tims in that stadium didn’t care about those things—and instead focused on a single type of topic. By focusing inward on yourself as a writer instead of outward on what you think readers will want to read, you’ll end up creating the best and most original work, and that one-in-a-thousand person who happens to love it will end up finding their way to you. P 47-48
6. Epitaph Test. When I find myself with an opportunity, I ask myself whether I’d be happy if my epitaph had something to do with this project. If the answer is a clear no, it probably means it’s not actually very important to me. Thinking about your epitaph, as morbid as it is, is a nice way to cut through all the noise and force yourself to look at your work from a super zoomed-out perspective, where you can see what really matters to you. ~the Epitaph Test is usually a reminder to focus my time and effort on doing the highest-quality and most original creative work I can.
Deathbed Test. We all hear about these studies where people on their deathbed reflect on what they regret most, and the cliché is that nobody ever says they regret spending more time in the office. That’s because a deathbed offers people a level of zoomed-out clarity that’s hard to get to in our normal lives, and it’s only when we’re lacking that clarity in the fog of our day-to-day rush that we’d think it makes sense to neglect our most important personal relationships. The Deathbed Test pushes me to do two things:
i. Make sure I’m dedicating my time to the right people with the question, “Is this someone I might be thinking about when I’m on my deathbed?”
ii. Make sure I’m spending enough high-quality time with the people I care about most with the question, “If I were on my deathbed today, would I be happy with the amount of time I spent with this person?” An alternative is thinking about other people’s deathbeds—“If X person were on their deathbed today, how would I feel about the amount of quality time I’ve spent with them?”
The people who matter most are always in competition for your time with both your work and with other people, and the Deathbed Test can be a good reminder that the only way to dedicate the proper amount of time to your key people is by saying no to a lot of other stuff and a lot of other people.
The point of both the Epitaph Test and the Deathbed Test is that by the time you’re on your deathbed and your epitaph is being drafted, it’s too late to change anything—so we want to do whatever we can to access that magical end-of-life clarity before the end of life actually happens. P 48-49
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wait_But_Why
https://www.ted.com/speakers/tim_urban
https://www.amazon.com/Elon-Musk-Blog-Wait-But-ebook/dp/B01CF5FY4E/ref
https://www.amazon.com/Wait-But-Why-Year-reader-ebook/dp/B00TXYJOZG/ref
TIM URBAN is the author of the blog Wait But Why and has become one of the Internet’s most popular writers. Tim, according to Fast Company, has “captured a level of reader engagement that even the new-media giants would be envious of.” Today, Wait But Why receives more than 1.5 million unique visitors per month and has over 550,000 email subscribers. Tim has gained a number of prominent readers as well, like authors Sam Harris and Susan Cain, Twitter co-founder Evan Williams, TED curator Chris Anderson, and Brain Pickings’ Maria Popova. Tim’s series of posts after interviewing Elon Musk have been called by Vox’s David Roberts “the meatiest, most fascinating, most satisfying posts I’ve read in ages.” You can start with the first one, “Elon Musk: The World’s Raddest Man.” Tim’s TED Talk, “Inside the Mind of a Master Procrastinator,” has received more than 21 million views.
Reference
Ferriss, Timothy. Tribe of Mentors: Short Life Advice from the Best in the World (P. 40). Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Kindle Edition.
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