Category: Expectations
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The aspiration capability gap
When you’re one person, practicing creative work, and you’re constantly choosing between a creative factor and a commercial factor (that provides your livelihood), it can feel extremely unfair, and even downright torturous (see Costica Bradatan). One reminder: whether you are one person, or a thousand-person company, at any given point, there will always be a…
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Opportunities are earned
If someone takes a chance on you, or you’ve found yourself with an opportunity you’re not sure you deserve, the best thing you can do—for yourself, and the other party—is earn it. In 1998, Peyton Manning signed a $48 million contract with the Indiana Colts. “People ask me what I plan to do with my…
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You are traffic
I got bored with people saying, like, “This world is shit.” It’s kind of like when people say, “Oh, this traffic is so bad.” I’m like, “You are traffic.” You can’t sit there and be like, “Oh man, the traffic was horrible. I’m sorry, I was late.” You are traffic. You’re in it. Without you,…
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Why almost everything is actually more difficult than it seems
The fluency illusion is a tendency for people to overestimate their abilities without sufficient evidence. Yale professor Woo-kyoung Ahn demonstrates this by showing students a few seconds of choreography and challenging them to imitate it. (It seems to cover a lot of ground similar to the Dunning–Kruger effect, a tendency for people with limited competence…
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Contentions: Poor Charlie’s Almanack, Stripe Press, and why it all works
A good friend of mine recently showed me Stripe’s new book, Poor Charlie’s Almanack. One of Stripe Press’s tactics is to republish old works with new packaging, and this one was a great choice. The original book was made nearly two decades ago by Peter Kaufman, who compiled quotes from Charlie Munger’s speeches, and put…
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Thinking outside of what exists
In a world where it’s challenging to think outside of what exists, the ability to be able to conceive of something—i.e., to imagine, to put shape and form to it, to express it and find comfort with or at least tolerance for ambiguity and confusion and being misunderstood and confrontation without giving up—that’s a competitive…
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Forget what happens next
There’s something powerful about letting go of all expectations; focusing on the thing that’s right in front of you, and taking the closest next possible step. When you’re actually doing what you’re supposed to be doing, you need to shift your brain into a state that can let that happen. Success or failure is probably…
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Kirby and the power of polish
In 1991, Japanese game company HAL Laboratory Inc. was 1.5 billion yen in debt and had to bet its future on one game. It was called Tinkle Popo, featuring a rotund protagonist named Popopo. HAL Laboratory had planned to publish Tinkle Popo independently, and sold 26,000 pre-ordered copies. Nintendo—a HAL Laboratory client and investor—intervened; game…
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Write the book you want to live
On either fence of, “Write what you know,” I tend to lean towards writing about what I don’t know; “Write What Obsesses You,” as Meg Wolitzer describes it. A year after publishing Creative Doing, and a few years after the initial manuscript, I still pick it up and enjoy flipping through it. Although there are…
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A little flame of talent
At Granta, Kent Haruf writes: When I finished that novel I wrote John Irving to ask if he would connect me with his agent, and he said he would. He said he had sent fifty writers to his agent and he hadn’t taken any of them, but maybe he’d take me. And he did: I…