This is a slightly edited repost of a twitter thread I once did at 520am in the morning to try and recap all of the things I talk about a lot, off the top of my head. I tried editing it a bit and then messed it up somehow, lolsob.
- Do it 100 times. Write 100 songs, cook 100 omelettes, talk to 100 people. It never seems like a huge deal until you try it yourself. It’s manageable, and yet it stretches you, and you’ll be observably different at the end of it. It’s an effective way to get a foothold on a new thing.
- Play long games. This is kind of a remix of 1. Thousands of people will want to start a substack or podcast. Something like 1% of them or less will stick with it consistently for 2 years. If you commit to things for 10+ years, you develop what appear to be superpowers.
- Practice good reply game. Life is multiplayer co-op. You can achieve much more with others than you can by yourself. You can build relationships simply by doing good replies over a sustained period of time. Do 100 good replies over 2 years. ;-P Don’t be pushy or needy about it.
- Cultivate your taste. Everything beautiful in the world is made by people with discernment, who know what they like and why they like it, who are motivated by something deeper than just money or status. This takes a while. Evaluate 100 things you love, articulate why/how.
- Haters are fans too. Be mindful of how you spend your time and energy. 90% of the time spent complaining about what you don’t like is better spent focusing on what you do like. Don’t incentivize what you dislike. A common enemy doesn’t actually create lasting friendship.
- No bullying. You cannot bully people into becoming better people, because what they learn from it is that bullying is how things get done.
- The meaning of life is friends. We’re here to take care of each other. We’re all walking each other home. You can come up with more grandiose versions of this – justice, liberty, happiness… it all makes more sense through the frame of human kinship.
- Narcissism is a bug of the mind. It’s an optical-temporal illusion, a fixation on the narrow image of a self that doesn’t actually exist. Call it ego if you like. It’s mistaking the menu for the meal, the map for the territory. There is no self, we are all waves in the ocean.
- You can’t shame someone who has none. Anti-narcissist shaming benefits narcissists (who have no shame, and as such are unaffected by you trying to shame them – many even enjoy the attention) and hurts everybody else.
- The public is insufficiently educated on how to be a good public.You could say that this is the central problem of our species. There are lots of parts to this wicked problem. There’s room for everyone to pitch in and contribute to this infinite endeavor.
- The means by which the public educates itself (the media, primarily) have warped incentives. So we have a global public that *systematically* deludes and terrifies itself. Choosing to be a measured, thoughtful, truth-seeking person in this world is a radical & meaningful act.
- Solving big problems requires massive coordination. As a species we’re not very good at large-scale coordination. To be fair, we’re fairly new to it. We need master communicators and coordinators to demonstrate how we can do it better.
- Projects require collaboration. Embarking on any sufficiently substantial project – like cooking 100 omelettes – requires that you learn to coordinate and collaborate with your future selves. This is a worthy endeavor because you can subsequently use those skills to serve and help your friends.
- The core thing about good reply game is attention. You have to be attentive to other people, discern what they’re trying to do, how they’d like to be interacted with. Attention is also how you cultivate taste. Attention then is the most precious, valuable resource there is.
- When we coerce people into “paying” attention, we set them up for dysfunctional relationships for the rest of their lives. We do this in families, we do this in schools, we do it because it’s convenient and we’re ignorant of the true costs. (See again: 6. No Bullying.)
- All advice is context-dependent to a degree we do not realize until we encounter a different context.
- Sufficiently caveated advice is indistinguishable from chaos.
- Nothing is edgier than being earnest. The edgelord tries to be edgy, the earnest person simply is.
- There is no advice that cannot be creatively weaponized in some way to justify getting back on your bullshit.
- People wanna be fuckable more than they wanna fuck.
- Narcissist PR works because people can’t help taking the bait every time. If we want to stop rewarding narcissists we have to educate people to do better.
- Joy is freedom from the shackles of narrow utilitarianism.
- Self-loathing requires that you participate in the delusional conceit that you know who you are. It’s also an inverted form of narcissism that doesn’t get talked about as much. “I’m uniquely terrible in the world” is simply the mirror image of “I’m uniquely amazing in the world” – both are alienating ideas.
- Fucking is labor, fuckability is capital.
- Thinking is easy, information architecture is hard.
- You can’t think your way out of a courage deficit.Lots of problems boil down to fear. Articulate (write it down!) precisely what you’re afraid of, and then take steps to address them. If you’re scared of doing something big, start by doing something small and work your way up progressively.
- Practice giving sincere compliments to your friends. If they’ve done something uncommonly well, tell them! They’ll appreciate that you noticed, and it can be useful feedback for them. People are less certain of themselves than they might seem. You cultivate taste doing this.
- You are more interesting and multi-faceted than even you yourself typically realize. Consciousness has a way of functioning as a sort of centralised propaganda department. You don’t actually have to be constrained by your narrow assumptions & expectations of yourself.
- Pedestalization is dehumanizing. We do our heroes a disservice when we pedestalize them. The kindest thing we can do for people we admire is to treat them as people. If you *have* to worship something, worship the game, not the individual players.
- Communication is fundamentally lossy. Misunderstanding is the default condition. It’s crazy that we even kinda-sorta understand each other at all! If we appreciated this properly, we’d all give everybody lots of room to revise all their statements. But… (#14)
- The user experience will be degraded until metrics improve.
- Imagination deficits rule everything around me.
- Real ambition is something far beyond mere prestige and accolades. Real ambition is about serving your deepest values at the highest level possible. It’s certainly dangerous if it isn’t intertwined with a genuine love for humanity.
- People who feel constrained by a culture will often contribute to enforcing it.
- Curiosity is a tiny spark that can develop into a powerful flame. Unfortunately it often gets stamped out of lots of kids. This is a crime against humanity. This is also related to #3, since curiosity is how you cultivate taste.
- Be careful about punishing failure, both in yourself and in others. It can incentivize not-even-trying. Where possible, try rewarding attempts to learn from failure. Gentle curiosity can pull you out of a slump where anger fails.
- Never downplay your work. Never be the one to sabotage your success. There are more than enough obstacles in the world to challenge you without you creating your own.
- Figure out a good-enough next step and execute it. If you’re trying to get healthy, drinking a glass of water and going for a walk will serve you much better than spending time researching obscure details about nutrition and exercise. This applies to practically everything.
- Courage is contagious. You can become more courageous by associating with courageous people. And living your life with courage will similarly have an effect on the people around you.
- Cerebral types tend to underestimate the effects of physical reality. Going to a new place (a different café, for eg) can be helpful in breaking out of recursive thought patterns. Novel environment, novel stimuli, novel response!
- Real optimism is not just a posture but a way of being. Funnily, a lot of people pretend to be optimistic for social reasons, but aren’t fundamentally optimistic. You can tell by how they act. Optimists truly, casually believe that progress is possible, and act accordingly.
- One must imagine Sisyphus LOL-ing.
- Boredom is a bug of the mind. Very specifically, a tired mind in a cluttered space with unclear purpose and unrealistic expectations.
- When life kicks your ass, try to accept it with as much grace as you can manage. Life kicks everyone’s ass in the end.
- If circumstances require that you have to kick someone’s ass (eg firing someone), don’t beat around the bush. Be clear, be firm, try to be kind, and absolutely do not gloat or be a dick about it.
- If someone kicks your ass with kindness, marry them. Or otherwise cherish them. Good friends are hard to come by.
- How you conduct yourself in crises will define you much more than 95% of everything else you do, so it’s worth mentally rehearsing them. Be the person that people can count on when shit hits the fan.
- People will do almost anything for a sense of purpose and belonging. Fascists understand this. The rest of us ought to get better at understanding it too.
- Constructive disagreements require mutual trust, respect and goodwill.
- It is absolutely possible to change people’s minds over the Internet. It just typically takes much longer than people would like. If you know you’re going to be around for decades anyway, why not play the long game? (#2)
- The world is big. 0.1% of people is a lot of people. Find your weirdos.
- Bureaucracy can be a kind of distributed brutishness. Nobody punches you in the face, but by the time you’re through with it, they might as well have.
- Build your capacity. If yocu have a choice between arguing with internet strangers (and even friends) about abstractions, or building your personal capacity, it’s almost always wiser to build your capacity. Some arguments become interestingly irrelevant past a certain threshold of personal growth.
- Children are alien immigrants from a foreign land. This makes them incredibly valuable for their fresh perspective on things. Every philosophy department should be 50% staffed by children. I’m absolutely serious.
- Earn your own self-respect. If you don’t respect yourself, almost all your pursuits will be marred by its absence. Where to begin? People contain multitudes- you can start by investigating your own history. What are your proudest moments? When were you at your best? How can you do more of that?
- If you’ve had to declare trust bankruptcy in yourself (I’ve been there), the way out is to start with really small wins. “I’m going to drink a glass of water now” → do it. Trust is built like courage: lots of little baby steps. Eventually you can do cartwheels & backflips.
- When internally conflicted about something, it can be fun and illuminating to write it out as a dialogue between two or more fictional versions of yourself. It’s easier to grapple with inner demons when you make them a little cute.
- It’s conflict all the way up and it’s conflict all the way down. It can be helpful to list out all of the conflicts you’re currently entangled in. Once you’ve got it on paper, you start seeing all sorts of alt solutions you might not have considered when in the thick of it.
- The most noble thing you can do with your strength is to use it to protect and nourish people. Starting with yourself. Create spaces where people can grow strong in turn. Create contexts where trust can flourish, and people can count on each other.
- Storytelling is a superpower. Storytelling can save your life. Stories are humanizing. Stories get people to care. We all tell stories all the time, it’s worth getting good at it. Like ambition, this can be a dangerous force if not intertwined with a genuine love for humanity.
- Talismans are simply objects that are meaningful to you. This is about storytelling! A wedding ring is a talisman everyone understands. You can imbue an object with narrative meaning via some kind of ritual or ceremony, and it can help you manage your psychology (which is The Hard Thing).
- The Hard Thing is managing your psychology (h/t Ben Horowitz). Everything else is moving levers and cranking widgets. Running a marathon, building a company, playing long games. It’s all just logistics, one foot in front of another. The hard part is managing your psychology. Here too, storytelling helps tremendously.
- Cruelty leaks. When you mock and insult others- even if they seem to deserve it- you become, to yourself, a person who mocks and insults others. This happens a lot with smart people who shame others for “being dumb”. They then live in chronic fear of being dumb themselves.
- Don’t summon demons. You can’t unsummon them. I’m b metaphorical here: a demon is an all-consuming malevolent entity with no regard for human life. Outrage, vengeance, contempt. You might think you can “control” a demon to use as a weapon for righteous causes. You can’t.
- Read history! It’s like binge-watching past seasons of current affairs. Everything makes a lot more sense once you know the backstory.
- Read biographies. Anybody’s. It’s the opposite of being swept up in a daily news cycle. Get a sense of the longer rhythms, cycles, ebbs and flows of a human life.
- If it’s been a few years, reread your old favorite books, rewatch your old favorite movies. It’ll hit different, because you’re a different person now. The ways in which your reactions have changed will reveal things to you.
- nice
- It’s okay to no longer be interested in things that you were interested in before. You’re a different person now. Forgive old obligations that are no longer relevant. Forgive your future self for doing the same. Cultivate trust and good faith across your past & future selves.
- Empty your cup. Never be so monomaniacally fixated on trying to force a specific outcome that you fail to notice the evolving reality of the situation. Check in on yourself and your context periodically. Bonus points: Write down your thoughts & observations for future-self to learn from.
- It’s good to have some friends that you only catch up with once a year or less. They’ll notice things that people you talk to regularly won’t.
- The Big Bang makes *much* more sense as The Great Cosmic Fart. Unfortunately the scientific establishment is run by cowards.
- Laughter and anxiety are two sides of the same coin. (h/t Alan Watts). It’s okay to be anxious about stuff. Saying “don’t be anxious!!” typically has the opposite effect. But if you can find a way to laugh, the anxiety usually dissipates. One must imagine Sisyphus LOL-ing.
- Decision-making is a skill like any other, and you can get better with practice and evaluation. Make 100 decisions! Even little silly-seeming ones like “I’m going to try a new ice cream flavor today” can be part of a journey that leads to something far more consequential. Practice making small decisions so you feel less nervous about bigger ones.
- [tweet about the joy of travel redacted due to global pandemic]
- Everything is a remix. (h/t @remixeverything) So there’s not much point trying to “be original”. Accept this, and then try to make the most interesting remixes you can. Make 100 remixes. “Originality” is just creative subconscious remixing. Cite your sources and inspiration.
- The fortress you build to protect yourself can become a prison if you’re not careful. A ship is safest in the harbor, but that’s not what ships are for. Don’t optimize for being the most unblemished corpse in the morgue.
- Study successful people. Success however you define it. It’s always worth getting as close to the source material as possible. What decisions did people make? What constraints and contexts did they operate in? You can reverse-engineer this and apply it to your own life
- Take notes. If you make a habit of writing things down, over time you develop a body of work that will give you insights into yourself and the world that you cannot get any other way. You can’t use your mind for this, because the mind is tricky and will modify your memories.
- Navigate by excitement. Not *entirely*, obviously – you do want to also have some self-preservation instincts, think about your future-self a little, etc. But life can be exciting, and you can live an exciting life. This isn’t frivolous, this is joyous – and joy is important.
- It’s okay to ask for help. You can actually get good at it, and then you’re almost doing a favor *to* the people who want to help. Lots of people are sitting around bored and overwhelmed and enjoy the opportunity to perform a small, simple task that makes someone else’s day.
- Dismantle your limiting beliefs. There are lots of good reasons to work out, but here’s my favorite: the moment you break a new Personal Best (fastest mile, heaviest lift), you can feel your limiting beliefs melt away. You just did something today that you couldn’t do yesterday. What will you do tomorrow?
- Sex is neither corrosive nor inert. Personally, I recommend only fucking people that you respect (who respect you). I’m old-fashioned that way. I think of it like having conversations: the people you do it with “rub off on you”. Whose energy do you want in your life? It adds up.
- I think a good goal to have is to inhabit a social reality filled with people you deeply respect. You can still be kind to old ties, and be good to strangers… but a having home base with friends you trust, respect, admire? There are billionaires who don’t have this. And they’re less happy than you might think.
- You can increase your exposure to luck. You can improve your odds by taking random walks (literally and figuratively), and by paying attention to the peripheries. Have a public body of work, which is like a spiderweb that catches the attention of people looking for you.
- Being kind makes you smarter. People trust you more when you’re genuinely kind. They’re likelier to share their more tentative thoughts and privileged knowledge of contentious things. Being unkind traps you in arrested development, and you’ll always be lagging behind.
- Sensitivity is a source of power. It might seem like a weakness, especially in young people who get overwhelmed by it. But think about it: Superman is supremely sensitive. Literally, his senses are heightened, which allows him to perceive things other people can’t. Smarts and strength are dangerously blind without sensitivity.
- Real communities resist social erosion. Just as plant roots prevent soil erosion, I believe that robust communities – meaning actual networks of real human relationships – prevent social erosion. Building bottom-up human networks then is an existential concern for humanity.
- Musicians have the answers to a lot of our problems. How to play together, how to harmonize, how to teach, how to tell stories, how to do community. I learned much of what I know from them. there’s a lot of ancient embodied wisdom that’s still practiced in live music.
- Enjoying yourself is a skill that you can develop. Once again it’s a lot about directing your attention in playful and interesting ways. being able to entertain yourself means you’ll never be bored. what has enjoyment looked like for you in your life so far?
- You can reframe everything you know into a set of questions. The point isn’t really to arrive at definitive answers, but to get comfortable with inquiry as a tool – which you can use for literally everything.
- Reframing is an infinitely useful and delightful skill you can develop. What if you looked at things from another perspective? What if you zoomed in? Zoomed out? Shook it all about? Infinite possibilities! A new way of seeing is a new way of being.
- Make 100 predictions. Making precise predictions, and following up on them, is a great (and humbling!) way to test your understanding of things. As with all the other skills, you get better with practice.
- There’s always a move. If you’re still breathing, if you still have thoughts in your head, you can still change things.
- The big lesson of survivor bias is that one should optimize for being a survivor.
- Fiddle with it! Tinkering and screwing around is a leading source of creativity and invention. And it’s just plain fun! Mess with stuff! You don’t have to be all solemn and austere about it. “Quick and dirty” sketches tend to have a liveliness to them. In celeritas, veritas.
- Beware Fuckarounditis. Yes I’m directly contradicting the previous point. Life is full of meaningful contradictions like this. While it’s good to mess around creatively, do it with zest. Don’t linger vaguely in a grumpy low-energy state. Stop before you start hating it.
- It’s very satisfying to do 100 of a thing. It’s challenging. You’ll surprise yourself along the way. If you had a plan, there’s a good chance you’ll change it midway. It’s a little adventure in of itself. You come away from it a different person. I highly recommend it.