Every week I publish the best, most timeless material you'll find anywhere on the web – books, articles, podcasts, research, videos, Twitter threads. These are the things you'll read and remember for years.
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Mimetic Traps (article)
This guy spent a year as a physics graduate student working his tail off - only to realize that he hated the work and felt like he wasted a year of his life. He didn’t even realize it until the end of the year when he was able to ask himself about his work: “Why does this matter?”
Full of wonderful one-liners like this one: “That’s the mimetic trap in a nutshell: it hurts to leave, and there’s nowhere to go.”
And this one:
“I was wrong in thinking that my work mattered to me, and I avoided asking myself this question because I knew the answer would be painful.”
And:
“You can spend years ascending ranks in a hierarchy without producing anything that the rest of humanity finds valuable.”
I felt this myself when I was a Big 4 auditor. The work felt so meaningless but I didn’t know what else to do. Eventually I just pulled the plug & quit without having a plan for my next thing. All I knew was that every extra day as an auditor was a day I knew I was marching in the wrong direction.
This ended up being an extremely good thing to do - it gave me the time and mental space to think about other projects, and 4 months after quitting I launched my Spanish language Bible app that grew to over 1 million users before being acquired.
Nassim Taleb 2016 Commencement Speech (article)
100% on brand - amazing one liners that you have to find by digging through his frequent but brief tangents (much better than his books though)
Two great quotes:
“Success requires absence of fragility. I’ve seen billion- aires terrified of journalists, wealthy people who felt crushed because their brother in law got very rich, academics with Nobel who were scared of comments on the web… For almost all people I’ve met, external success came with increased fragility and a heightened state of insecurity.”
“I have a single definition of success: you look in the mirror every evening, and wonder if you disappoint the person you were at 18, right before the age when people start getting corrupted by life. Let him or her be the only judge; not your reputation, not your wealth, not your standing in the community, not the decorations on your lapel. If you do not feel ashamed, you are successful.”
How to Think For Yourself (article)
The latest Paul Graham essay. Self recommending.
One thing I realized while reading: following your curiosity is a career moat, because your curiosity is unique to you.
"No matter what your past has been, you have a spotless future." -- Tony Hsieh, RIP
Tony was one of my favorite entrepreneurs. I wish we’d heard more from him in the past few years. We forget this now but he was one of the most active people on Twitter in the early days. His tweets have now been scrubbed, but one that I remember was something like “do ghosts stay up late around the campfire and tell human stories?”
Cheat code to social gatherings:
1. Nothing to prove. You are a nobody.
2. Discussion should maximize the other person’s value and growth towards their version of happiness.
3. Assume everyone else has something profound to teach you.
One year of writing in public (article)
Just one more example of the power of working in public. Audiences are still underrated - can’t recommend doing this enough.
How to talk to yourself better (article)
This resonates with me personally - there’s been times in my life where I feel like I can accomplish anything, and other times where I feel… not that.
This was a good reminder of how to get the positive part back in. My favorite part:
“eventually i went to university and, while i can't put my finger on the exact moment, something inside me changed. it was my self-talk.
instead of complaining that i was starting school late, or skipped 80 days of my senior year of high school, or failed a couple AP exams... i told myself "Ryan you can do this."
it wasn't fancy. it wasn't pep rally rah-rah "you're amazing! crush it!" it wasn't a cheer. it was just the truth: i can do this.
I’ve recently gotten more into visualizing the things you want, and the person you want to be. Not as in like, the secret or any nonsense like that, but in that you have to visually and mentally build the thing you want before you can physically make it.
Building the thing you want in your mind can motivate and inspire you for a few reasons: 1) the daily todo lists always have meaning because of the backdrop of what you’re building towards, 2) many people don’t get what they won’t not because they can’t do the work, but because they don’t know what they want, and 3) it’s exciting to imagine a better, more prosperous future for yourself!
Justice Scalia on why America is actually free (8 min youtube)
His first point is perfect - other countries, even ones with dictators, have bills of rights that are actually better than America’s. But unless they’re actually enforced they have no power - they’re just words on a piece of paper. I think of this any time I see a revolution or a new country formed with their own constitution, etc.
His answer for what gives us more freedom is actually helpful in calming in today’s political environment.
11 tweet thread about car insurance fraud by Russian immigrant communities in NYC in the 90s. Fascinating.
If you like remembering what you read instead of that knowledge just rushing out of your head - you should use Readwise.
It syncs all your highlights from basically any source: Kindle highlights, tweets, anything you read in the browser, etc., and then uses spaced repetition so you can review them. One of the best new digital consumer products of the last few years IMO. They’re also bootstrapped AFAIK.
The were nice enough to give my subscribers an extra month on the free trial - I don’t get a kickback or anything, just wanted to encourage you to try it out.
I also hear rumors they’re launching an updated version of the product very soon too…
Interactive instructional videos with mmhmm (3 min youtube)
mmhmm is a fun product that adds a lot of features to the vanilla Zoom experience. One thing that’s possible is creating a recording w/ slides that is interactive for the student. Start the video at 3:33.