181–190 of 464 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's another word for this...play?
It's not exactly play, it's more like focused exploration. Eg Columbus setting sail without knowing what he would find. You wouldn't say he was playing but you would say he was discovering.
The thing I try to keep in mind most when dealing with these kinds of blog posts is that something that must be helpful to a majority of its audience will inevitably lose a lot of the value it can provide to each individual.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is Franz Kafka best remembered for how good he was at his day job?
And he died at 40 and this was his personal life: > Kafka never married. According to Brod, Kafka was "tortured" by sexual desire … his life was full of "incessant womanising" and that he was filled with a fear of "sexual failure".[64] Kafka visited brothels for most of his adult life[65][66][67] and was interested in pornography.[63] In addition, he had close relationships with several women during his lifetime. On…
Well put. But what the article (and others like it) lacks is the fallback, the plan B, the exception handling, what to do if things don't work out as planned. There's a Gauss curve. Simple stuff can be done by any idiot so there's going to be a lot of competition on that. Like picking strawberries, for any position there's 100 Mexicans (in the US) or Eastern European guys (in the EU) willing to do that for cheap. So…
> So exception handling: if you invest a lot of effort into something make sure you get to reap some rewards even if you're one of the 99 guys that doesn't get to pick the strawberries. How does this work in the world of business where 99% fail Should I not even try?
Example of what not to do - try becoming a pro poker player. If you fail, you have no marketable skills to fall back on.
I'm trying to make sense of this question. Usually people think about boredom as a matter of kind, not degree. X subject is either boring or not to most people, to any degree, small or large.
Conceiving of boredom as a matter of degree is counter intuitive. Is this meant to be an insightful nuanced point or am I just high?
I quite like to read an article like this from time to time, because it can be motivating when your ambitions are low. However, I also believe that it can be detrimental and even lead to burn-out or depression if you actually believe that putting in the work, and putting it in in a good way, will lead you to success. This seems like a recipe for disaster. Is it not more likely that most historically successful people…
Anecdotally: I think of myself as one of those people who is by nature driven to do great work. Tbd if it happens. But in my life I see most other people as having written off almost everything I find interesting, all the places where it seems like there is great work to be done if one digs hard enough. It seems obvious that someone like me, who believes this and is looking and working everywhere, will be the type of…
I think it's important to note there are two types of "great work" 1) Where you have work expertise that is objectively higher than your peers or in the top percentile of your industry due to natural skills or experience or both. 2) Where you have do not have top-percentile expertise, but are hitting the limits of your capabilities. Maxing out your performance is the only way to know your limits and get better. Somet…
The third type is where you just got lucky. For example a one hit wonder musician or writer. Your baseline abilities aren’t that good but you hit the high side of variance.
Well put. But what the article (and others like it) lacks is the fallback, the plan B, the exception handling, what to do if things don't work out as planned. There's a Gauss curve. Simple stuff can be done by any idiot so there's going to be a lot of competition on that. Like picking strawberries, for any position there's 100 Mexicans (in the US) or Eastern European guys (in the EU) willing to do that for cheap. So…
Honestly I didn't think it was well put at all. A vast number of words for very little content, and what content can be distilled is useful to approximately nobody. I've never known a person who needed this advice. If you're exceptional in some niche you don't need the advice (if it can be called that). If you aren't, you can be your best and thrive if you are motivated, in which case this is similarly unhelpful. In…