Sometimes as an antidote
To fear of death,
I eat the stars.
Those nights, lying on my back,
I suck them from the quenching dark
Til they are all, all inside me,
Pepper hot and sharp.
Sometimes, instead, I stir myself
Into a universe still young,
Still warm as blood:
No outer space, just space,
The light of all the not yet stars
Drifting like a bright mist,
And all of us, and everything
Already there
But unconstrained by form.
And sometime it’s enough
To lie down here on earth
Beside our long ancestral bones:
To walk across the cobble fields
Of our discarded skulls,
Each like a treasure, like a chrysalis,
Thinking: whatever left these husks
Flew off on bright wings.
When you do something, you should burn yourself completely, like a good bonfire, leaving no trace of yourself.
This is the first step in creation. When you are there, everything else is there; everything is created all at once. When we emerge from nothing, when everything emerges from nothing, we see it all as a fresh new creation.
“[...if you are going to start a business...it has to pass...] three basic tests. First, your idea has to be big enough to justify devoting your life to it. Make sure it has the potential to be huge. Second, it should be unique. When people see what you are offering, they should say to themselves, “My gosh, I need this. I’ve been waiting for this. This really appeals to me.” Without that “aha!” you are wasting your time. Third, your timing must be right. The world actually doesn’t like pioneers, so if you are too early, your risk of failure is high. The market you are targeting should be lifting off with enough momentum to help make you successful. If you pass these three tests, you will have a business with the potential to be big, that offers something unique, and is hitting the market at the right time. Then you have to be ready for the pain. No entrepreneur anticipates or wants pain, but pain is the reality of starting something new. It is unavoidable”
"Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it."
You want job security, be creative.
— Orange Book 🍊📖 (@orangebook_) August 10, 2020
"Meaning is not something you stumble across, like the answer to a riddle or the prize in a treasure hunt. Meaning is something you build into your life. You build it out of your own past, out of your affections and loyalties, out of the experience of humankind as it is passed on to you, out of your own talent and understanding, out of the things you believe in, out of the things and people you love, out of the values for which you are willing to sacrifice something. The ingredients are there. You are the only one who can put them together into that unique pattern that will be your life. Let it be a life that has dignity and meaning for you. If it does, then the particular balance of success or failure is of less account.”
“It’s as hard to start and run a small business as it is to start a big one. You will suffer the same toll financially and psychologically as you bludgeon it into existence. It’s hard to raise the money and to find the right people. So if you’re going to dedicate your life to a business, which is the only way it will ever work, you should choose one with the potential to be huge.”
A thread on insightful ideas on consumer products by Brian Norgard (@BrianNorgard):
— Rohit Jindal 📚 (@rohit_jindal29) May 20, 2020
1/
The single best growth hack in existence is a quality product that only works when used with other people.
Artist (and perhaps food) meccas in history seem to have:
— Simon Sarris (@simonsarris) August 23, 2020
1. Very cheap housing and lots of unconventional housing options, ideally paired with
2. Numerous cheap, *small* commercial, retail, or studio spaces. pic.twitter.com/kmpdMCtXbH
“Most men die at twenty or thirty; thereafter they are only reflections of themselves: for the rest of their lives they are aping themselves, repeating from day to day more and more mechanically and affectedly what they said and did and thought and loved when they were alive.”
The work of reading:
— Shane Parrish (@ShaneAParrish) August 20, 2020
1. Read a book while highlighting heavily.
2. Distill highlights into core insights, written in your own words.
3. Put into a searchable format.
4. Review regularly.
To build an audience, show your work.
— Jack Butcher (@jackbutcher) August 18, 2020
To build a community, show your working.
An economy that’s stuck needs more creators and artists— the kind of people who open doors for others.
— Ana Lorena Fabrega (@anafabrega11) August 18, 2020
Still spinning from this idea in @nayafia's "Making in Public": that when the economics of consumption don't work—e.g. because the product is a public good—a more viable model may exist around the economics of *production*. That is: when might production *be* the product?
— Andy Matuschak (@andy_matuschak) August 15, 2020
Facebook:
— Matthew Kobach 🚀 (Sept 2nd) (@mkobach) August 14, 2020
Follow family
YouTube:
Follow entertainers
Twitter:
Follow ideas
Snapchat:
Follow friends
Instagram:
Follow beauty
LinkedIn:
Follow colleagues
Pinterest:
Follow inspiration
TikTok:
Doesn’t matter who you follow
solocapitalist, solopreneur, solo content creator.
— Geoff Lewis (@justGLew) August 11, 2020
fascinating how rapidly the money making narrative has adapted to serve (a) incumbent software platforms that enable solo-x and (b) covid-induced societal atomization.
raging bull market in solo.
The power of storytelling via @rorysutherland: "You generate value simply by getting people to look at something that already exists in a more favorable light. That’s a kind of alchemy." https://t.co/y2LalC5oUD pic.twitter.com/kyVFNr0jkR
— Paul Barnes (@LennyIce) August 2, 2020
“No one ever reads a book. He reads himself through books, either to discover or to control himself.”
Perhaps obvious, but it strikes me that dollowers (dollar-weighted followers) are an important part of the future.
— balajis.com (@balajis) June 25, 2020
Platforms like Substack, Patreon, Ghost, Locals allow writers to optimize their dollowers. Dollowing is a scarce and directly valuable behavior, unlike following.
Step 1: Know exactly what you want. Have a big vision that is crystal clear.
— James Clear (@JamesClear) June 13, 2020
Step 2: Know exactly what is true. See reality for what it is and accept the honest facts of the situation.
Step 3: Be flexible in the way you close the gap between 1 and 2.
Bold. Rational. Adaptable.
"We don't get a chance to do that many things, and every one should be really excellent. Because this is our life. Life is brief, and then you die, you know? And we've all chosen to do this with our lives. So it better be damn good. It better be worth it."
Tobi Lutke (@tobi) is the CEO of Shopify
— George Mack (@george__mack) May 18, 2020
He's one of my favorite CLEAR thinkers
I spent some time in lockdown going through his interviews
Here are 6 mental models I got from it
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