Building Something
"Tradition is about passing the flame not keeping the ash". That's from superstar chef Massimo Bottura.
Building resilience isn’t pretty. It’s messy, hard, and it relies on learning how to tolerate frustration. Frustration tolerance is one of life’s most essential skills. The more we can tolerate frustration, the more we can learn, the more we can struggle, the more we can take on challenges, the more we can bounce back from failure. I talk to parents from all around the globe and they all want the same thing for their kids - they want their kids to be gritty and to take on challenges and to not give up when things get hard! And what I want parents to know that kids aren’t inherently born with the ability to do any of these things - but they can learn the skill that enables them to do all of them. That skill? Frustration tolerance. And if you’re thinking about how hard it is for us, as adults, to tolerate frustration… I’m right there with you. It’s more natural to look for a quick exit from our distress or a quick rescue from our struggle or a quick “quit” around our latest challenge. Here’s the good news: we can learn, frustration tolerance skills too! It’s never too late.
instagram.comFrustration Tolerance
Here is something I wrote years ago about ~creative despair~ (I wrote it a couple years before I started Strange Planet) I am reposting this again - Creative despair is an emotion that I feel sometimes. It is not a place devoid of creativity. ❤️
instagram.com“Human performance is impossible without human energy. A leader's job is not to get people to perform and produce; it's to cultivate an environment that regenerates people's energy so that they can perform and produce.”
It’s ok to sound dumb, and a few other practical ideas on how to lead people — Salmon Labs
Zach Mercurio, Researcher
At any given time, you’re either pre–heavy thing or post–heavy thing. You’ve either made something weighty already, or you haven’t. Pre–heavy thing people are still searching, experimenting, iterating. Post–heavy thing people have crossed the threshold, and it shows. They’ve made something substantial—something that commands respect, inspires other... See more
From one of my favorite Hacker News comments ever, by @Jonathan_Blow: https://t.co/uJgib4x6El
Here are a few more questions a business owner, in any industry, might consider:
What considerations did you take when determining your product / service price?
How does pricing determine your potential customer base, and what are the repercussions of serving only those customers?
Is the product you're selling addressing a genuine need, or is it oppor... See more
What considerations did you take when determining your product / service price?
How does pricing determine your potential customer base, and what are the repercussions of serving only those customers?
Is the product you're selling addressing a genuine need, or is it oppor... See more
Our economy is sick. Compartmentalization prevents us from healing it.
Even now, when I’m lucky enough to be able to write exactly what I want to write with very few external constraints, writing often feels difficult for me in the same way it did when I was pumping out listicles — slow, sticky, clunky, painful, humiliating. I wonder if this, too, is part of the appeal of AI: it is so often humiliating to push up agai... See more
When writing, separate the “creator” and the “editor”. The “creator” just writes, and doesn’t worry about quality; the goal is words on the page. Later, you can be the “editor” and shape it into something good