Entrepreneurship

If effort is now diminished, if it can be hidden, and proof can or soon will be gamed too, if transparency itself can be performed — what’s left?

The only thing left that can’t be gamed is wanting something badly enough that it shows. Desire is the closest thing to proof of authenticity we have left.

Desire resists this because it’s too... See more

“I don’t know anything about business,” Ive demurs, but he abhors the current fascination with disruption. “I’m not interested in breaking things,” he says. “We have made a virtue out of destroying everything of value,” he says. “It’s associated with being successful and selling a company for money. But it’s too easy—in three weeks we could break... See more

“It matters where you get your dopamine. Get your dopamine from clarifying your ideas more than from their visibility.”

When you try to make something that solves everything, you obsess over questions of power: how to make something that is omnipotent and everlasting. But when you make something that does one thing well, the questions are much more personal: does it solve my problem? and for how long? and who for? and where will it push the space around it? I want... See more

It’s about the same trap in professional life: doing the thing for years, getting more experienced, and staying stuck at the same level. You can work hard for a very long time without getting better—not because you’re lazy or untalented, but because you’re confusing practice with deliberate practice.