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Don't forget to launch | Des Traynor

Grothendieck knew what he found interesting and productively confusing because he had spent three years observing his thought and tracing where it wanted to go. He was not at the mercy of the social world he entered; rather, he “used” it to “further his aims.” (I put things in quotation marks here because what he’s doing isn’t exactly this... See more

Henrik Karlsson • Cultivating a state of mind where new ideas are born Cultivating a state of mind where new ideas are born

This experience is common in the childhoods of people who go on to do great work, as I have written elsewhere. Nearly everyone who does great work has some episode of early solitary work. As the philosopher Bertrand Russell remarked, the development of gifted and creative individuals, such as Newton or Whitehead, seems to require a period in which... See more

Henrik Karlsson • Cultivating a state of mind where new ideas are born Cultivating a state of mind where new ideas are born

Decade Volcanoes

en.wikipedia.org

“Have you tried doing less on the problem?” is an underrated strategy to get unstuck. Most people try to do more.

Work so fast that you don’t have time to self-censor. While writing the intensely confessional My Struggle, Knausgaard forced himself to write five pages a day to overcome his tendency to freeze up in shame. Every time he acclimated to the pace of his writing, he increased the quota so he would always be overwhelmed—at one point he forced himself

Henrik Karlsson • Cultivating a state of mind where new ideas are born Cultivating a state of mind where new ideas are born

“An artist has got to be careful never really to arrive at a place where he thinks he’s AT somewhere. You always have to realize that you’re constantly in a state of becoming. And, as long as you can stay in that realm you’ll sort of be alright.”

— Bob Dylan

If your goal is to create a popular version of a well-established thing, like a pizza parlour, seek plenty of feedback.

If your goal is to create something somewhat novel that still requires stakeholder buy-in, like a tech company, avoid feedback during exploration phases and seek feedback during exploitation phases. Going back to the two opening... See more

Leber • The Feedback Tradeoff

One more thing about the ideology of Silicon Valley is that it is also this hyper-masculine worldview, which is another reason why I think they align so much with Trump and why that is such a seductive political system for them.

The term “alpha” is [not just] this financial extra. [I asked] one of the entrepreneurs I talked to, why would they leave