Jake

"and George began to wonder, in capital letters, just What Was Going On."

The mathematical genius Alexander Grothendieck once had a metaphor for solving problems. He suggested that instead of forcing open an impossibly hard kernel with a hammer and chisel, one should simply let it sit in water and wait. Over time, the shell softens and opens with ease. This is also true in writing; time is the only non-substitutable... See more

To signal a desire for learning, do cool things that require you to learn and do more than the job requires. Employers are, in general, sort of like archeologists: They study artifacts to understand the people who made them. So make artifacts that demonstrate you like to learn things.

“The aesthetic is colonized by the economic.”

Byung-Chul Han

What you don’t want to happen is unsustainable stress, or for people to not share failure or tell you when you’re wrong. So you need to actively fight this as the leader by: a) asking for dissent (“does everyone agree this is the right path? Does anyone disagree”? and letting a silence hang until someone speaks) b) reward debate.