Johanna

If you want an average successful life, it doesn’t take much planning. Just stay out of trouble, go to school, and apply for jobs you might like. But if you want something extraordinary, you have two paths:1. Become the best at one specific thing.2. Become very good (top 25%) at two or more things.

I once found this idea seductive. Now I find it outrageous. It’s not just because it’s wrong; it’s an affront to the human spirit. People only discover stuff when they think it’s worth trying, and there have been entire eras of human history where people didn’t think it was worth trying. A meme like “ideas are getting harder to find” could drive... See more

The worthwhile problems are the ones you can really solve or help solve, the ones you can really contribute something to. A problem is grand in science if it lies before us unsolved and we see some way for us to make some headway into it. I would advise you to take even simpler, or as you say, humbler, problems until you find some you can really... See more

Over on the other side of the dining hall was a chemistry table. I had worked with one of the fellows, Dave McCall; furthermore he was courting our secretary at the time. I went over and said, ``Do you mind if I join you?'' They can't say no, so I started eating with them for a while. And I started asking, ``What are the important problems of your... See more

Most people do whatever most people they hang out with do. This mimetic behavior is usually a mistake—if you’re doing the same thing everyone else is doing, you will not be hard to compete with.

OK, I didn’t tell you the most important part—how do you know whether to hire someone? In principle, it’s simple. You’re looking for people who are Smart, and Get things done.

Economic growth is not objectively good by itself. But part of the question here is, “what happened to economic growth around 1970?” When the companies in the global #1 and #2 positions were both founded by people who used LSD, it makes you want to pay attention. It makes you wonder what Jeff Bezos, Larry Page, and Sergey Brin might have tried... See more

The idea that you can reinvent yourself each hour of the day is liberating. We get stuck in ruts and tell ourselves that we cannot change because we are too old, too young, too poor, too tied down. These are only excuses. They absolve us from responsibility.