Tom Schmidt

Most of the time, “What should I do with my life?” is a terrible question. “What should I do with this tennis serve?” “What should I do with this line at Starbucks?” “What should I do with this traffic jam?” “How should I respond to the anger I feel welling up in my chest?” These are better questions. Excellence is the next five minutes,

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“You may accumulate a vast amount of knowledge but it will be of far less value to you than a much smaller amount if you have not thought it over for yourself; because only through ordering what you know by comparing every truth with every other truth can you take complete possession of your knowledge and get it into your power.”

"The person who experiences the consequences should make the decision."

"You want two things:

1. Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity. No wasted movement. No wasted effort.

2. Compounding. Every project should have a long runway and feed the others."

the ABCD framework: What’s Awesome? What’s Boring? What’s Confusing? And what do you not believe? I find that to be a helpful way to get feedback.

• Embrace failure as discovery, foster insatiable curiosity, and iterate relentlessly


• The core principle: break things, test repeatedly, and view each failure as eliminating one wrong approach


• If you can dream it, you can build it through iterative experimentation.

Naive Optimism + Strategic Execution

• Turn ideas into action by combining an optimistic

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"Rather than feel impotent and useless, you must come to terms with the fact that as a human being you are infinitely powerful, and take responsibility for this tremendous power. Even our smallest actions have potential for great change, positively or negatively, and the way in which we all conduct ourselves within the world means something. You... See more

Challenge yourself when life is easy, so you'll be ready when life is hard."