Do What Makes the Best Story

My friends uncle said to us when we were teens “boys, I know boys like to do stupid things. Just make sure you don’t hurt anyone and only break the law if it’s really funny so the judge will laugh and go easy on you.”

Another one I heard recently that I like: “If you ain’t having fun building it your users ain’t gonna have fun using it.”

>Notice how the most successful startups in the world all have remarkable genesis stories.

I like this article and philosophy, but I had to scoff at this point. I've seen too many startups invent their remarkable genesis story to create a convenient narrative. The truth is usually mundane and largely/entirely money-driven.

This strikes me as a teenager attitude - trying to look cool. If your stories are great because you go out of your way to try make those stories.. it's not that interesting to other people.

Being boring is seen as bad to teenagers but really, it's not that bad.

I don't think this is good advice at all and reeks of survivorship bias. I used to live my life like this, very intentionally. I married a woman on our first date. I moved across the country for love. I spent much of my early 20s traveling and writing, dirt poor basically rubber tramping it like I was Neal Cassady, getting by on charm and storytelling. I joined the Army during wartime for an essentially similar reason to why Oliver Stone did, and yeah, it clearly worked out for him but what about all his platoon-mates who were killed or permanently damaged?

Granted, interesting stories don't have to be inherently dangerous or self-destructive, but unfortunately dangerous and self-destructive does actually make for great stories. I can probably tell better stories than this guy, but I'm kind of lucky to be alive. A whole lot of people I was friends with back in the day are dead, in jail, homeless, junkies, and that doesn't work out so well once you hit your 40s and recovery gets more and more impossible.

The best advice I can give young people is do something sufficiently interesting that you don't go crazy and throw away your life someday when you have a midlife crisis, but seriously study up on how compound interest works and do the things, no how matter how boring they are, that are going to take care of you when you're 70.

I wish I could truncate the last two paragraphs; I roll my eyes when seemingly everything on this website gets reframed as advice for startup founders (I know, I know, the site is literally run by an incubator)

But I think the fundamental point about the human condition (we are both subjects and writers of our own stories, and taking hold of one's own story is key to finding happiness and fulfillment) is very true and important

I see this advice as mostly mapping to "get out side of your comfort zone", "do something everyday that scares you", "the definition of insanity is doing the same thing every day and expecting something to change", "you miss 100% of the shots you don't take" and so on. Overall it's good advice, only by trying new things and stirring the pot are we likely to get somewhere better.

> If it turned out to be the wrong decision to have made, you'd at least be fun at dinner parties.

Or you'll regret it for the rest of your life.

This advice only works for easily reversible decisions.

It has taken me many decades, but I finally settled on this a my main approach to life.

When it's all over, all you will have left is the story. Make sure it's a good one.

Some important context that I think that's missing here is that Amjad is the founder of repl.it

My participation in the start up ecosystem has been strictly as an engineer and advisor. What I've observed of founders and early leaders over the years is that they don't live in reality and this often by necessity. What people see from the outside is these strong, pervasive, bulletproof personalities that are leading, changing our way of thinking, and changing our way of life - often in a meta-sense very rapidly. These people, like anyone else, doubt themselves and are quite often doubted by a majority of people they come into contact with. Ordinary people in the face of such doubt and opposition would likely fold to this feedback; thinking something along the lines of, "The majority of people tell me this is a fruitless idea" and move on with some momentary pause. Start up founders can't afford such a luxury. Peoples money, jobs, and futures lie in their hands and their continued interest of chasing this dream. Something has to fuel that mentality and when I read a piece like this it speaks to me in the way I observed what those founders had to tell themselves every day just to get through the day.

One of my mentors, who also came from the startup ecosystem, recently reflected, "Great engineers deal in reality because reality can be defined, measured, and acted upon but perception matters too. That is the struggle of every great engineer." Amjad isn't wrong, he's just a founder, and he deals in reality but also has to dabble in perception.

There's something very Terry Pratchett about this - and there's some truth to it, too.

I think we can reduce it to "be willing to take risks but don't be insanely stupid."

Which doesn't sound as amazing, to be honest.

Somewhat good advice, but with a caveat. While a good narrative is generally helpful, results still matter. Case in point, a team that ships quickly but also has crunch time can craft a story about heroic devs staying long hours to ship a product, but this is not better than doing things right the first time to avoid crunch

Isn't the counter argument to this, that meditation is telling us to stop your mind from constantly telling stories?

I agree that story telling has it's purposes, and I agree that most people are not leveraging storytelling to benefit them, but instead as a way to feel sorry for themselves. Listen to the discussions many people are having, and I'm amazed how often I overhear people talking about how they were put out, treated badly, etc etc. You can imagine the story they tell themselves, looking for pitty, and for somebody to tell them it's ok.

I think the bigger lesson here is to teach people that they are in control of their minds, and not the other way around. Use storytelling to your benefit, but realize that you don't have to be constantly in storytelling mode.

The best stories are fiction. From books, to movies, to resumes.

I'll play along with the author. I haven't made my mind up whether I think the author is right, but I'll play along, because from that perspective I have a couple of things to note.

-----

> So next time you're faced with a tough decision, consider the path that makes a more interesting story. If it turned out to be the wrong decision to have made, you'd at least be fun at dinner parties.

The issue is that a good story enhances the propagation quality of a particular set of concepts that relate back to you in this case. I daresay that the quicker you can make your story into a meme, the higher that propagation quality will go -- attracting all kinds of success for you in the process. There is however one huge huge issue with this. It is devoid of ethics!

By that I am not saying it's evil. But it does mean it can be used for evil purposes, and it has (e.g. Enron, vaporware companies). Moreover, if you do not decide about the ethics of a story, then you might risk that you're secretly going to lead a very narcisistic life. It might be successful, but it ultimately might not be the best you can do or the best you can be. I hear you saying: "and you're supposed to tell what it is? You? A random guy on the internet?"

I'm going to tell you what it is.

:)

Next to optimizing for story also optimize for: bringing the future present and optimizing for humanity as a whole. From this perspective I think Elon Musk could be considered a role model. His story is much cooler than any rock star has or also much cooler than Tim Ferriss his story. Why? Because those stories don't add that much to humanity (Tim did have a couple of things, but Elon is disrupting that part with Neuralink). Stories like Bill Gates eliminating whatever disease ails the planet is awesome, that he made Microsoft is a fun story, but it's peanuts compared to his work of setting up a team that's playing for a demi god.

Amazing stories have altruism towards humanity, without it things can still sound cool but it will make us blindsided to simply things that sound cool. Eventually that's not the best you can be.

-----

Alright, that was me playing along. I'm still not sure what I think of this concept, or my own opinion/story on the matter. I feel the thinking is too heuristic-based, like something isn't fully thought through. I can't put my finger on it. But it was fun to play along, and from that perspective I'd vouch for more altruism towards humanity and sci-fi awesomeness to be incorporated into anyone's life story!

This is kinda an analog for doing the uncomfortable thing. There's a certain amount of security in doing what's comfortable, and if you can find happiness in that I think that's great. It's all relative. I think it's less "be cool at dinner parties" and more being happy with the path you've taken through life.

I wonder if there'll come a time when people graduate to thinking in tones of grey, rather than trying to boil life down to fortune cookies, or if it's just limited by people's brains.

Take this for instance:

> Self storytelling is so essential for people that one of the most effective techniques for treating depression and anxiety boils down to "tell yourself better stories."

This is trivially false and the author doesn't seem to feel any need to substantiate this wild claim. He's stuck in fortune cookie world where you can just say shit, as long as it feels/sounds good.

Hopefully the internet will expose fortune cookie thinkers to people who actually use their brains for more than talking out of their ass and it'll be a rude wake-up call. Of course brainless people are on a holy crusade to ban speech that doesn't agree with their idiotic ideology, so we'll see who wins out in the end. If history is any indication - idiotic beliefs lose out in the long run, but they sure can destroy a whole lot of lives for centuries in the process.

Just don't epic. An epic is usually the result of some short sightedness or mistake.

I don't necessarily agree with this advice but I have a question that's related.

How do you get really good at telling stories?

I've done a lot of cool stuff in my life but usually don't do into much detail because when I tell them it usually falls flat.

Success != Story | The article oversimplification is not acceptable for me.:)

I really dislike this advice, I think it encourages people to be shallow and superficial. This quote from Parks and Recreation captures it nicely

Ron (sitting down next to Leslie at the Senior’s Ball): Everything ok, Knope?

Leslie: My boyfriend is a lawyer, and he’s smart and interesting and there are a lot of things about him I really like. But he acted like a real jerk today. I don’t know, it’s something about the way he treats people or something.

Ron: He’s a tourist. He vacations in people’s lives, takes pictures puts them in his scrapbook and moves on. All he’s interested in are stories.

Leslie: Ha.

Ron: Basically, Leslie, he’s selfish, and you’re not, and that’s why you don’t like him.

This article is total startup mumbo jumbo navel gazing. The start-up cultural thing about making the leaders tell their story and make that a whole part of the package has become tedious.

The best story? Oh please, many people work in things were they acquire incredible stories and for various reasons (security, privacy, humbleness etc.) will never be able to tell anyone.

But you know what, that's fine, once they are happy with what they have done themselves. Do what makes you happy.

not a bad approach, just make sure its not the 'how did he die' kind of story.

It's not bad to have a few good stories at the end. But the article is bullshit for the Instagram crowd. Sometimes you gotta work your ass off just to get the thing done, story be damned.

> Self storytelling is so essential for people that one of the most effective techniques for treating depression and anxiety boils down to "tell yourself better stories."

This sounds a lot like what Jordan Peterson calls "Self Authoring" https://www.selfauthoring.com/

I can see that story ending like this: "... and that's how our startup failed."

"There are good stories and there are good decisions"

I think most people want to be somewhere in the middle. Unless you have a very high risk tolerance or are trying to be a writer you probably don't want to optimize for stories. If you wanted to optimize for good decisions you'd probably be an actuary and marry a woman you met at church.

Edit: I am genuinely not sure why this is being downvoted.