And it doesn't have to be a fundamental shift in your worldview, just something consequential enough that you think back to it often and it affects your view/behavior with respect to a domain.
I grew up in a place where a lot of people were addicted to drugs and alcohol and where poverty was pretty bad. I would see how they all encouraged each other to continue on their paths to self-destruction through their friendships, and I guess I was already quite picky about who my friends were but after hearing that quote I have definitely become more picky about friendships.
Then someone else once made a remark to me (which I can’t remember word for word to quote it) about watching crabs in a bucket, how they could all escape but they keep pulling each other down.
Those two quotes/concepts together have meant for me, friendship is never really a strong priority. I’m really not interested in feeling popular, and I don’t tend to struggle with loneliness because I see people all the time. I also have family members that I’m extremely close to. Especially my brother - who just gets me.
I grew up a bit of a loner and I struggled to make friends as a kid because I was super shy. People never realised I was shy because I was also super loud and talkative when I found people I felt comfortable talking to… but I generally won’t talk to new people unless they talk to me first. So maybe those quotes resonated because I was already destined to be a bit of a loner anyway and extremely selective with my friends… but I think when you think about how friendships can start to define the environments you choose to put yourself in, I think it’s a pretty life changing quote because perhaps you could change your life for the better, by changing the people you surround yourself by.
Marjane Satrapi
But just a reminder. Iran still commits public executions by hanging. For things like blasphemy.
Chris Hadfield, Canadian astronaut, found on zenpencils.com
A second one from the webcomic "Order of the Stick":
"You're not a type! You're a person, a person who does stuff! If you want to be different, do different stuff! Look at me. I used to be a town guard, and then I decided I wanted to be a cleric. Did everyone I know tell me, "Oh, I don't really think you're the type to be a cleric"? Yes! Did I listen to them? No! If anyone tells you that you can't be better if you want to be, you punch them in their stupid judgy face! And you know what the best part is? When you make a change, everyone who meets you from that point on? Only knows the new version of you. And that's nice."
And a last one:
"Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both."
Benjamin Franklin, found in Civilization IV
> What man can you show me who places any value on his time, who reckons the worth of each day, who understands that he is dying daily? For we are mistaken when we look forward to death; the major portion of death has already passed. Whatever years lie behind us are in death's hands.
[1] https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Moral_letters_to_Lucilius/Let...
> The things in our control are by nature free, unrestrained, unhindered; but those not in our control are weak, slavish, restrained, belonging to others. Remember, then, that if you suppose that things which are slavish by nature are also free, and that what belongs to others is your own, then you will be hindered. You will lament, you will be disturbed, and you will find fault both with gods and men. But if you suppose that only to be your own which is your own, and what belongs to others such as it really is, then no one will ever compel you or restrain you. Further, you will find fault with no one or accuse no one. You will do nothing against your will. No one will hurt you, you will have no enemies, and you not be harmed.
Antoine Saint Exupéry
A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked. A complex system designed from scratch never works and cannot be patched up to make it work. You have to start over, beginning with a working simple system.
John gall
If software developers followed those mantra, instead of pursuing complexity like it's a good thing, software would be much much better and would be easier to maintain.
Everyday I am searching for code and solutions, and everyday I swear and curse at complexity. It doesn't look like it's taught at school.
In a deeper sense, it’s made me realize that a lot of our attitudes are socially conditioned and not actually what is “natural.”
"If you accept conventional wisdom from conventional people living conventional lives, how can you expect to be anything but conventional?" - MJ DeMarco
"I had a peculiar feeling that it was a good thing for everything to be over. Like suddenly being free of everything. No wanting. No having to. Infinite darkness. No yesterday. No today. No tomorrow. Nothing." - Hannah, Dark S03 epilogue
"[Man] sacrifices his health in order to make money. Then he sacrifices money to recuperate his health. And then he is so anxious about the future that he does not enjoy the present; the result being that he does not live in the present or the future; he lives as if he is never going to die, and then dies having never really lived." - Dalai Llama
“What are the 'riskiest' choices? Those that don’t allow you to become the person you want to be, to live your life full measure. Survey results confirm that people’s biggest fear is neither death (ranks third) nor public speaking (second) but failing to live a meaningful life. That’s our greatest fear, our biggest risk. And it all begins with not living your life.” - Mark Albion
that alone made me quit all that drug stuff.
i still respect that other people need it for their own causes, but i have strong opinions on safety especially on addictive ones. i still find myself lucky i didn't got into addictive downward spiral with the things i got my hands on.
Congratulations on hanging up the phone. <3 You did good.
> It was a really different political economy in the ’70s and ’80s. You were not waiting to save up for an apartment; you were usually on a list that your parents put you on, and you were waiting to be granted the right to an apartment. You didn’t have a hope of a car. And jobs were — not exactly a crapshoot, but you were going to be assigned something.
You could actually start — if you went through college (even if you didn’t), you might be in a position to have a place to live and an income to support a family at 21, 22, and nothing much to save up for. No real way to save up, no real goal to save towards.
https://conversationswithtyler.com/episodes/jacob-mikanowski...
I like it because it makes me think about what people want from life, and how people may behave differently (and the same) when their opportunities were so different.
Clearly in most ways things were worse, but I can't help feeling there would be something liberating about not being on the hedonistic treadmill your whole life
Many people think success is luck and luck is on some kind of lottery-level probability.
While luck is a huge part of success, consistently doing things towards it increases the probability drastically.
You probably don't make 10million over night by a random pick, but you can certainly make 100k in a year by making a few regular educated guesses over the course of a year and realizing your ideas.
> Do you know the difference between an error and a mistake, Ensign? Anyone can make an error, Ensign. But that error doesn't become a mistake until you refuse to correct it.
Some I've seen, liked, and noted :
"Every action has its pleasures and its price" - Socrates
"Build a life you don't need to regularly escape from."
"Find the hard work you're willing to do."
Told to me by a more senior colleague at work when I was still wet behind the ears.
Absorb what is useful, discard what is useless and add what is specifically your own. -- Bruce Lee
Don't believe for one moment that 5 hours on Product Hunt or anywhere else for that matter represents a serious marketing effort.
If you want to run a business rather just create stuff, your work has only just begun. In the light of Facebook and other social media revelations, the idea of a truly disposable email address which means your entire life is not analysed and spammed to death has to be worth something.
You haven't told anyone about it though. And I mean you shout from the rooftops every day and everywhere you can think of. You market. People are not going to come looking for you. You have to start approaching influencers, be seen and be heard everywhere you think your potential users might lurk.
And, by the way, everyone sees a million new ideas a day so you have to be consistent, appear to be permanent and appear to be solid. No-one is going to entrust communications with you if they think you are a small, one-man band with an idea and little else.
Time to start reading marketing articles and strategies and applying them.
And expect it to take time.
Love this quote too. Heard a similar sentiment that staying on top is actually harder than getting there. “It’s hard to do the 4am run in silk pajamas”
— Iain McGilchrist, The Master and his Emissary (2009)
also "always think with your own brain" - my mom :P
[Most people spend their life trying not to lose something rather than reaching towards a new goal, so they become stuck.] Are you playing to win, or not to lose?
I keep referring to it with my career choices over the last few months - it’s getting me out of my hole and onto the ladder to find a new job.
"Beware the quiet man. For while others speak, he watched. And while others act, he plans. And when they finally rest...he strikes" - Anonymous
"Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom." - Kierkegaard
"We don't rise to the level of our expectations, we fall to the level of our training." - Archilochus
(from memory)
Something I also have to remind myself of every now and then when I spend days or weeks researching a topic without anything user facing to show during that time.
> You cannot spend time on something without having done something. Progress is not a requirement. If you spend time on learning something, report on what you learned, If you read a book, write a short summary of it. If you make demo files to test things, show the demo files and report on the tests.
[1] https://archive.blender.org/lists/soc-2017-dev/2017-July/000...
The principle that reforms should not be made until the reasoning behind the existing state of affairs is understood.
"The enemy of art is the absence of limitations."
I heard the phrase "Nutrient harvesting" on a no-dig gardening channel. Helped me reframe the mundane task of weeding in my garden. I'm now instead gathering nutrients for my plants as either local mulching or composting and it became a much more meaningful task.
"The way your childhood shaped you is an adaptive reaction to your environment that searched for the optimal solution to survive."
This is a reframing for bad or unwanted patterns you learned through childhood and still doing. Helped me forgive myself and accept the unwanted behaviours as something that was once necessary to stay afloat.
-- e. e. cummings
“Don’t judge your success by one final outcome, but the number of iterations it took to get there. Optimize for iteration”.
If you are, then you think too much."--Billy Joel, "It's Still Rock'n'Roll to Me"
At first this led to a slacker attitude about education.
Then I realized that knowledge >>> ignorance.
The final conclusion is that credentials are as good as far as they go, but knowledge is key.
- Carl Sagan
So much to say about human behavior here... Anyways, one should try it sometime, can be liberating even in small doses.
When walking through the twilight,
Or writing down a date from the past,
That they have lost something infinite?
-- Jorge Luis BorgesMe.
Anthony Bourdain
Mike Tyson
It is up to me
Today i-is Friday, Friday (Partyin')