Category: Commentary

The More You Risk the More You Learn?

Here’s a relationship I’m exploring right now:

The amount you learn is proportionate to the amount you risk.

I’m not sure if it’s universally valid.  There are probably exceptions.  Still, the more I think about it the more I like it.

It’s important to note that “risk” is subjective.  An increase in risk is an increase in the probability and/or magnitude of a result that forces you to do something you’d prefer not to.  Risk can be material, emotional, physical, or psychological.

If you work for an established, large corporation you will learn things.  If you work for an early stage startup you will learn more things.  If you start your own company you will learn even more.  Each stage ratchets up the risk, in this case financial and social (status loss in event of failure), and the learning goes with it.

Physical risk seems to follow the same pattern.  To learn new moves on the court or field you have to be willing to try them.  Each new move has an increased risk of failure or even injury.  Adventure athletes can probably attest to this at the most extreme, where loss of life is a legitimate risk the physical and mental knowledge gained is likely tremendous.

Even in pure intellectual pursuits I expect this is true.  Sitting and reading or contemplating seems an inherently riskless activity but it’s not.  What you can learn is limited by what you explore, what questions you’re willing to ask, and how far you’re willing to go for answers.  If you safely examine comfortable, socially acceptable ideas you may learn a few things.  But the real learning comes when you push yourself and explore things with potentially risky ramifications.  If your beliefs were to change how uncomfortable would it make you?

This doesn’t mean intellectual risk taking is simply reading people diametrically opposed to your own views.  This is one of the least risky things to do.  More likely it involves reading someone reasonable with a number of foundational beliefs in common but with some unexpected angle or paradigm you’ve never considered.  Imagine a knowledgeable libertarian, for example, reading a radical socialist.  Not very risky.  It’s easy to predict what will be argued and responses are already at hand.  It’s riskier for a libertarian to read an anarchist who builds on the same foundation but extends the ideas into more radical territory – territory that might make one seem “impractical” at cocktail parties.

So what does it mean if the more you risk the more you learn?

The conclusion shouldn’t be that more risk is inherently good.  We all love the word “learning” but there is nothing inherently good about learning either.  Don’t necessarily feel guilt for not risking and therefore learning more.  There are plenty of instances where reducing risk, and therefore learning, is the better path.  I’m sure if I played chicken with an oncoming car I’d learn a lot about myself that couldn’t be learned any other way.  Doesn’t mean I should do it.  I’m not sure knowledge helps if you’re dead (then again, how can I know without trying…)

But I think there are some valuable implications to the risk/learning relationship.  If you know your own goals and are honest about them it can help you make decisions.  If you place a tremendously high value on learning something in particular you might consider higher risk situations that will impart a higher level of knowledge.

This is related but (I think) a little bit different than Nassim Taleb’s powerful concept of “skin in the game“.  Skin in the game is about getting more value out of the decisions you do make by being more invested in the outcome, whereas the risk/learning relationship is perhaps slightly broader and has implications for the kind of decisions you make in the first place.

The Ever Moving Goalposts of Arguments for College

 

You have to go to college to get a good job and make money

Actually, college grads have an average of $35,000 in debt and 60% of them have no job or jobs that don’t require degrees.  Those silly earnings statistics have the causation backwards.

 

But you still need to learn skills for the real world!

Actually, employers report that college grads are completely unprepared for what’s needed in the real world.  You can learn all the skills you need better, faster, and cheaper through an apprenticeship.  College tends to foster all the worst skills; the type that make humans dull rule followers, easily replaceable by machines.

 

You can’t be so one-dimensional and materialistic.  The liberal arts are important to becoming well rounded person.

Precisely why you shouldn’t go to college.  Student knowledge of liberal arts is the same when they exit as when they enter school, and none of them like going to class anyway.  Anyone who is interested can read books and articles or take classes for free or incredibly cheap and get a far better liberal arts education.

 

It’s not about the knowledge, it’s about the network!

College networks are incredibly limited and uniform.  Anyone can build a rich, diverse network through work, travel, social clubs, or any number of ways that don’t cost six figures or take five years.

 

It’s not about the specific job, skills, knowledge, or network, it’s about the glories of the unique campus environment, the parties, the football, the four year escape to live and grow up!

Anyone can move to a college town and have all that and more without ever paying tuition or registering for classes.

 

Employers still need a degree as a signal of hireablility!

Actually, fewer and fewer require it and even those that do care far more about things that actually signal value creation.  A degree is one of the weakest signals on the market and the most expensive.  There are more ways than ever to get great jobs and stand out without wasted time or wasted dime.

 

Some jobs have mandated legal requirements for a degree!

Yes.  Yes they do.  And they shouldn’t.  Of course, many of those jobs are “prestige” careers that students don’t actually enjoy but feel like their parents need them to pursue like law or medicine.  Even there, opportunity to innovate and work in those industries as an entrepreneur without the costly credential exist and are growing rapidly.

 

But old people and parents might look down on you if you don’t do it!

Yep.  They look down on just about everything young people enjoy, create, and do well.  They’ll adjust.

Whether People are Good or Bad…

I posted a quote by C.S. Lewis to Facebook about decentralized power being valuable not because everyone is so good they should have some, but because humans are imperfect and no one should have a lot.

An interesting discussion ensued in the comments.  It’s easy to misunderstand what I take to be the core insight of the quote; that freedom doesn’t depend on the moral goodness of people.

Here’s my own take:

Markets and freedom work and benefit all whether people are good or bad.

Government control, on the other hand, is unnecessary if people are good and deadly if people are not.

Whatever your views on the goodness or badness of human nature, government is an unnecessary evil.

I happen to think people are self-interested, which is neither good nor bad.  When you try to force them to be good, they become worse.  When you let them freely pursue their own self interest, they become better.

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It Took Me Ten Years to Launch…and I Don’t Regret It

My brother and I started a business when I was 19, but is was never the business or anything I was really passionately committed to.  After that failed, I worked for other people for the next decade before Praxis, which had been a rough idea I had since age 17, was actually launched.

This wasn’t a bad thing for me, and there’s no way I would have accumulated the knowledge, network, skills, confidence, and experience needed without it.

Today I share 3 reasons you should work at a company before you launch your own.  Check it out, and relax a little.  As long as you’re not doing stuff you hate, you’re probably moving closer to your dreams.

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If You Hate This Post You Hate Truth

Just about every argument for school is actually an argument for the value of education that proves nothing about the value of school.

Just about every argument for law is actually an argument for the value of order that proves nothing about the value of law.

Just about every argument for welfare is actually an argument for the value of compassion that proves nothing about the value of welfare.

Just about every argument for the military is actually an argument for the value of security that proves nothing about the value of the military.

Just about every argument for regulation is actually an argument for the value of safety that proves nothing about the value of regulation.

Doublespeak is alive and well. Those who succeed in making the name of their pet policy linguistically interchangeable with a basic universal value always get to play offense.

Name it and claim it!

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Football is Not a Physical Game

If I asked you to describe the essential features of football, I bet you’d say something about the physical, sometimes violent nature of the game.  I think you’d be wrong.

I’m (slowly) reading Chuck Klosterman’s book, “But What If We’re Wrong?” and thoroughly enjoying it.  There is much to say about the book and I hope to get into more of it in the next podcast episode.  But today I’m thinking about football.

I read a chapter last night about the future, or non-future, of football.  It’s a great bit of analysis/speculation by Klosterman vs. Malcolm Gladwell on the probability of football existing 25 years from now.  I don’t pretend to know the fate of football and find it equally likely that it dies off as thrives.  But there was one assumption embedded in the chapter that I think was wrong, and that might affect the way we analyze the future of the sport.

Football is not a physical game.

The book explores the sport’s potential under the assumption that the key ingredient is a physical showcase and that’s what people either love or hate about it.  I have no doubt that’s what people hate about football, but I am highly skeptical that’s what people love about it.

If viewers were in it for the physical aspects of the game then track & field would be hugely popular.  I can’t think of a more purely physical spectacle than a foot race.  But no one watches foot races.  No one really watches power lifting or standing high jump either.  These are neat physical feats that might gain an occasional YouTube breakout if really extraordinary.  If football were essentially about the physical aspect we’d expect these other, often more extreme, physical activities to be equally beloved.  They’re not because the physical is not the essential part of football.

The essential part of football is mental.

It’s mental in two ways.  The most obvious is strategy.  Football fans love the complex, chess-like strategies in each play, possession, game, and season.  Every match-up involves coaches and players trying to outsmart each other with X’s and O’s.  It’s a really nerdy game when you start to get into the strategy of it.

But that’s just the first mental part, and I think the less important.  If this was the only way in which football was a mental game it would be fairly easy for software or robots or chess to replace it.  But strategy is only a small part of the essential mental aspect of football.

The other, less acknowledged way that football is a predominantly mental game is the individual and collective mental strength, emotional control, adaptability, and creativity required.  How to perform under high expectations vs. no expectations.  How to handle off-the-field distractions.  How to play when you’re hated by fans or teammates.  How to succeed on a play after failing at it the previous three times.  How to battle a choker reputation.

That this mental aspect of the game is the essential feature is revealed in the way we talk about football.  Listen to the in-game commentators or sports radio the day after.  We say things like, “How will they respond to that touchdown drive?”  That’s not a question of a physical response.  We know exactly what they’ll do physically.  Run really fast in a slant pattern and put up their hands.  “Respond” is a mental word.  We’re asking how they will handle the emotional toll of a turnover.  We discuss whether the QB has a short enough memory to not let it get to him.  We discuss whether or not a player can “win the locker room” not by physical prowess, but leadership qualities.  We love the game because it is an incredibly rich environment in which every conceivable emotional and mental state is experienced and each player must determine how to navigate the challenges inside their own heads.  We don’t spend hours after the game discussing exactly how many inches a DB jumped to make an interception, but we do spend hours discussing how his constant trash talk got in the head of the slot receiver causing him to pull up short on his route.

As a poster child for the violent physical nature of the sport the book references fanatical coach Jim Harbaugh and his comments about football being the last bastion of masculine physicality.  But even Harbaugh is really all about the mental game.  Whether or not he believes football’s real essence is physical, his success or failure as a coach will not be determined by how much his front line can bench press.  That’s going to be roughly the same as his competitors.  It will be determined by how well they respond to his wild antics and tough guy persona.  Will it inspire them and create the conditions for mental toughness, or will it patronize and annoy them and create mutiny?  That’s what everyone is watching Harbaugh to see.  That’s what his fans and detractors are discussing.

All physical activities have a mental component, but the degree can differ greatly.  We love football because of its astronomically high degree of mental complexity.  This is why soccer, though vastly more accessible, cannot replace football.  It involves strategy (though much less) and mental challenges, but far less diversity and complexity in its situations.  This is why golf is more popular than power-lifting.  The former has a more complex set of mental challenges because it’s not just a single feat repeated, but a series of diverse shots in different conditions with different expectations.

If you accept my argument that football’s essence is mental, not physical, and its core value to consumers is the mental game rather than the speed or violence, what does it mean for the future of the sport?  I’m not sure.  But I think it can help separate the popularity of the sport as a whole from the increasing worry about the violent aspects of it.  It should help us gain clarity as we speculate about what, if anything, might replace football as we know it.  Whatever it is, it can’t just be simulated physical play, or pure strategy.  The demand for a complex combination of strategy and mental agility is large, and if football is to die off some day something equally mentally and emotionally challenging has to fill the void.

PS – The book cites an overall decline in rates of youth participation not just in football, but in all the major organized sports and attributes this to changing values and interests and the emergence of video games.  That may be the cause, but another possible contributor I’ve not heard mentioned is increased specialization.  As these sports grow in money and sophistication, players become more specialized.  That means by age 10 if you’re not pretty serious about a sport it’s harder to join a league than it used to be.  It could be that the casual, recreational participation in sports leagues has fallen while the number of serious specialists has grown.

Here’s What We’ve Done in the First Three Years of Praxis

In just two weeks it will mark three years from the day the first Praxis website went live and the first person applied for the program.  It seemed a good time to give a longish recap on what we’re all about, what we’ve been building, and what it’s resulted in so far.

This includes bits of blog posts and updates written over the past few years that reflect the deepest, most important and enduring reasons why we do what we do.

We started with nothing but an idea so powerful it demanded action.  Action is scary.  Action is unknown.  Action is prone to failure and accountable to results.  Action can be nitpicked and potshotted.  Action is also the only way to turn ideas into a powerful force for change.

We didn’t start with a pristine plan or perfect path to execution.  We started with a dogged, enthusiastic commitment to create something new and bold and big to change lives and life itself.

We didn’t start Praxis because we think college is bad, or because we want to convince people it is.  We didn’t start it to be hip and trendy and “disruptive”.  We didn’t start it because we want to point out problems with the world.  We started it because we want to create value for individuals.

There are a lot of young people hungry for valuable experiences and not finding them.  There are a lot of young people unhappy with the education, career, and life options they see before them, searching for something more.  Praxis exists for you.

Praxis is more than a program or a company to me.  It’s the embodiment of a mindset and a way of life.  It is a tangible way to help people live free, self-directed lives.  It’s a community and a set of resources and ideas and businesses and participants built around the understanding that no conveyor belt can lead you to the life you want, and no structure you don’t choose and create yourself will bring you fulfillment.

Praxis is a concrete opportunity, not a vague notion.  It offers an interesting, challenging, amazing job and an interesting, challenging, amazing self-guided educational experience, all with a relentless focus on deliverable results.  It’s a recognition that your life will be determined by the quality of your product more than the pedigree of your paper.  It’s a way to remove the fear and doubt and strictures of the linear ladder to imagined success.  It’s a way to reveal and fan into flame the deep human love of adventure, play, possibility, and experimentation.

I don’t believe doing things you don’t like and hoping it leads to unspecified things you do like is a recipe for success.  Praxis pushes you to define what you don’t like and what you do, to learn what you’re good at and what you’re not, to identify definite outcomes you wish to achieve and definite causality between those outcomes and your desired next step.  Praxis does not ask you to learn things or perform tasks in the hope that it will get you work experience, we give you that work experience from the start.  You cannot separate learning from doing.

Praxis is a recognition that, wherever you get your paycheck, you are your own firm.  The future does not belong to those who follow orders, but those who solve problems with creativity.  The future belongs to entrepreneurs, whether founders or builders within firms.  Entrepreneurial thinking and acting cannot be learned from study, but must be practiced.  Praxis exists to put those eager to learn it into environments right now – not tomorrow, not after more study and certification – where they can be around and become entrepreneurs.

Praxis exists to offer a valuable service to young people who are searching for a way to build their confidence, skills, experience, network, and knowledge.  Praxis is built upon questions like, “Why not now?”, and “Why not me?”

Praxis is about that powerful combination of big picture dreamers and blue-collar doers.  It’s all the imagination of Silicon Valley startups with all the work-ethic of Midwestern small businesses.  It’s grit plus grind plus greatness.  Praxis is the realization that the most radical thing you can do is often the most practical, and that the most practical thing you can do is sometimes be radical.

Praxis is an idea.  The idea is simple.  Find the best way to get from where you are to where you want to be.  If we can help you do that better and faster with a great job that comes with a great education and community, jump in.  If not, we’ll still be rooting for you every step of the way.

We didn’t start Praxis to make enemies or to make friends.  We started it to create value.  We started it because the idea was so powerful we had no choice but to bring it into the world.  We started it because theorizing about ways young people could build their lives wasn’t enough.  We started it because it’s fun, fulfilling, and harder than anything I’ve ever done.  I wouldn’t have it any other way.

When we created Praxis we did it to fill a large and growing gap in the option set facing young people.  So many smart, ambitious, curious individuals are languishing in fluorescently-lit cinder-block classrooms.  Bored.  Racking up debt.  For no clear purpose.

The myth they are steeped in is that they have to do this.  There is no choice.  The options are presented: Be a loser, or sit around for 4-6 years at a cost of tens of thousands.

But the myth goes deeper.

The myth is that learning itself, and by extension self-improvement, are terrible, boring, passionless and must necessarily be enforced by bureaucrats and self-proclaimed authorities.  Your job, if you want to succeed in life (by who’s definition anyway?) is to follow the rules, memorize the disconnected facts, take the tests, pad the resume, apply for the jobs, and wait for the conveyor belt to drop you off at ‘normal’.

How depressing and frustrating this is to so many of the best and brightest.

We set out to cut through the crap.  We wanted these talented young people to stop waiting for real life and to jump into amazing work experiences at amazing companies eager for their help.  We wanted them to shatter the old paradigm of education and start fresh, like newborns do, exploring questions that matter to them, creating their own challenges and structure, diving into a rigorous self-improvement project.

The mindset is simple and powerful.  Awaken your inner entrepreneur.  You own your life.  You own your education.  You own your career.  You are the driving force in your own process of creation.  Do things for the results you value, not the hoops arbitrarily placed before you.

We wanted this entire life-shifting experience to take place in the span of a single year and for a net cost of zero.

I received this email from current Praxis participant Mitchell Earl.  It beautifully illustrates the mindset shift.

“If I had to estimate, I’d say I skipped class 2/3 of the time in college. I don’t sit still well. I couldn’t learn in that type of environment. I need to be stimulated. When I did go to class, I used to take the daily puzzles; either crosswords or sudokus because I needed something to direct my nervous energy toward if I was going to be forced to sit and listen to someone talk at me. I can’t even count the number of times I had a professor yank my newspaper away from me IN COLLEGE.

In my web design class, the syllabus alone put a burr under my saddle reading, “One absence is considered excessive for the course.” I redefined excessive. I turned in my work on time, but I refused to go sit in a classroom and be told how or what to code, design, or write. That’s not how I learn.

I didn’t and don’t want my work to be like grocery store milk, micro-filtered, ultra-pasteurized, standardized, and homogenized. For me to do my best work, I need to have the freedom to explore my creativity. Praxis has shown me that. It’s given me the freedom to explore my own needs as a learner. No one is yanking my puzzle away telling me to pay attention. No one is telling me how to learn. No one is shaming my individuality. With Praxis, I’m free to be me.”

Yes.  That’s exactly it Mitchell.  We set out to create more freedom.  To help you carve out a space, to break the other-imposed mold, and plot your own path to fulfillment as you define it.

Freedom isn’t easy.  It’s much harder work than just doing what everyone else wants and expects.  It takes a lot of deep, philosophical thinking.  It takes self-knowledge and self-honesty.  It takes discipline and hard work.  It takes tolerance of failure and the courage to put yourself in new situations, often over your head, and learn on the fly.  It takes the humility to be in environments where you’re not the smartest person in the room.  Your desire for personal growth must be strong enough to sustain these challenges.

Mitchell is tasting it.  So are our other participants and grads.  This is what we set out to do.  And we’re doing it.  One life at a time.

If you know anyone who sounds a lot like Mitchell was in school, give ’em a little nudge of encouragement to be free.  Remind them the dominant path isn’t the only one, and the best paths are the ones they’ll blaze themselves.  You can even send them my way and I’ll gladly talk with them about taking creative control of their education, career, and life, with or without Praxis.

Let’s awaken people’s dreams and increase the number of those who are truly living free.

Here’s the cool thing.  Praxis grads are kicking ass.  We have story after story of 17, 18, 20, 22, 25 year olds creating amazing results getting awesome jobs and blowing away their classroom bound peers.

What kind of results?

  • Praxis grads are all employed.
  • Their average salary is $50,287.
  • 100% said Praxis helped them achieve a better career and life.

Now entering our third year, we’ve taken an even more dramatic and direct approach to creating value.  We guarantee our graduates job offers at the startup where they get paid to apprentice.

We’re growing every month in applications, participants, business partners, graduates, and most of all young people with an unleashed approach to life.

It’s about individuals, not aggregates and average data.  Still, if you want numbers, put it side by side with the typical path taken by most young people, pressured by parents and teachers who don’t bear the burden themselves:

Praxis

  • Length: 9 months
  • Cost: $12k tuition – $14,400 earnings during the program = ($2,400)
  • Debt: $0
  • Job after graduation: 100%
  • Min. starting salary: $40k ($50k is the average)
  • Net benefit over 5 years: $2,400 (in program) + $170,000 (min. pay, no raises for 4.25 years after graduation) = $172,400

College

  • Length: 5+ years on average
  • Cost: $100k (minimum)
  • Debt: $37k average
  • Job after graduation: ??? (82% of grads do not have a job lined up. 62% of degree holders have no job or a job that does not require a degree)
  • Opportunity cost: $172,400 (assuming you had done Praxis instead)
  • Net benefit over 5 years: -$37k debt -$172,400 opportunity cost = ($209,400)

We’re not done but just getting started.  We are relentlessly committed to creating value for our young customers.  We have to.  We are directly, immediately accountable to them.  That’s what the market does.  We wouldn’t want to be shielded from it.

You can love us or hate us or ignore us or join us.  It doesn’t really matter.  What matters and what will always matter to us is helping those who want to act on their dreams and gain a massive head start on building a life they love.

That’s why we took this risk and created Praxis nearly three years ago.  That’s why we’ve weathered the storms and criticism and risk and pain.  That’s why we get excited about every amazing story and accomplishment by our participants and alumni.

Break the mold.

Isaac

74 – FwTK: This is a Shit Test

Sometimes you just have to realize what it is to pass it.

TK and I discuss the concept of “shit tests” and how interpreting disagreement and hate through this lens can keep you in your “zone of power” (TK’s cheesy phrase).

Recommendations from the episode: Pulling Your Own Strings by Wayne Dyer, How to Deal With Nasty People by Jay Carter, Ego & Hubris: The Michael Malice Story by Harvey Pekar.

This and all episodes are available on SoundCloud, iTunes, YouTube, and Stitcher.

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What If Someone Could Read You Articles Anytime?

I always have a backlog of posts and articles I want to read, but my eyes and my schedule can only fit so much screen-staring.

This is one of the reasons podcasts and audiobooks are so awesome.  I can get in a walk, a workout, or some other activity while listening to great ideas without needing to be at a screen or book in hand.

But lots of the content I love isn’t in audiobook or podcast format.

What if it could be?  Instantly, cheaply, and read by real humans in an app or feed that lets me listen now or store for later?

It’s called AudioThat and it’s gearing up for a beta test.

My friends Zak Slayback and Chuck Grimmett are working on this project with me and we want some beta users to try the service for free so we can see what we’ve got here.

You can sign up at AudioThat.com or learn more in this Medium article.

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Sixteen Big Myths About College and Success in Your Early 20’s

I don’t normally write long posts, but it needed to be done.

Over at the Praxis blog I address just about every stupid bit of advice young people routinely get about their education, career, and future.

All these myths are based on the Conveyor Belt Mentality, which is as dangerous as it is dumb.

If you’ve heard any of these bits of advice about college or jobs it’s probably time to call bullshit and build better reasons for taking the path you choose…

  • “It’s worth it”
  • “It’s free so you can’t turn it down!”
  • “Only drop out if you have a billion dollar idea”
  • “You’re already this far, so it only makes sense to finish.”
  • “Don’t burn any bridges.  Keep your options open.”
  • “Build your resume”
  • “Follow the rules”
  • “Pick a good major. Pick a growing industry”
  • “It will be good to have just in case”
  • “Find companies with job openings and apply”
  • “Get qualified and certified so you can do X”
  • “Get a good starting salary”
  • “Get something with your degree”
  • “Make your parents proud”
  • “Earn and invest your money”
  • “Get a job with a good future”

Read the full post with my explanation for why the above are false here.  Then share it with a young person in your life.

 

Random Recap for Health and Happiness

  • After a bad night’s sleep and a hard-to-get-going morning writing something – anything – always makes me feel better.
  • Current reading list: Be Slightly Evil, But What If We’re Wrong, Without Their Permission, The Graveyard Book, High Output Management, Notes on the Synthesis of Form, Tempo.
  • There is almost nothing better than a new T-shirt that fits perfectly.
  • If you want to see just how petty and enthused I can get, watch a good sporting match with me.  If you want to believe I’m a largely reasonable human being, don’t.
  • Drying off after a shower is really annoying, especially in warm weather.  It takes too long and you never get totally dry.  I want a booth to step into with high-pressure air blowers like they have at car washes.  Maybe a dash of baby powder at the end to prevent any remnants of wetness?
  • I often dream of days where I do nothing but read all day, but in reality I can’t read for more than 30 minutes straight without needing to break it up.
  • All great stories take shape after the actual events occur.  It doesn’t look like a story while it’s happening.  The narrative arc is crafted in retrospect.  This is why what actually happens in real-time is less important than how it’s framed after the fact.
  • I’m still not sure any books about how a particular person or company succeeded are worth reading.  But I still read them.
  • Why do men seem to be more motivated by the idea that no one believes in them than women?  Or is this a misnomer?
  • If consumers are so dumb that they buy whatever marketers sell them, wouldn’t it be much scarier to give power to elites to curb marketing messages?  Wouldn’t hapless consumers simply look for orders from those elites instead?  Isn’t it less dangerous to have easily duped people in a world where tons of companies compete to dupe them vs. a few elites duping them “for their own good”?
  • Almost no one has enough faith in self-interest.
  • Preaching to the choir is far superior than preaching to anyone else.  Echo chambers and bubbles are more productive than going out of your way to step outside of them.
  • Reading people whose ideas you disagree with is vastly overrated.
  • Your gut is probably smarter than you think, but listening to it is harder than you think.
  • Steph Curry, despite looking great last night, is clearly still not himself.  I contend that his movement is still limited by the MCL sprain.
  • Olympic basketball isn’t that cool anymore.
  • “Entrepreneurship” is overused but there’s no going back so it might as well cease meaning someone who starts a business and take on the economic meaning of a descriptive category of action.  That still doesn’t mean you should describe yourself as one on LinkedIn if you haven’t started a business.
  • Now I feel better.  Time to kick this day in the butt.
Published
Categorized as Commentary

Episode 69.5: FwTK – Heartbreak, Loss, Change, and Space

My family and I just moved to a new house and it’s been a surprisingly hard adjustment.  TK and I discuss how to handle moving, change, grief, and heartache, as well as what a sense of space means and how humans interact with light and their built environments.

Mentioned in the episode: Christopher Alexander, Too Many Dirty Dishes, Tim Ferriss, Peter Thiel, Aslan, In Defense of Metaphor in Science Writing, Jeff Till’s Five Hundred Years, George Lakoff, Your Brain is Not a Computer, Metaphors and Magic,

Recommended: Space and Place, Landscapes of the Soul, A Timeless Way of Building

This and all episodes are available on SoundCloud, iTunes, YouTube, and Stitcher.