realization 04/15/2010
 
Your twenties are always an apprenticeship, but you don't always know what for.
 
Agenda 01/20/2010
 
  • Suck less
  • Know that you are actually much better than most of the people around.
  • Action speaks louder than words but its usually happens bit later. So reason out deferring of words.
 
discipline 09/15/2009
 
After reading PG's essay this week came across equally important small email from my daily subscriptions. I need more of it.

When you're not as talented or skillful as the next person, discipline is the next best substitute. Talent and skills are full of potential. But when that potential isn't harnessed with discipline, it's all for nothing. Discipline with the talent and skills you have right now will leave those with the  best talent and skills but no discipline choking in the dust.  

More concise words: success=(determination+discipline)*ambition By davemcclure
 
 
when you don't create things, you become defined by your tastes rather than ability. your tastes only narrow & exclude people. so create.
-
_why
 
 

The first principle is that you must not fool yourself - and you are the easiest person to fool.

-- Richard Feynman, Caltech commencement address, 1974


 
stay focused! 06/01/2009
 

You have to organize the world so that you get a series of small successes. And be prepared to take any success as a success.Make it easier for yourself to accomplish things. If you can remove parts of your task list (punt for now or remove entirely) it can help -- a long todo list is demoralizing. I find that people generally try to build very large systems; this the enemy of productivity.

Choose a design that will allow you to arrive at as minimal a system as possible as quickly as possible, such that the system still retains conceptual integrity (that is to say, it is whole.) Then, afterwards, each time you sit down and do a bit of work, you'll have added a function or whatever instead of slogging along towards your first working system, which could be quite distant.

Finally, don't thrash when the working isn't happening. Instead, go goof off or go for a jog. This really helps. You can't work all the time, and if you've been pushing too hard your productivity gets diminished rapidly.
- joshu(HN User)

 
unlearn 05/03/2009
 

To avoid situations in which you might make mistakes may be the biggest mistake of all.
-
Peter McWilliams

I guess we have been taught to do this exact thing throughout education.

 
lets try 04/30/2009
 

You can't screwup what you can't change

 
wannabe DTGS! 04/26/2009
 

There is a tide in the affairs of men
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
On such a full sea are we now afloat;
And we must take the current when it serves,
Or lose the ventures before us.

- William Shakespeare, Julias Ceasar

Cliffnotes of quote for the Shakespearean impaired

 
 

You see things vacationing on a motorcycle in a way that is completely
different from any other. In a car you're always in a compartment, and
because you're used to it you don't realize that through that car window
everything you see is just more TV. You're a passive observer and it is all
moving by you boringly in a frame.

On a cycle the frame is gone. You're completely in contact with it all. You're
in the scene, not just watching it anymore, and the sense of presence is
overwhelming. That concrete whizzing by five inches below your foot is the
real thing, the same stuff you walk on, it's right there, so blurred you can't
focus on it, yet you can put your foot down and touch it anytime, and the
whole thing, the whole experience, is never removed from immediate
consciousness.

Source: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
and this reminded me of song "Guaranteed" from movie "Into the Wild"