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What I actually do all day

This Minyanville  article  written by Jeff Saut covers Peter Lynch's "cocktail party" theory. It's from the book One Up on Wall Street .  ...

When a crisis looms, first choose your group. The bigger the crisis, the less likely you are to survive it alone. Find people that you want to be with, then agree who does what. "I used to think I was not much good in a crisis, but over the years, I have realized there is no such thing as being individually good or bad in a crisis. Humans either deal with crises in effective groups, or not at all"

Last week I stumbled across the book Annotation, written by Remi Kalir and Antero Garcia. As the title suggests, the book is all about the history and practices of annotating texts. And probably be…

Two years ago, frustrated with a long list of unfulfilled project ideas in my phone notes, I decided to give myself one week to try each idea out in its tiniest form.

The memo below was sent to the team at Tiny Speck, the makers of Slack, on July 31st, 2013. It had been a little under seven months since…

Which path are you on? Tony Robbins explains there are 3 paths in life. Which one are you on?

“Not to eat but to think.”

In my writing on technology and culture I try to be judicious about citing scientific studies. The issues involved in our ongoing wrangling with digital innovations are subtle and often deeply human. Attempts to exactly quantify what we're gaining and losing through our screens can at times feel disconcertedly sterile. All that being said, however,

What I learned building an eight-figure candle business

How you respond to change makes all the difference when dealing with the unexpected. To keep moving in a direction you can be proud of, reprogram your thinking.

Daily notes as a frictionless default input for personal knowledge management systems

Seriously, it’s really weird. But it’s helped me for 25 years!

Even the most experienced writers can feel intimidated by editorial work, with its arcane rules and secret symbols. Here, I hope to demystify the process and prove that you can effectively edit your own work even if you've no idea what a dangling participle is and couldn't confidently identify an en

Most are probably unaware of the effort involved in maintaining a personal website or of the benefits that result.

Reading is a good thing. A good thing too many people don’t do enough of (or any of it all…) So obviously doing lots of it is good, right? This is why people try to figure out how to speed read (a scam, I say!). This is why they show off their huge libraries (guilty!). This is why they listen to audiobooks at 2x or 3x speed.  “Less is more? Quality over quantity? Not with books!”  But not all reading is created equal. As Epictetus said, “I cannot call somebody ‘hard-working’ knowing only that they read.” He said he needed to know what and how they read. Sure, reading is better than a lot of other activities, but you can still do it poorly or for poor reasons. “Far too many good brains,” Seneca said, “have been afflicted by the pointless enthusiasm for useless knowledge.” To be a great reader, it is not enough that you read, it’s how you read. These 13 strategies by no means make a complete list, but if you implement even a couple of them, I’m comfortable guaranteeing you’ll not only be a better reader for it, but a better person too. Stop Reading Books You Aren’t Enjoying  If you find yourself wanting to speed up the reading process on a particular book, you may want to ask yourself, “Is this book any good?” You turn off a TV show if it’s boring. You stop eating food that doesn’t taste good. You unfollow people when you realize their content is useless. Life is too short to read books you don’t enjoy reading. My rule is one hundred pages minus your age. Say you’re 30 years old—if a book hasn’t captivated you by page 70, stop reading it. So as you age, you have to endure crappy books less and less. Read Like A Spy One of the most surprising parts of Seneca’s writing is how that avowed Stoic quotes Epicurus, the founder of Epicureanism. Even Seneca knew this was strange as each time he did so in his famous Letters, he felt obliged to preface or explain why he was so familiar with the teachings of a rival school. His best answer appears in Letter II, On Discursiveness in Reading, and it works as a prompt for all of us in our own reading habits. The reason he was so familiar with Epicurus, Seneca wrote, was not because he was deserting the writings of the Stoics, but because he was reading like a spy in the enemy’s camp. That is, he was deliberately reading and immersing himself into the thinking and the strategies of those he disagreed with. To see if there was anything he could learn and, of course, to bolster his own defenses. Keep A Commonplace Book In his book, Old School, Tobias Wolf’s semi-autobiographical character takes the time to type out quotes and passages from great books to feel great writing come through him. I do this almost every weekend in what I call a “commonplace book”— a collection of quotes, ideas, stories and facts that I want to keep for later. It’s made me a much better writer and a wiser person. I am not alone. In 2010, when the Reagan Presidential Library was undergoing renovation, a box labeled “RR’s desk” was discovered. Inside the box were the personal belongings Ronald Reagan kept in his office desk, including a number of black boxes containing 4×6 note cards filled with handwritten quotes, thoughts, stories, political aphorisms, and one-liners. They were separated by themes like “On the Nation,” “On Liberty.” “On War,” “On the People,” “The World,” “Humor,” and “On Character”. This was Ronald Reagan’s version of a commonplace book. Lewis Carroll, Walt Whitman, Thomas Jefferson all kept their own version of a commonplace book.  As Seneca advised, “We should hunt out the helpful pieces of teaching and the spirited and noble-minded sayings which are capable of immediate practical application–not far far-fetched or archaic expressions or extravagant metaphors and figures of speech–and learn them so well that words become works.” Re-Read The Masters You were in high school when you read The Great Gatsby for the first time. You were just a kid when you read The Count of Monte Cristo or had someone tell you the story of Odysseus.  The point is: You got it right? You read them. You’re done, right? Nope. We cannot be content to simply pick up a book once and judge it by that experience. It’s why we have to read and re-read. As Seneca put it, “You must linger among a limited number of master-thinkers, and digest their works, if you would derive ideas which shall win firm hold in your mind.” Because the world is constantly changing, we are changing, and therefore what we get out of those books can change. It’s not enough to read the classics once, you have to read them at every age, every era of your life. We never step in the same river twice, Marcus Aurelius said, and that’s why we must return again and again to the great works of history. Read Fiction There’s an interesting thread running through in the writings and teachings of Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, and Epictetus that can zip right past you if you aren’t reading closely. What is it? What did all these great men share? They heavily relied on plays, tragedies, satires, mythologies, and other works of fiction to clarify their thinking and their own writing. Epictetus draws on characters like Achilles and Agamemnon from the Iliad, Admetus from Euripides’ Alcestis, and a long list of others from Greek mythology. Marcus Aurelius quotes from the comedies of Aristophanes, the tragedies and plays of Euripides and Sophocles, and says we should read fiction “to remind us of what can happen, and that it happens inevitably—and if something gives you pleasure on that stage, it shouldn’t cause you anger on this one.” Seneca liked to quote the works of the great Roman poets [...]

Reggie Vanderbilt was born into a family of bitter feuds, fragile egos, and impossible expectations. Everything went downhill from there. When Reggie’s great-grandfather, Cornelius “Commodore” Vanderbilt died in 1877, the New York Daily Tribune wrote an editorial predicting the legacy of the world’s richest man: The Vanderbilt case is an impressive lesson in the folly of attempting to “found a family” upon no better basis than the possession of money. The ruling idea of the Old Commodore’s latter years was to amass a huge fortune which should stand for generations as a monument to the name of Vanderbilt, and make the head of the house a permanent power in American society. There is no country in the world where fortunes are made so quickly … and none in which inherited money has done so little for its possessors. The Vanderbilt money is certainly bringing no happiness and no greatness to its present claimants, and we have little doubt that in the course of a few years, it will go the way of most American fortunes; a multitude of heirs will have the spending of it, and it will be absorbed in the vast circulating system of the country. The plans of the dead railway king will come to naught; and if he ever revisits the earth to look after what he had so much at heart in his last years, he will be satisfied that the art of founding a family was one of the things that he did not know. This harsh opinion underestimated what was to come. Cornelius Vanderbilt left his heirs the inflation-adjusted equivalent of something like $300 billion. Within 50 years it was gone. In between sat three generations whose primary purpose was to compete on who could build the largest house and marry the bluest blood. The first heirs had some entrepreneurial sense of running the family business; over time the “family business” became insecurity and resentment. In 1875 an op-ed said socialites “devote themselves to pleasure regardless of expense.” A Vanderbilt responded that actually they “devote themselves to expense regardless of pleasure.” It was a game that couldn’t be won, so everyone lost. Reggie was one of the last Vanderbilts to inherit significant wealth. On his 21st birthday he received $12.5 million, or about $350 million in today’s dollars. Family biographer Arther Vanderbilt writes: Self-indulgent, lazy, lackadaisical, Reggie had absolutely no sense of responsibility or purpose other than to keep himself from being bored … [he was] never employed and never did a lick of work. Somewhat at a loss when asked his occupation, he usually responded, ‘Gentleman.’ … The only way Reggie could distinguish himself was to live the life of a rich playboy. And this he did with dedication and consummate skill. Reggie’s two loves were brandy and gambling. The first left him dead at age 45, with cirrhosis so severe the blood flow from his liver was cut off and pushed up to his esophagus, where the veins abruptly ruptured and left him choking in a pool of blood. The latter left him broke – after repaying debts Reggie’s will was nearly irrelevant, as he had nowhere near the amount of money promised to his heirs. Reggie’s grandson – Anderson Cooper – was one of the first Vanderbilts who was never promised dynastic wealth. It may have been a blessing. Cooper once said of inheritance: “I think it’s an initiative sucker. I think it’s a curse. From the time I was growing up, if I felt like there was some pot of gold waiting for me, I don’t know if I would have been so motivated.” It’s like he was the first Vanderbilt to be set free. – Money is fungible in the sense that my dollar bill is indistinguishable from your dollar bill. But the value people get out of a dollar varies wildly, even among people with the same income and net worth. I’m always interested in the difference between getting rich and staying rich. They are completely different things, and many of those skilled at the former fail at the latter. Part of this topic is knowing the difference between rich and wealthy. These definitions are my own, but here’s the distinction: Rich means you have cash to buy stuff. Wealth means you have unspent savings and investments that provide some level of intangible and lasting pleasure – independence, autonomy, controlling your time, and doing what you want to do, when you want to do it, with whom you want to do it with, for as long as you want to do it for. What I find fascinating are stories like the Vanderbilts, who were the richest people on earth but, by my definition, some of the least wealthy. Money to them was less of an asset and more of a social liability, indebting them to a status-chasing life that left most of them seemingly miserable. George Vanderbilt spent six years building the 135,000-square-foot Biltmore house – with 40 master bedrooms and a full-time staff of nearly 400 – but allegedly spent little time there because it was “utterly unaddressed to any possible arrangement of life.” The house nevertheless cost so much to maintain it nearly ruined Vanderbilt. Ninety percent of the land was sold off to pay tax debts, and the house was turned into a tourist attraction. There are so many similar stories from the Vanderbilt family that you begin to ask, “What was the point?” The point, as the New York Daily Tribune realized early on, was not to live a great life. It was to be rich – to be valued “upon no better basis than the possession of money.” Rather than using money to build a life, their life was built around money; rather than an asset, their inheritance was an insurmountable lifestyle debt, passed to the next generation until there was mercifully nothing left. In his 1903 book The Quest for the Simple Life, William Dawson writes: The thing that is least perceived about wealth is that all pleasure in money ends at the point where economy becomes unnecessary. The man who can buy anything he covets, without any consultation with his banker, values nothing that he buys. Nassim Taleb echoes a similar point when he says, “The record shows that, for society, the richer we become, the harder it is to live within our means. Abundance is harder for us to handle than scarcity.” You become a victim of your own success. The Vanderbilts are an extreme example, but I think they were just a magnified version of what so many regular people deal with today. Average household incomes adjusted for inflation have more than doubled in the last 70 years, but it doesn’t feel that way because expectations have more than doubled. Part of the reason home affordability is lower today than in previous generations is because the average new home is a third larger than it used to be; millions of Americans haven’t saved enough to retire, but just a few generations ago the entire concept of retirement was a dream. I want to be rich, because I like nice stuff. But what I value far more is to be wealthy, because I think independence is one of the only ways money can make you happier. The trick is realizing that the only way to maintain independence is if your appetite for stuff – including status – can be satiated. The goalpost has to stop moving; the expectations have to remain in check. Otherwise money has a tendency to be a liability masquerading as an asset, controlling you more than you use it to live a better life.

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My Schedule Should Be Terrible... I should have an overwhelming, Malox-guzzling, stress-saturated schedule. Here's why: I'm a graduate student in a demanding program. I'm working on several research papers while also attempting to nail down some key ideas for my dissertation. I'm TA'ing and taking courses. I maintain this blog. I'm a staff writer for

Mariko Yugeta’s comeback story shows that regret doesn’t have to drag us down.

Originally sent as a private note to portfolio companies: PDF Founders, In the first 2 months of 2021, crypto prices have already doubled and continue to hit new all-time highs. Bitcoin has

From the iPhone to Snapchat and Notion—when words escape us

Hello, everyone. I'm going to be taking an extended break from kottke.org, starting today. I've been writing here for more than 2

Not long ago, I watched Aziz Ansari's new Netflix special, Nightclub Comedian. I was pleasantly surprised when, early in the show, Ansari demonstrates his commitment to escaping tech-driven distraction by showing off his Nokia 2720 flip phone (see above). Soon after the special was released, Ansari elaborated on his personal brand of digital minimalism in

Nat Eliason's Monday Medley Newsletter for May 09, 2022

Longtime collaborators and founders of the design collective LoveFrom chat about Apple, Ferrari and friendship at Newson’s workshop in the Cotswolds