"People don’t listen, they just wait for their turn to talk."
-- Chuck Palahniuk [1963]
Speak less and listen more. Be interested to be interesting.
Talk slowly. Be clear. Never mumble. Don’t interrupt. If you can’t be kind, be quiet. The quieter you become, the more you can hear. Don’t debate, just listen. Listen actively. Mirror or paraphrase: repeat the last 1-3 words as a question or restate in your words. Seek to understand before being understood. Don’t plan your next line, speak what’s on your mind, even if it risks backfiring. Be real. The best conversationalists listen best. Be interested to be interesting. Draw people out about themselves, it gives their brain as much pleasure as food or money. When they open up, don’t judge. Conversation isn’t about winning. You don’t need an opinion on everything. Form fewer opinions on far fewer things, then interrogate your stronger ones rigorously.
Ask questions, listen, respond with a statement. No one is boring, you just haven’t asked the right questions. Curiosity is key; questions without attention are worthless. Good/unusual questions spark interest. Simple: «What’s your favorite book?» Deep: «Why is your best friend your best friend?» Hard to fake answers. Probe challenges: work, location, raising kids, reveals current priorities. Talk passions over accomplishments. Use external catalysts for stories/questions. Catch nonverbal cues. Best topics: outside their expertise (where you add value), travel, sincere compliments, advice requests. Stop impressing. Focus on being interested, not interesting. Impression control consumes bandwidth and feels fake. Smile and relax, warmth comes from smiling while speaking. Popular people smile more. Calm comes from slower speech. Treat new acquaintances as old friends. Don’t be stubborn, make your point and let go. Use «yes and» over «yes but». Drop ego, add value. Don’t judge. Lead or flow with the conversation. Emphasize similarity, we like people like us. Keep a journal of what excites you and what you look forward to. Keeps ideas ready for discussion. Repeating the same entries daily is fine. People believe anything whispered.
"A silent man is the best one to listen to." (...)
"Say a little and say it well." (...)
"Silence cannot be misquoted."
-- vox populi
"Give me the gift of a listening heart."
-- King Solomon [-970]
"A fool is known by his speech, and a wise man by silence."
-- Pythagoras [-570]
"Know how to listen and you will profit even from those who talk badly."
-- Plutarch [0046]
"The more you say, the less people remember."
-- François Fénelon [1651]
"The best way to become boring is to say everything." (...)
"Everything you say should be true but not everything true should be said."
-- Voltaire [1694]
"Every man hears only what he understands."
-- J.W. Goethe [1749]
"Think like a wise man but communicate in the language of the people."
-- W.B. Yeats [1865]
"A little inaccuracy sometimes saves tons of explanation."
-- H.H. Munro [1870]
"Two monologues do not make a dialogue."
-- Mikhail Bakhtin [1895]
"Don’t talk unless you can improve the silence."
-- Jorge Luis Borges [1899]
"The most important thing in communication is hearing what isn’t said."
-- Peter Drucker [1909]
"If you want to be interesting, be interested."
-- David Ogilvy [1911]
"Everyone you meet always asks if you have a career, are married or own a house; as if life was some kind of grocery list. But nobody ever asks if you are happy."
-- Heath Ledger [1979]
"Admit when you’re wrong. Shut up when you’re right."
-- John Gottman [1942]
Don’t raise your voice, improve your argument.
Listen as if you’re wrong. Ask the person trying to convince you to explain how their view works. If they can, you’ll learn. If they can’t, their position softens. The more we disagree, the higher the chance at least one of us is right.
"The aim of argument should be progress, not victory."
-- Joseph Joubert [1754]
"Be curious, not judgmental."
-- Walt Whitman [1819]
"Never argue with a fool, onlookers may not be able to tell the difference." (...)
"Never argue with stupid people, because they will drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience."
-- Mark Twain [1835]
"Tact is the ability to tell someone to go to hell in such a way that they look forward to the trip."
-- Winston Churchill [1874]
"Seek first to understand, then to be understood."
-- Stephen R. Covey [1932]
"With truly logical people, most arguments are very short and based mainly on differing assumptions."
-- Naval Ravikant [1974]
"Eloquence is logic on fire."
-- Lyman Beecher [1775]
Good stories condense massive details into a consumable, shareable form. Their primary purpose isn’t accuracy, it’s entertainment.
You don’t need to answer every question. You can say whatever you want if it’s interesting but learn when to deflect boring or easily misinterpreted ones.
"If you want to reach a large audience, appeal to idiots."
-- Arthur Schopenhauer [1788]
"A good speech should be like a woman’s skirt: long enough to cover the subject and short enought to create interest."
-- Winston Churchill [1874]
"Cinema is just life with the boring parts cut out."
-- Alfred Hitchcock [1899]
"Improvisation is the ability to talk with oneself."
-- Cecil Taylor [1929]
"To tell a good story, you must reveal a surprise; otherwise is just a report." (...)
"Always say less than necessary."
-- Kevin Kelly [1952]
"The secret to public speaking is to speak as if you were alone." (...)
"The art of conversation is best practiced between three to four people."
-- Naval Ravikant [1974]
"The enemy of excellence is isolation."
-- Aaron Walker [1910]
Be useful, not important.
Listen to people, understand their goals, and help them. It’s not about you, it’s about the impact you have on others. Who you know and whether they like you determines the opportunities you get. Make networking a habit. You start truly living when you live outside yourself, in the moment, not in your head.
Field tactics: «Rescue» people instead of cold-calling. Include strangers to gain allies. Become the conduit—make introductions («Have you met my friend Johnny?»). Welcome people into groups; everyone wants to feel included. Eye contact builds trust. Don’t hide. Don’t wait to speak. Start with small/open groups. Opening line: «Hi, I’m X and I don’t know anybody here.» Go to the bar or help the host serve food. Exit gracefully after 10–15 minutes (exploring, not lingering): «Excuse me, I must talk to someone who just entered.» «I have to make a call.» Introduce them and leave. To rude people: «My mom told me not to talk to strangers.» Social inadequacy (creepiness) stems from unpredictability. Staring isn’t creepy if you smile or say hi.
Building new connections matters, but nurturing existing ones matters more. Form relationships with those who give as much as they take. The best way to get value is to give it first, even through validation. Treat them as well as you possibly can – after that, treat them as they treat you. Forget those who forget you. Avoid forcing connections. Do not beg. Do not call twice. Do not explain yourself. Do not simp. Respect yourself. Do not insult yourself: If they reject you, they are not worthy of your presence. Those who want to stay will find a way. Rejection hurts, we dislike when others see us differently from how we see ourselves.
"I speak to everyone in the same way, whether he is the garbage man or the president of the university."
-- Albert Einstein [1879]
"You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you."
-- Dale Carnegie [1888]
*"Everyone is shy. Other people are waiting for you to introduce yourself to them, they are waiting for you to send them an email, they are waiting for you to ask them on a date. Go ahead." (...)
"Don’t take it personally when someone turns you down. Assume they are like you: busy, occupied, distracted. Try again later. It’s amazing how often a second try works." (...)
"When introduced to someone make eye contact and count to 4. You’ll both remember each other."
-- Kevin Kelly [1952]
"If you expect magic in every encounter, you’ll find it."
-- Adam Robinson [1955]
"To develop your intellectual powers at the expense of the social is to retard your own progress to mastery."
-- Robert Greene [1959]
"The currency of real networking is not greed but generosity."
-- Keith Ferrazzi [1965]
"Your network is your net worth."
-- Porter Gale [1970]
"Nothing will attract people to you as much as your values."
-- Naval Ravikant [1974]
"Millenials who learn the dark Boomer arts of phone calls and eye contact will inherit the earth."
-- x@molson_hart
"Avoid people who are close with people who dislike you."
-- x@wealthinc247
"If you can’t sell yourself in one sentence you won’t be able to sell yourself in several paragraphs."
-- Sahil Lavingia [1989]
Choose truth, or your self-mythology will seduce you.
"If you can’t advertise yourself, what hope have you being able to advertise anything else."
-- David Ogilvy [1911]
"The best elevator pitch is the one that makes someone lean in and ask, «Tell me more.»"
-- Guy Kawasaki [1954]
"When it comes to the story of our own lives, we’re more like novelists, not journalists. We’re not reading from our confessional journals, but recounting a polished story we’ve rehearsed over years. So a bio becomes a highlight reel of pedigree and accomplishments. Most of the stories we hear about people’s success are nothing more than clever myth-making: a way of reconfiguring their past as they wish to remember it, shaping it into a compelling and effective narrative, and weaponizing it into a personal propaganda tool. That story might be «rags to riches», «rising from the ashes», «one yes after a thousand nos», «crazy till I wasn’t» or any one of the familiar narratives we’ve heard from our heroes."
-- x@jordanharbinger
"When you want to tell stories, be it startup pitches, or just stories about your experiences, always share them in three points, no more, no less. The human mind & the underlying world gravitates towards threes, look at any industry, typically the equilibrium points lie in threes. There are also numerous other examples that paint this phenomena. It’s a magic number for communication. Story tellers rule the world."
-- x@signulll
"A business is simply an idea to make other people’s lives better."
-- Richard Branson [1950]
Focus on what you can easily give that empowers others.
Entrepreneurs are more risk-averse than average. Budget pessimistically using worst-case scenarios. Check if the math scales.
First try to sell it, then build it. Validate your business by finding paying clients. If something is worth doing, sales come easily and dollars are high. If you have to drag people along, you’re wasting time. The more they pay, the more they value it, the consumer votes with their wallet. It’s not about what you know; it’s about who trusts you to solve their problems. Often it requires technical skills. Always persuasion skills. The bottleneck is rarely tool knowledge, it’s understanding customer needs. It’s easier when you are the customer. Start with what interests you. Skip theory; solve the problem. If you have an idea, test and launch now (MVP) but do the math. Timing is key in startup success (quick to start, not necessarily first). Team and execution follow. Find the 80/20 solution. Do things manually first. Don’t scale team/product until people want it. Automate only when manual capacity is overwhelmed. Don’t invest heavy effort only to discover no paying demand. Focus on revenue-generating activities. If it doesn’t earn money, don’t do it or outsource to free time for cash flow. Deliver a little more than expected for recommendations. «Fire» nasty, time-consuming clients. Failure improves entrepreneurship only if you study it.
"Don’t open a shop unless you know how to smile."
-- vox populi
"Without customers, you don’t have a business. You have a hobby."
-- Don Peppers [1946] & Martha Rogers [1938]
"You can obsess about serving your customers or you can obsess about beating the competition. Both work, but of the two, obsessing about your customers will take you further." (...)
"Ask funders for money, and they’ll give you advice; but ask for advice and they’ll give you money."
-- Kevin Kelly [1952]
"Microsoft is always two years away from failure."
-- Bill Gates [1955]
"You can’t just ask customers what they want and then try to give that to them. By the time you get it built, they’ll want something new."
-- Steve Jobs [1955]
"Don’t find customers for your products. Find products for your customers."
-- Seth Godin [1960]
"Your margin is my opportunity."
-- Jeff Bezos [1964]
"What you need to start a new business: generosity."
-- Derek Sivers [1969]
"Constantly think how you can do things better." (...)
"If things aren’t failing you’re not innovating enough." (...)
"Great companies are built on great products." (...)
"Any product that needs a manual is broken."
-- Elon Musk [1971]
"There is no skill called business. Avoid business magazines and business classes." (...)
"Anyone who attempts to serve a customer at a new level of quality and scale is an entrepreneur. Anyone who does not, is not." (...)
"To build product, «make something people want». To create art, make something «you» want." (...)
"You are not building a product. You are solving a problem." (...)
"Startups are a theory about something the market wants, but doesn’t yet exist." (...)
"You only have to be right once." (...)
"You’re doing sales because you failed at marketing. You’re doing marketing because you failed at product." (...)
"Startups don’t die when they run out of cash, they die when the founders run out of energy." (...)
"Nobody who’s actually good at making money needs to sell you a course on it."
-- Naval Ravikant [1974]
"It’s easy to be right. It’s hard to build things and take financial risks that reward you for being right."
-- Sahil Lavingia [1989]
"Rich people buy time. Poor people buy stuff. Ambitious people buy skills. Lazy people buy distraction."
-- x@alexhormozi
"A startup isn’t really a company at all. A startup is a set of founders with hopefully a set of proprietary insights that are a result of them living in the future. Most of the great startups come from a great insight and a great insight usually occurs when someone is living in the future and they notice something that’s missing."
-- x@m2jr
"For the most successful founders, entrepreneurship is a pursuit of creative expression disguised as a business pursuit." (...)
"Show me a person doing great things and I’ll show you a kid playing."
-- x@rapahelz
"I think the role of the entrepreneur in the world is to find ways to do things better or more efficiently and then try to do that as many times over with the help of other people."
-- x@santinestea
"What one piece of advice would you give someone starting a company? Do something that most people think is hard. If you try something easy, there will be five other companies doing the same thing two months later. But if you try something that’s difficult at first, everything gets much easier as soon as you make it through those initial challenges. Competition will be lower, because everyone else thought it was too hard. Recruiting good people will be easier, because good people like doing hard things. And when you have better people and less competition, raising capital gets easier, too."
-- x@velez_david
"Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don’t need."
-- Chuck Palahniuk [1963]
We’re all in sales. To sell is to deal with objections.
Traditional selling (hunting) favors extroverts: intruding (foot in the door), pitching (persuasion), persisting (push to close). Modern selling (farming) favors ambiverts/introverts: research (understand customer needs alone via web/analysis), listening (patient, quiet, open to perspectives), reacting (adapt to needs, let them set pace/agenda). Sales used to rely on information asymmetry; now it’s applied persuasion and relationship-building. Top sellers are ambiverts. Being recommended is the best marketing.
"In science the credit goes to the man who convinces the world, not to the man to whom the idea first occurs."
-- (sir) William Osler [1849]
"A man who stops advertising to save money is like a man who stops a clock to save time."
-- Henry Ford [1863]
"You can tell the ideals of a nation by its advertisements."
-- Norman Douglas [1868]
"If you make people think they’re thinking, they’ll love you. If you really make them think, they’ll hate you."
-- Don Marquis [1878]
"If it doesn’t sell, it isn’t creative." (...)
"You can’t bore people into buying your product."
-- David Ogilvy [1911]
"Nobody reads advertising. People read what interests them, and sometimes it’s an ad."
-- Howard Gossage [1917]
"Stop selling, start helping." (...)
"Every sale has five basic obstacles: no need, no money, no hurry, no desire, no trust."
-- Zig Ziglar [1926]
"Advertising serves not so much to advertise products as to promote consumption as a way of life."
-- Christopher Lasch [1932]
"Marketers don’t convince. Engineers convince. Marketers persuade. Persuasion appeals to the emotions and to fear and to the imagination. Convincing requires a spreadsheet or some other rational device."
-- Seth Godin [1960]
"Ethics in business means «don’t sell anything you wouldn’t buy»."
-- Naval Ravikant [1974]
"You don’t convince people by challenging their longest and most firmly held opinions. You find common ground and work from there. Or you look for leverage to make them listen. Or you create an alternative with so much support from other people that the opposition voluntarily abandons its views and joins your camp."
-- Ryan Holiday [1987]
"The world rewards the people who are the best at communicating ideas, not the people with the best ideas."
-- x@david_perell
"Marketing is attention engineering."
-- x@mozarrinsadaf
"Lots of folks doing everything they can to avoid talking on the phone. DMs, texts, emails — all shortcuts that reduce income dramatically. This business is about relationships. Hiding behind a screen is setting them years behind those who know the value of making real connections."
-- x@realestatetrent
"Sales is basically just be decent enough at something and let people like you. Nobody gives a sh*t how smart you are."
-- x@skylarromines
"Negotiations are won by whoever cares less."
-- Naval Ravikant [1974]
You don’t get what you deserve in life, only what you negotiate.
Negotiation sets the exchange rate between money and value. A good deal means giving less (money/value) than you receive. However, always aim for win-win: if either side doesn’t get what they need, the deal collapses. The most dangerous negotiation is the one you don’t realize you’re in.
Negotiate only with integrous people. You need options to negotiate effectively. To go fast, let the other side go first. Tone reveals negotiation style: analytical/cold = patient; assertive = fast; accommodator = relationship-focused. Be playful and smart, your counterpart often mirrors your mood. Mirror by repeating their last few words as a question. It opens their mind and tests firmness. Show arbitrage: If they pay X, they’re buying something worth X × Y—that’s how to sell. Say no with: «How am I supposed to do that?» «How» lets them demonstrate smarts. Avoid binary questions: prefer «What can you do?» over «Will you do this?» Close: «What’s your best out-the-door price? Can you do X% below that? If you meet my price, I’ll buy today.» Take more to give back meaningless concessions, people feel choice and walk into your trap easier. Use interesting testimonials over details, they let people relate. People buy better versions of themselves, not products.
"Flattery is the infantry of negotiation."
-- (lord Chandos) Hugo von Hofmannsthal [1872]
"You can’t make a good deal with a bad person."
-- Warren Buffett [1930]
"People may or may not say what they mean but they always say something designed to get what they want."
-- David Mamet [1947]
"When negotiating, don’t aim for a bigger piece of the pie; aim to create a bigger pie."
-- Kevin Kelly [1952]
"When asking for help, appeal to people’s self-interest, never to their mercy or gratitude."
-- Robert Greene [1959]
"One time a college far away in Ohio, about a 12-hour drive, asked what I would charge to do a two-hour show. I said, «$1500». She said, «Oh, that’s a bit too much. What would you charge to do just a one-hour show?» I said, «$2000». She said, «No, wait, you’ll be performing less, not more!» I said, «Yeah! Exactly! What you’re paying me for is to get there! Once I’m there, playing music is the fun part! If you tell me I have to get back in the van after only an hour, and drive home, then I’m going to charge you more than if you let me play for a couple hours first». She liked that so much she came up with the $1500."
-- Derek Sivers [1969]
"Zero-sum games tend towards conflict. Positive-sum games tend towards cooperation."
-- Naval Ravikant [1974]
"Price is what you pay, value is what you get."
-- Warren Buffett [1930]
Price is a filter. Set it to choose the customers you prefer to work with.
"The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it."
-- Henry David Thoreau [1817]
"Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing."
-- Oscar Wilde [1854]
"When you don’t know how much to pay someone for a particular task, ask them «what would be fair» and their answer usually is."
-- Kevin Kelly [1952]
"Pay double and insist on ten times the quality." (...)
"If it takes an expert to tell you what it’s worth, it isn’t worth anything."
-- Naval Ravikant [1974]
"Pay too much for everything. The effort spent getting a deal is only a distraction and attention is your most limited resource."
-- x@allentucker
"At some point you begin to define «expensive» in terms of time instead of money."
-- x@realestatetrent
"No one has ever become poor by giving."
-- Anne Frank [1929]
No one on their deathbed has ever regretted giving too much away.
Always give best-in-class. Practical luxuries make better gifts than branded merchandise. A low-value gift may have the opposite effect. If you can afford the dinner, you can afford the tip.
"A bit of fragrance clings to the hand that gives flowers." (...)
"A candle loses nothing by lighting another candle." (...)
"A guest and a fish stink in three days."
-- vox populi
"He that gives should never remember and he that receives should never forget."
-- Talmud [book]
"Givers have to set limits because takers rarely do."
-- Henry Ford [1863]
"I was always ashamed to take. So I gave. It was not a virtue. It was a desguise."
-- Anais Nin [1903]
"Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity."
-- Simone Weil [1909]
"The miracle is this: the more we share the more we have."
-- Leonard Nimoy [1931]
"The most selfish thing in the world you can do is to be generous. Your generosity will return you ten fold." (...)
"You can’t call it charity unless no one is watching."
-- Kevin Kelly [1952]
"The last time I saw my uncle, I asked how he could be generous, and yet not be taken advantage of or stuck with horrible people. He said that what he’d learned to do was to condition whatever help he was offering on the person taking some tiny step first. Often, it was as simple as «make up a budget for you and your wife to go on a three day getaway, send it to me, and I’ll write you a check». Almost everyone who was just in it for the handouts couldn’t be bothered. My uncle also mixed a lot of his giving with encouraging young people’s talents. He’d hire students who were excited in X, to do X for him in some way. He hired students to take photos, make music, decorate houses, build apps, archive things, paint, and who knows what else. He even hired a student to make memes. This way the students not only got money, but grew in their skills and were excited that someone wanted their work. There were, of course, some rude and uncaring people in his life. But those people didn’t want to spend time with him so there was never really a conflict there." (...)
"My uncle died suddenly this year. He was unbelievably caring — and not just to family — but to everyone he ever met. His funeral was jam packed with everyone from homeless people to executives of multi-billion dollar companies. I always thought that his ability to always have you, and whatever you had last talked about with him, on his mind at any moment was some kind of supernatural gift. I was surprised to find out at his funeral that he actually kept an excel spreadsheet of everyone he met and what they needed and were going through. He reviewed this constantly. It didn’t lessen his genuine love for everyone, just let him be a little more super human."
-- hn@danielvf
"In nature there are neither rewards nor punishments, there are consequences."
-- Robert G. Ingersoll [1833]
Punish bad behavior consistently; reward good behavior intermittently.
Complex behaviors form through continuous reinforcement (reward every time), then shift to intermittent reinforcement once learned. Replace punishments with extinguished rewards. Powerful people give freely, buying influence rather than things. Those who love you most care little about your money or gifts, they want your presence and attention.
"Rewards and punishment is the lowest form of education."
-- Zhuang Zhou [-369]
"Show me the incentive and I will show you the outcome."
-- Charlie Munger [1924]
"Use money to reward the best, not to motivate the rest."
-- Naval Ravikant [1974]
"Never take compliments personally. People compliment you because they like you, not because you’re perfect."
-- x@farshadsarrafi
"To lead people walk behind them." (...)
"A leader is best when people barely know he exists, when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say: we did it ourselves."
-- Lao Tzu [-571]
Leaders are team makers. There are no bad teams, only bad leaders.
Being a leader differs from being a boss: it requires managing and psychotherapizing. Leadership rests on emotional intelligence, people follow the strongest person, not robots. The secret to motivating and sustaining morale is shifting focus from self to group. Leaders are ambassadors of their teams. They can delegate culture-keeping but not culture-creation. Leadership is locating yourself.
To lead, act with confidence, others will sense the energy and fall in line. No explicit statements needed. If someone fails to align, either improve your leadership or remove them from the group. Best leaders rise from within the hierarchy. People seek leadership for autonomy and influence. Influence outweighs money. Millionaires’ depression often stems from not grasping this difference.
"He who does not desire power is fit to hold it."
-- Plato [-427]
"To lead an orchestra, you must turn your back on the crowd."
-- Aristotle [-384]
"An army of sheep led by a lion is better than an army of lions led by a sheep."
-- Alexander the great [-357]
"Raise your words, not your voice. It is rain that grows flowers not thunders."
-- Rumi [1207]
"If you wish to control others you must control yourself."
-- Miyamoto Musashi [1584]
"If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader."
-- John Quincy Adams [1767]
"People ask the difference between a leader and a boss. The leader works in the open, and the boss in covert."
-- Theodore Roosevelt [1858]
"Example is not the main thing in influencing others; it is the only thing."
-- Albert Schweitzer [1875]
"The led must not be compelled; they must be able to choose their own leader."
-- Albert Einstein [1879]
"To be able to lead others, a man must be willing to go forward alone."
-- Harry Truman [1884]
"Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it."
-- Dwight D. Eisenhower [1890]
"If you want to build a ship, don’t herd people together to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea."
-- Antoine de Saint Exupery [1900]
"The leader has to be practical and a realist, yet must talk the language of the visionary and the idealist."
-- Eric Hoffer [1902]
"One of the tests of leadership is the ability to recognize a problem before it becomes an emergency."
-- Arnold Glasow [1905]
"Only the guy who isn’t rowing has time to rock the boat."
-- Jean-Paul Sartre [1905]
"Management has a lot to do with answers. Leadership is a function of questions. And the first question for a leader always is: «Who do we intend to be?» Not «What are we going to do?» but «Who do we intend to be?»" (...)
"The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality. The last is to say thank you."
-- Max DePree [1924]
"Leadership is the capacity to translate vision into reality."
-- Warren Bennis [1925]
"You can tell a bully from a leader by how they treat people who disagree with them."
-- Miles Davis [1926]
"If you don’t understand that you work for your mislabeled «subordinates», then you know nothing of leadership. You know only tyranny."
-- Dee Hock [1929]
"Lead and inspire people. Don’t try to manage and manipulate people. Inventories can be managed but people must be lead."
-- Ross Perot [1930]
"Effective leadership is putting first things first. Effective management is discipline, carrying it out."
-- Stephen Covey [1932]
"The function of leadership is to produce more leaders, not more followers."
-- Ralph Nader [1934]
"The key to successful leadership today is influence, not authority."
-- Kenneth Blanchard [1939]
"Leaders must be close enough to relate to others, but far enough ahead to motivate them." (...)
"A leader is one who knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way."
-- John C. Maxwell [1947]
"If you want to make everyone happy, don’t be a leader. Sell ice cream."
-- Steve Jobs [1955]
"A politician who reads aloud speaches written by others is an actor, not a leader." (...)
"The leader doesn’t take charge of the tribe. The leader takes responsability for the tribe." (...)
"The highest status people in human history are those that asked for nothing and gave everything." (...)
"Charisma is the ability to project confidence and love at the same time." (...)
"If you aren’t willing to get mocked, you’ll never be able to lead." (...)
"You lead by willing to walk alone."
-- Naval Ravikant [1974]
"The person who clears the path ultimately controls its direction, just as the canvas shapes the painting."
-- Ryan Holiday [1987]
"Leadership is not about being followed, is about being first."
-- x@til_danmunro
"The more you explain, the more they sense you doubt it too." (...)
"Your emotions are biochemical reactions designed for survival, not truth."
-- x@mozarrinsadaf
"The only thing that gives orders is balls."
-- (fictional) Tony Montana
"Don’t postpone to tomorrow what other people can do for you today."
-- Warren Buffett [1930]
Managing is delegating. A great manager is a great facilitator. Their responsibility is to make the team better.
A manager should answer two questions daily: «What is important to accomplish?» and «Where was I uncomfortable yesterday?» The speed at which you offload tasks determines your team’s speed. Your productivity as a manager equals your team’s productivity. Sitting and making stuff isn’t productive. Prioritize your team’s output. You’re a communication hub and multiplier. Delegate what others can do; focus on what only you can. If you work for your people instead of pretending to be busy, what you accomplish today may not be visible yet, but it will be. Spend one hour daily communicating with your team and everything will be OK.
Instead of generalizing that «management is useless», say «bad management is counterproductive». Many awful managers exist because capable people refuse the job.
"The best executive is the one who has sense enough to pick good people to do what he wants done, and self-restraint enough to keep from meddling with them while they do it."
-- Theodore Roosevelt [1858]
"Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity."
-- (general) George Patton [1885]
"Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things." (...)
"My greatest strength as a consultant is to be ignorant and ask a few questions." (...)
"No institution can possibly survive if it needs geniuses or supermen to manage it. It must be organized in such a way as to be able to get along under a leadership composed of average human beings."
-- Peter Drucker [1909]
"The manager asks how and when; the leader asks what and why."
-- Warren Bennis [1925]
"Management is about persuading people to do things they do not want to do, while leadership is about inspiring people to do things they never thought they could." (...)
"The oldest and largest organisation in the world has only 4 layers of management, that’s the Catholic church."
-- Steve Jobs [1955]
"Management is mostly hiring well and firing quickly."
-- Naval Ravikant [1974]
"Management is prompt engineering for humans."
-- x@pmddomingos
"The best teams are made up of a bunch of nobodies who love everybody and serve anybody and don’t care about becoming a somebody."
-- Phill Dooley [1966]
While the team is cohesive, external threats will pass.
A chain is only as strong as its weakest link. Always be clear and specific about expectations, articulate them repeatedly and in writing. Plan for people to fail you. Create a culture that rewards killing ideas. No one gets fired, people get praised for saving money.
Humans, like animals, thrive in groups of a certain size. The ideal: Amazon’s «two-pizza teams».
"If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together."
-- vox populi
"There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it."
-- Edith Wharton [1862]
"I divide my officers into four groups. There are clever, stupid, diligent and lazy officers. Usually two characteristics are combined. Some are clever and diligent -- their place is the General Staff. The next lot are stupid and lazy -- they make up 90 percent of every army and are suited to routine duties. Anyone who is both clever and lazy is qualified for the highest leadership duties, because he possesses the intellectual clarity and the composure necessary for difficult decisions. One must beware of anyone who is stupid and diligent -- he must not be entrusted with any responsibility because he will always cause only mischief."
-- Kurt von Hammerstein-Equord [1878]
"You’re either part of the solution or part of the problem."
-- Eldridge Cleaver [1935]
"A team effort is a lot of people doing what I say."
-- Michael Winner [1935]
"Nothing will kill a great employee faster than whatching you tolerate a bad one."
-- Perry Belcher [1947]
"Every person in your company is a vector. Your progress is determined by the sum of all vectors."
-- Elon Musk [1971]
"When working surround yourself with people more sucessful than you. When playing surround yourself with people happier than you." (...)
"A good organization focuses on correctness. A bad organization focuses on consensus."
-- Naval Ravikant [1974]
"The goal is to move everyone up from «unconfident and incompetent» to «confident and competent»."
-- hn@exelius
Ask instead of telling.
Continue or consider: feedback should say either «continue doing X» or «consider changing X to improve». If work falls short, give a clear reason. It’s simple, fast, and actionable. Appropriate feedback makes juniors feel their work matters. Directives or silence demotivate. Don’t give it daily.
Hints:
- «Why did you decide to do X in that order?» This sparks dialogue, not debate. Lead people to discover your suggestion. Smart people often reach the same conclusion or you may learn something if you're humble to listen.
- «Can you take another look at this for XYZ reasons?» Gives ownership while prompting fixes. «Because» is a great motivator.
- «Interesting, how do you feel about it? And your team? Is that the best you can do?»
"Good advice is something a man gives when he is too old to set a bad example."
-- François de La Rochefoucauld [1613]
"Praise by name, criticize by category."
-- Warren Buffett [1930]
"To get to the real reason, ask a person to go deeper than what they just said. Then again, and once more. The third time’s answer is close to the truth." (...)
"Work on your tone. Often ideas are rejected because of the tone of voice they are wrapped in. Humility covers many blemishes." (...)
"If you are impressed with someone’s work, you should tell them, but even better, tell their boss."
-- Kevin Kelly [1952]
"Ask for feedback on your attempts, not advice on your ideas."
-- Sahil Lavingia [1989]
"Mistake I made when younger was giving unsolicited feedback to others when it’s actually one of the easiest ways to make people dislike you."
-- x@chrislakin
"The most senior person at a meeting should speak last." (...)
"Instead of PowerPoints use «narratives» — four-to-six page memos that employees read and discuss together." (...)
"Leave one seat free, for your customer."
-- Jeff Bezos [1964]
Default to «no» for all meetings. Meetings are the death of productivity.
If you can’t say no, schedule for the afternoon and preferably as walking meetings (exercise and sunlight; fewer pleasantries; more dialogue, less monologue; no slides; easy end by walking back). People remember no more than three points from a speech. Tell bad news promptly. Good news can wait. (Berkshire policy)
"Meetings are a symptom of bad organization. The fewer the better."
-- Peter Drucker [1909]
"The least productive people are usually the ones who are most in favor of holding meetings."
-- Thomas Sowell [1930]
"If you want the meeting, make it an offer, not an ask."
-- Naval Ravikant [1974]
"To know the road ahead, ask those coming back."
-- vox populi
Feedback from mentors accelerates improvement.
Even if you don’t grasp their logic, they can point you to the right door. Never take criticism from people you wouldn’t seek advice from. Be generous and share your strengths. Impact the world. When you teach, you do something useful. When you do research, most days you don’t. However some people are not ready to accept your vision. And «givers» attract «takers»: remember that you don’t owe them anything.
Look for the «silver medalist». He has more availability, and sometimes, a better attitude than «the golden child». A paid mentor isn’t a mentor, it’s a salesperson.
"He who asks is a fool for five minutes, but he who does not ask remains a fool forever." (...)
"I’d rather have criticism from a genius than praise from an idiot." (...)
"Do not teach a starving man to fish." (...)
"A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in."
-- vox populi
"When the student is ready the teacher appears. When the student is truly ready the teacher disapeers."
-- Lao Tzu [-571]
"Those who know do. Those that understand teach."
-- Aristotle [-384]
"Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its students."
-- Hector Berlioz [1803]
"One repays a teacher badly if one remains only a pupil."
-- Friedrich Nietzsche [1844]
"A critic is a legless man who teaches running."
-- Channing Pollock [1880]
"A good teacher does not teach facts, he or she teaches enthusiasm, open-mindedness and values."
-- Gian Carlo Rota [1932]
"Don’t follow your mentors; follow your mentors’ mentors."
-- David Leach [1936]
"Good teaching is 1/4 preparation and 3/4 theatre."
-- Gail Godwin [1937]
"If you think you’re too small to make an impact, try to go to bed with a mosquito in the room."
-- Anita Roddick [1942]
"Share your knowledge. It is a way to achieve immortality."
-- Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev [1957]
"Good advice helps you find the solution to your problem. Great advice helps you find you were solving the wrong problem."
-- Merlin Mann [1966]
"You don’t need mentors, you need action." (...)
"Take feedback from nature and markets, not from people." (...)
"A good scare is a great error-correcting mechanism." (...)
"Remove grading to see who is really interested in the topic." (...)
"Every piece of advice must be taken before it’s given." (...)
"I was always ready to share, but before external success, nobody cared to listen."
-- Naval Ravikant [1974]
"If something is too early to criticize, it’s also too early to evangelize."
-- Kelsey Hightower [1981]
"Most asks for advice are a version of: «Can you motivate me?»."
-- Sahil Lavingia [1989]
"Teach what you build. Your product is proof. Your process is value. Your execution is credibility. No one wants a guru. They want a builder who shares."
-- x@heycharafeddine
"Teach your children early what you learned late." (...)
"Teach your children how to think, not what to think."
-- Richard Feynman [1918]
Your father is your first mentor.
Don’t tell your kids how to live, live fully and let them see. Prepare the child for the path, not the path for the child. Spend half the money you think you should, but double the time with them.
Hints:
- Generosity: «What did you do this week for somebody?»
- Responsibility: «Bedtime at 8:30 and I turn off the light, or 9 and you have the responsibility to turn it off?»
- Self-improvement: «Did you give your best today?» «Ask good questions today. In the future, you’ll know anything you want, anytime. So the quality of questions you learn to ask will matter more than memorized knowledge.»
- Authority: Kid: «Why do I have to do this?» You: «I was a boy myself. I know why it’s important.»
- Money management and healthy habits: Pay your son for each mile he rides his bike (with interest on what he saves).
- Dealing with failure: «How did you fail today?» The best gift is failure. By treating everything as major risk, we prevent kids from learning to judge truly dangerous from unfamiliar. Parents prevent death but shouldn’t prevent living as kids grow.
"Children are a poor man’s riches." (...)
"A father is someone you look up to no matter how tall you grow."
-- vox populi
"When you teach your son, you teach your son’s son."
-- Talmud [book]
"The father who does not teach his son his duties is equally guilty with the son who neglects them."
-- Confucius [-551]
"To a father growing old nothing is dearer than a daughter."
-- Euripides [-480]
"Don’t force your children into your ways, for they were created for a time different from your own."
-- Plato [-427]
"My family history begins with me, but yours ends with you."
-- Iphicrates [-418]
"Children need models rather than critics."
-- Joseph Joubert [1754]
"Some day you will know that a father is much happier in his children’s happiness than in his own. I cannot explain it to you: it is a feeling in your body that spreads gladness through you."
-- Honoré De Balzac [1799]
"It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men."
-- Frederick Douglass [1818]
"No man can possibly know what life means, what the world means, what anything means, until he has a child and loves it."
-- Lafcadio Hearn [1850]
"Children begin by loving their parents. After a time they judge them. Rarely, if ever, do they forgive them."
-- Oscar Wilde [1854]
"I cannot think of any need in children as strong as the need for a father’s protection."
-- Sigmund Freud [1856]
"Never help a child with a task he feels he can succeed."
-- Maria Montessori [1870]
"Nothing affects the life of a child so much as the unlived life of its parent."
-- Carl Jung [1875]
"Every father should remember one day his son will follow his example, not his advice."
-- Charles Kettering [1876]
"If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales."
-- Albert Einstein [1879]
"My father didn’t tell me how to live. He lived and let me watch him do it."
-- Clarence Budington Kelland [1881]
"Your naked body should belong only to those who fall in love with your naked soul."
-- Charlie Chaplin {in a letter to his daughter} [1889]
"The hardest job kids face today is learning good manners without seeing any."
-- Fred Astaire [1899]
"My father always said there are four things a child needs: plenty of love, nourishing food, regular sleep, and lots of soap and water. After that, what he needs most is some intelligent neglect."
-- Ivy Baker Priest [1905]
"The most difficult thing in the world is to know how to do a thing and to watch someone else doing it wrong, without commenting."
-- T.H. White [1906]
"Do not handicap your children by making their lives easy."
-- Robert A. Heinlein [1907]
"One of the greatest things a father can do for his children is to love their mother."
-- Howard W. Hunter [1907]
"A parent will always worry about the wrong child."
-- Don Alt [1916]
"Fathering is not something perfect men do, but something that perfects the man."
-- Frank Pittman [1935]
"Life doesn’t come with an instruction book — that’s why we have fathers."
-- H. Jackson Brown Jr. [1940]
"Dads are most ordinary men turned by love into heroes, adventurers, story-tellers, and singers of song."
-- Pam Brown [1948]
"Be nice to your children because they are going to choose your nursing home." (...)
"Children totally accept — and crave — family rules. «In our family we have a rule for X» is the only excuse a parent needs for setting a family policy. In fact, «I have a rule for X» is the only excuse you need for your own personal policies." (...)
"To keep young kids behaving on a car road trip, have a bag of their favorite candy and throw a piece out the window each time they misbehave."
-- Kevin Kelly [1952]
"If children feel safe, they can take risks, ask questions, make mistakes, learn to trust, share their feelings and grow."
-- Alfie Kohn [1957]
"All you have to do is love them and show them the world."
-- Paul Graham {quoting his mother on raising children} [1964]
"My advice is my autobiography not slogans. People relate better like that."
-- James Altucher [1968]
"Don’t ask kids what they want to be when they grow up but what problems do they want to solve. This changesthe conversation from who do you want to work for, to what do i need to learn to be able to do that."
-- Jaime Casap [1970]
"If raising children was less rewarding than not doing it, the human race would have gone extinct." (...)
"Either have children or become a saint, because eventually, you have to find something you love more than you love yourself."
-- Naval Ravikant [1974]
"The only thing worse than a boy who hates you: a boy that loves you."
-- Markus Zusak [1975]
"The nature of impending fatherhood is that you are doing something that you’re unqualified to do, and then you become qualified while doing it."
-- John Green [1977]
"Learn to sell. Learn to build. If you can do both, you’re unstoppable."
-- Naval Ravikant [1974]
Most of your life is a search for who and what needs you the most. Nobody can compete with you on being you.
Become the best at one specific thing or very good at two or more things. Happy, smart, and useful. Work smart (not just harder but hard still). It’s good to be better, but better to be different. Deliver more value than expected. You don’t advance or earn more by staying in the same seat.
You will either pivot or get pivoted. Avoid locking into one career path, focus on being useful. Your passionate interests will change many times after college. You are a learning machine, not an occupation. Your work is the greatest means to express your social intelligence. Leverage transportable soft skills (persuasive communication: pitching, changing opinions, emotional intelligence, reading the room, building trust, retaining talent) and hard skills (writing a pitch, making a 2-minute video, etc.). Make yourself rare by combining two or more relevant «pretty goods.» Pursue what feels fun to you but looks like work to others. Capitalism rewards what is both rare and valuable.
Employee or entrepreneur? Employees have no control over their futures. The economy forces all the risk on them. To be an entrepreneur, you need to know a little about a lot of things. To be employed, if you pick the right specialization, you’ll do better as a specialist. Startups are (by necessity) filled with generalists; big companies are filled with specialists.
"Look for the job that you would take if you didn’t need a job."
-- Warren Buffett [1930]
"Your income is directly proportional to the need for what you do and your ability to do it."
-- Jim Rohn [1930]
"My thing is to work more than the others to show them how useless they are."
-- Karl Lagerfeld [1933]
"Don’t be the best. Be the only." (...)
"A good sign that you are doing the kind of work that you should be doing is that you enjoy the tedious parts that other people find tortuous."
-- Kevin Kelly [1952]
"The moment you rigidly follow a plan set in your youth, you lock yourself into a position, and the times will ruthlessly pass you by."
-- Robert Greene [1959]
"Salaried people are just stepparents. They can be good stepparents but it never matches the biological."
-- Nassim Taleb [1960]
"If the title matters to you, you don’t belong to a startup." (...)
"If you want to be part of a great tech company, then you need to be able to sell or build. If you don’t do either, learn." (...)
"Creative teams should be colocated. The rest of the company can be distributed." (...)
"There are 7B people in the world. someday, I hope, there will be 7B companies." (...)
"What feels like play to you and work to others?" (...)
"Be a creator and you won’t have to worry about jobs, careers, and AI." (...)
"Following your genuine intellectual curiosity is a better foundation for a career than following whatever is making money right now." (...)
"Be the best in the world at what you do. Keep redefining what you do until this is true." (...)
"You get rewarded for unique knowledge, not for effort. Effort is required to create unique knowledge." (...)
"Give the world what it need and it will give you what you want." (...)
"You don’t have 8 creative problem-solving hours in the day — you have 2. Spend your time wisely." (...)
"Knowledge workers function like athletes — train and sprint, then rest and reassess." (...)
"If the work doesn’t require creativity, delegate it, automate it or leave it." (...)
"Set and enforce an aspirational hourly rate." (...)
"Rich people get paid by the project and pay by the hour." (...)
"To get paid in the future, live in the future." (...)
"If they can train you to do it, they can train a machine to do it." (...)
"A taste of freedom can make you unemployable." (...)
"An entrepreneur without drive is just an unemployed." (...)
"Earn with your mind, not with your time." (...)
"You’re never going to get rich renting out your time." (...)
"Trade money for time, not time for money. You’re going to run out of time first."
-- Naval Ravikant [1974]
"Be so good that they cannot ignore you." (...)
"Career capital is the unique skills that make you rare and valuable." (...)
"While deep work will promote you, shallow work will only prevent you from being fired."
-- Cal Newport [1982]
"The interesting jobs are the ones that you make up."
-- Chris Young [1985]
"Every job will be automated until four remain: engineer, entrepreneur, investor, artist."
-- Sahil Lavingia [1989]
"Jobs are like clothes. There is no "wrong job". There are jobs which fit now."
-- hn@bergerjac
"No one works harder than people who work at a small company, there’s nobody to delegate to and nowhere to hide."
-- x@anuatluru
"My theory: career pivots keep you young/hungry/foolish."
-- x@ashleymayer
"How did people come to believe that if everyone went to college we could all just get jobs sending each other emails and someone else (who?) would maintain all physical elements of modern society? It sounds so dumb when you say it explicitly."
-- x@empty_america
"Work in isolation, collaborate in person."
-- x@maximecperoumal
"Work for companies you would invest in and invest in companies you would work for."
-- x@morganhousel
"My dad sat me down once and said: «There are only two jobs in the world: building or selling. If you’re not doing one of those, you’re just an expense.» I still think about this."
-- x@rmcentush
"Employees who leave to start their own business face a huge risk few ever think about: If the venture fails, they find themselves unwilling to ever go back to being an employee, and many never get back on track. It’s a real risk, and nobody talks about it." (...)
"Better to have average IQ and know one little tiny niche very well than be a generalist know-it-all genius."
-- x@realestatetrent
"He who works with his hands is a laborer.
He who works with his hands and his head is a craftsman.
He who works with his hands and his head and his heart is an artist."
-- St. Francis of Assisi [1181]
Trial most candidates but hire only likable people who «get sh*t done».
How to attract or keep talented people? Respect them. You’ll never respect them if you don’t reward them accordingly. Use «golden handcuffs»: offer hires the ability to earn as much as they want, provided they generate even more income for you. People usually leave managers, not companies. Smart people won’t work extremely hard just for money. Good employees are hard to find. It takes real chutzpah to expect someone to do your work for insufficient pay while you profit heavily. Your goal should be to «fire» yourself by hiring people better at your job than you are. Leaders must master finding and hiring talent.
Hints:
- «Problems you’ve solved and how?» (Elon Musk)
- «What did you get done this week?» (Elon Musk)
- «What do you own and why?» (Sandy Gottesman)
- «What do you believe that most people don’t?»
- «Show me your calendar» (reveals implementers; Codie Sanchez)
- «How would you solve this X problem I have right now?» (detects fast thinkers; Codie Sanchez)
Two skill levels: still learning or confident. Your resume should explain why you’re more valuable to the company than the next candidate. Show this through your experience. Don’t just list responsibilities—highlight how you accomplished them better than others. Example: Everyone sells cars, but you sold more than anyone else in the dealership for six months last year. That’s who gets hired. How to know your strenghts? Ask employers why they invited you for an interview — they will describe your strengths. When applying for a job, be more consultant than applicant. Don’t do interviews, have discussions. Employers seek people they like, that’s «culture fit». It’s often less about skill and more about likability while being sufficiently good. Go in with a story. Interviewers want to know if they can spend eight hours a day with you. People like people like themselves. Companies hire to solve specific problems, not general optimizations, even if they need generalists. Growing companies are always hiring. Job search is numbers and quality: control applications and skills/portfolio strength. Decide your time’s worth in advance. Don’t let others dictate your pay—they make offers, but it’s your decision. You’re not paid what you’re worth—you’re paid what you negotiate. When you sell results, nobody asks about your skillset. When you sell time, you must fit a predefined role someone already knows they need. Rich people get paid by project and pay by the hour. The boss wants the most sophisticated talent for the least pay. Every penny spent and every second of your life not claimed is a failure in his eyes. Asking for a raise: Don’t get discouraged by a «no». Thank them, then ask: «What specific outcomes would be required to receive this raise within the next 3–6 months?» If they can’t answer, consider finding another employer. You hire them because they know their job better than you. If you could do it, you wouldn’t need them. Experience is overrated—hire for aptitude, train for skills. Great things are often done by people doing them for the first time.
"I am looking for a lot of people who have an infinite capacity to not know what can’t be done."
-- Henry Ford [1863]
"Your work speaks only to those on the same wavelenght as you."
-- Jean Cocteau [1889]
"In looking for people to hire, you look for three qualities: integrity, intelligence and energy. And if they don’t have the first, the other two will kill you." (...)
"Your salary is the bribe they give you to forget your dreams."
-- Warren Buffett [1930]
"Hire character. Train skill."
-- Peter Schutz [1930]
"Your best job will be one that you were unqualified for because it stretches you. In fact only apply to jobs you are unqualified for." (...)
"Being enthusiastic is worth 25 IQ points." (...)
"The best time to negotiate your salary for a new job is the moment AFTER they say they want you, and not before. Then it becomes a game of chicken for each side to name an amount first, but it is to your advantage to get them to give a number before you do." (...)
"If you desperately need a job, you are just another problem for a boss; if you can solve many of the problems the boss has right now, you are hired. To be hired, think like your boss." (...)
"Train employees well enough they could get another job, but treat them well enough so they never want to."
-- Kevin Kelly [1952]
"Whatever makes you weird is probably your greatest asset."
-- Joss Whedon [1964]
"It’s important to like your coworkers."
-- Elon Musk [1971]
"Don’t tell me what you did. Tell me what happened because you did it."
-- Simon Sinek [1973]
"If you can’t see yourself working with someone for life, don’t work with them for a day." (...)
"Mercenaries work for money. Missionaries build for others. Artists create for themselves." (...)
"Everybody wants to hire the best. Few of them actually pay them like they’re the best." (...)
"Your real resume is a painful recounting of all your struggles." (...)
"Our best work is the work we find ourselves doing, when there is no obligation to do so."
-- Naval Ravikant [1974]
"If you are not embarrassed by how much you charge, you’re probably undercharging."
-- Casey Brown [1978]
"Don’t hire people who hire people to do their jobs." (...)
"A designer who can’t build is like a chef who can’t cook" (...)
"Chief of staff: who you hire when you want to retire but don’t want to look like you’ve retired" (...)
"Every job will be automated until four remain: engineer, entrepreneur, investor, artist." (...)
"Fixing the dishwasher is harder than washing the dishes. Automation makes (remaining) jobs harder, not easier." (...)
"Hire for ideas and agency." (...)
"Never trust an engineer in a suit" (...)
"The people who embrace AI will automate the people who don’t."
-- Sahil Lavingia [1989]
"We value «T-shaped» people. That is, people who are both genera lists (highly skilled at a broad set of valuable things—the top of the T) and also experts (among the best in their field within a narrow discipline—the vertical leg of the T) (...) An expert who is too narrow has difficulty collaborating. A generalist who doesn’t go deep enough in a single area ends up on the margins, not really contributing as an individual. Where you choose to be deep should be an area of interest to you and which the market values."
-- Valve [book]
"Bad professionals make money off their customers, good professionals make money for their customers."
-- hn@jacquesm
"I had a manager who once said the people who were terminated were those who question too much and do too little."
-- hn@nostrademons {paraphrased}
"Your company is the sum of the people you recruit, not the ideas you have. Talent > Strategy."
-- x@leilahormozi
"We don’t pay you to work here, we pay you so you can work here."
-- x@nivi
"The next decades will be dominated by the AI-working class alliance, as white-collar work loses value while blue-collar work keeps it."
-- x@pmddomingos
"Mediocre talent seeks to figure out how to network. Great talent seeks to figure out how to contribute."
-- x@rapahelz
"It’s not the office that they hate, it’s the commute."
-- x@realestatetrent
"Perhaps the most counter-intuitive truth of the universe is that the more you give to others, the more you’ll get. Understanding this is the beginning of wisdom."
-- Kevin Kelly [1952]
Focus on what you can give.
However, after taking the first steps, mirror their behavior. Don’t cross oceans for people who wouldn’t jump puddles for you.
If you are lonely when not alone, you are in bad company. If a person is nice to you but to nobody else, that person is not nice. Trust and vulnerability are correlated. Don’t hide your feelings from people who show you theirs. Supporting helps people grow and builds healthy relationships. Fixing manipulates and breeds resentment or co-dependency. Sometimes connections grow. Sometimes they stay the same. Sometimes they collapse. Choose people who choose you. The end. Loyalty is earned, not owed. If they drain your energy, stunt your growth, or disrespect boundaries, let them go. You weren’t born to carry dead weight. Protect your peace and move forward. Never force, beg, or chase. One day you’ll miss how much I cared. Be careful what you tolerate. You are teaching people how to treat you. The more you do for people, the less gratitude they show. The more you go out of your way to be liked, the less appreciative they are. Too much availability kills your value.
"Never allow someone to be your priority while allowing yourself to be their option."
-- Mark Twain [1835]
"Never waste your time trying to explain who you are to people who are committed to misunderstanding you."
-- Dream Hampton [1971]
"Play long-term games with long-term people. The secret to a happy relationship is two happy people. If you loose somebody for being yourself, then you never had them to begin with. Find a relationship where you, naturally being you, makes the other person happy and viceversa. The worst way to build a relationship is to try to build a relationship. The people you most want to impress can read your intentions." (...)
"The basis for friendship, relationship, partnership — isn’t proximity or time spent together — it’s values." (...)
"Ultimately, you attract the complement of what you project."
-- Naval Ravikant [1974]
"The most authentic relationship is between two people who don’t speak the same language." (...)
"A beautiful relationship is between equals, intellectually and ethically."
-- x@rapahelz
"True friendship can exist only between equals."
-- Plato [-427]
Life is meant to be lived in community, but don’t settle for a place where you’re tolerated. Go where you’re celebrated.
Be independent from your family but loyal at the same time. Keep friends for friendship but work with the skilled and competent. Resist working with family and friends. Peers are peers, not boss and employee. You will waste your life trying to make those around you into who you want them to be.
"Your friends are the ones that go to your funeral in a day of rain."
-- vox populi
"Love your neighbour, yet don’t pull down your hedge."
-- Benjamin Franklin [1706]
"It is easier to forgive an enemy than to forgive a friend."
-- William Blake [1757]
"Friendships last when each friend thinks he has a slight superiority over the other."
-- Honoré De Balzac [1799]
"The only way to have a friend is to be one."
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson [1803]
"To lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness." (...)
"A bore is someone who deprives you of solitude without providing you company."
-- Oscar Wilde [1854]
"I have nothing to offer anyone, except my own confusion."
-- Jack Kerouac [1922]
"Routinely greeting six neighbours maximizes wellbeing."
-- Fred Rogers [1928]
"If everybody loves you, something is wrong."
-- Paulo Coelho [1947]
"At your funeral people will not recall what you did; they will only remember how you made them feel." (...)
"Each time you reach out to people, bring them a blessing; then they’ll be happy to see you when you bring them a problem." (...)
"Friends are better than money. Almost anything money can do, friends can do better. In so many ways a friend with a boat is better than owning a boat."
-- Kevin Kelly [1952]
"When everything goes to hell, the people who stand by you without flinching, they are your family."
-- Jim Butcher [1971]
"Your family is broken but you’re going to fix the world."
-- Naval Ravikant [1974]
"Parents spot fake friends. Children spot fake relatives."
-- x@falsi1ke
"A mother tells you you’re special. A father gets you to prove it." (...)
"If you can’t talk shit to your friends, you’re not friends."
-- x@alexhormozi
"Anybody can sympathise with the sufferings of a friend, but it requires a very fine nature to sympathise with a friend’s success."
-- Oscar Wilde [1854]
You are the average of your friends.
If you’re always the smartest in the room, you’re in the wrong room. When you enter a workplace, assume you will become like them, not the opposite. Bad friends will prevent you from having good friends. Be suspicious of people who like being owed favors, especially unrequested ones. Divide your life: 33% with people below you (mentor them), 33% with equals (friends/peers), 33% with people 10–20 years ahead (mentors). Find someone smarter to teach you, equals to challenge you, and less developed to teach. Sometimes people enter our lives via circumstance, not quality. Nietzsche’s friendship: share one great suffering and one great hope. You can’t be friends unless you hate the same things and worship the same gods. If your circle doesn’t inspire you, it’s a cage, not a circle. If your absence doesn’t bother them, your presence never mattered. Instead of changing people, curate them. It’s okay to unfollow in real life. Don’t let loneliness tempt reconnection with toxic people, you wouldn’t drink poison because you’re thirsty. Maintain old friendships. Pay attention to who you’re with when you feel your best. Stay away from people who act like victims in problems they created. Surround yourself with people who challenge you to be better—not enamored with who you already are. Genuine supporters are rare and usually already wealthy, loved, happy. The older you get as a man, the more you understand and forgive your father. The real miracle of Jesus was having 12 close friends in his late 30s. Life has cycles, don’t expect people to level up with you. Growth’s price is outgrowing people. Successful friends leave if you don’t level up too. You need friends who inspire better, not acquaintances who say what you can’t do. You only grow apart from people who don’t grow. Your girlfriend will get a new boyfriend. Your boss will replace you before your burial. But your mom won’t get another son—take care of her. Your birthday is for your mom, not you. Your single female friends are the most toxic thing in your relationship, dump them. You’re never too old to make a friend. Look for shared interests. Invite them to do something. A true friend is someone you can go long stretches without talking to, then pick up right where you left off.
"Brothers love each other when they are equally rich."
-- vox populi
"Don’t make a man feel too indebted to you. With many persons it is not necessary to do more than overburden them with favours to lose them altogether: they cannot repay you, and so they retire, preferring rather to be enemies than perpetual debtors."
-- Balthasar Gracian [1601]
"Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you too can become great."
-- Mark Twain [1835]
"When you’re in jail, a good friend will be trying to bail you out. A best friend will be in the cell next to you saying, «Damn, that was fun»."
-- Groucho Marx [1890]
"Cultivate 12 people who love you, because they are worth more than 12 million people who like you." (...)
"Don’t be the smartest person in the room. Hangout with, and learn from, people smarter than yourself. Even better, find smart people who will disagree with you." (...)
"Don’t loan money to a friend unless you are ready to make it a gift."
-- Kevin Kelly [1952]
"Spend your time in the company of geniuses, sages, children and books."
-- Naval Ravikant [1974]
"Hard truth: most people don’t want you to be the best version of yourself. They want you to be the version of you that’s best for them."
-- x@skylarromines
"We accept the love we think we deserve."
-- Stephen Chbosky [1970]
You attract what you are.
Love is what happens between men and women who don’t know each other. Love doesn’t hurt, expectations do. Every person feels loved in a different way. We fall in love with someone because of how they make us feel about ourselves. We’re always looking for somebody that looks for us. First parents, then a lover. Screens give us 100% attention. Tech is a compensation. A man’s loyalty is tested when he has everything. A woman’s loyalty is tested when her man has nothing. Arguing and insecurity kill seduction. Familiarity is seduction’s death. Relationships shift from «can we talk» to «we need to talk». Once dislike sets in, everything irritates. A dirty dish can become a major marriage issue. Keep separate bank accounts. Spouses need freedom to buy what they want after bills are paid. People value things differently. Justifying every expense feels like surveillance and breeds resentment. Most marriages end in divorce, most over money.
On falling out of love: First you see the virtues. Then the flaws. For a long and deep relationship, values must match.
"Love is the absence of judgement." (...)
"When poverty comes in the door love goes out the window." (...)
"Faults are thick where love is thin."
-- vox populi
"Absence diminishes small loves and increases great ones, as the wind blows out the candle and fans the bonfire."
-- François de La Rochefoucauld [1613]
"The first sign of love: for men is timidity, in women it is courage."
-- Voltaire [1694]
"Love is a flower, friendship a sheltering tree."
-- Samuel Taylor Coleridge [1772]
"When women love us, they forgive us everything, even our crimes; when they do not love us, they give us credit for nothing, not even our virtues"
-- Honoré De Balzac [1799]
"One expresses well the love he does not feel."
-- Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr [1808]
"Nothing is so necessary for a young man as the company of intelligent woman."
-- Leo Tolstoy [1828]
"The very essence of romance is uncertainty."
-- Oscar Wilde [1854]
"How bold one gets when one is sure of being loved."
-- Sigmund Freud [1856]
"A mind all logic is like a knife all blade. It makes the hand bleed that uses it."
-- Rabindranath Tagore [1861]
"Romance is the glamour which turns the dust of everyday life into a golden haze."
-- Elinor Glyn [1864]
"The love that lasts the longest is the love that is never returned."
-- W. Somerset Maugham [1874]
"Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence." (...)
"The surest sign that a man is in love is when he divorces his wife."
-- H.L. Mencken [1880]
"Between what is said and not meant, and what is meant and not said, most of love is lost."
-- Kahlil Gibran [1883]
"A man usually falls in love with a woman who asks the kinds of questions he is able to answer."
-- Ronald Colman [1891]
"Unless you love someone, nothing else makes any sense."
-- E.E. Cummings [1894]
"Love is the absense of anxiety."
-- Wilhelm Reich [1897]
"People change and forget to tell each other."
-- Lillian Hellman [1905]
"Love is the extremely difficult realisation that something other than oneself is real."
-- Iris Murdoch [1919]
"The free soul is rare, but you know it when you see it basically because you feel good, very good, when you are near or with them."
-- Charles Bukowski [1920]
"A man is already halfway in love with any woman who listens to him."
-- Brendan Behan [1923]
"Men experience many passions in a lifetime. One passion drives away the one before it."
-- Paul Newman [1925]
"You must love in such a way that the person you love feels free."
-- Thich Nhat Hanh [1926]
"The highest function of love is that it makes the loved one a unique and irreplaceable being."
-- Tom Robbins [1932]
"Warriors and worriers. Human males form cooperative groups to compete against out-groups, while human females exclude other females in their quest to find mates, female family members to invest in their children. This challenges the familiar wisdom that women are more sociable than men and men are more competitive than women."
-- Joyce Benenson [1949]
"That’s what careless words do. They make people love you a little less."
-- Arundhati Roy [1961]
"Both men and women are desperate to revive a broken relationship, to re-create the great love affair they had at the beginning. The difference is that women try to do it while it is ongoing, and men try to do it when it is over."
-- Zan Perrion [1964]
"Our story has three parts: a beginning, a middle, and an end. And although this is the way all stories unfold, I still can’t believe that ours didn’t go on forever."
-- Nicholas Sparks [1965]
"Sexuality is spontaneous chemical reaction between two parties, not a process of negotiation."
-- Rollo Tomassi [1969]
"It gives me strength to have somebody to fight for; I can never fight for myself, but, for others, I can kill."
-- Emilie Autumn [1973]
"The measure of love is peace." (...)
"You can’t buy a real kiss." (...)
"Intimacy is a flower — it blooms in a healthy relationship, and disappears in a sick one." (...)
"There are three qualities to look for in a partner: intelligence, energy, and integrity. You need all three. You can’t compromise on any one of them." (...)
"If you ask someone why they’re with someone else and the answer sounds like a resume, it’s over." (...)
"True, unconditional love is the province of parents and saints."
-- Naval Ravikant [1974]
"You haven’t been in love, if you haven’t let it ruin your life."
-- Sarah Hildebrand [1990]
"Real love doesn’t meet you at your best. It meets you in your mess."
-- x@jsparkblog
"Early internet: meeting someone online? Probably a weirdo. Now: meeting someone without an online presence? Definitely a weirdo." (...)
"There are only two ways to appreciate or understand how insanely rare a genuine connection with someone truly is: 1) getting older. 2) insanely crazy heartbreak. There are simply no other ways."
-- x@signulll
"A gentleman holds my hand. A man pulls my hair. A soulmate will do both."
-- Alessandra Torre [1978]
Women want a gentleman who knows when not to be gentle, and who shows grace under pressure.
No woman wants a boring man. No woman wants a coward. But also no woman wants to be alone. They want a man taller and stronger than them, who earns more, who leads assertively and decisively while pretending they are his equal. Women don’t leave good guys, they leave boring ones. Only a coward is worse than boring. Men think women want looks and money. Women want leadership, humor, honesty, intelligence, resilience, and certainty. Men choose loyal women over successful ones. Women choose successful men over loyal ones. Women respect security, power, and ambition. Broke men are tolerated at best, ignored at worst. Without money, only your mother can love you. How a woman sees men depends mostly on her father. Women aren’t investors in men — they won’t wait for «potential». They find a man who’s already made it and join his success. They’re attracted to traits that create money. Sex is their reward. Every woman wants sex from the best man. Women want to be desired for control, not connection. Every woman chooses a successful cheater over a faithful loser. Good men go unappreciated until they stop caring. Women dislike violence but it excites them; dislike arrogance but are drawn to arrogant men; want full disclosure but prefer mystery; dislike your options but respect you if you have them. Narcissists beat women at their game — that’s why women love them. She prefers the fun guy over the calm, stoic one. Nice guys can’t fuck. Give alpha or sigma — just not beta. «Why is he so focused on me? Does he have nothing else in life? He’s boring.» «I’d marry a feminist guy. But the guys I sleep with aren’t husband material—they’re sexist jerks lol.»
"Man is loved mainly because of two virtues: courage first, loyalty second."
-- Gaius Lucilius [-180]
"Women sometimes forgive a man who forces the opportunity, but never a man who misses one."
-- Charles de Talleyrand-Perigord [1754]
"Why are women so much more interesting to men than men are to women?"
-- Virginia Woolf [1882]
"The classical definition of a gentleman: he never insulted anyone unintentionally."
-- James Crow [1916]
"If you can make a woman laugh, you can make her do anything."
-- Marilyn Monroe [1926]
"A suit to women is like lingerie to men."
-- Yves Saint Laurent [1936]
"Women are attracted to funny men, it is often said. This is not true. It only appears this way because women laugh at everything a very handsome man say."
-- Norm Macdonald [1959]
"What do women want? Every woman wants to be in a love story."
-- Zan Perrion [1964]
"Most women fall in love with the lifestyle of a man, not with the man himself."
-- x@falsi1ke
"The 3 guys she wants to fxck: The guy who is better than her. The guy who is more important than her. The guy who is more interesting than her."
-- x@alpharivelino
"And she followed up with the take that this is why women like dad bod over the obsessive-fitness figure: It signals positively about the underlying psychology and priorities. Like Jung said: «Mentally unhealthy people are usually fanatics of healthy lifestyles»."
-- x@dhh
"Women are most satisfied when their partner is 21cm (8.27in) taller then they are. Men are most satisfied when they are 8cm (3.15in) taller then their partner." (Stulp/Buunk/Pollet)
-- x@harmlessyarddog
"I’m an average woman who doesn’t want an average man."
-- x@icameback5
"Women are status-driven creatures. In the West, foreign men are given higher status than native men. Hence, native women will instinctively side with foreigners over their own."
-- x@pulpchico
"A shy man is inexperienced. And no woman wants an innocent man."
-- x@realthoughtsfem
"If male baldness was universally unattractive, it would’ve disappeared long ago -- like female baldness."
-- x@stefanmolyneux
"Men are simple. Give them sex, respect and a home-cooked meal and they’ll move mountains for you. It’s not that they’re hard to please, it’s just that too many women refuse to try."
-- x@pallnandi
Men hate disrespect more than they love sex.
Young women value themselves based on how much men want to sleep with them—this creates a false high self-valuation. If they valued themselves based on how much men want to marry them after getting to know them, they’d have a more accurate sense of worth. Men do not care if a woman is an engineer or doctor. They care if she’s loyal, respectful, and not promiscuous. Every boy wants a good girl to be bad just for him. Every girl wants a bad boy to be good just for her. Trust, style, nice to my family, ambitious, and adventurous. Unicorn of the Western world: no tattoos, debt-free, virgin.
"When neither their poverty nor their honor is touched, the majority of men live content."
-- Niccoló Machiavelli [1469]
"No matter how plain a woman may be, if truth and honesty are written across her face, she will be beautiful."
-- Eleanor Roosevelt [1884]
"An old friend of mine, a journalist, once said that paradise on earth was to work all day alone in anticipation of an evening in interesting company."
-- Ian McEwan [1948]
"A man settles down where he finds peace. Not beauty, not money, not status, but PEACE."
-- x@falsi1ke
"99% of women underestimate the power of making their husband a sandwich and delivering it to him in a sundress."
-- x@giammacool
"At the end of the day, even billionaires trying to become immortal want nothing more than a mid to call their own."
-- x@iterintellectus
"Men do not care about your career, ladies. I’m sorry, they just don’t. They will date a waitress over a corporate executive if they treat them right and make their lives easier."
-- x@jedediahbila
"Most men don’t want an «independent, empowered» woman. That’s code for bitchy slut with a chip on her shoulder. We all want a sweet, nice, joyful, feminine woman who treats her man like a king."
-- x@realvictorpride
"Men marry women with the hope they will never change. Women marry men with the hope they will change. Invariably they are both disappointed."
-- H. Harwood [1874] & R. Gore-Bro [1893]
Marry a happy person. An unhappy spouse means an unhappy life. Men aren’t avoiding marriage, they’re avoiding divorce.
"As long as the bed shakes, the house will remain stable." (...)
"When poverty comes in the door, love goes out of the window." (...)
"Happy the marriage where the husband is the head and the wife the heart." (...)
"A good husband should be deaf and a good wife should be blind."
-- vox populi
"By all means marry: If you get a good wife, you’ll become happy; if you get a bad one, you’ll become a philosopher."
-- Socrates [-470]
"When should a man marry? A young man, not yet; an elder man, not at all."
-- Francis Bacon [1561]
"Marriage is the triumph of imagination over intelligence. Second marriage is the triumph of hope over experience." (...)
"When a woman marries again it is because she detested her first husband. When a man marries again, it is because he adored his first wife." (...)
"Marriage is the process of finding out what kind of man your wife would have preferred."
-- Oscar Wilde [1854]
"It doesn’t much signify whom one marries, for one is sure to find out next morning it was someone else."
-- Will Rogers [1879]
"When a man steals your wife, there is no better revenge than to let him keep her."
-- Sacha Guitry [1885]
"Alimony is a system by which, when two people make a mistake, one of them continues to pay for it."
-- Peggy Hopkins Joyce [1893]
"The happiest time of a person’s life is after his first divorce."
-- John Kenneth Galbraith [1908]
"A successful marriage requires falling in love many times, always with the same person."
-- Mignon McLaughlin [1913]
"If men acted after marriage as they do during courtship, there would be fewer divorces and more bankruptcies."
-- Frances Rodman [1917]
"When women hold off from marrying men, we call it independence. When men hold off from marrying women, we call it fear of commitment."
-- Warren Farrell [1943]
"You don’t marry a person, you marry a family."
-- Kevin Kelly [1952]
"If Apple sold you a product that failed 50% of the time, would you buy it?"
-- Esther Perel [1958]
"Don’t do it. You’ll regret it. The things you love about him now, you’ll hate in a few years."
-- Tom Ford [1961]
"He who marries for love without money has good nights and sorry days."
-- Ani Difranco [1970]
"Hard times create marriageable women. Marriageable women create good times. Good times create whores. Whores create hard times." (...)
"I was raised by a middle eastern family. In Lebanon only men decide divorce. The way it needs to be." (...)
"If she refuses to sign a prenup she’s planning the wedding and the exit strategy." (...)
"Ladies, If you’re thinking, «I don’t recognize the man I married, I’m not attracted to him anymore», Consider this… Pointing out everything he does wrong daily changes a man. A man who is constantly torn down will naturally pull away. If you’re not building him up daily, you’re setting yourself up for your own downfall, and worse, you’re not protecting your man." (...)
"Nothing is more attractive to a man than your willingness to adopt his last name. Either way, your last name is either your husband’s or your father’s. So, claiming you want to keep your last name isn’t strictly accurate."
-- x@giammacool
"You can tell the health of a marriage by how often the wife posts selfies."
-- x@mc_shortyy
"Modern women don’t want a husband. They want a lifestyle. If another man can upgrade them, they’re gone."
-- x@pallnandi
"Instead of teaching fear of pregnancy, we should teach fear of childlessness."
-- Elon Musk [1971]
Men do not look down on women who stay home with the kids. Women do.
If your daughter needs abortion rights, you failed as a father. If you praise a woman who aborted her child because «she did what was best for herself», then praise men who abandon theirs for the same reason. Feminism has convinced a generation of young women that motherhood is beneath them. Treating children as burdens rather than gifts has consequences.
"The childless are the dead branches on the tree of life."
-- Friedrich Nietzsche [1844]
"Either have children or become a saint, because eventually, you have to find something you love more than you love yourself."
-- Naval Ravikant [1974]
"Women get dogs to fill the void of not having a toddler. Men get dogs to fill the void of not having a woman who loves him."
-- x@helen_mrow
"For some childless people, veganism becomes a stand-in for parenthood. Animals become the «kids», the planet becomes the «future», and that’s why they defend it with the same ferocity parents defend their children."
-- x@veganrecovering