The only light in the motel room came in through the blinds from the street lights. This didn’t stop him from writing. Oh no. Because he’d been in a thousand rooms just like the one he was in now, he knew exactly what to do. He took out the high-wattage light bulb he always had and screwed it in. With a now-illuminated room, Cormac McCarthy began killing off his characters in the most brutal way imaginable.

And that’s how many of Cormac McCarthy’s early novels were written. In cheap, dark, Tennessee motel rooms. **It doesn’t matter where you work, so as long as you work.**

Sadly, McCormack [died this week](https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/13/books/cormac-mccarthy-dead.html).

For a long time, McCormack and his novels about the cruelty of human nature were cult favorites. But with the publication of *All the Pretty Horses*, McCormack went mainstream – much to his disliking. Probably. His books are often described as macabre and surely would make you wince thrice. Put simply: they are not the types of books I’d listen to in the car with my wife.

Yet they stir something inside you. I don’t know exactly what it is but boy oh boy is it there. You’re half-scared / half-wondering who will die next and when and how. Everything within you is saying to put the book down. It’s time to go to bed. It’s time to work. Your family misses you. But you can’t.

William Faulkner, James Joyce, and Herman Melville – only some of the greatest writers to have ever lived – were McCormack’s inspirations and every one of his pages pays homage to them.

His books are different. There’s a lot of blood, yes, and “[more corpses than commas](https://web.archive.org/web/20200815201750/https://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2005/08/cormac-mccarthy-interview),” but the most unique thing is the lack of punctuation. McCormack doesn’t use quotation marks to denote dialogue. You would think this would cause confusion, but it doesn’t. “There’s no reason to blot the page up with weird little marks,” [he said](https://www.oprah.com/oprahsbookclub/cormac-mccarthy-on-james-joyce-and-punctuation-video). “I mean if you write properly you shouldn’t have to punctuate.”

Here’s an excerpt from one of his novels, *Child of God*:

> Ballard came to the edge of the cutbank and looked up to where Kirby was sitting. He said: You got any whiskey?
> 

> Might have some.
> 

> Why don’t you let me have a jar.
> 

> Kirby stood up. Ballard said: I can pay ye next week on it. Kirby squatted back down again.
> 

> I can pay ye tomorrow, Ballard said.
> 

> Kirby turned his head to one side and gripped his nose between his thumb and forefinger and sneezed a gout of yellow snot into the grass and wiped his fingers on the knee of his jeans. He looked out over the fields. I cain’t do it, Lester, he said.
> 

See. No quotation marks but you don’t get lost.

Writing dialogue is one of the first things they teach you in English class. You learn when to put the commas inside of the quotes, how to introduce a new character, and are told to make sure each character’s words have their own line.

McCormack broke all those rules and had massive success doing it. Why? Because the thing, the actual writing, story, and plot were terrific. McCormack mastered the fundamentals, so he could break every rule he wanted and people still read – and are still reading – his words.

I never once thought about how unimportant quotation marks are. I didn’t know you could write dialogue without them. How sad is that? Tradition was so engrained in my brain, I never thought to question those funny little lines before and after words from a character. Now I am.

How he wrote isn’t the only thing McCarthy chose to do differently. He didn’t go on book tours and rarely did interviews. He could talk until the cows came home about physics or the philosophy of mathematics but shied away from talking about his writing. What writer doesn’t want to talk about their work? Then again, what writer doesn’t use quotation marks?

I admire his knack for going against the grain, but his ex-wives who lived in poverty because of that habit didn’t. “We lived in total poverty," his second wife, Annie DeLisle [said](https://www.nytimes.com/1992/04/19/magazine/cormac-mccarthy-s-venomous-fiction.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm). On a dairy farm just outside of Knoxville, they’d take baths in the lake. Funny enough, that’s something a McCormack character would partake in. "Someone would call up and offer him $2,000 to come speak at a university about his books. And he would tell them that everything he had to say was there on the page. So we would eat beans for another week." That right there says all you need to know about Cormac McCarthy.

This great American novelist has passed, yes, but his words and habits and ideas will never die.

McCormack, both directly and indirectly, **teaches one to question tradition** and that **there’s always room for something different,** especially if it’s great.

Break the mold and break the mold and do it differently and break the mold.

---

If you’ve never read a McCarthy novel before, *The Road* is his most critically acclaimed. “No Country for Old Men” is a movie that McCarthy first wrote as a book with the same title. He published two new novels last year, *The Passenger* and *Stella Maris*, if you want to read something current. The *New York Times* wrote about [his best books](https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/13/books/cormac-mccarthy-best-books.html). Warning: his books are brutal. Some say the violence makes them hard to read, but that’s exactly why you should try.

Break the Mold

## Get Up and Write

I started watching [Foundation](https://tv.apple.com/us/show/foundation/umc.cmc.5983fipzqbicvrve6jdfep4x3?itscg=MC_20000&itsct=atvp_brand_omd&mttn3pid=Google%20AdWords&mttnagencyid=a5e&mttncc=US&mttnsiteid=143238&mttnsubad=OUS2019859_1-562857103871-c&mttnsubkw=104006946180__btoBqYLG_&mttnsubplmnt=_adext_) on Apple TV this week (I’m late, I know), and it was so good I had to learn more about Isaac Asimov, the original author of the Foundation series. In an interview in 1975, after being asked how it was humanely possible, he could write 4,000 words a day – turning out book after magazine article after book – [he said](https://youtu.be/xUz_KkibYAs), “What it amounts to [being able to write so much] is that I’m not happy except when I’m writing. It’s almost the only way I can think of to spend my time pleasantly, and so I’m naturally drawn to the typewriter at all times. The day is lost in which I don’t type.” By 1980, he had over 200 books to his name. His routine for that kind of output is simple; [he explains](https://youtu.be/365kJOsFd3w), “I get up in the morning, sit down and write, and when I finish writing, go back to bed.” Consistency helped make him great, but time did as well. He started writing in 1939 and was still typing away over 40 years later. Getting up every morning to sit down and write doesn’t seem like a terribly hard thing to do, and it’s not, but doing it for 40 years is. But when someone commits, as did Asimov, greatness comes within reach.

Asimov wasn’t only a fan of writing, he loved to read as well. Read the [congratulatory letter he wrote to the recipients of a new library here](https://www.dltn.io/posts/june-05-2023-isaac-asimov-on-writing). 

## Write Stuff Down

Aboard the HMS *Beagle* in 1831, Charles Darwin started journaling. He’d never stop. [He wrote](http://darwin-online.org.uk/EditorialIntroductions/Chancellor_fieldNotebooks.html), “Let the collector’s motto be ‘Trust nothing to memory,’ for the memory becomes a fickle guardian when one interesting object is succeeded by another still more interesting.” If you rely on your memory to hold the ideas and information you learn, and it actually works, you aren’t reading or learning enough interesting things. Darwin began journaling because he *had* to. He wouldn’t remember the crazy-beautiful-incredible things he saw out in the wild without it. If you’ve ever had the desire to start journaling, and have failed, don’t try harder to force yourself to journal. Instead, focus on your inputs. Make it so you’re overwhelmed with interesting ideas that you have no choice *but* to journal.

## Anything to Win

So far, two lines have stood out in dialogue from Foundation. The first is, “A rotten tree trunk looks strong until a storm breaks it in two.” Lesson: We’re all just one small thing from breaking down. Anyone can look strong on the outside, but you never know what’s going on within. It’s good to be kind. The second is, “You can’t play chess with someone who is willing to set the board on fire.” Lesson: You can’t play fairly with someone who will do anything to win. It’s impossible. No strategy, smarts, or negotiation tactics will help you beat them because they’ll go so far outside the bounds of what’s allowed to ensure victory. It’s best to stay away from these types of people.

## Shake things up

If you’re stuck creatively, shake things up. When Joan Baez has writer’s block, she writes with her non-dominant hand. She [says](https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-new-yorker-interview/joan-baez-is-still-doing-beautiful-cool-stuff), “Somewhere in my teenage years, probably out of boredom, I taught myself how to write backward, starting with EINAOJ ZEAB, my new name…I still write backward as a form of therapy when I need to get to the root of a blockage or calm the buzzing heat of a panic attack. It's as though the appropriate wires cross my brain when I write backward, which allows information otherwise unavailable to surface.” Haruki Murakami did something similar when he was writing his first novel. Instead of using manuscript paper and writing in Japanese, which made him feel like he was writing literature, he used a typewriter and wrote in English. Writing in English, his brain avoided the "system overload" that accompanied writing in Japanese. If you’re stuck, do things differently. Write on a napkin instead of paper, use crayons instead of a pen, or go to a dog park instead of a coffee shop.

## Old Story; New Ways

Erik Larson’s books are literary masterpieces. He combines thousands of journal entries and other primary sources from different historical events into page-turning narratives that make you feel as if you know every character. Plus, my favorite thing, you learn a lot about history. When he began the process of writing *The Splendid and the Vile*, a book that chronicles life in London during the German air raids of 1940 and follows Winston Churchill’s life closely, he was questioned on the necessity of yet another Churchill-esque biography. “There’s always a way to tell an old story in a new way,” [he said](https://lithub.com/erik-larson-on-finding-a-new-angle-on-history/). “It’s all in the telling.” I like that. *It’s all in the telling*

.

221b: Get Up and Write

### Poetry and Politics

In June 1956, Senator John F. Kennedy [gave a speech](https://www.jfklibrary.org/archives/other-resources/john-f-kennedy-speeches/harvard-university-19560614) at Harvard wherein he examined the newfound chasm between politicians and intellectuals. After discussing the various differences between the two vocations, he ended the speech, saying, "'Don't teach my boy poetry; he is going to stand for Parliament,' an English mother recently wrote the Provost of Harrow." Well, perhaps she was right – but if more politicians knew poetry and more poets knew politics, I am convinced the world would be a little better place in which to live on this commencement day of 1956.

### Mind as an Attic

You can impress people by knowing useless facts and memorizing dates and names of famous battles, but unless you plan to make a run on Jeopardy!, most of that information is useless. There is no point in bogging down your mind with facts you can look up with a quick Google search. Reading [an article](https://collabfund.com/blog/paying-attention/) this week, I was reminded by this great Sherlock Holmes quote. In 1887, he said, “I consider that a man’s brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands.” The information you choose to put in your brain is much like commitments in life, with everything you add, something else has to go. Be cautious. Don’t pay attention to everything that shows you its checkout line.

### You Win Every Battle You Don't Fight

Tom Hanks received an unsuspecting call from the FBI one day. On the other end, the feds were letting him know his name appeared on a list of potential targets to attack. After a Zoom call, there wasn’t much else to do, so Hanks went on with his life. Most people are surprised he didn't do anything else, but Hanks wasn't sure what else he could do. [He explained](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2023/06/tom-hanks-making-motion-picture-book-interview/673783/) his reasoning with a favorite wartime story from General MacArthur—how MacArthur, “aware of huge pockets of Japanese forces and arms on various Pacific islands, deliberately decided not to attack them.” Hanks says, “And so these Japanese soldiers essentially sat out the war doing nothing.” MacArthur just left them there. “And I thought, That’s friggin’ brilliant. You’re really smart in the battles you don’t fight.” You win every battle you don't fight. That’s why Haruki Murakami disdains literary prizes and doesn't join literary panels. He’s a writer, not a critic. “A writer’s greatest responsibility is to his readers,” he writes, “to keep providing them with the best work that he is capable of turning out…Developing the objectivity needed to approve of or reject others’ works in a responsible manner, however, sits entirely outside the boundaries of that battlefield.”

### Time as a Judge

Time is the ultimate judge. With moviemaking, Tom Hanks [explains](https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-new-yorker-interview/tom-hanks-on-the-rewards-and-vicious-reality-of-making-movies), wherever the movie is at in twenty years is what counts, not what the critics say on opening day. “For me, it happened on a movie that I wrote and directed called "That Thing You Do!" he said. "I loved making that movie. I loved writing it, I loved being with it. I love all the people in it. When it came out, it was completely dismissed by the first wave of vox populi. It didn’t do great business. It hung around for a while, was viewed as being some sort of odd, kinda quasi-ripoff of nine other different movies and a nice little stroll down memory lane. Now the same exact publications that dismissed it in their initial review called it 'Tom Hanks’s cult classic, That Thing You Do!' So now it’s a cult classic. What was the difference between those two things? The answer is time." Time separates the wheat from the chaff, the good from the great. This is why I hesitate to read new books. Unless it’s by an author I love, I rarely read new books. Most of them won’t be around in five years. So why waste time on them now? Instead, I like to read old books and let time be my filter. If an old book is still in print, I know it’s going to be excellent.

### A Perfect Day

Novelist Vladimir Nabokov [describes](http://www.lib.ru/NABOKOW/Inter03.txt) his daily routine: "I awake around seven in winter... For a while, I lie in bed mentally revising and planning things. Around eight: shave, breakfast, enthroned meditation, and bath—in that order. Then I work till lunch in my study, taking time out for a short stroll with my wife along the lake... We lunch around one p.m., and I am back at my desk by half-past one and work steadily till half-past six. Then a stroll to a newsstand for the English papers, and dinner at seven. No work after dinner. And bed around nine. I read till half-past eleven..."

A daily routine is crucial because how we spend our days is how we live our lives. For what is life but a series of weeks, and what are weeks but a series of days? If you wish to live a good life, aim first to live a good day.

221b: Poetry and Politics

### Knowledge

While Richard Feynman was working at Los Alamos on the Manhattan Project, every now and then, a lieutenant from the Army would come down and check on his team’s work. Feynman’s boss [told him](https://bookshop.org/p/books/surely-you-re-joking-mr-feynman-bound-for-schools-libraries-richard-p-feynman/7364110?ean=9780606412728) that since he was a civilian section, the lieutenant ranked higher than any of them. “Don’t tell the lieutenant anything,” his boss ordered. “Once he begins to think he knows what we’re doing, he’ll be giving us all kinds of orders and screwing everything up.”

This story has two applications: 1) Be careful who you share information with. Once they know something, they can “help out.” 2) If someone isn’t telling you something, you may be the lieutenant.

### Solution

Leslie Groves, the Army liaison who ran point on the Manhattan project, picked J. Robert Oppenheimer for the head scientist of the project, but he faced a good deal of opposition due to Oppie’s background with communist party members. When he proposed Oppenheimer’s name to the Military Policy Committee, [he said](https://bookshop.org/p/books/american-prometheus-the-triumph-and-tragedy-of-j-robert-oppenheimer-kai-bird/8526472?ean=9780375726262), “I asked each member to give me the name of a man who would be a better choice. In a few weeks it became clear that we were not going to find a better man.” Groves could have debated back and forth with the committee for weeks drumming up other suggestions, but he didn’t. “Okay,” he said, “If you don’t like my choice, give me another.” When they couldn’t, the decision became obvious and Groves got what he wanted. Sometimes problem-solving is as simple as seeking a better solution. If you don’t find one, go with what you have.

### Kids

Peter Oppenheimer, Robert Oppenheimer’s son, had an electrical toy, “a square box filled with various lights, buzzers, fuses, and switches.” He called this toy his “gimmick.” Two years after he got this toy, David Lilienthal, an attorney for the Atomic Energy Commission, was visiting the Oppenheimers. While there, Kitty, Oppenheimer’s wife, was trying to fix the “gimmick.” After fiddling with it for over an hour but to no avail, she stopped to cook dinner. Robert took Kitty’s spot and began working on the “gimmick.” As Robert sat on the floor, the author writes in *[American Prometheus](https://bookshop.org/p/books/american-prometheus-the-triumph-and-tragedy-of-j-robert-oppenheimer-kai-bird/8526472?ean=9780375726262)*, “Peter ran to the kitchen and whispered loudly to Kitty, ‘Mama, is it all right to let Daddy work with the gimmick?’ Everyone laughed at the notion that the man who directed the construction of the ultimate ‘gimmick’ might not be qualified to fiddle with his child’s electrical toy.” Despite being a brilliant scientist, Robert Oppenheimer is still seen as a father and, in his son’s eyes, may or may not possess the skills to fix his toy. Your kids, likely, aren’t impressed by your accomplishments or paychecks. At the end of the day, all they want to know is if you can fix their toy.

### Trust

In the span of nearly a decade, Cillian Murphy has been in five of Christopher Nolan’s films. In each movie, he plays a supporting role of some sort, but the next one, he is the main character. Coming out in July, Murphy will play the lead role of J. Robert Oppenheimer. In an interview together, Nolan and Murphy [talked about the benefits](https://ew.com/movies/oppenheimer-christopher-nolan-cillian-murphy-in-conversation/) of “re-collaboration.” “I think the best thing that happens from re-collaboration is that you get this level of trust,” Murphy said. “I think that's allowed us to continue to make interesting work. To me, that's the most important thing. If you trust the director, you can really go out on a limb, and be vulnerable, and expose yourself emotionally.” Nolan agreed, saying, “Trust is creatively freeing, because you feel like you can try things, and there are no wrong answers, nobody's going to chastise you, or laugh at you. It's like, okay, let's just try a few different things, and then trust on the fundamental level of, okay, we're going to take you on a boat, and we're going to sit you on top of an overturned hull, and on a cue, you're going to jump off into the sea. [Laughs]” When you work with people you trust, you’re not afraid to fail because you have nothing to prove. You’re likely to take more risks, knowing that if it fails, that’s okay because these people know how good you are. Likewise, if they fail, they know how good you think they are, so they can try different things. It’s difficult to do something great with people you don’t trust.

### Success

“All success is a lagging indicator,” Ryan Holiday [writes](https://ryanholiday.net/all-success-is-a-lagging-indicator/). 99% of Warren Buffett’s net-worth was accumulated after his sixtieth birthday. The success he’s had is a lagging indicator of the discipline and consistency of being an investing-fiend while in his teens and twenties. The book that debuts on the bestseller list is a lagging indicator of the years of research, writing, and editing an author has dedicated. A good physique is a lagging indicator of the consistent days spent in the gym sustained over a long period of time. All success is a lagging indicator; if you’re not seeing success yet, keep going. You may have years to work until the payoff arrives.

221b: Unlocking Success

### Enjoy the Doing

In the autumn of 1932, Robert Oppenheimer [wrote](https://bookshop.org/p/books/american-prometheus-the-triumph-and-tragedy-of-j-robert-oppenheimer-kai-bird/8526472?ean=9780375726262) in a letter to his brother Frank, "The work is fine, not the fruits but the doing..." That may seem like a throwaway sentence, but it's profound. Oppenheimer understood that the work is what mattered, not the results. Learning physics was the fun part, not the accolades or attention. When you base your attitude or willingness to work hard only on the hopes of great outcomes, you're setting yourself up for disaster. That's where unhappiness is born. Unhappiness is caused by placing your definition of success in outcomes you don’t control. Followers, fans, and revenue are all byproducts of doing the work. But when those things become what you seek, and you don’t get, happiness eludes you. If you don't enjoy the work, you'll be miserable. "When you move the outcome or the goal to something that is up to you, you'll always win," Ryan Holiday [explains](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWvOKHNeLMI). He continued, "That's what wise people do. It's not that they're not ambitious, they are ambitious, but their ambition is things that are up to them."

### It doesn't matter where

The writer's job is a bit romanticized in today's culture. Maybe you picture them in a forest overlooking a pond with an old cabin, a squeaky desk, and books strewn all around. Though that sounds like paradise to me, there's a danger in romanticizing the work. It can lead you to believe that you need the perfect "place" to start writing that book or working on that next project. That's just another way to avoid doing the work. Michael Lewis [says](https://famouswritingroutines.com/writing-routines/michael-lewis-writing-routine/#:~:text=%E2%80%9CI've%20written%20in%20awful,that%20you%20visit%20the%20muse.%E2%80%9D), "I've written in awful enough situations that I know that the quality of the prose doesn't depend on the circumstance in which it is composed. I don't believe the muse visits you. I believe you visit the muse." When Haruki Murakami began writing his first novel, he couldn't get started. So he replaced his fountain pen and fancy manuscript paper with an old Olivetti typewriter because "as long as [the pen and paper] were in front of me, I felt like I was doing literature," [he writes](https://bookshop.org/p/books/novelist-as-a-vocation-haruki-murakami/18304495?ean=9780451494641). The muse won't visit you anymore with the latest technology than it will with a napkin and a pen, just get started. It doesn't matter where. Neil Gaiman [advises young](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHPKTby9z6o) writers that if they travel to get a book down, go to a boring city and an average hotel, "or else you might become a tourist and walk around... or you might luxuriate," he said. "You have to want to just get out and have nothing else to do so that you must sit down and write."

### Sentences

Annie Dillard tells this great story in *The Writing Life*. A college student asked a published author if they think that the college student could become a full-time writer. "Well, I don't know," the author replies. "Do you like sentences?" If you want to be a writer, you have to like sentences. If you want to be a podcaster, you have to love hitting record. If you want to be an academic, you have to love the books and essays. If you want to be a teacher, you have to love students and learning and lesson plans. You have to love the smallest unit of your craft. Because that's the only thing you control. You don't control how many people buy your books or listen to your podcast episodes, so if you just do it for the results, you'll be miserable. You don't control the fruits, just the doing, so if the fruits aren't ripe yet, you have to still love the doing.

### Problem

During the spring of 1926, Robert Oppenheimer was in the midst of working on his first major paper in theoretical physics. It was a hard, new type of work. One day, he walked into Ernest Rutherford's office and saw Niels Bohr sitting in a chair. Rutherford introduced the two. "How's it going?" Bohr [asked](https://bookshop.org/p/books/american-prometheus-the-triumph-and-tragedy-of-j-robert-oppenheimer-kai-bird/8526472?ean=9780375726262). "I'm in difficulties," Robert replied starkly. "Are the difficulties mathematical or physical?" "I don't know," Oppenheimer said. Bohr: "That's bad." Years later, Oppenheimer reflected on Bohr's profound question, "I thought it put a rather useful glare on the extent to which I became embroiled in formal questions without stepping back to see what they really had to do with the physics of the problem." Don't spend time working on a math problem if the difficulties are physical. A problem well-defined is half-solved. Know what type of problem you're dealing with.

### Timeless Focus

"People claim to want to do something that matters," Ryan Holiday [writes](https://bookshop.org/p/books/perennial-seller-the-art-of-making-and-marketing-work-that-lasts-ryan-holiday/11708311?ean=9780143109013), "Yet they measure themselves against things that don't and track their progress not in years but in microseconds." Writers and business leaders want to create something that lasts a long time but then agonize over social media followers and blog views – things that are pointless. People say they want to create timeless work, but then spend energy trying to figure out how to make their post go viral instead of how to make sure it lasts for 15 years. There's a fundamental flaw there in the logic. "If you focus on near-term growth above everything else," investor Peter Thiel writes, "you miss the most important question you should be asking: Will this business still be around a decade from now?"

221b: Work, Places, Sentences, Problems, Timeless

## Chase Your Reading

There are two main modes of reading, Robin Hanson   [writes](https://www.overcomingbias.com/p/chase-your-readinghtml)  , searching and chasing. With searching, you read widely to find something that interests you. Once you find that thing, you chase. While chasing, you're looking to solve a problem, figure something out, or trying to resolve an internal conflict within yourself. Though most people read in search mode, it's better to be chasing instead. "It helps to have in mind a question, puzzle, or problem," Hanson explains, "and then read in order to answer your question, explain your puzzle, or solve your problem." Samuel Johnson explains why this is important: "What we read with inclination makes a much stronger impression. If we read without inclination, half the mind is employed in fixing the attention; so there is but one half to be employed on what we read." If you read without a gap in your knowledge or understanding, it becomes hard to actually learn what you read because that information doesn't have anywhere to anchor itself to. Read with intention.

## Nobody Cares

When Bill Parcells began his career as the Head Coach for the New York Giants, he dealt with a wealth of injuries. Worried and anxious about how all of his players missing games might impact the team's performance, he talked to his mentor, the Raiders owner Al Davis, in hopes for some advice. "Bill, nobody cares, just coach your team," Davis replied. "You see," Ben Horowitz   [writes](https://a16z.com/2011/10/08/nobody-cares/)  , "nobody cares. When things go wrong in your company, nobody cares. The press doesn't care, your investors don't care, your board doesn't care, your employees don't care, even your mama doesn't care. Nobody cares." When things go wrong over that which you (supposedly) had control, the reason they went wrong doesn't matter. No one cares. It happened, so what are you going to do to fix it? Your kids don't care why you missed their birthday or softball game, they just know you weren't there. Your spouse doesn't care that you were too busy with work to plan a special anniversary date night, they just know that they don't have special dinner plans next Tuesday. Horowitz continues, "It's best to spend zero time on what you could have done and all of your time on what you might do." Don't let the past occupy your head because nobody cares anyway. Focus on the future, on what you can control, and on how you might fix whatever went wrong.

## Wealth and Wisdom

"A big problem with bubbles," Morgan Housel   [writes](https://collabfund.com/blog/thoughts/)  , "is the reflexive association between wealth and wisdom, so a bunch of crazy ideas are taken seriously because a temporarily rich person said it." Just because someone is rich doesn't mean they are wise. Just because someone is in a position of power doesn't mean they are wise. When Richard Nixon was the most powerful person in the world, he constantly made unwise decisions after unwise decisions. At the same time, his staff didn't think twice to question his decision-making process. They were certain that when the rubber met the road, Nixon would have everything under control -- the hush money payments, the illegal break-ins and wire tappings -- would all be washed away because a man in power didn't necessarily say to stop doing what they were doing.

## AI

I'm not worried about AI taking my job, or my favorite author's job. Reading and writing aren't just about getting one word on the page after another. It's about getting a glimpse into the psyche of another human and learning their internal dialogue. For what is writing but someone's internal thoughts splattered on a page for all to read? I'm uninterested in the thoughts of a CPU, no matter how "sentient" said CPU claims to be. "Part of the experience of reading an author is getting a glimpse into a human mind," Richard Hanania   [writes](https://richardhanania.substack.com/p/how-to-be-an-intellectual?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email)  , "a living, breathing person who perceives the world with all his quirks, prejudices, and foibles. You can interact with him on Twitter, try to get him mad, or wonder whether or not he's trolling or serious in any given circumstance. Even if an LLM could produce text in the style of a famous author and predict his views on every issue, I don't think the public intellectual has anything to worry about."

## Van Cleaves

Before the Wright brothers were a global phenomenon for their lighter-than-air machines,   [they owned](https://www.dltn.io/posts/the-wright-brothers-by-david-mccullough)  a bicycle repair shop. After three years simply repairing bikes, they designed their own. It sold between $60 and $65; they called it the Van Cleve, in honor of their great-great-grandmother. They had advertisements: "Van Cleves get there First." That's genius marketing. It's a common phrase to throw around nowadays to focus on the "benefits, not the features" when advertising a product. Apple does this well. Their iPod wasn't the best MP3 player on the market with the latest technology. No no. The iPod let you put a thousand songs in your pocket. That's the benefit. People think this is a new idea, but the Wright brothers understood this over a hundred years ago. Their advertisements didn't focus on the parts used or the sleek design, it was all about the benefits: "getting their first." Because that's all anyone who rides a bike wants anyway. To go fast.

221b: Reading, Nobody Cares, Wealth and Wisdom, AI and Writing, Van Cleaves

Being born out of wedlock in 1400s Italy didn't leave a lot of options for the son of a multi-generation notary. It was customary in that day for the sons of tradesmen to acquire the skills of the father, but Leonardo da Vinci didn't have that luxury since he was illegitimate. He also couldn’t enroll in proper schooling.

Though da Vinci lacked traditional education, he did attend an abacus school to learn useful skills in math and commerce. It was here that he learned the value of thinking about subjects through analogies and patterns, which became "for him a rudimentary method of theorizing."

It was after, where he got an apprenticeship in **[Verrocchio's workshop](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrea_del_Verrocchio)**, that his true genius began to shine.

Here’s what I learned from reading *[Leonardo da Vinci* by Walter Isaacson](https://bookshop.org/p/books/leonardo-da-vinci-walter-isaacson/18795658?ean=9781501139154).

![https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F38095559-1570-4972-aa35-8f13ba99c745_1280x720.png](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F38095559-1570-4972-aa35-8f13ba99c745_1280x720.png)

Leonardo da Vinci became an apprentice of Andrea del Verrocchio (1435 - 1488) at about 14 years old. The first painting da Vinci worked on with Verrocchio was ***[The Baptism of Christ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Baptism_of_Christ_%28Verrocchio_and_Leonardo%29)***. It's believed he worked on the leftmost angel because of its soft facial features, which the other subjects in the painting are not graced with.

![https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F1147477b-2fdb-486a-ad45-b8c760e8be49_2652x3124.jpeg](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F1147477b-2fdb-486a-ad45-b8c760e8be49_2652x3124.jpeg)

Being a disciple of experience, da Vinci noticed that when he looked at something in real life, it wasn't obvious where one object ended and another began, like it so often appeared in pictures. It's hard to describe what he saw, but he didn't think there should be a harsh boundary between different objects in paintings. This lead him to embrace a painting technique called ***[sfumato](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sfumato)***. The word, derived from the Italian word for smoke, *fumo*, can be roughly translated to "soft, vague, or blurred." It makes the painting look airy and like every object blends into the next.

This was just one example of da Vinci's acute observational skills represented in his paintings. He wrote in a notebook:

> If you wish to have a sound knowledge of the forms of objects, begin with the details of them, and do not go on to the second step until you have the first well fixed in memory.
> 

Isaacson writes:

> Leonardo wove an argument that was integral to understanding his genius: that true creativity involves the ability to combine observation with imagination, thereby blurring the border between reality and fantasy
> 

Leonardo's artistic genius is undoubted, but his business suave could have been better. He seemed to do okay but was never truly rich because he couldn't finish most of the pieces he was commissioned to do. There's no *real* reason why this happened, but there are some hypotheses.

One hypothesis is that *what could be* excited Leonardo much more than *what was*. He got so excited about a new idea that he abandoned everything else he was working on to pursue it. This cycle never ended. Isaacson wrote, "he was a genius undisciplined by diligence."

Another example could be that da Vinci wasn't about "the grind." He preferred to work very little and follow his curiosity about the world instead. He wrote in a notebook:

> Men of loft genius sometimes accomplish the most when they work the least, for their minds are occupied with their ideas and the perfection of their conceptions, to which they afterwards give form.
> 

Another reason may have been because his idea of perfection was so close to reality that it can never be pulled off to the degree Leonardo expected of himself. So, he got as far as he could on some paintings and then just stopped. He was paralyzed by perfectionism. He didn't like to finish pieces because he would inevitably learn a new fact about how a body should be positioned that he could use to make the piece better down the line. To him, nothing was more beautiful than representing Nature like it ought to be represented; and nothing more disgraceful when Nature was represented incorrectly.

> Though human ingenuity may make various inventions it will never devise an invention more beautiful, more simple, more direct than does Nature; because in her inventions nothing is lacking and nothing is superfluous.
> 
> 
> – Leonardo da Vinci
> 

An example of this relentless perfectionism can be seen by examining *St. Jerome in the Wilderness.* This painting was done in two phases: the first being in 1480 when he started the painting and the second being in 1510. Under infrared analysis of the painting, you can see dual neck muscles and other parts added in 1510 that were not part of the original drawing. These additions seem to align with the anatomical discoveries da Vinci was making through his autopsies at the time. This implied he started the painting in 1480, but then changed it *30 years later* to add small neck muscles that he didn't know existed before. **His perfectionism was a virtue, but it was also his vice.**

![https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fb9d3f59d-f6a8-40ea-af39-a9b4afc479d8_750x1024.jpeg](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fb9d3f59d-f6a8-40ea-af39-a9b4afc479d8_750x1024.jpeg)

Da Vinci valued experience to a degree that lead him to dissect some 300+ bodies throughout his lifetime. He wasn’t a psychopath, though, he wanted to understand the layout of the human body and how muscles move different body parts.

## **Lesson: Be more curious**

Da Vinci didn't intend for his life to come under a microscope 500 years later, yet, there is one thing we can learn when we do so: **to observe and be curious about the little things in life more often**.

Isaacson writes:

> I did learn from Leonardo how a desire to marvel about the world that we encounter each day can make each moment of our lives richer.
> 

He continued:

> Yes, he was a genius: wildly imaginative, passionately curious, and creative across multiple disciplines. His genius was based on skills we can aspire to improve in ourselves, such as curiosity and intense observation.
> 

If we look at Leonardo for a thesis on how to approach life, he might say to do so "with a sense of curiosity and an appreciation for its infinite wonders."

That, Mr. da Vinci, I will strive to do.

How to Approach Life: From Leonardo da Vinci

*One ship drives east and another drives westWith the self-same winds that blow.’Tis the set of the sailsAnd not the galesWhich tells us the way to go.*

– Ella Wheeler Wilcox, “Winds of Fate”

---

No one was less likely to change the world than two poor boys from Dayton, Ohio. But that’s what happened.

After spending two years in Europe for test flights, which were a resounding success, the Wright brothers returned home. Waiting for them in Dayton was a celebration to honor the hometown heroes. But for the quiet town, it wasn’t just about planes or money; it was about showing the world that anyone – no matter where they came from – could do something important.

The *Dayton Daily News* wrote:

> There was beginning a great deal of talk about man’s no longer having the opportunities he once had of achieving greatness.

Too many people were beginning to believe that all of the world’s problems had been solved…Money was beginning to tell in the affairs of men, and some were wondering whether a poor boy might work for himself a place in commerce or industry or science.

This celebration throws all such idle talk to the winds. It crowns a new the efforts of mankind. **It crushes for another hundred years the suspicion that all of the secrets of nature have been solved or that the avenues of hope have been closed to those who would win new worlds.**

It points out to the ambitious young man that he labors not in vain; that genius knows no class, no condition…

The modesty of the Wright brothers is a source of good deal of comment…But above all there is a sermon in their life of endeavor which cannot be preached too often.
> 

Here’s what I learned from reading *[The Wright Brothers](https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-wright-brothers-david-mccullough/10347963?ean=9781476728759)* by David McCullough.

![https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fa57e4a06-e34a-4be3-b7db-f46df4d78129_1280x720.png](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fa57e4a06-e34a-4be3-b7db-f46df4d78129_1280x720.png)

### 1. Don’t be a burden

Orville and Wilbur’s work ethic, ideas, and philosophy on life were heavily influenced by their father, Bishop Milton Wright. He saw it as his duty to raise his kids with respect and love and always provide them with wisdom.

He once said, “It is assumed that young folks know best, and old folks are fogies. It may be so, but old folks may be as right about new fangles as young folks are about fogy ways. Make business first, pleasure afterward, and that guarded. **All the money anyone needs is just enough to prevent one from being a burden on others.”**

### 2. Intellectual curiosity is important

A friend once told Orville that he and Wilbur would always stand as an example of how far Americans with no special advantages – old money, power, name, or influence – could advance in the world. Orville disagreed: “But it isn’t true to say we had no special advantages…**the greatest thing in our favor was growing up in a family where there was always much encouragement to intellectual curiosity.**”

### 3. Consistency and longevity are the two keys to success

Wilbur, writing about his attitude towards test flights at Kitty Hawk:

> The man who wishes to keep at the problem long enough to really learn anything positively must not take dangerous risks. Carelessness and overconfidence are usually more dangerous than deliberately accepted risks.
> 

Wilbur, again:

> A man who works for the immediate present and its immediate rewards is nothing but a fool.
> 

### 4. It’s all about hard work

The Wright Brothers were smart, undoubtedly, but they also worked harder than anyone else. John T. Daniels, a Kitty Hawk resident who helped the brothers set up their operation, said they were “two of the workingest boys” he had ever seen, “and when they worked, *they worked…*They had their whole heart and soul in what they were doing.”

Daniels later said of the boys’ achievement:

> It wasn’t luck that made them fly; it was hard work and common sense; they put their whole heart and soul and their energy into an idea and they had the faith.
> 

They also never fixated on their past success. The Brothers first build a glider, a plane that just rode the wind; once they got that design down, they added a motor. After their first flight with a motor, Charlie Taylor, the mechanic who built and maintained the motor, said there were no “jig steps” over what had been achieved:

> Of course they were pleased with the flight. But their first word with me, as I remember, was about the motor being damaged when the wind picked up the machine and turned it topsy turvy…They wanted a new one built right away…They were always thinking of the next thing to do; they didn’t waste much time worrying about the past.
> 

### 5. Don’t allow others to pressure your process

Once they figured out how to fly, people came from all over to see the spectacle, but there was always a risk that conditions for flying weren’t favorable. In all his quiet confidence, Wilbur never let the pressure of the crowd get to him. They wanted to see a show, but Wilbur never bet his hard work or pride on someone else’s desires. They’d have to come back tomorrow if he couldn't go up. Surprisingly, people understood this and happily obliged.

When Orville began test flights in the United States while Wilbur was in Paris, Wilbur warned Orville never to succumb to that pressure:

> Don’t go out even for all the officers of the government unless you would go equally if they were absent. Do not let yourself be forced into doing anything before you are ready…Do not let people talk to you all day and night. It will wear you out, before you are ready for any real business. Courtesy has limits. If necessary, appoint some hour in the daytime and refuse absolutely to receive visitors at any other time. Do not receive anyone after 8 o’clock at night.
> 

Another time, with the pressure of thousands watching, the brothers had to cancel the flight because the winds were too strong. As they wheeled the plane back to the shed, a senator was overheard saying, “I’m damned if I don’t admire their independence. We don’t mean anything to them, and there are a whole lot of reasons why we shouldn’t.”

### 6. A solution usually leads to another problem

Wilbur and Orville Wright understood one thing that helped them succeed: **when they solved one problem, another would almost certainly arise.**

Edward Huffaker, a visitor at Kitty Hawk, never understood this. Wilbur wrote: "He thinks the problem solved when these difficulties…are overcome, while we expect to find further difficulties of a theoretic nature which must be met by new mechanical designs."

Wilbur understood something many overlook: when you're doing innovative work, a solution usually leads to a different problem. If you assume the problem you're working on is the last one you'll ever encounter, it can ruin you when you find another.

Wilbur was practicing what Jim Collins calls the Stockdale Paradox: "the ability to combine the brutal facts of reality with the unwavering faith that you will prevail in the end." Brutal facts: flying is hard. There were going to be a lot of unforeseen problems that no one had encountered before. Unwavering faith: Wilbur knew, based on his past experiences, that he’d figure it out. If he kept working at it day by day with grit and confidence, he’d fly.

### Bonus: Orville on bombers in WWII

Orville Wright lived surprisingly late, only passing away in 1948 due to a heart attack. As he realized the damage and destruction wrought by bombers in World War Two, he couldn’t help but feel some responsibility. Yet that feeling did not outweigh the importance of his and Wilbur’s achievements, and he knew that. He said:

> We dared to hope we had invented something that would bring lasting peace to the earth. But we were wrong…No, I don’t have any regrets about my part in the invention of the airplane, though no one could deplore more than I do the destruction it caused. I feel about the airplane much the same as I do in regard to fire. That is I regret all the terrible damage caused by the fire, but I think it is good for the human race that someone discovered how to start fires and that we have learned how to put fire into thousands of important uses.
> 

### Bonus: NASA pays respects on the moon

On July 20, 1969, when Neil Armstrong landed on the moon, he paid homage to the Wright brothers. With him was a small swatch of fabric from the wing of their 1903 Flyer, the first plane that carried them a meaningful distance. Armstrong is also from Ohio.

The Wright Brothers

Tick tock, tick tock, the clock goes on. Second…by…second. One no faster than the last; no shorter than the next. Yet these seconds, when they add up, seem to vanish when we account for them. *It’s time to get the kids already? Your birthday is* this *weekend?! Where did the time go?* It ticked away, second…by…second.

This isn’t a new phenomenon. It may seem like it because the items that burglarize our seconds never end. Phones, TVs, news, notifications, bings, bops, and blips are all over the pla – sorry, my phone buzzed.

What’s worse? It’s not getting easier.

The problems may be new(er), but the remedy is not: Arnold Bennett’s 1908 classic, *[How to Live on 24-Hours a Day](https://bookshop.org/p/books/how-to-live-on-24-hours-a-day-the-complete-original-edition-arnold-bennett/18888388?ean=9781250250674)*. This short book is a tour de force of philosophical advice and practical ideas for time management.

![https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F3005eec6-9d00-4c18-a69d-76a0e26f1dd4_1280x720.png](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F3005eec6-9d00-4c18-a69d-76a0e26f1dd4_1280x720.png)

The first step to living fully and comfortably within the allotted hours of one’s day is the realization that though it is possible, it is not easy. It requires an endless amount of effort and continuous sacrifice. Everything will be fighting against you, but you must not give in. Your happiness depends on it.

A note: If you’re reading this and thinking at any time, *there’s no way I could do any of this. I don’t have the time between the kids, sports, work, my marriage, and everything else I have going on.* That’s great! This book addressed those who felt like each day was ending with no control over what happened. If you’re not in that scenario, not all of these ideas will apply, but some will.

### Why care about this?

The importance of finding and using time deliberately is that we all have things we want to do (or to have gotten done) that we simply haven’t yet: going back to school, learning to write, studying history, improving our skills for a better job, and so on. “You are constantly haunted by a suppressed dissatisfaction with your own arrangement of your daily life,” Bennett writes, “and **the primal cause of that inconvenient dissatisfaction is the feeling that you are every day leaving undone something which you would like to do**, and which, indeed, you are always hoping to do when you have ‘more time.’”

*You will never have “more time.”* As Bennett writes, “We shall never have more time. **We have, and have always had, all the time there is.**” Instead of trying to find “more time,” you need to *make more time*.

Here are the main ideas in Bennett’s book.

### **Don’t center your day around your job (if you dislike it)**

Bennett writes:

> The person who works 10 to 6 every day, and who doesn’t have a real passion for their job, make the first mistake by assuming 10 to 6 is “their day” and that the ten hours prior and the six hours following are nothing but a prologue. This attitude kills any interest with doing something with those 16 hours. Even if said person does not intentionally waste them, the point is he does not count them; he regards them simply as margin.
>

Instead of 10 to 6 being “the day,” think of 10 to 6 as being a day within a day. The first day starts at 10 am and ends at 6 pm. The second day starts at 6 pm and ends at 10 am.

For the sake of our humanity, let’s reserve 8 hours for nocturnal rest: 11 pm to 7 am. Now, what will you do during the new hours of that second day, from 6 pm to 11 pm and from 7 am to 9 am?

### **Be deliberate**

First, let’s find 30 minutes in the morning between 7:00 and 7:30 to strengthen the mind deliberately. During these minutes, practice concentrating on something. Whenever your mind wanders from what it should be focused on, drag it back with all your might. You can focus on whatever you want: a quote from your favorite book, a song lyric, the beauty of painting, whatever. The *what* doesn’t matter so much as the *act*.

Whatever you do, do not use these perfectly good minutes of solitude to read “that which was meant to be read with rapidity.” Bennett here is referring to newspapers. I’m referring to Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, or other social platforms. (And maybe even the news.) Don’t waste 30 minutes of your fresh mind on ephemeral content.

Bennett explains that practicing intense focus will make discipline easier in all aspects. If you can control your mind, you can control your mood, attitude, behavior, and more.

So far, we have found two and a half hours every week (30 mins a day X 5 days per week) that didn’t exist before. Let’s now turn to our evenings.

Most people come home from work, sit on the couch for an hour, watch the news, and start making dinner. After dinner, they either go back to tv or *maybe* start reading a book. Bennett advises that instead of having dinner interrupt the middle of your evening, have it as soon as you get home. Then, reserve an hour and a half three days a week to better oneself. In doing so, you still have two weeknights and all of Saturday and Sunday to do whatever you want.

Now, what will you do with your four and a half evening hours each week? Most people wrongly assume reading or studying literature is the only option. Nothing could be further from the truth.

You could study music, learn how to play an instrument, advance your knowledge in the field of mathematics, become an armchair physicist, write a book, become an expert on Renaissance paintings, learn how to paint, study for a certificate of some sort, learn how to program, commit to reading a large volume of text…shall I continue?

Everything is on the table with one requirement: **You must be keenly interested in that thing**. Don’t study philosophy because you like the idea of becoming a philosopher. Do it because you’re interested in philosophy and want to learn more about it.

Whatever it is, do it deliberately. That’s the point of all this.

If you want to learn something academic but don’t want to attend an actual school, do what Jack London did. Before he started writing, he got a copy of the syllabi from the University of California and read all the books from English and Philosophy courses.

## **Some warnings**

**For your evening study, don’t let anything influence your decision about what to pursue other than your interests.** Bennett writes:

> In choosing the occupations of the evening hours, commit to that which you have a supreme interest and let nothing else influence or dictate that which you choose to study. Being a walking encyclopedia of philosophy is all well and good, but not so if you have a disdain for philosophy and would rather study the stars.
>

**Maintain flexibility**. Following the program is important, but it’s not a religion. You’re the master. Maintain flexibility. However, you have to take it seriously enough for it to work and not just be a cruel joke. There is a right amount of rigidity and flexibility one must achieve.

**Don’t rush.** One may take the dog out at eight and be thinking the whole time that he has to start reading at nine and, therefore, never enjoy the moment of the walk.


A summary of Arnold Bennett's 1908 classic, 'How to Live on 24-Hours a Day'

2 Ideas for Realistic Time Management

20th-century scientists often embody a certain stereotype that befits their profession as stuffy and dry, only caring about smoking pipes and reading books. Richard P. Feynman – and his bongo-banging, night-club hanging, lock-picking self – fit none of them. If you liked to talk, you might enjoy riding shotgun with him behind the wheel. If you didn’t, you might ask to be let out at the next light.

Born just before the end of WWI, he attended MIT and Princeton, where he pulled his fair share of pranks. His “masterpiece” came one morning when he took a door off the hinges of a room and hid it because, well, why not? When those in his fraternity woke up, they noticed the missing door. “Feynman! Did you take the door?” *Oh yeah! I took the door*. But they didn’t believe him. His tone was too sarcastic. The mystery went on for a week until Feynman left a picture of where the door was on the table overnight, and they found it. Later, when he finally admitted to taking it, everyone accused him of being a liar, but he wasn’t! He said he took the door. It was everyone else’s fault for not believing him. *Funny stuff.*

During his time at Princeton, he started work on the Manhattan Project. In April 1943, he moved to Los Alamos, New Mexico, to continue work on the atom bomb. In 1946, he became a professor at Cornell. He lived and worked in Brazil and Japan a few times before settling at Cal Tech.

That paragraph does not do his life justice.

Here are (some of) the most insightful and fun stories from *Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!*

![https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F0c029b12-69a5-4d47-9da4-d063aee4ec4d_1280x720.png](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F0c029b12-69a5-4d47-9da4-d063aee4ec4d_1280x720.png)

### 1. Spend more time thinking about the problem

Like any great genius in Feynman’s day, he first learned science by playing with radios. He’d take them apart and reassemble them, only better. Fixing radios became one of his first jobs. In one instance, he made quite an impression on someone.

The broken radio in question made a funny noise when it first turned on, but the noise stopped after a while, and then it would work fine. When Feynman got to the scene to assess the damage, he heard the problem and thought, “How can that happen?”

He starts walking back and forth, thinking to himself, “One way it can happen is that the tubes are ready to go, and there’s nothing feeding in, or there’s some back circuit feeding in, or something wrong in the beginning part…” This thinking went on for some time but was interrupted by shouts from the customer, “What are you doing? You come to fix the radio, but you’re only walking back and forth!”

“I’m thinking!” Feynman snaps back. He then thought to take the tubes out and reverse the order completely, thinking maybe they’d heat up better if they were reversed. This worked. The customer was amazed, telling everyone he knew, “He fixes radios by *thinking!”* Upon reflection, Feynman writes, “The whole idea of thinking to fix a radio – a little guy stops and thinks, and figures out how to do it – he never that was possible.”

### 2. Use a different set of tools

When you have a different set of tools than everyone else, you can do things they can’t.

Feynman learned, through *Advanced Calculus*, how to solve integrals in a way not taught at MIT or Princeton. So, he was able to solve problems guys who went to those schools couldn’t. “If it was contour integration, they would have found it; if it was simple series expansion, they would have found it. Then I come along and try differentiating under the integral sign, and often it worked. So I got a great reputation for doing integrals, only because my box of tools was different from everyone else’s, and they tried all their tools on it before giving the problem to me.”

If you’re self-taught in a skill or profession, you may feel as if you don’t know everything people who have a degree do, but you might know other things. Just because your box of tools may differ doesn’t mean they’re worse. Never be afraid to tackle a problem in an unconventional way. The worst that could happen is you get the same result as everyone else.

### 3. Knowledge is power

While working at Los Almos on the Manhattan Project, every now and then, a lieutenant from the Army would come down and check on Feynman’s team’s work. Feynman’s boss told him that since he was a civilian section, the lieutenant ranked higher than any of them. “Don’t tell the lieutenant anything,” his boss ordered. “Once he begins to think he knows what we’re doing, he’ll be giving us all kinds of orders and screwing everything up.”

This story has two applications: 1) Be careful who you share information with. 2) If someone isn’t telling you something, you may be the lieutenant.

### 4. Say what you mean

Hans Bethe is one of the most remarkable physicists ever to live. Feynman met him multiple times at Los Alamos and made quite an impression. During the early stages of the project, Feynman became the guy Bethe brainstormed with because Feynman told him the truth; stature and importance be dammed.

“You see, when I hear about physics, I just think about physics, and I don’t know who I’m talking to,” Feynman explains, “so I say dopey things like, ‘no no you’re wrong,’ or ‘you’re crazy.’ But it turns out that’s exactly what he [Bethe] needed. I got a notch up on account of that, and I ended up as a group leader under Bethe with four guys under me.”

Bethe, remembering this interaction, told Neils Bohr, another remarkable physicist, that Feynman was a good brainstorming partner. “Next time when we want to discuss ideas, we’re not going to be able to do it with these guys who say everything is yes yes, Dr. Bohr. Get that guy [Feynman] and we’ll talk to him first,” Bohr told Bethe.

“I was always dumb in that way,” Feynman writes. “I never knew who I was talking to. I was always worried about the physics. If the idea looked lousy, I said it looked lousy. If it looked good, I said it looked good. Simple proposition.”

Don’t calculate someone’s status or hierarchy into the equation of what makes an idea good or bad. Say what you mean, no matter who it’s to.

### 5. Follow your curiosity

Within a week of starting at Cornell, Feynman saw some guy throw a plate in the air with a medallion of Cornell in the center of it. While it was spinning around, Feynman noticed the medallion was spinning around faster than the rest of the plate. “I had nothing to do, so I started figuring out the motion of the rotating plate,” he writes. “I discover that when the angle is very slight, the medallion rotates twice as fast as the wobble rate–two to one. It comes out of a complicated equation! Then I thought, ‘Is there some way I can see in a more fundamental way, by looking at the forces or the dynamics, why it’s two to one?’” Eventually, he worked at the motion for those particles and how the acceleration makes it two to one.

“There was no importance to what I was doing, but ultimately there was. The diagrams and the whole business that I got the Nobel Prize for came from the piddling around with the wobbling plate.”

It’s important to follow your curiosity and wonder – “piddle.” It may just win you a Nobel Prize.

### 6. The world works differently than how you learned it worked growing up

About one in every five of Feynman’s stories takes place with him in a bar or a nightclub. What he ends up learning in those stories usually has nothing to do with either a bar or a nightclub, though. Here is an interesting one.

While Feynman was out one night, he asked “The Master” – some guy he deemed good at talking to women – for advice on picking up girls. The Master taught Feynman it wasn’t as complicated as Feynman was making it to be. He said you buy them a drink and then ask them to sleep with you. Though reluctant, he tried it out.

After some failed attempts, it worked! Feynman was surprised, but he didn’t try it again. “No matter how effective the lesson was, I never used it after that. I didn’t enjoy doing it that way. But it was interesting to know that things worked much differently from how I was brought up.”

After my wife and I got married, she told me one day she was having “jumpy legs.” I hadn’t heard that term before. She explained to me that it’s the feeling of just wanting to move your legs around, what I just called restlessness. But here’s this phrase she’s had, for 23 years of her life, that she knew, that I had never heard before.

The real world works much differently than how you learned it does growing up.

### 7. Be your own master

One day in Brazil, around 3:30 in the afternoon, Feynman was walking along the sidewalk across the beach and past a bar. “I suddenly got this treMENdous, strong feeling: ‘That’s *just* what I want; that’ll fit just right. I’d just love to have a drink right now!’ I started to walk into the bar, and suddenly thought to myself, ‘Wait a minute! It’s the middle of the afternoon. There’s nobody here. There’s no social reason to drink. Why do you have such a terribly strong feeling that you *have* to have a drink?–and I got scared. I never drank again, since then.”

He explains that he has such a fun time *thinking* that he didn’t want anything to “destroy this most pleasant machine that makes life such a big kick.” This is also the reason he was reluctant to try LSD at a later point in life.

Be your own master. Don’t let anything have control over you.

### 8. Don’t make decisions when you’re sad, tired, angry, or lonely.

Feynman once met a girl, Mary Lou, at Cornell. He liked her a lot, but they fought constantly. Eventually, they split up. But after another year of dating without any progress, he was as lonely as a horse in a cow pasture.

While staying in Brazil, he wrote a letter to her and proposed. “Somebody who’s wise could have told me that was dangerous,” he writes. “When you’re away and you’ve got nothing but paper, and you’re feeling lonely, you remember all the good things and you can’t remember the reasons you had the arguments.”

The arguments started again right away, and the marriage lasted two years.

### 9. Seek understanding, not memorization

Feynman tells this story about a Greek scholar who loved the Greek language, but in his country, no one studied Greek. But he goes to another country and finds everyone studying Greek. So he goes up to a student who is getting his degree in Greek and asks, “What were Socrates’s ideas on the relationship between Truth and Beauty?”

Sadly, the student couldn’t answer. So he asks the student, “What did Socrates say to Plato in the Third Symposium?” At this, he knows the answer. Word for word he explains what Socrates said, in Greek, in the Third Symposium. But what Socrates said in the Third Symposium was about the relationship between Truth and Beauty!

Feynman explains, “What this Greek scholar discovers is, the students in another country learn Greek by first learning how to pronounce the letters, then the words, and then the sentences and paragraphs. They can recite, word for word, what Socrates said, without realizing that those Greek words actually *mean* something. To the student, they are all artificial sounds.”

To Feynman, knowledge meant something *real*. It wasn’t just words and sounds; it described how nature works and what happens in the world. It’s important, always, to make sure you’re actually *learning* and not just *memorizing.*

The most insightful and entertaining stories from 'Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!'

9 Lessons on Curiosity and Adventure from Richard Feynman

Discipline is a habit. But it’s also a choice and not an easy one. Discipline is ignoring what you desire in the moment for what you want in the future.

Some people think discipline is just for #hustlebros who want to wake up early and take cold showers, but it’s more than that.

Discipline is choosing to go back to your hotel room alone when the beautiful person at the bar has been giving you eyes all night after a fight with your spouse.

It’s choosing to let your money quietly compound in index funds while everyone else gets rich from pumping Game Stop. It’s the ability to show up every day for five years while you work on that degree without being “rewarded” for it.

Discipline is everywhere and applicable to everyone. Here are six rules I learned about self-mastery from *Discipline is Destiny* by Ryan Holiday.

Most of the lessons are pulled from chapter titles, so thanks to Holiday for making that easy. I’m just highlighting the ones I thought were most important.

![https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F72758897-ef8e-47f9-b8c9-057237074995_1280x720.png](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F72758897-ef8e-47f9-b8c9-057237074995_1280x720.png)

### **1. Treat the body rigorously**

Lou Gehrig was no "good-time Charlie." He wasn't a drinker and didn't chase thrills or girls. "The obligation of a champion," Holiday writes, "is to act like a champion...while working as hard as somebody with something to prove." It wasn't about his "image" or wanting to be "above reproach." Gehrig knew his body was a machine, and it was how he made his money. He wasn't going to abuse it, and neither should we.

Someone would write about him that he didn't drink, "not because of any prissy notions of righteousness that it was evil or wrong to take a drink but because he had a driving, non-stop ambition to become a great and successful ball player. Anything that interfered with that ambition was poison to him." Muhammad Ali would say later, "When a man can control his life, his physical needs, his lower self, he elevates himself."

Musonius Rufus, speaking on a similar note, writes, "Obviously the philosopher's mind should be well prepared for physical activity, because often the virtues make use of this as a necessary instrument for the affairs of life. We use the training common to both when we discipline ourselves to cold, heat, thirst, hunger, meager rations, hard beds, avoidance of the pleasures and patience under suffering. For by these things...the body is strengthened and becomes capable of enduring hardships, study and ready for any task."

You train your body and mind in moments you can control, so you can control your body and mind in moments you don't.

### **2. Don’t let anything have mastery over you**

One day in 1949, Richard Feynman felt an increased craving for a drop of alcohol, separate from the reward of celebrating the results of hard work. Right then and there, he gave up drinking. Because as Holiday writes, "Nothing, he felt, should have that kind of power over him."

A core idea of self-discipline is to be extremely wary of anything that controls you. These can be vices like caffeine, alcohol, or drugs. But they can also be virtues like success or working out. The desire isn't the issue. *It's the need.*

### **3. Show up every day**

Thomas Edison said, "The genius hung around his laboratory day and night. If anything happens, he's there to catch it; if he wasn't, it might happen just the same, only it would never be his." Showing up when it's easy...is easy. But doing it when it's hard is when it really counts. Those are the days when greatness is born.

John Steinbeck called these "dawdly days." Holiday explains, "Those days when everything seems out of whack, when you're just not feeling it, when the distractions won't stop." Showing up on those days "is the first step to greatness."

### **4. Sweat the small stuff**

No big project has succeeded by ignoring the small stuff. "It is the loose ends," Zelda Fitzgerald said, "with which men hang themselves." There's an old saying about a horse, *for want of a nail, the kingdom was lost.* For want of a nail, the shoe was lost. And then, because of the shoe, the horse was lost. Because of the horse, the rider was lost, and because of the rider, the message, and because of the message, the battle, and because of the battle, the kingdom...

*For want of a nail, the kingdom was lost.*

### **5. Keep the main thing the main thing**

> Anyone who has not groomed his life in general towards some definite end cannot possibly arrange his individual actions properly. -- Michel de Montaigne.
>

Holiday writes, "If you don't know where you're sailing, the Stoics said, no wind is favorable." He continued, "the secret to success in almost all fields is large, uninterrupted blocks of focused time." To do this, we can borrow a line from E.B. White, who replied after being asked to be a part of some commission, "I must decline for secret reasons."

It sounds simple, but doing it isn't easy. To keep the main thing the main thing requires you not to be a slave to your ego. After you become successful, they want you to appear on every podcast, go to every conference to "network," and be a part of communities so people know who you are. Your ambition and ego will want you to continue walking down the path of success and fame, but that ambition isn't helpful if it's not taking you anywhere. You must learn to tame ambition and to keep the main thing the main thing.

### **6. Expect much from yourself, little from others**

This is an important one.

*You* have to be disciplined. You don't have to force discipline on *others*. Those people are just annoying, and no one likes them. Don't judge other people for drinking if you don't. Don't make someone feel bad for not running, reading, or waking up early.

Their life is not in your control, so don't act like it is. Hold *yourself* to high standards.

Cato the Elder said, "I am prepared to forgive everybody's mistakes except my own." Ben Franklin said something similar: "Search others for their virtues, thyself for thy vices." Holiday writes, "Be a strong, inspiring example and let that be enough." He also shares a story from one of Lincoln's secretaries who would marvel at her boss "never asked perfection of anyone, he did not even insist, for others, upon the high standards he set for himself."

On a similar note, Seneca writes, "Happy is the man who can make others better, not merely when he is in their company, but even when he is in their thoughts." So though you shouldn't hold people to your high standards, you should inspire them to be better just by *being you.* Not giving some fake speech or showing off your accomplishments, but by your character, your attitude, and your approach to life. Holiday writes, "The fire within us can burn bright enough to warm others. The light within us can illuminate the path for others."


6 Rules for Self-Mastery | 'Discipline is Destiny' by Ryan Holiday

As if it were a movie, *[The Splendid and the Vile](https://a.co/d/j3riSq6)* captures the courage and hope of Winston Churchill – the newly minted Prime Minister – his family, close associates, and other Londoners during The Blitz, a nine-month rampage of German bombings on the capital of the United Kingdom during World War II.

I cried. I laughed. I learned.

I sat filled with sorrow about what it must have been like to live during those nine months when death rained from the skies above – every night – while the sun set on the once-quiet town as it tried to hide in a cloak of darkness.

Here’s what I learned about life and human nature.

![https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ffde4c004-04d1-49e9-a90d-6632290079a4_1280x720.png](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ffde4c004-04d1-49e9-a90d-6632290079a4_1280x720.png)

### 1. Withholding bad news makes the bad news worse

When Winston Churchill heard of the bombing and subsequent sinking of the RMS *Lancastria,* where over 4,000 lives were lost, he barred the press from reporting on it. “The newspapers have got quite enough disaster for today at least,” he said. The press was quiet for a while, but after 2,500 survivors arrived in Britain out of nowhere, people started asking questions. Eventually, *The New York Times* ran the story.

The Home Intelligence Agency, an organization responsible for monitoring British sentiment during the war, reported, “The withholding of the news of the *Lancastria* is the subject of much adverse criticism. **The blatant censorship led the public to imagine what other bad news was being hidden from them.**”

![https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F6ebb8017-d5cb-4c62-995a-7f01287ba34c_624x351.jpeg](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F6ebb8017-d5cb-4c62-995a-7f01287ba34c_624x351.jpeg)

In times of war, morale is one of the most important things for survival. Churchill and the government worked hard to keep morale high, often increasing the tea limit to keep people happy. But more tea couldn’t make up for the government’s deceptiveness. In an effort to protect sentiment, the government only caused more damage by not reporting the bad news in a timely manner.

When you break something and wait to fix it, it usually makes it worse. When you do something wrong and don’t own the mistake immediately, it usually makes it worse. If you have bad news to report and don’t, it usually makes it worse.

**When you try to hide something, it only makes people look harder for it.** (See also: The Streisand Effect.)

### 2. Give people public attention for doing what you want more of

After the citizens of Jamaica, then a British colony, sent money to help build a bomber, Lord Beaverbrook, the Minister of Aircraft Production, ensured this act of unprompted kindness got widespread attention. Soon, more gifts arrived.

He realized this could generate cash but also boost the morale of the public and the workers building the planes. He sought more donations but never directly asked for them. Rather, Erik Larson writes, “he made a deliberate show of acknowledging those that arrived. When donations reached a certain level, the contributors could choose to name a specific fighter; a richer total allowed the donors to name a bomber.”

![https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F7d0622f1-ccbd-43e6-82b5-00f669f48ca8_1334x1732.jpeg](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F7d0622f1-ccbd-43e6-82b5-00f669f48ca8_1334x1732.jpeg)

Eventually, the BBC gave recognition to the donors on its nightly broadcasts. In the beginning, Beaverbrook wrote a personal letter to each donor, but once this became impossible, he chose the gifts most worthy of attention based on sacrifice, not amount. Larson writes, “A child giving up a few pence was as likely to get a letter as was a rich industrialist.” By May 1941, the donations totaled ~ 13 million pounds ($832 million). Though that amount barely made a dent in the overall production of planes, that wasn’t the point. “To countless men and women,” Beaverbrook’s secretary David Farrer wrote, “he made easy the way to a more personal interest in the war and to an enthusiastic contribution to its waging.”

Instead of trying to get on the BBC every night and saying, “Donate! Donate! We need help!” He gave people *public* recognition for doing so already. The people that donated became quasi-celebrities, and *everyone* wanted to be a celebrity, so lots of people donated.

Praise people (in public) for doing what you want more of. If you want employees to come to the office (I hope you don’t), instead of emailing them every week telling them to come, offer perks, shoutouts, and recognition to those who already do. If you want your kid to behave differently, give their sibling public attention for behaving that way.

It's human nature to want attention.

### 3. A project with more than one owner will fail

Public shelters were home to many during the bombings but were a humane disaster. Liquids that shouldn’t be on the ground were because of the lack of “latrines.” Some latrines were right next to where people slept. Worst of all, there were no provisions for making tea!

![https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F1d954662-6072-4400-9531-ed6897573ae3.jpeg](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F1d954662-6072-4400-9531-ed6897573ae3.jpeg)

Clementine, Churchill’s wife, told the Prime Minister these circumstances were unacceptable. She believed the problem was that too many agencies with overlapping authority were in charge of the shelters, resulting in nothing actually getting done. Quoting her, Larson writes, “‘The only way to get the matter straightened out is to have one authority for safety, health, and everything else’, she wrote to the Prime Minister (carefully calling him his title and not Winston). ‘Division of authority is what is preventing improvement.’”

A dog with two owners dies of starvation.

*Division of authority is what is preventing improvement. – Clementine Churchill*

### 4. What’s right for your people may not be the most efficient

One thing that had infuriated Londoners during the night raids wasn’t just the bombings; it was the fact that the Luftwaffe could come and go as they wished. The fact that the RAF was essentially blind at night was one reason the Luftwaffe flew with ease, but not the only one. Also helping their continual raids were the orders for anti-aircraft guns to conserve ammunition and only fire when planes could actually be seen in the sky, which was difficult to do at night. This upset many Londoners; they felt they were being walked all over.

“On Churchill’s orders,” Larson writes, “more guns were brought to the city, boosting the total to nearly two hundred, from ninety-two.” Churchill followed by giving the orders to fire at will, disregarding the previous understanding to conserve ammunition. Though Churchill knew anti-aircraft guns rarely did any damage to German bombers, “The impact on civic morale was striking and immediate,” Larson writes.

Yes, the constant shooting and bombing from the anti-aircraft guns made sleeping nearly impossible, but that didn’t matter. Private secretary John Martin wrote, “Tails are up and, after a fifth sleepless night, everyone looks quite different this morning–cheerful and confident. *It was a curious bit of mass psychology–the relief of hitting back* (emphasis mine).” The Home Intelligence reported the same, “The dominating topic of conversation today is the anti-aircraft barrage of last night. This greatly stimulated morale: in public shelters, people cheered and conversation shows that the noise brought a shock of positive pleasure.”

Did they waste a lot of ammunition? Positively so. Was it harder to sleep? Most definitely. But were the people happy? Yes. And that’s what mattered most.

A similar thing happened with COVID. Was quarantining, wearing masks, and shutting businesses down *the safest* thing to do? Yes, it probably was. But was it worth the anger, unhappiness, loneliness, isolation, social unrest, and other second-order effects it caused…?

### 5. Opinions are useless if you don’t have anything with which to back them up

While working from his room at 10 Downing, Churchill learned that two bombs had fallen adjacent to the house but failed to detonate (that was a common occurrence). “Will they do us any damage when they explode?” He asked John Colville, one of his private secretaries.

“I shouldn’t think so, sir,” Colville replied.

“Is that just your opinion, because if so, it’s worth nothing,” Churchill roared back. “You have never seen an unexploded bomb go off. Go and ask for an official report.”

This, Larson writes, “reinforced for Colville the folly of offering opinions in Churchill’s presence, ‘if one has nothing with which to back them.’”

What’s that saying about people’s opinions?

*Is that just your opinion, because if so, it’s worth nothing. – Winston Churchill*

### 6. Your reputation takes a lifetime to build, but you can lose it in a second

Lord Beaverbrook resigned from his post as Air Minister three times by the start of 1941. Each time, he got a bit more serious, yet Churchill was able to persuade him to stay on; his patience, however, was waning.

Churchill wrote Beaverbrook after this third resignation attempt: “My Dear Max, I am very sorry to receive your letter. Your resignation would be quite unjustified and would be regarded as desertion. **It would in one day destroy all the reputation that you have gained** and turn the gratitude and goodwill of millions of people to anger. It is a step you would regret all your life.”

### 7. Be in a relationship with someone because *you* want to be

Clementine Churchill gave Mary, her daughter, sound advice for marriage: “Don’t marry someone because *they* want to marry *you*–but because *you* want to marry *them*.”

![https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fb870cbe9-7f69-4a12-98ed-3df8991766ef_860x573.jpeg](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fb870cbe9-7f69-4a12-98ed-3df8991766ef_860x573.jpeg)

---

Read more notes on *[The Splendid and The Vile* here](https://www.dltn.io/posts/the-splendid-and-the-vile).


What Churchill, London, and life during the Blitz taught me about human nature.

7 Life Lessons from 'The Splendid and the Vile' by Erik Larson

*Novelist as a Vocation* gives a glimpse into the creative mind of novelist Haruki Murakami. It’s an anthology of essays – some new, some original – on what it means to be a novelist, why literary prizes are worthless, how Murakami writes, writing great dialogue, originality, and more.

### 1. A professional's true mark of greatness is consistency, not intensity

“It’s not that difficult to write a novel, maybe even two,” Murakami writes, “but it’s another thing altogether to keep producing, to live off one’s writing, to survive.” Elsewhere in the book, he writes, “It’s not difficult to write a single novel. Even a very good novel, depending on who you are. It isn’t easy to pull off, but it’s not impossible. **What’s really hard is to keep on writing novels year after year.** That’s not something anyone can do.”

It’s not about what you do, it’s about how long you’ve been doing it. Time is the greatest filter. In *The Psychology of Money,* Morgan Housel explains this is why Warren Buffett is so famous. Has Buffett made the biggest returns ever? No, but he’s had “pretty good” returns for decades. In investing – as in writing, working, inventing, and life – time is the best judge.

**The greatest way to win the game is to be in it the longest.** Consistency over intensity.

### 2. When you’re stuck, change your process

When Murakami began writing his first novel, he had trouble getting the words to flow. Instead of just trying to work harder or, worse, quit, he changed how he approached it. He ditched his fountain pen and fancy manuscript paper. “As long as they were in front of me,” he writes, “what I was doing felt like literature.” Instead, he used an old Olivetti typewriter and began writing the opening of his novel in English instead of Japanese.

Though he didn’t have a Churchillian command of English, he had enough to make it work. “I could only write in short, simple sentences.” But instead of letting this hinder his performance, it helped. “However complex and numerous the thoughts running around in my head, I couldn’t even attempt to set them down as they came to me,” he writes. “The language had to be simple, my ideas expressed in an easy-to-understand way, the descriptions stripped of all extraneous fat, the form made compact, and everything arranged to fit a container of limited size.” Though the prose wasn’t poetic, “a distinctive rhythm began to take shape.”

When he wrote in English, his brain avoided the “system overload” that happened while writing in Japanese. “It also led me to the realization that I could express my thoughts and feelings with a limited set of words and grammatical structures, as long as I combined them effectively and linked them together in a skillful manner. Ultimately, I learned that there was no need for a lot of difficult words–I didn’t have to try to impress people with beautiful turns of phrases.” (There’s a lesson there, too.)

After he wrote the introduction in English, he “transplanted” it to Japanese. What emerged was a unique style that became his. “Now I get it,” he writes. “This is how I should be doing it.”

If you’re stuck on a project, instead of trying to work harder and force something that isn’t working, see if you can change how you’re approaching the problem. Don’t force yourself to write in Japanese if it isn’t working.

### 3. No matter how good something is, it can be made better

Murakami used a word processor for the first time in his life when he wrote *Dance, Dance, Dance*. While moving from Rome to London, a chapter somehow went missing from his computer and he couldn’t find it anywhere. The chapter was beautiful, long, and unfortunately, wouldn’t turn up. After a few weeks, he resolved to rewrite the chapter from scratch, trying to remember how it went but feeling like he would never write it as well again.

Sometime later, after he was finished with the book, that missing chapter showed up again on his computer. He was flustered. Should he add the original chapter back in? After reading it, though, he was relieved to “see that in fact the rewrite was far superior. What this story shows is that, no matter what you have written, it can be made better.”

He writes later, “What’s crucial, in short, is the *physical* act *of rewriting**.*** What carries more weight than anything else is the resolve to sit down at one’s desk to improve what one has written. Compared to that, the question of which direction to take in those improvements may be of secondary importance.”

When you rewrite something, you can feel the choppiness, the places where the words just don’t flow. That’s harder to do when you’re simply editing what’s already on the screen.

### 4. Find something to do when the muse isn’t musing

The best way to beat writer’s block is to do something similar to writing, but that doesn’t take the same creative effort. *I* do that by taking book notes. If I’m struggling to write something creative, I open a book and start taking notes. Murakami does something similar but translates books into Japanese.

> I have been writing fiction for more than thirty-five years at the time of this book’s writing; yet I have never experienced what is commonly known as ‘writer’s block.’ Wanting to write but being unable is unknown to me. That may make it sound as if I am overflowing with talent, but the actual reason is much simpler: I never write unless I really want to, unless the desire to write is overwhelming. When I feel that desire, I sit down and set to work. When I don’t feel it, I usually turn to translating from English. Since translation is essentially a technical operation, I can pursue it on a daily basis, quite separate from my creative desire; yet at the same time, it is a good way to hone my writing skills.
>

Richard Feynman, the bongo-beating theoretical physicist, used teaching to help him come up with new ideas. This is one of the reasons he lamented the Institute for Advanced Study, a prestigious research institution that Albert Einstein, Robert Oppenheimer, and John von Neumann called home. The Institute gave unlimited tenure to the brightest minds of the 20th century *without* the hindrance of teaching classes. They had complete freedom to do whatever they wanted – and this is exactly what [Feynman hated](https://a.co/d/2p1bf8i). He writes:

> In any thinking process there are moments when everything is going good and you’ve got wonderful ideas. Teaching is an interruption, and so it’s the greatest pain in the neck in the world. And then there are the longer periods of time when not much is coming to you. You’re not getting any ideas, and if you’re doing nothing at all, it drives you nuts! You can’t even say “Well, at least I’m teaching my class.” If you’re teaching a class, you can think about the elementary things you know very well. These things are kind of fun and delightful. It doesn’t do any harm to think them over again. Is there a better way to present them? Are there any new problems associated with them? Are there any new thoughts you can make about them? The elementary things are easy to think about; if you can’t think of a new thought, no harm done; what you thought about it before is good enough for the class. If you do think of something new, you’re rather pleased that you have a new way of looking at it.
>
>
> The questions of the students are often the source of new research. They often ask profound questions that I’ve thought about at times and then given up on, so to speak, for a while. It wouldn’t do me any harm to think about them again and see if I can go any further now. The students may not be able to see the thing I want to answer, or the subtleties I want to think about, but they *remind* me of a problem by asking questions in the neighborhood of that problem. It’s not so easy to remind *yourself* of these things.
>

For Feynman, teaching gave him the ability *to* come up with creative ideas because he knew if he didn’t think of anything, he was still teaching. Murakami translated books.

What do you do when the creative juices aren’t flowing?

### 5. If someone gives you feedback, listen, but ignore their suggestions about how to fix it.

Murakami deals with feedback from early readers, usually his wife, in an interesting way: he rewrites every scene someone doesn’t like. In the end, even though he may not agree with their feedback, sometimes he writes the scene in an entirely new way, and it works much better than what he had before.

“It seems that when a reader has a problem,” he writes, “there is usually *something* that needs fixing, whether or not it corresponds to their suggestions.” This echoes advice given to founders: if a user has a problem, you should listen to them. But if they tell you how to fix it, ignore them.

Criticism doesn’t bother Murakami because he knows, in the end, he gave all he could. He didn’t try to write a bad story, try to cheat, or cut corners. If, for some reason, that wasn’t good enough, well…that’s alright with him. “I know at the physical level that I cut no corners in the writing; that I gave it all I had. I spent whatever time was needed to gestate the novel and let it settle, and further time tinkering to get it right.”

That’s lesson 5.5: if someone criticizes you or your work, and it hurts you, is it because you knew deep down that you could have made it better? Think about that.

---

If, like me, you read this book (or notes) and want to start writing novels, a word of caution: only start writing novels if you love writing novels…not because you love the *idea* of being a novelist. As [Paul Graham puts it](http://www.paulgraham.com/love.html):

> Prestige is like a powerful magnet that warps even your beliefs about what you enjoy. It causes you to work not on what you like, but what you'd like to like.
>
>
> That's what leads people to try to write novels, for example. They like reading novels. They notice that people who write them win Nobel prizes. What could be more wonderful, they think, than to be a novelist? **But liking the idea of being a novelist is not enough; you have to like the actual work of novel-writing if you're going to be good at it**; you have to like making up elaborate lies.
>


Consistency, writer's block, criticism, and more

5 lessons from 'Novelist as a Vocation' by Haruki Murakami

## Irrational

People don’t make irrational decisions on purpose. I learned this from *The Psychology of Money*. If someone is doing something, to that person, it makes perfect sense even though it looks idiotic to someone else.

Morgan Housel, the author, [has a funny story](https://open.spotify.com/episode/1ELrw8BuYVfEh3xHAZof0q?si=8bd6b1a16c0f4853) that illustrates that same lesson. The story goes like this: Every day, a father would offer his son the choice between a nickel and a dime, and for whatever reason, his son always chose the nickel. His little brother thought this was crazy! “You do know a dime is worth twice as much as a nickel? You’re crazy for choosing the nickel!” his brother said. “Wrong,” the son replied, “because if I took the dime, dad would stop offering it!”

The game someone is playing isn’t always obvious.

## Mistakes

Potty training a dog is tedious work. Often, it’s made more tedious because it’s hard to train a dog *not* to go to the bathroom inside *unless* they go to the bathroom inside. I was taught to stick the dog’s nose close to the accident, tell them, “No! Bad dog! Outside!” and then put them outside immediately. Eventually, they learned.

But the learning doesn’t come from getting put outside or even going to the bathroom in the house; it’s getting their nose stuck in it so they can associate that smell with being outside. We should do the same with our mistakes. [In the words](https://open.spotify.com/episode/2QTLimXIzpJPrsXbubtgJt?si=8a8a86629a6349e1) of Charlie Munger, “I know I’ll perform better if I rub my nose in my own mistakes.” If you make a mistake and move on without asking what went wrong, you’re cheating yourself of the opportunity to get better. Mistakes aren’t bad; repeated mistakes are.

## Ego

Speaking to Stanford Business School, Marc Andreessen [says](https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/insights/marc-andreessen-take-ego-out-ideas) he sees two common mistakes Venture Capitalists make: omission and commission. Mistakes of commission, he says, are when you invest everything you have in a company and lose it all. This is tough, but it’s easy to get over in time. Mistakes of omission are different. Not investing when you had the chance to will scar you for life. “Take the bet, lose 1X,” he says, “Don’t take the bet and possibly miss on 1,000X.”

Andreessen says people regularly make mistakes of omission because they don’t have an open mind. They form an idea, such as *No one will want to sleep in a stranger’s home,* and gather evidence that confirms that opinion. This is dangerous. Just because something didn’t work in the past doesn’t mean it won’t work in the future. “Just because MySpace didn’t reach Facebook levels of scale didn’t mean Facebook wouldn’t be able to. So you have to be ruthlessly open-minded and constantly willing to reexamine your assumptions...You have to take the ego out of ideas,” he says, “which is a very hard thing to do.”

## Third-Place

I romanticize pubs, cafés, and coffee shops. The unplanned conversations, meet-ups, and run-ins are healthy. They provide a great break from the grind of daily life. Apparently, there’s an actual name for these types of places, The Third Place. An article in *[The Atlantic](https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2022/04/third-places-meet-new-people-pandemic/629468/)* describes The Third Place as “a physical location other than work or home where there’s little to no financial barrier to entry and where conversation is the primary activity.” The author declares that Third Places are becoming less frequent because of our productivity-obsessed culture. Also, cities where most Third Place institutions are naturally built are expensive to live in, so people work long hours and have little time just to chill. “Urban-dwelling Americans, however, tend to place work at the center of life in part because cities are so expensive to live in. They might work 50-hour weeks to survive, leaving little to no time for leisure and community engagement,” she writes. “Unstructured quality time with friends is replaced with a scheduled series of continuous catch-ups. Subsequently, these overscheduled people lack meaningful ties with their neighbors, and so they patronize spaces to make those connections even less frequently.”

I like to learn the names of things because you can only talk about what you can describe, so knowing “places where people casually hang out” are more formally called Third Places is interesting.

## Quote I’m thinking about

“If you try to make an impression, that’s the impression you’ll make.”

– Jason Zweig’s [dad](https://jasonzweig.com/on-writing-better-part-1/).

221b: Irrationality, Mistakes, Ego, Third-Place, & Impressions

## Look at Your Fish

Louis Agassiz, the nineteenth-century Harvard naturalist, would place a smelly old fish in front of each one of his students and say, “Look at your fish,” then he’d leave. Upon returning, he would ask each student what they had seen. Naturally, there wasn’t much to say. So he’d leave and come back; he’d repeat this cycle for days. One student, unable to see what he thought he was supposed to see, eventually realized how little he had seen before. Finally, the following day, the student announced to Agassiz: Paired organs! The same on both sides! Agassiz was pleased.

David McCullough, the biographer, uses that story when teaching writing classes. “Seeing is so important…” [he says](https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/894/the-art-of-biography-no-2-david-mccullough). “Insight comes, more often than not, from looking at what’s been on the table all along, in front of everybody, rather than discovering something new. Seeing is as much the job of an historian as it is of a poet or a painter, it seems to me.” Quoting Dickens, he says, “Make me see.”

## Good is a myth

The stories we tell ourselves create more drama in our lives than reality. We’ve all experienced the sunk stomach feeling–the text from a boss, “Do you have a second to chat?”; the ominous voicemail from someone you’ve been seeing, “Hey, something came up. I have to cancel…”–that turns our head into writing a screenplay. I resonated with this passage from a novel, *[Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow](https://a.co/d/h8v9qNt)*: “And yet, he knew himself and he knew he was the type of person that never called anyone, unless he was absolutely certain the advance would be welcomed. His brain was treacherously negative. He would invent that she had been cold toward him, that she hadn’t even had a class that day, that she had simply wanted to get away from Sam. His brain would insist that if she’d wanted to see him, she would have given him a way to contact her. “ But as Shakespeare wrote, “There is nothing good nor bad, but thinking makes it so.”

## Knowledge

Information creates clutter; wisdom creates clarity. Information creates confusion; wisdom creates insight. Though the two are often taken as one and the same, there is a difference. Knowing the order and terms of American presidents is information; wisdom is knowing how each President handled a failure in office and strategies they used to deal with conflict. “‘One needs to differentiate between information, knowledge and wisdom,” Henry Kissinger [said](https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/henry-kissinger-interview-i-don-t-see-the-wisdom-there-once-was/). “In the internet era they tend to get mixed up. The more time one spends simply absorbing information, the less time one has to apply wisdom.”

## Waste your time

Robert Caro didn’t intend to write about the many love affairs President Johnson had had in *The Years of Lyndon B. Johnson.* This was mainly because he didn’t think any of them really impacted his political career or influence, until he stumbled upon Alice Marsh. Caro [writes](https://a.co/d/1QTfSbQ), “Then, however, while turning pages in a folder whose label, ‘Public Activities–Biographic Information–Naval Career,’ hinted very strongly that turning pages in this folder would be a total waste of time, and whose contents seemed to consist largely of mimeographed copies of a press release about Johnson’s activities in the Pacific in 1942, there was, suddenly, and age-browned Western Union form: CHARLES BELIEVES YOU SHOULD FILE FOR SENATE, it said. POLLS SHOW YOU LEADING. NO ONE ELSE SHARES HIS OPINION ENTHUSIASTICALLY. IF POSSIBLE, TELEPHONE. LOVE, ALICE MARSH.” This character in Johnson’s life was peculiar and it opened up a lot of rabbit holes for Caro. He may have not stumbled upon it otherwise if he hadn’t wasted his time with a boring folder. Caro “looked at the fish” and saw what no one else could.

## Genius

“A Genius! For thirty-seven years I’ve practiced fourteen hours a day, and now they call me a genius!”

– Pablo de Sarasate

221b: Fish, Thinking, Knowledge, Waste, Genius

## Rules

Filmmaker extraordinaire Stanley Kubrick had 12 rules posted in every room in his house. They were simple yet effective. They were…

- If you open it, close it!
- If you turn it on, turn it off!
- If you unlock it, lock it!
If you break it, repair it!
- If you can’t fix it, call someone who can!
- If you borrow it, return it!
- If you use it, take care of it!
- If you make a mess, clean it up!
- If you move it, put it back!
- If it belongs to someone else, get permission to use it!
- If you don’t know how to operate it, leave it alone!
- If it doesn’t concern you, don’t mess with it!

## Reputation

Lord Beaverbrook resigned his post as Air Minister for Britain three times by the start of 1941. Though he was a bit more serious about it each time, Churchill was able to persuade him to stay on; Churchill’s patience, however, was waning.

In response to his third resignation attempt, Churchill replied, “My Dear Max, I am very sorry to receive your letter. Your resignation would be quite unjustified and would be regarded as desertion. It would in one day destroy all the reputation that you have gained and turn the gratitude and goodwill of millions of people to anger. It is a step you would regret all your life.”

**Reputation takes a lifetime to gain and a second to lose.**

## Star Trek

Lieutenant Uhura, a proud citizen of the United States of Africa, was fourth in command aboard the spaceship *Enterprise* in the show *Star Trek*. The actor, Nichelle Nichols, tendered her resignation with the show’s creator, Gene Rodden, after the first season. Devastated, Rodden asked her to take the weekend to think it over.

That weekend just so happened to host an NAACP civil rights fundraiser, and a coordinator for the event told Nichols that “one of her biggest fans” wanted to meet her. That fan was Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Margot Lee Shetterly, writing in **************[Hidden Figures](https://a.co/d/cn4KBbd)************** said that Nichols appreciated Dr. King’s effusive praise of the show but let him know she had decided to leave. Before she even finished, King said, “You can’t leave the show…We are there because you are there.”

Shetterly continues:

> Black people have been imagined in the future, he continued, emphasizing to the actress how important and ground-breaking a fact that was. Furthermore, he told her, he had studied the Starfleet’s command structure and believed that it mirrored that of the US Air Force, making Uhura–a black woman!–fourth in command of the ship.
>

On Monday morning, Nichols marched into Rodden’s office and asked to tear up the resignation letter.

## Dissatisfaction

In 1908, philosopher Arnold Bennet wrote one of the most practical guides on time management ever published. The ideas are simple, but Bennett’s setup on the importance of time management is crucial to understand. “Now that I have succeeded (if succeeded I have) in persuading you to admit to yourself that you are constantly haunted by a suppressed dissatisfaction with your own arrangement of your daily life,” Bennett writes, “and that **the primal cause of that inconvenient dissatisfaction is the feeling that you are every day leaving undone something which you would like to do**, and which, indeed, you are always hoping to do when you have ‘more time.’”

Dissatisfaction is caused by many things in life: stress, busyness, work, and so much more. One pertinent cause is the feeling of regret that you lost your chance at what *could’ve been.* True, some things are probably said and done, but some aren’t. If you want to change your career, take some classes online. If you want to run a marathon, start training for it today. I’m sure you’re incredibly busy, but you can find 30 minutes here or there to start. It’s important to start now because you’ll never have “more time.”

## A quote on my mind

"The world is full of obvious things which nobody by chance ever observes."

– Sherlock Holmes


Reputation: it takes a lifetime to build and a second to lose.

221b: Kubrick, Reputation, Star Trek, Time, & Observation

## Sandwich

Robert Caro is a master biographer. After writing *The Power Broker*, he started a series to capture the life and power of Lyndon B. Johnson. Though he started shortly after Johnson’s death in 1973, Caro is currently writing his fifth (and final) volume of the series. He’s won numerous literary awards and is a master of his craft.

When looking for an editor for his first book, *The Power Broker*, his agent set him up with four different meetings. “Three of the editors took me to the Four Seasons or some other fancy restaurant, and basically said they could make me a star,” Caro writes. “Bob Gottlieb at Knopf said, ‘Well, I don’t go out for lunch, but we can have a sandwich at my desk and talk about your book.’” That made the choice easy for Caro, “So of course I picked him.”

I love the simplicity of that. It was a good choice, too, for Caro and Gottlieb are still working together. [A documentary](https://www.sonyclassics.com/film/turneverypage/) came out recently covering their relationship that looks fascinating, but I can’t find a way to watch it.

---

## Death

The realization that death was around the corner for many Londoners during the Blitz is something I can’t wrap my head around, no matter how hard I try to imagine what life was like then. Erik Larson puts it well in *The Splendid and the Vile*: “The raids generated a paradox: The odds that any one person would die on any one night were slim, but the odds that someone, somewhere in London would die were 100 percent. Safety was a product of luck alone. One young boy, asked what he wanted to be when he grew up, a fireman or pilot or such, answered: ‘Alive.’”

The fact that death could be seconds away caused many people to feel strange things. One diarist, after being missed by a bomb while in her home, wrote, “I lay there feeling indescribably happy and triumphant. ‘I’ve been bombed!’, I kept saying to myself, over and over again–trying the phrase on, like a new dress, to see how it fitted. ‘I’ve been bombed!’…’I’ve been bombed–*me*!’ Never in my whole life have I ever experienced such *pure and flawless happiness*.”

---

## Fitzgerald

F. Scott Fitzgerald kept a notebook of aphorisms, funny things he overheard in conversations, and other “wisecracks” in a journal. Parts of the journal were published in *The Crack-Up* and are delightful to read. Here are a few of the best ones:

- “I’m giving a dinner tonight, some very fine and cultivated people. I want you to come. I sent a note to your cabin.” “For God’s sake,” Lew groaned, “I don’t want to meet any people. I know some people.”
- “We can’t just let our worlds crash around us like dropped trays.”
- “I like writers. If you speak to a writer, you often get an answer.”
- You don’t write because you want to say something; you write because you’ve got something to say.
- Genius is the ability to put into effect what is in your mind. There’s no other definition to it.
- Fitzgerald: “The rich are different from us.”
    
    Hemingway: “Yes, they have more money.”
    

You can read my notes on *[The Crack-Up* here](https://www.dltn.io/posts/the-crack-up-by-f-scott-fitzgerald).

---

## Sitzfleisch

I learned a new German word this week: *sitzfleisch.*

Literally, it means “sitting meat” or “sitting flesh,” but it describes "the ability to sit still for the long periods of time required to be truly productive."

It describes the patience and staying power one must have to do great work. It’s sort of a mash-up of endurance, perseverance, and focus. It’s not enough to just sit and work for long periods of time, can you sit and work for long periods of time on the stuff that truly matters? That’s *sitzfleisch*.

---

## A quote on my mind

Coming back to Fitzgerald…

“The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function. One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise.”

---

Until next time.d s m

221b: Sandwich, Death, Fitzgerald, Sitzfleisch, Genius

## Comparison

Four years before the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair, the French unveiled the Eiffel Tower–a majestic display of creativity and ingenuity–at the Paris Exhibition.

America’s pride was hurt. Everyone in America thought they were the most creative and ingenious country. To be outshone by the French was an embarrassment. Chicago would help reignite its spirits.

But trying to “out Eiffel the Eiffel,” as the goal came be to known, would not be easy.

As Erik Larson  [writes](https://a.co/d/csE3hLg) , Chicago had to beat the extravagance of the tower or be humiliated, bringing disgrace and shame upon America.

An interview in the *Chicago Tribune* captures the consensus at the time:

The most marvelous exhibit of modern times or ancient times has now just closed successfully at Paris. Whatever you do is to be compared with that. If you equal it you have made a success. If you surpass it you have made a triumph.

If you fall below it you will be held responsible by the whole American people for having assumed what you are not equal to.

**Lesson:** **If you try to imitate something that people have already experienced, you can’t just “build a taller tower.”** Your product, offering, or service, has to be as new and unique as anything that came before, lest it be compared to just trying to build a taller tower in a race to “out Eiffel the Eiffel.”

Chicago’s big unveiling was the Ferris Wheel. It was something so different and new that it captured people’s imagination in a unique way. The Eiffel Tower, though it was still an amazing feat of architecture, didn’t spin 2,000 people around in a circle. Chicago had successfully out Eiffled the Eiffel.

---

## Simplicity

Rain was a menace to the construction of the fair. It would wash away the wet paint on buildings and ornate plants that were already in the ground.

Frederick Olmstead, the chief architect of the fair, gave sound advice to his crew:

Do not lay out to do anything in the way of decorative planting that you shall not be quite certain that you will have ample time and means to perfect of its kind. There be can little fault found with simple, neat turf. Do not be afraid of undecorated, smooth surfaces.

**Lesson: When a deadline is looming, do the best you can with the time you have, and don't overcommit.** There's nothing wrong with simple.

A good plan done well is better than a great plan done poorly.

---

## Details

Olmstead, the landscape architect, insisted on not having steamboats on the Chicago fair’s waterways, even though they would be more efficient.

He wrote:

Put in the waters unbecoming boats and the effect would be utterly disgusting, destroying the value of what would otherwise be the most valuable original feature of this Exposition.

**Lesson: Small details have a big impact. When they're done right, they create an extravagant scene. When ignored, they ruin it.**

---

# Silence

People are uncomfortable with silence. It's often why some people talk too much. They'd rather hear themselves blab than be forced to sit in the uncomfortable abyss of nothing. But silence is a crucial weapon, especially in an important meeting or interview.

Robert Carp, the legendary biographer who wrote *The Power Broker* and *The Years of Lyndon B. Johnson* said silence is the most important thing when he interviews subjects. He  [writes](https://a.co/d/eNcaZDJ) , "Interviews: silence is the weapon, silence and people'e need to fill it–as long as that person isn't you, the interviewer...When I'm waiting for the person I'm interviewing to break a silence by giving me a piece of information I want, I write 'SU' (for Shut Up!) in my notebook. If anyone were to ever look through my notebooks, he would find a lot of 'SUs' there."

---

## A quote on my mind...

"Just because someone holds a position of responsibility doesn't mean they are acting responsibly."

– David McCullough

5 interesting stories and ideas from history.

221b: Comparison, Simplicity, Details, Silence, Responsibility

## Da Vinci

If you want to be a “genius,” it starts with being more curious.

No life illustrates this more than Leonardo da Vinci’s. He never intended to be a famous painter. He simply followed his curiosity and drew things along the way. His adventures included: drawing detailed sketches of war machines; dissecting bodies to learn how muscles and veins work, and then drawing anatomical sketches of them; and cutting open skulls to see how they protected the brain.

His curiosity was enhanced by his desire to observe the mundane. “If you wish to have a sound knowledge of the forms of objects”, da Vinci wrote in a notebook, “begin with the details of them and do not go on to the second step until you have the first well fixed in memory.”

But it wasn’t just big things that caught his attention. Walter Isaacson reports in ******************[Leonardo da VInci](https://a.co/d/98V9WxD),* that recovered in his notebooks are to-do lists filled with things like:

- “Observe the goose’s foot: if it were always open or closed the creature would not be able to make any kind of movement.”
- “Why is the fish in the water swifter than the bird in the air when it ought to be the contrary since the water is heavier and thicker than the air?”
- “Describe the tongue of the woodpecker.”
- “Inflate the lungs of a pig and see if they increase in length and width, or only width.”

So, was da Vinci a genius? Yes.

But that genius was rooted in two things:

1. Insatiable curiosity
2. Intense observation

---

## Brevity

In 1940, Winston Churchill sent his staff a memo titled *******[Brevity](https://policymemos.hks.harvard.edu/files/policymemos/files/churchill_memo_on_brevity.pdf?m=1602679032)*******. In it, he shared four rules all further written correspondence must follow:

1. Set out the main points in short, crisp paragraphs.
2. If the report requires charts, stats, or some detailed analysis or explanation, put it in an appendix.
3. Sometimes, it's best to write only headings and expand orally if needed.
4. Don't use drawn-out phrases. Like: "It is also of importance to bear in mind the following considerations..." Or, ""Consideration should be given to the possibility of carrying into effect..." Churchill wrote, "Most of these woolly phrases are mere padding, which can be left out altogether, or replaced by a single word...Let us not shrink from using the short expressive phrase, even if it is conversational."

Churchill later told a private secretary, **"It is slothful not to compress your thoughts."**

---

## 'You Called?'

Joe Walker was the first person to fly NASA's X-15 rocket-powered aircraft. Experiencing the full thrust of the rockets on his first flight traveling 3,700 MPH, Douglas Brinkley writes in ******************[American Moonshot](https://a.co/d/fWg3MdW),* he yelled, "Oh my God!" into the radio. This prompted the flight controller to respond, "Yes, you called?"

---

## Ballomania

On November 21, 1783, with a paper and silk-covered hot-air balloon, Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier and François Laurent d'Arlandes set sail in the skies over Paris. They reached an altitude of 500 feet and traveled 5.5 miles before landing safely. This was the first time in history that humans kissed the sky.

Naturally, this event drew a crowd. But as always, some didn't understand what all the fuss was about. Someone complained to a stranger wondering what these balloons could possibly be used for. “What is the use of a new-born baby?” Benjamin Franklin quipped back to the stranger.

Though subtle, that eight-word reply gives us a unique insight into the worldview of Ben Franklin...and the value of curiosity. He knew the potential for innovation lies in the future, of what could be. He understood the fact that most "new" things seem useless.

The President of the Royal Society [wrote](https://archive.schillerinstitute.com/educ/hist/Franklin_flight.html) to Franklin, with a somewhat snobbish attitude, trying to dissuade him from doing too much with the balloons. Sir Joseph Banks said:

"I see an inclination in the more respectable part of the Royal Society to guard against the Bloomania [until] some experiment likely to prove beneficial either to society or science is proposed."

To which Franklin responded:

"It does not seem to me a good reason to decline prosecuting a new experiment which apparently **increases the power of man over matter until we can see to what use that power may be applied**. When we have learned to manage it, we may hope some time or other to find uses for it, as men have done for magnetism and electricity, of which the first experiments were mere matters of amusement.”

Translation: That's dumb. First, let's see what's actually possible with the balloons, *then* we can try and find a potential use case.

At first, technical innovation never looks useful, but that doesn’t mean it never will be. Progress advances on a gradient...it's one useless thing after another until someone comes along and puts it all together.

Dismissing an idea before it's fully realized is a great way to never be a part of anything world-changing.

---

## A quote on my mind...

"A habit of finding pleasure in thought rather than action is a safeguard against unwisdom and excessive love of power."

– Bertrand Russel

Five interesting ideas and stories from history.

221b: Da Vinci, Brevity, X-15, Ballomania, Thinking

## Curiosity

In 1910, Thomas Edison created a controversial test as part of the application process to join his company. Though every applicant had passed college, Edmund Morris writes in *******Edison,******* only 4% passed the application “test.”

The questions were leaked to the press because of how ridiculous they were. In a  [column](https://www.nytimes.com/1921/05/11/archives/edison-questions-stir-up-a-storm-victims-of-test-say-only-a-walking.html)  with the headline “Edison Questions Stir up a Storm” followed be a subhead saying “’Victims’ of Test Say Only a Walking Encyclopedia Could Answer Questionnaire,” some questions were listed:

- What kind of wood is the heaviest? What kind of wood is the lightest?
- What part of Germany do we get toys from?
- Of what kind of wood are axe handles made?

Einstein threw shade at the test and is quoted saying he saw no reason to clutter his mind with facts one could read in an encyclopedia. Nikola Tesla, who isn’t the most unbiased source regarding all things Edison, said, “Edison attaches too great a value to mere memory.”

But as brilliant as both of those gentlemen were, they missed the point of the test. Edison explained it was a “rough test” to **see who had the quality he loved most - curiosity**. He wasn’t trying to measure “intelligence, logic or reasoning.” He wanted to hire those who had, “**power of observation** and **interest in the life of the world**.”

---

## Flaw

20 years before the phonograph, Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville, an expert stenographer, patented a machine that recorded sound. After learning about how vibrations move through the ear in a textbook, he thought a machine might be able to do something similar.

caption for image

[https://embed.filekitcdn.com/e/wKeU2qiPEN7uGTJ8Af3QNW/2wZzVKZdEX3ZeDP6G9QDqd/email](https://embed.filekitcdn.com/e/wKeU2qiPEN7uGTJ8Af3QNW/2wZzVKZdEX3ZeDP6G9QDqd/email)

His machine captured sound waves through a funnel with a stylus on the end. The vibrations from the sound would move through the horn and the stylus would etch the corresponding waves onto the paper. He called it the phonautograph. But there was a problem.

There was no way to *listen* to the sound. As Steven Johnson writes in *******How We Got to Now******* since people could read the symbols of shorthand, Scott assumed they’d be able to do the same with the etchings on the scroll, or as they came to be called, phonautograms.

In the end, it was less of a flaw in the design and more of a flaw in the logic of how the devise would be used.

In 2008, the machine was discovered in a Paris patent office with a phonoautogram still etched in the scroll. Thanks to new technology, sound engineers were able to listen to the sound. It  [was a recording of someone singing](https://youtu.be/WpXNqdEUhWY)  “Au Clair de la Lune” from 1860. It’s the earliest known recording of a human voice.

[It sounds cool](https://youtu.be/WpXNqdEUhWY) , but eerie. Definitely not something you want to hear over the baby monitor in the middle of the night.

---

## Money

People say money can’t buy happiness. I disagree. If you don’t have to worry about paying bills or picking up a check with friends for dinner, you’re going to be objectively more happy than if you had to worry about those things. Nonetheless, too much money can cause problems. Even though George Vanderbilt, grandson of Cornelius Vanderbilt, spent six years building a 135,000-square foot home, Morgan Housel  [writes](https://collabfund.com/blog/the-art-and-science-of-spending-money/)  that most of the land was eventually sold off to pay tax debts (after nearly ruining Vanderbilt financially). Housel continues quoting an 1875 op-ed that said, “socialites ‘devote themselves to pleasure regardless of expense.’ A Vanderbilt heir responded that actually they ‘**devote themselves to expense regardless of pleasure**.’”

---

## Bureaucracy

Bureaucracy in an organization is often the result of a solution to fix something that went awry at some point in time. Some examples:

- An email went out with a typo in it four years ago, so now any outbound communication has to be read by four different editors.
- A contractor got paid before they finished the work one time and were never heard from again. Now, any contractor needs to be vetted with multiple interviews and HR approvals before any contracts get signed or works get started.

Jason Fried, founder and CEO of 37Signals, has a term for this: “scarring on the first cut.” He  [explains](https://a.co/d/0hMRfII) , “Policies are organizational scar tissue. **They are codified overreactions to situations that are unlikely to happen again**. They are collective punishment for the misdeeds of an individual. This is how bureaucracies are born. No one sets out to create a bureaucracy. They sneak up on companies slowly. They are created one policy — one scar — at a time.”

Don’t scar on the first cut.

---

## A quote on my mind...

"Learn enough from history to bear reality patiently, and to respect one another's delusions."

– Will and Ariel Durant


221b: Curiosity and Edison

## Edison

143 years ago to the day, Thomas Edison patented his design for an incandescent lightbulb. The word *incandescent* just means something that lights up when it is heated. Most people assume Edison was the first person to *ever* invent an electric lightbulb. That is not true.

There are three variables at play in a lightbulb:

• Something that glows (a filament) when a current runs through it

• Something to stop the filament from burning out too quickly

• Something to supply power to create the reaction in the filament

Many inventors tried different combinations of each variable. In 1841, an English inventor tried using Carbon as the filament inside a vacuum, which is what Edison eventually settled on. However at the time, the vacuum wasn't strong enough and the carbon burned too quickly. In 1865, the mercury pump was invented, which finally allowed for a proper vacuum to form. Then, in 1880, Edison developed a Carbon filament bulb.

The creation of the lightbulb is attributed to Edison for other reasons than his showmanship, though. One of the biggest, was that he *also* discovered a way to spread electricity throughout a town, which was obviously needed to make an electric bulb work.

*(There's a movie that dramatizes Edison, Tesla, and Westinghouse's relationship and the invention of the bulb called The Current War.)*

---

## Wonder

The life and wisdom of Albert Einstein was the result of his innate curiosity. He had a willingness to ask questions about the strange mysteries in the world and see where finding answers lead him.

That curiosity was rooted in one thing: wonder.

This first time it happened, he was sick in bed as a kid when his father gave him a compass. He was fascinated with how the needle moved and was determined to understand how it worked. This was the spark–a simple act of wondering–that lead to a lifetime of revolutionary ideas. *The New York Times*, reporting on Einstein’s death, wrote the most beautiful words that describe his approach to life:

*Man stands on this diminutive earth, gazes at the myriad of stars and upon billowing ocean and tossing trees–and wonders. What does it all mean? How did it come about? The most thoughtful wonderer who appeared among us in three centuries has passed on in the person of Albert Einstein.*

“The most thoughtful wonderer...” I love that phrase.

---

## Pursue

Annie Dillard tells this story in *The Writing Life* and it encapsulates so well human feelings towards what we create:

Every year a young photographer gives his photos to an older photographer. The older photographer separates the images into two piles: good and bad. Every year, the same image gets put in the “bad” pile, yet the young photographer keeps bringing it. ”You submit this same landscape every year, and every year I put it on the bad stack. Why do you like it so much?” the old photographer asks.

“Because I had to climb a mountain to get it,” the younger says.

We love what we pursue.

---

## Loophole

Kurt Gödel, considered along with Aristotle to be one the most significant thinkers in the field of logic, often had trouble not wearing his "logician's hat." In one instance, Jim Holt writes in *When Einstein walked with Gödel,* while getting his U.S. Citizenship, Einstein had to calm Gödel down after he got agitated with the worker at the court house. The issue at hand was Gödel's insistence that the Constitution had a loophole in it that would allow a dictatorship to come into existence.

---

## A Quote...

"We must be indulgent to the mind, and regularly grant it the leisure that serves as its food and strength."

– Seneca

221b: Edison, Einstein, Pursuit, Gödel, Rest

## Time

In 1583, at the Duomo of Pisa, a teenager noticed something peculiar about the lamps swinging back and forth from the ceiling. No matter how big the arc was, the lamp seemed to take the same amount of time to go back and forth. As the arc got smaller, the swinging got slower, and vice versa. The student measured the swinging against his own pulse, to confirm his observation. “Most nineteen-year-olds figure out less scientific ways to be distracted while attending mass,” writes Steven Johnson in *[How We Got to Now](https://a.co/d/9GrhfDD)*. “But this college freshman happened to be Galileo Galilei.” At the time, an encounter with a regular beat was uncommon, so Galileo took note. What he realized was the time it takes a pendulum to go back and forth depends only on the length of the string. The size of the arc or the load on the end are irrelevant. *Fifty-eight years later*, after a life spent entrenched in the ideas of mathematics and physics, Galileo began drawing up plans for a pendulum clock. By the end of the century, you couldn’t go a few blocks without seeing the new timepiece.

---

## Moonshots

John F. Kennedy’s speech in 1962 put a clock on everyone working to fulfill the space dream: “…in this decade.” Eight years, that's what they had. Deke Slayton, one of the original Mercury Seven astronauts, said, “What Kennedy did with his goal was brilliant. It has to be something under 10 years; if you give people a 30-year goal, they won’t waste time thinking about it. It’s too far away.”

There’s a lesson there. You can’t set a goal to reach too soon, or else there's no hope of meeting it and you'll give up. You also can’t set a goal too far away, because it’s unrealistic to even think about. Who knows where you’ll be in 30 years? If you have unlimited time, it’s going to take unlimited time. A more realistic timeline, and something [Austin Kleon encourages](https://austinkleon.com/2013/12/29/something-small-every-day/), is to focus on days. “Days have a rhythm,” he says. Hours, weeks, and months are all manmade, but days follow the rising and setting of the sun. If you focus on a good day’s work and show up, any moonshot is within reach.

---

## Artistry

Doing a job is much easier if you have the right tools. You can build a house with a hammer, but it’s faster to use a nail gun. But becoming reliant on the tools you use is a recipe for disaster. What happens if the tool breaks, can you think outside the box and get the job done? Anyone can create something using the latest tech, but those who can create something great no matter what tools they have are the real geniuses. [John Lennon said once](https://www.imaginepeace.com/archives/4385), “I’m an artist man. Give me a tuba and I’ll get you something out of it.” I love that. “I’m an artist…”

---

## 26.2 Miles

During the 1908 London Olympics, Queen Alexandra [made a request](https://www.history.com/news/why-is-a-marathon-26-2-miles) (as much as a queen can make a request I suppose) for a race to start on the lawn of the Windsor castle and end in front of the Royal box at the Olympic stadium. The distance between the two? 26.2 miles. That’s why a marathon has a seemingly arbitrary–well, actually it **is** arbitrary–distance of 26.2 miles. In 1921, the Olympic committee decided to make this distance a standard for future games. Prior to 1908, the distance was always around 25 miles for the marathon, in honor of Pheidippides, who in 490 B.C. died of exhaustion after running 25 miles to Athens announcing the victory over Persia after the Battle of Marathon.

---

## A Quote I’m Thinking About…

“I’m no genius. I’m smart in spots and I stay around those spots.”

– Tom Watson, co-founder of IBM

An anthology of ideas on history, science, philosophy, and more.

221b: Time, Moonshots, Artistry, 26.2 Miles, & Genius

## Writing Advice from Hemingway

Ernest Hemingway’s first real writing job was as a reporter at the *Kansas City Star*. There, he adopted the simple style of prose with which he wrote throughout his life. That style, as Mary Dearborn explains in ** *[Ernest Hemingway: A Biography](https://a.co/d/i9UcKJs)* ( [notes](https://www.dltn.io/posts/ernest-hemingway) ), **was adopted from  [a writing handbook The Star](https://www.pinterest.com/pin/star-style-guide-110-rules-of-writing-ernest-hemingway-said-those-were-the-best-rules-i-ever-learned-for-the-b--440156563553793781/)  issued new writers. Ernest later said the document was, "the best rules I've ever learned for the business of writing. I've never forgotten them." The guide contained rules like "Use short sentences. Use short first paragraphs. Use vigorous English. Be positive, not negative." It also had rules for describing news events. One such rule was to never write anyone was "seriously injured" because all injuries were serious. It also said to avoid adjectives. Words like "gorgeous," "grand," or "marvelous" were not to be used. Ernest said, "[No writer] can fail to write well if he abides by [those rules]."

---

## Devil's Disciples

The term "to detect" is derived from the Latin verb *de-tegere* which means "to unroof." In Victorian England, the birthplace of detectives, the public viewed detectives in the same light as journalists: crusaders for truth who uncovered all the dirty little secrets of the town. Since privacy at home was a cornerstone of the era, detectives had the unique job of “tearing off” the roof of a suspect’s home to analyze the life inside. This caused detectives to be known as "the devil's disciples" because, according to legend, the devil allowed his henchmen to peer into houses by removing their roofs as well.

---

## Libraries

[Pliny the Elder](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pliny_the_Elder) , when talking about  [Asinius](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaius_Asinius_Pollio) , the friend of Julius Caesar who would bring Caesar's plan for a library in Rome to fruition, said Asinius was, "the first to make the genius of man public property." I love that description for a library. Compliment that with Van Gogh who said, “Bookstores remind me that there are still good things in the world.”

---

## Leadership

Each leader profiled in  [](https://www.amazon.com/Leadership-Six-Studies-World-Strategy/dp/0593489446)*[Leadership: Six Studies in World Strategy*](https://a.co/d/eTx5tlx)  ( [notes](https://www.dltn.io/posts/leadership) ) by Henry Kissinger faced opposition to their plan for the future of their country. But that's to be expected. They weren't looking for consensus, they were looking to lead, which usually brings tension. When Charles de Gaulle appeared in Paris to meet with members of the French defense establishment, a soldier told Kissinger, "whenever he appears, he divides the country." Kissinger writes, "A leader does not undertake fundamental economic reforms as [Margaret] Thatcher did, or seek peace with historic adversaries as [Anwar] Sadat, or build a successful multiethnic society from the ground up as Lee [Kuan Yew], without offending entrenched interests and alienating important constituencies." He continues, "Both during their years in government and afterwards, not everyone admired these six leaders or subscribed to their policies. In each case, they faced resistance–often carried out for honorable motives and sometimes by distinguished opposing figures. Such is the price of making history."

---

## A Quote on My Mind...

"The intellectual is, quite simply, a human being who has a pencil in his or her hand when reading a book."

– George Steiner

5 interesting ideas that stoke your curiosity.

221b: Writing, Detectives, Libraries, Leadership, Reading

## Droste Effect

I'll ask you the same question Sally Draper asked on MadMen:

"When I think about forever, I get upset. Like the Land O' Lakes butter has the girl sitting holding a box and a picture of her on it holding a box, with a picture of her on it holding a box, with a picture of her on it holding a box. You ever notice that?"

[https://embed.filekitcdn.com/e/wKeU2qiPEN7uGTJ8Af3QNW/bxRmVNpCepRVw6R2T4QCoE/email](https://embed.filekitcdn.com/e/wKeU2qiPEN7uGTJ8Af3QNW/bxRmVNpCepRVw6R2T4QCoE/email)

Well, have you?

This is an example of the Droste Effect, known more formally as *mise en abyme* or "infinite regression." **It's the effect of an image appearing within itself.

This is often used in art and filmmaking to help express the idea of infinity.

---

## Rules for a Deliberate 2023

There are many experts who write about their rules for success. I am neither. I'm just a 23-year-old kid trying to figure out life, but I suspect there are others who are trying to do the same.

With that, here are some ideas and rules I'm thinking about in 2023 to help me live deliberately:

**More search, less feed** – I learned this idea from [Austin Kleon](https://austinkleon.com/2019/04/04/more-search-less-feed/)**.** Visit blogs I like directly. Subscribe to RSS feeds. Use [Readwise Reader](https://readwise.io/read). Find and read content in other ways than what an algorithm forces down your throat.

**Quit optimizing the system and just do the work** – We're distracted by things that are new. It's human nature. The latest tools, the hottest new products, the coolest new productivity apps all make us believe that using them will unlock another gear in our ability to get stuff done. That's a lie. It won't. The only thing that gets work done is sitting down to do the work. So, work more, optimize less.

**A full no is better than a half yes** – [Derek Sivers](https://sive.rs/n) puts it more bluntly, saying, "Overwhelmed? If you feel anything less than 'hell yeah!' about something, say no." You'll earn more respect by saying no than by saying yes and not giving your all.

You can read [six more rules here](https://twitter.com/dltnio/status/1609953779310538752?s=20&t=40WDD70_1xQxvL1vFJ7ZlQ).

---

## Why You Should Read History

Winston Churchill, when asked how to best prepare for leadership, said, "Study history. Study history. Study history."

Will Durant, the brilliant author and philosopher who wrote the 11-volume series, *The Story of Civilization, describes* the current culture of our consumption habits when he said, "Therefore I feel that we of this generation give too much time to news about the transient present, too little to the living past. **We are choked with news, and starved of history.** We know a thousand items about the day or yesterday, we learn the events and troubles and heartbreaks of a hundred peoples, the policies and pretensions of a dozen capitals, the victories and defeats of causes, armies, athletic teams."

Reading old things (or about old things) is one of the most important acts you can do. Reading about current events or the latest self-help books leads to ephemeral knowledge. It's not not worthwhile. “Somebody who only reads newspapers and at best books of contemporary authors," Einstein said, "looks to me like an extremely near-sighted person who scorns eyeglasses. He is dependent on the prejudices and fashions of his times, since he never gets to see or hear anything else."

---

## What's Really Difficult

In *[The War of Art](https://www.amazon.com/The-War-of-Art-Steven-Pressfield-audiobook/dp/B07PTBYH2G/ref=sr_1_1?gclid=Cj0KCQiA5NSdBhDfARIsALzs2EBF4qiAaJGyxu7bkm54r9MMV8ttKysOwuVDyVoggLLBtPxZCw6HMj0aAtWJEALw_wcB&hvadid=616931649982&hvdev=c&hvlocphy=9032520&hvnetw=g&hvqmt=e&hvrand=192683585453675654&hvtargid=kwd-12727008147&hydadcr=24656_13611721&keywords=the+war+of+art+book&qid=1672877273&sr=8-1)*, Steven Pressfield makes an interesting point about getting work done. "Writing isn't hard," he says, "what's hard is *sitting down to write* (emphasis mine)."

Reading isn't a difficult task. What's difficult is sitting down in a chair with a book that you'll enjoy and that will prevent you from picking up your phone for 30 minutes. If you're struggling to read and want to read more, you don't need more tips on how to read. You need to sit down and read.

Is 2023 the year you want to write that book? Sit down and write 500 words every morning.

Will you start that business or side project this year? Sit down and work on it for 45 minutes every night.

You can read my notes on *[The War of Art* here](https://www.dltn.io/posts/the-war-of-art).

---

## Something on my mind...

With each passing day you inch closer and closer to death.

It's up to you to decide if you're also moving closer and closer to that which makes you feel alive.

---

This is the first edition of the 221b Newsletter. If you enjoyed this post, please share it on social media. You can share this link: [https://daltonmabery.ck.page/efe995a836](https://daltonmabery.ck.page/efe995a836)