Book Notes on 'Plain Speaking: An Oral Biography of Harry S Truman'

Book Notes and Review of 'The Patriots by Winston Groom'

## Impressions

*Mornings on Horseback* is an engrossing narrative about Theodore Roosevelt Jr., his family, and his parents. It reveals a lot about why Roosevelt did what he did later in life, and how his family upbringing, childhood, and young adult adventures shaped his philosophy on life and work.

## Notes

Theodore Roosevelt was actually Theodore Roosevelt, Jr. The son, just so happened to make the name more famous than the father, which was not easy to do. Theodore Roosevelt, Sr., was a wealthy businessman and philanthropist who loved to travel. His brother, Robert, told Theodore the purpose of travel

> is not to see scenery, you can see finer at home. It is not to see places where great people lived and died, that is a stupidity. But it is to see men. To enlarge your mind, which will never be enlarged by looking at a large hill, but by conversing with, and seeing the bent of the minds of other people.

Yet, he was a simple man. "Best were the pleasures of a morning walk or his books or a good cigar or what he called the quiet luxury of home life," McCullough writes. I can't help but agree.

A simple man who believed in hard work. "Man was never intended to become an oyster," he remarked. "He hated idleness," writes McCullough. "Every hour must be accounted for and one must also enjoy everything one did." Also: "I always believe in showing affection by doing what will please the one we love, not by talking."

---

**Lead, don't drive, younger folks into learning**

Dr. Hillborne West, an uncle from Philadelphia, would recite poems to Teddy and his siblings under trees. "The very fact that he was not achieving a thousand worthwhile things, as was my father, the very fact that he was not busied with the practical care and thought for us, as were my mother and aunt, brought about between us that delightful relationship when the older person leads rather than drives the younger into paths of literature and learning," wrote Connie, Teddy's sister.

---

**Why you should journal**

Theodore Roosevelt, Sr., upon leaving Washington, regretted not keeping a diary.

> All those whom I have seen in social intercourse day by day will be characters in history, and it would be pleasant hereafter [to read] my own impressions of them and recall their utterly different views upon the policy which should be pursued by the government.

---
Two observations McCullough makes about a young Theodore Roosevelt demonstrate his demeanor well. On a ship, Mittie, Theodore's mom, had to "keep a weathered eye on Teedie, who alone of her four children refused to have anything to do with the the other children on board." When the boat finally arrived in Liverpool, Mittie notes the madness in her diary. Everyone was running amok, except Theodore who, "sat off to himself in the salon, reading a book," McCullough writes.

Teedie's knack for learning was demonstrated by someone else once again later during the trip. Ellie, who was suffering a bad throat, "took offense when told to ease up and miss part of one day's touring. 'I want to learn about things, too, like Teedie,' he insisted."

Later, McCullough continues: "Still, there remains a theme, a mounting refrain really, of the pleasure and pride in being the first to see or do something, and eagerness to set himself apart from the others, to distinguish himself, to get out ahead of them; or simply to be alone, absorbed in private thoughts."

---

Foreshadowing the sorrow death would bring him later in his life, during this trip he was informed that his Uncle Weir Roosevelt died. He wrote in his diary, "It is the third relation that has died in my short life. What will come?"

---

As a boy, Teedie's father instilled a sense of action, hard work, and exercise into all of his kids, especially Theodore Jr. The family doctor wrote something that would become the family creed: "Organs are made for action, not existence; they are made to work, not to be; and when they work well they can be well."

"Theodore, you have the mind, but you have not the body, and without the help of the body the mind cannot go as far as it should. You must *make* your own body," Theodore's dad admonished him. "It is a drudgery to make one's body, but I know you will do it."

"it was no good wishing to appear like the heroes he worshipped if he made no effort to *be* like them. Strength had to come first; one must be strong before everything else," McCullough writes.

---

"Asthma" in Greek means panting, something Theodore constantly struggled with as a kid. But these struggles made him stronger:

> Ailment other than asthma, any of the inevitable knocks and scrapes of childhood, or of later life, are often taken with notable stoicism. It is as if having experienced asthma, he finds other pains and discomforts mild by comparison.
> 
> He has learned at an early age what a precarious, unpredictable thing life is—and how very vulnerable *he* is. He must be prepared always for the worst.
> 
> But the chief lesson is that life is quite literally a battle. And the test is how he responds, in essence whether he sees himself as a helpless victim or decides to fight back, whether he becomes, as Teedie was to say of a particular variety of desert bird, "extremely tenacious of life."

[[Marcel Proust]] thought his asthma, like his homosexuality, was part of a price he had to pay for his creative gifts:

> We enjoy fine music, beautiful pictures, a thousand exquisite things, but we do not know what they cost those who wrought them in sleeplessness, tears, spasmodic laughter, rashes, asthma, epilepsy...Neurosis has an absolute genius for malingering. There is no illness which it cannot counterfeit perfectly."

---

On his father's parenting style, Teedie once remarked that his father "used now and then to say that he hesitated whether to tell something favorable because he did not think a sugar diet was good for me."

I love that. [[Don't give people sugar diets.]]

---

Theodore Jr.'s father had the "power...of being focused." Louisa Schuyler said, "Without his power of concentration and great physical endurance such a life would have been impossible."

**If you want to do great things, you must cultivate the power of concentration.**

---

When Theodore Jr. went off in the train for Harvard, Theodore Sr. wrote, "As I saw the last of the train bearing you away...I realized what a luxury it was to have a boy in whom I could place perfect trust and confidence..."

I think that's a perfect goal as a parent to strive for in raising your kids: raise them so when they grow up, you have complete confidence and trust in who they are and what they'll do.

This feeling was reciprocated by the son. Theodore wrote his dad while he was in college: "I do not think there is a fellow in college who has a family that love him as much as you all do me, and I am *sure* that there is no one who has a father who is also his best and most intimate friend, as you are mine...I do not find it nearly so hard as I expected not to drink and smoke..."

After attending his father's funeral, he poured out his soul to his diary: He experienced "bitter agony when I kissed the dear, dead face and realized he would never again on this earth speak to me. He was the most wise and loving father that ever lived: I owe everything to him."

With his father now gone, nothing seemed to matter anymore. "Am working away pretty hard," he wrote in May; "but I do not care so much for my marks now; what I most valued them for was *his* pride in them."

---

On a gate to the entrance of Harvard Yard, William Roscoe Thayer had inscribed:

> Enter to grow in wisdom
> Depart better to serve thy country and they kind.

That's a good life motto.

---

After Harvard, Roosevelt attended Columbia Law School:

> "The law work is very interesting," he said in his diary; and again, "I like the law school work very much." Some afternoons, when not at the Astor Library, he read law in the offices of Uncle Robert...

---

Roosevelt wrote a book, *Naval War of 1812*, and his work habits are revealing about who he was and how he approached his calling:

> To write his *Naval War of 1812,* Theodore forced himself to master every nuance and technical term of seamanship—Theodore, who never particularly cared for sailing, who disliked long sea voyages. Theodore had plowed through everything in print on his subject, tracked down original documents to amass volumes of statistics on fighting ships, armaments, crews.

Sometimes, though, he felt as if he had taken on more than he could handle. He wrote, "I have plenty of information now, but I can't get it into words; I am afraid it is too big a task for me."

(I'm glad other people feel this. If I were to ever write a history book, I think this would be my problem. I'm amazed at authors like David McCullough or Ron Chernow who can not only do the research, but then shape that research into something that's very fun to read and actually coherent.)

---

When Roosevelt was in the State Legislature, he shared a house. His roommate would "always know when it was Theodore returning from a weekend, because Theodore would swing the front door open and be halfway up the stairs before the door swung shut with a bang."

This is telling: it reveals the energy and drive with which Theodore went about his day and conducted his business.

---

On the day that both his mother and wife died, February 14, 1884, Theodore wrote a big "X" on that day in his diary. Beneath it he wrote, "The light has gone out of my life."

---

**What someone does *for* you, they'll eventually do *to* you:**

> Once, seeing one of his ablest cowboys about to put the Maltese brand on an unbranded stray found on Gregor Lang's range, Theodore dismissed him on the spot. The cowboy could not understand. "A man who will steal *for* me will steal *from* me," Theodore said. "You're fired."

---

During his time in the West, Theodore Roosevelt came to embrace not only the lifestyle but the virtues of a "cowboy." He wrote in *Ranch Life and the Hunting Trail*:

> "Meanness, cowardice, and dishonestly are not tolerated," he observed. "There is a high regard for truthfulness and keeping one's word, intense contempt for any kind of hypocrisy, and a hearty dislike for a man who shirks his work." It was, of course, exactly the code he had been raised on. (Recalling his father years later, he would use very nearly the same words: "He would not tolerate in us children selfishness or cruelty, idleness, cowardice, or untruthfulness.") The cowboy was bold, cared about his work; he was self-reliant and self-confident. Perhaps most important of all, the cowboy seemed to know how to deal with death, death in a dozen different forms being an everyday part of his life.

(That is probably one of my favorite passages I've ever read.)

---

I like wrote McCullough wrote of Theodore in the Afterword:

> A book was about the only thing that could make him sit still and his love of books lasted as long as he lived. He read everything and anything, sometimes two books in an evening, and his favorites—theIrish sagas, Bunyan, Scott, Cooper, the letter of Abraham Lincoln, *Huckleberry Finn*—he read many times over.

---

## Books mentioned
- *The Life and Times of Theodore Roosevelt* by William H. Harbaugh
- *The Pilgrams Progress*
- *My Brother Theodore Roosevelt*

Mornings on Horseback by David McCullough


Jim Collins writes about a [bullet and cannonball analogy](https://www.jimcollins.com/concepts/fire-bullets-then-cannonballs.html) for business. Instead of going all-in on something that may or may not work, he advises shooting bullets—small bets at various things—until one hits the target. When it does, then you shoot a cannonball and go all in.

I like to read the same way.

There are _a lot_ of books I want to read; currently, there are over $2,500 of books in my Amazon cart. With such a wide selection of options for my next read, I’m picky about what I start and finish. If I get bored with a book, I drop it. This works fine, but ideally, I get so good at “judging a book by its cover” that any book I decide to start is so good that I finish it. In this way, I hope to hone my judgment so that the number of books I quit each year will be fewer than the previous year. Not because I “experimented” less but because I did more research on the front end.

Reading with bullets and cannonballs makes this process easier. If I’m not sure I’ll enjoy a book, but the topic looks interesting, I’ll shoot bullets: I’ll read interviews with the author, a few sample chapters on Kindle, or book reviews. Sometimes, I’ll listen to an audiobook chapter. (Spotify having audiobooks makes this a lot easier now.) If either of my “bullets” hooks me, I know I’ll want to read the physical copy.

Sometimes, after shooting bullets, I feel like I got the gist of the book and don’t need to read the whole thing. This often happens with business books because it’s easy to summarize a business book in an hour-long podcast. When that happens, I write up some thoughts and move on to my next book. Other times, the author or topic is so interesting that I want to go deeper and get the nuance. When that’s the case, I shoot my cannonball and buy the book.

This happened this week. After listening to a [podcast with Jared Cohen on Armchair Expert,](https://open.spotify.com/episode/6N1F8NwrIuv2nEj71bLIAC?si=4c8cda73b22a4b7c) I wanted to learn more about his book Life After Power. So I started listening to it on Spotify, and before the introduction was over, I knew I’d want to buy the physical copy.

The downside of all of this is that it takes time. If I had a money tree, I would just buy any book that looks interesting, but I don’t. Though books are cheap, the cost adds up over time, so I only try to buy a book I know I’ll enjoy and learn a lot from. This isn’t the only way to choose what to read, but it works well for me.

How I choose what to read: bullets vs. cannonballs


There are few things I love more than books.

The things I _do_ love more than books are often old, like [typewriters](https://x.com/dltnio/status/1675508695055335424?s=20), record players, pipes, and top hats.

But when you combine the two and get some _old books_ in my hands, oh man, it’s hard to contain myself.

Books—old or new—transport you back in time. You’re forced to enter someone else’s life and get an inside glimpse at what someone thought and did. That’s remarkable.

But there’s something even more special about old books because when you read them, you’re not just transported back in time to when the subject lived or what the author wrote, but also to the periods of time when someone else owned and touched the very book you now hold in your hands.

![](https://evm.heg.mybluehost.me/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/IMG_2543-1024x695.jpg)

Someone asked on Twitter what the oldest book you own was, so I thought I’d do a post showing the old books I have in my library.

![](https://evm.heg.mybluehost.me/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/IMG_2530-768x1024.jpg)

The oldest, and my favorite, is a first edition of U.S. Grant’s Memoirs (1885). I have no idea how my parents found this for sale, but I love it. The cover is a bit torn up, though. I’ve debated taking it to an old bookbinder by my house, but I want to keep it in its most original state possible, so I’m still thinking about that. The fragility of the binding makes it impossible to read, but it is still very cool.

![](https://evm.heg.mybluehost.me/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/IMG_2527-768x1024.jpg)

A friend gifted me this fun book after I shared the digital edition in my newsletter. It’s called How to Write Letters (1876) by J. Willis Westlake. It’s a compendium of advice on style, format, language, and more appropriate letter-writing etiquette from the late 1800s.

![](https://evm.heg.mybluehost.me/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/IMG_2533-768x1024.jpg)

From the preface:

> For convenience, the treatsie is divided into three parts:—
> 
> Part 1. Letters, Notes, and Cards.
> 
> Part II. Orthography and Punctuation.
> 
> Part III. Miscellaneous, containing Titles, Forms of Address and Salutation, Abbreviations, Foreign Words and Phrases, Postal information, and Business Forms.

![](https://evm.heg.mybluehost.me/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/IMG_2534-768x1024.jpg)

I have a two-volume set of [The Complete Sherlock Holmes](https://dltn.io/posts/how-to-learn-like-sherlock-holmes/) (1930, I think…). I picked these up for $2 in an antique store. Steal!

![](http://evm.heg.mybluehost.me/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/IMG_2537-scaled-e1708899409238-768x1024.jpg)

I have Winston Churchill’s memoirs from both world wars. The first, The World Crisis, was published in 1918. The second, [Memoirs of the Second World War](https://dltn.io/posts/book-notes-the-gathering-storm-winston-churchill/), was published in 1947. (It’s a six-volume set, but I’m currently reading Their Finest Hour, so it’s not pictured. The dust jacket is sitting on top of the books pictured below. I don’t like reading a book with the jacket on.)

![](https://evm.heg.mybluehost.me/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/IMG_2538-768x1024.jpg)

I also have Will and Ariel Durant’s 11-volume set of Story of Civilization, the first of which was published in 1954.

![](https://evm.heg.mybluehost.me/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/IMG_2539-1024x768.jpg)

Finally, I have a copy of Benjamin Franklin’s autobiography and a collection of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essays that I bought at a used bookstore in either Kentucky or Indiana (it was on the border) for $8.

![](http://evm.heg.mybluehost.me/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/IMG_2542-768x1024.jpg)

![](http://evm.heg.mybluehost.me/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/IMG_2541-768x1024.jpg)

As the years go on, I’m looking forward to updating this post.

A love letter to old books

## Impressions

I was let down by this book, but only by a little.

I started reading it on July 4, thinking I would learn the history of the Declaration of Independence and the early days of America. Aside from a brief mention of the paper signed by Mr. John Hancock, it wasn't what I was expecting at all.

Instead of a grand narrative of the political battlefields of 1776, it's a grand narrative of the actual battlefields of 1776, mainly, the first year Washington's rebel army faced off against the lobster backs.

The mistake was mine and mine alone. I should have read the description more, and not just the title. Once I understood the premise of the book, I was delighted to learn about the Revolutionary War.

People parade George Washington around as one of the best generals ever, but the first half of this book tells a very different picture. Was he a great general? Yes. But he was also indecisive and let his emotions get the best of him; he was constantly on the retreat from the British, and was always fighting Congress for more money and men, since he could really perform only as good as the soldiers he had.

Still, it was a miracle the American Revolution was a success, and without George Washington, who knows what would have happened?

From the last chapter:

> Especially for those men who had been with Washington and who knew what a close call it was at the beginning—how often circumstance, storms, contrary winds, the oddities of strengths of individual character had made the difference—the outcome seemed little short of a miracle.

---
## Notes

**There’s great reward in being able to see things as they are, and not be fooled by optimism**

David McCullough on what made George Washington a great commander during the early days of the Continental Army:

"In truth, the situation was worse than they realized, and no one perceived this as clearly as Washington. Seeing things as they were, and not as he wished them to be, was one of his salient strengths."

Later, McCullough writes:

“Seeing things as they were, not as he wished they were, was known to be one of Washington’s salient strengths…”

Once, during the Siege of Boston, Washington replied to a message from someone complaining about the situation, saying, "...we must bear up against them, and make the best of mankind as they are, since we cannot have them as we wish."

---

**In a position of power, respect is more valuable than likability or friendship**

Washington was “amiable” and “modest” during his time as commander, but he intentionally set himself above others. He advised his officers, “Be easy…but not too familiar, lest you subject yourself to a want of that respect, which is necessary to support a proper command.”

He wanted his soldiers to respect him more than like him; he was to be seen as their commanding officer, not a friend.

---

**Plan for the circumstances**

In the heat of battle in New York, Washington’s presence was requested in Philadelphia to consult with Congress. Meanwhile, arrangements were made “for fast horses to be held at ready intervals along the road, so that if necessary he could get back to New York with ‘utmost expedition.’”

---

**Appeal to the benefits (or fears) of winning (or losing) when trying to spurn action in someone**

Washington: “The hour is fast approaching, on which the honor and success of this army, and the safety of our bleeding country depend. Remember officers and soldiers that you are free men, fighting for the blessings of liberty—that slavery will be your portion, and that of your posterity, if you do no acquit yourselves like men.”

---

Sir George Otto Trevelyan wrote about the American Revolution: "It may be doubted whether so small a number of men ever employed so short a space of time with greater and more lasting effects upon the history of the world."

---

Abigail Adams: "Affliction is a good man's shining time."

---

David McCullough:

> He was not a brilliant strategist or tactician, not a gifted orator, not an intellectual. At several crucial moments he had shown marked indecisiveness. He had made serious mistakes in judgement. But experience had been his great teacher from boyhood, and in this his greatest test, he learned steadily from experience. Above all, Washington never forgot what was at stake and he never gave up.

---

## Books mentioned

- *Rules of Civility and Decent Behavior in Company in Conversation*
- *The Journal of Major George Washington*
- *The Crisis*, Thomas Paine

1776

If, like me, you've long wondered how Germany—after the Treaty of Versailles—was able to amass a big enough army and enough weapons to invade Poland and France, and wage war on Britain, just a few short years later, this is how: 1. They ignored the treaty and 2. Hitler played Neville Chamberlain like a violin.

*The Gathering Storm* is Winston Churchill's account of those events, and these are my notes.

Churchill's rise to fame in pre-World War Two British government largely stems on the fact that, for years, he raised warnings about Germany's build up of arms and soldiers, France's diminishing arms and soldiers, and was trying to raise alarm bells. No one listened, until, of course, they had no choice but to.

This first volume covers from the end of World War One, the signing of the Treaty of Versailles and what it was *supposed* to mean, Germany's eventual invasion of Poland, and Churchill's ascension to Prime Minister.

It is a very, very fun book to read. I'm quite looking forward to studying the next five volumes.
## Notes

**If you want to lead, you need the best information**

Churchill maintained relationships with people deep within the French and German governments. This "enabled me to form and maintain opinions which did not depend on what was published in the newspapers..."

---

In 1932, Churchill almost met Hitler in person. The meeting was cancelled after Churchill asked one of Hitler's confidants why he hated Jews. "How can any man help how he is born?" Writing about the cancellation, Churchill says, "Thus Hitler lost his only chance of meeting me."

Thought that was a cheeky way to write that.

---

**Disasters come fast. Though everything might look okay, decades can happen in minutes. Always be preparing; always be on the lookout.**

Churchill: "Wars come very suddenly"

---

Churchill had great faith in human's ability to do the impossible when circumstances demanded at. When the question was raised how Britain would defend against bombers, Churchill wrote:

> My experience is that in these matters, when the need is fully explained by military and political authorities, science is always able to provide something. We were told that it was impossible to grapple with submarines, but methods were found... Many things were adopted in the war which we were told were technically impossible, but **patience, perseverance, and, above all, the spur of necessity under war conditions, made men's brains act with greater vigour, and science responded to the demands...**

---

**Success isn't always about having the nicest equipment or fanciest tools, but rather using what you *do* have better than anyone else.**

Writing about the British radar system, Churchill admits the Germans "developed a technically efficient radar system which was in some respects ahead of our own." But also explains that the Germans were surprised by "the extent to which we had turned our discoveries into practical effect... **it was our operational efficiency rather than novelty of equipment that was the British achievement**."

---

**You never know when something seemingly bad will end up working out for your good.**

Churchill:

> How little can we foresee the consequences either of wise or unwise action, of virtue or of malice! Without this measureless and perpetual uncertainty, the drama of human life would be destroyed... This was not the first time—or indeed the last—that I have received a blessing in what was at the time a very effective disguise.

That reflection came after Churchill's realization that not being formally connected to Chamberlain's administration was actually a good thing. When things needed to change, Parliament needed someone unattached and completely new to the government. Churchill was able to be this person.

At first, he was upset at not being picked to serve with Chamberlain, but then, as his reflection shows, it was a "blessing in...a very effective disguise."

---

**If you fight when you don't have to, you won't have to fight when you're forced to**

From the beginning, Churchill was an advocate of war. Not because he was a bloodthirsty scoundrel, but because he saw what was happening in Germany and how eerily similar it was to the first war. Churchill wanted to do whatever it took to prevent another full-fledged war.

Churchill reflects on the failure of the British government to act earlier:

> Still, if you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed; if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival.

That description fits lots of things in life.

If you wait to prioritize your marriage until it's on the brink of failure, it will be a much harder battle to fight than if you would've prioritized date nights and intentionally loved your spouse from the outset.

If you wait to get your finances in order until you're on the brink of bankruptcy, it will be a much more difficult challenge than if you started budgeting when you first began working.

If you wait to start working out and eating right until you have your first heart attack, getting healthy will be much more difficult than if you started doing it thirty years ago.

---

> Statesmen are not called upon only to settle easy questions. These often settle themselves. It is where the balance quivers, and the proportions are veiled in mist, that the opportunity for world-saving decisions presents itself.

Translation: No one is made great sitting on the sidelines, coasting along, making easy decisions. Great men and women are formed through difficult circumstances.

---

Churchill on Vyacheslav Molotov:

> I have never seen a human being who more perfectly represented the modern conception of a robot.

The Gathering Storm

![enter image description here](https://res.cloudinary.com/dde1q4ekv/image/upload/v1702584403/cover_cq7dj3.png)

This was the first year I kept a detailed log of all the books I read. I don’t remember what compelled me to do this, but I’m glad I did. I’ll try to do something like this every year from now on!

History, biography, and creative non-fiction or narrative non-fiction were the most read categories by a landslide, and for a good reason, because they are the best genre of books ever.

Here is my Year in Reading for 2023. These books impacted me most as a person and taught me a lot about life and other people. ([I stole this post format from Austin Kleon](https://austinkleon.com/2022/12/28/my-reading-year-2022/).)

## Narrative Non-Fiction

![enter image description here](https://res.cloudinary.com/dde1q4ekv/image/upload/v1702572080/Untitled-narrative_nx8mpy.png)

*[The Splendid and the Vile](https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-splendid-and-the-vile-a-saga-of-churchill-family-and-defiance-during-the-blitz-erik-larson/8630726?ean=9780385348737)* by Erik Larson falls neatly into the category of narrative nonfiction and is a clear favorite of mine. Rarely does a book make me cry, but this book did just that. (I also cried after finishing *Truman* by David McCullough. Don’t you judge me.) Larson paints a uniquely personal portrait of Winston Churchill, his family, and his close advisors. Plus, it gave me a unique look at what it was like to live in London during the Battle of Britain. *[The Devil in the White City](https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-devil-in-the-white-city-murder-magic-and-madness-at-the-fair-that-changed-america-trade-book-erik-larson/586167?ean=9780375725609)*, also by Erik Larson, was an incredible narrative non-fiction book. It was just as engaging as *Splendid* but had fewer practical applications and lessons. *[The Wager](https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-wager-a-tale-of-shipwreck-mutiny-and-murder-david-grann/18732445?ean=9780385534260)* by David Grann (*Killers of the Flower Moon*) was also a fun read. It was about a shipwreck and mutiny in the 18th Century. Again, it is more of a fun story than practical lessons, but that doesn’t make it any less enjoyable to read. *[His Majesty’s Airship](https://bookshop.org/p/books/his-majesty-s-airship-the-life-and-tragic-death-of-the-world-s-largest-flying-machine/18904983?ean=9781982168278)* by S.C. Gwynne also falls into that category.

*[Watergate](https://bookshop.org/p/books/watergate-a-new-history-garrett-m-graff/18576043?ean=9781982139162)* by Garrett Graff is another informative narrative non-fiction book. Graff weaves together the different characters and motivations behind the Watergate scandal. One practical lesson: Watergate was not some grand conspiracy. “Labeling it a ‘criminal conspiracy’ implies a level of forethought, planning, and precise execution that isn’t actually evident at any stage of the debacle,” Graff writes. “Instead, the key players slipped, fumbled, and stumbled their way from the White House to prison, often without ever seeming to make a conscious decision to join the cover-up.” I suspect that’s how most moral failures occur. It’s a slippery slope, one tiny decision after another. It reminds me of Hemingway's answer about how someone goes bankrupt: “Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.”

If you like riveting political tales, *[Crooked](https://bookshop.org/p/books/crooked-the-roaring-20s-tale-of-a-corrupt-attorney-general-a-crusading-senator-and-the-birth-of-the-american-political-scan-nathan-masters/18618188?ean=9780306826139)* by Nathan Masters is also a great read. It documents the corruption of the Teapot Dome Scandal and the strange beginnings of the Department of Justice.

## History and Biography

![enter image description here](https://res.cloudinary.com/dde1q4ekv/image/upload/v1702583960/history_uuaycd.png)

Each of the books above could be categorized as history and biography, but since I also read more “traditional” history and biography books, I separated them.

It’s impossible to say which biography was my favorite because many were so good. I read *[American Prometheus](https://bookshop.org/p/books/american-prometheus-the-triumph-and-tragedy-of-j-robert-oppenheimer-kai-bird/8526472?ean=9780375726262)*, J. Robert Oppenheimer’s biography, to prepare for Christopher Nolan’s biopic, and the book was just as good as the movie. The prologue sucks you right into the conflict of Oppenheimer’s life, and the rest of the book follows suit. The writing is amazing, and you learn *a lot* about the early 20th-century world of physics. The fact that his life is one of the most tragic stories of any American helps.

Up there with Oppenheimer’s bio is *[JFK: Coming of Age in the American Century](https://bookshop.org/p/books/jfk-coming-of-age-in-the-american-century-1917-1956-fredrik-logevall/13599885?ean=9780812987027)*. This book chronicles the early years of JFK’s life and ends right before he begins his campaign for the presidency. (I’m anxiously waiting for volume two.) The third book in this three-way race that probably no one besides me cares about is *[Truman](https://bookshop.org/p/books/truman-david-mccullough/12820325?ean=9780671869205)* by David McCullough. As I mentioned before, I cried at the end of this book. I cried not because Truman was a revolutionary world leader but because McCullough did an amazing job bringing me into Truman’s life as if I was watching the entire thing myself. I felt like I *knew* the man – like I knew what made him tick – and naturally, I was upset at losing someone I knew. Plus, Truman and I are both from Missouri, which makes me proud.

I also read and loved *[Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr: A Life in War, Law, and Ideas](https://www.amazon.com/Oliver-Wendell-Holmes-Life-Ideas/dp/0393634728)*. Holmes’ philosophy on writing and thinking guides my writing and thinking. He believed it should be clear, focused, and free of legalese or jargon. He loved to read and learn, and that always inspires me. I understand this is a biography, but I thought the author spent too much time on Holmes’ war experience, though I don’t much like war stories. One fun anecdote from that period, though, is when Holmes yelled at Abraham Lincoln, “Get down, you damn fool!” when Abe paid a visit to Fort Stevens, and his top hat was sticking out over cover while trying to get a glance at the battle.

*[The Johnstown Flood](https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-johnstown-flood-david-mccullough/10926299?ean=9780671207144)* and *[1776](https://bookshop.org/p/books/1776-david-mccullough/951332?ean=9780743226721)* by David McCullough are both riveting histories. The former has a moral that is also illustrated in *Watergate* and *Crooked*: just because people are in power or have influence does not mean they are acting responsibly. If I had a chance to speak at a high school, that is one message I would try to get locked into people’s heads. *1776* fooled me a bit. I read it on the 4th of July, hoping it would provide some background on the Declaration of Independence and America’s freedom. It did little of that. Rather, it’s more of a mini-biography of George Washington, documenting some of the Revolutionary War's early battles, defeats, and victories. *[The Wright Brothers](https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-wright-brothers-david-mccullough/10347963?ean=9781476728759)* by David McCullough wasn’t as detailed as I thought it would be, probably because they were so secretive and liked to stay out of the limelight, but it was still incredible. The philosophy on learning, thinking, and doing the brothers inherited from their father is encouraging, and their story is a true American one. They were poor boys from Dayton, Ohio who worked hard, took risks, and completely changed the world.

*[John Adams](https://bookshop.org/p/books/john-adams-david-mccullough/951261?ean=9780743223133)* and *[Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power](https://bookshop.org/p/books/thomas-jefferson-the-art-of-power-jon-meacham/943896?ean=9780812979480)* gave me what I was looking for with *1776*, mainly how the politics of the age helped shape the birth of the nation. They were both exceptional.

*[G-Man](https://bookshop.org/p/books/g-man-j-edgar-hoover-and-the-making-of-the-american-century-beverly-gage/18233330?ean=9780593511466)*, a biography about J. Edgar Hoover, was remarkable. Hoover’s tenure in the Bureau from 1924-1972 was ridiculously long. He survived many presidents (some he got along with, others less so), ideologues (communism, which he fought ‘till his dying day), and controversies.

*[And There Was Light](https://bookshop.org/p/books/and-there-was-light-abraham-lincoln-and-the-american-struggle-jon-meacham/18363430?ean=9780553393965)* and *[Team of Rivals](https://bookshop.org/p/books/team-of-rivals-the-political-genius-of-abraham-lincoln-doris-kearns-goodwin/586230?ean=9780743270755)* are two books that helped me learn more about Abraham Lincoln, The Civil War, and the greater political questions that were being debated at that time. *Team of Rivals* is a multi-faceted biography covering Lincoln, Edward Bates, Henry Seward, Salmon P. Chase and other members of the Lincoln Cabinet. What’s noteworthy about his cabinet was most of the people he appointed to it were his competitors for the Republican primary campaign. They’d all lost to Lincoln, but were honored to serve him. And though each had a differing political philosophy, Lincoln trusted them deeply. He didn’t always do exactly what they wanted, but he at least gave their ideas the time of day and reasoned them carefully.

*[The Accidental President](https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-accidental-president-harry-s-truman-and-the-four-months-that-changed-the-world-a-j-baime/6960758?ean=9781328505682)* piggybacked off *Truman* and went deeper into the tumultuous four months from April to August of 1945 when Truman took over from FDR, the Potsdam Conference with Churchill and Stalin, and Truman’s controversial decision to drop the atom bombs.

I read James Boswell’s *[The Life of Samuel Johnson](https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-life-of-samuel-johnson-james-boswell/375751?ean=9781515428633)* which was a unique book, and I understand why it’s stood the test of time.

I finally read *[The Gathering Storm](https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-gathering-storm-winston-s-churchill/11271956?ean=9780395410554)*, the first volume of Winston Churchill’s *Memoirs of the Second World War*, and it was amazing. I learned a lot about the period between the end of World War One and the beginning of World War Two. Mainly, what England and other European countries did wrong that allowed Germany to break the Treaty of Versailles and build up their army. Put simply: Neville Chamberlain was a horrendous judge of character. No matter how many times Hitler broke his word, Chamberlain gave him more and more, insisting that he would eventually stop. News flash: he didn’t stop.

## Other Non-Fiction and Memoir
*[The Writing Life](https://bookshop.org/p/books/three-by-annie-dillard-the-writing-life-an-american-childhood-pilgrim-at-tinker-creek-annie-dillard/8864604?ean=9780060920647)* by Annie Dillard and *[Bird by Bird](https://bookshop.org/p/books/bird-by-bird-some-instructions-on-writing-and-life-anne-lamott/8649952?ean=9780385480017)* by Anne Lammot are helpful, spunky guides to writing, thinking, and life. *[Steal Like an Artist](https://bookshop.org/p/books/steal-like-an-artist-10-things-nobody-told-you-about-being-creative-austin-kleon/6862462?ean=9780761169253)* and *[Show Your Work](https://bookshop.org/p/books/show-your-work-10-ways-to-share-your-creativity-and-get-discovered-austin-kleon/10350226?ean=9780761178972)* by Austin Kleon and *[Perennial Seller](https://bookshop.org/p/books/perennial-seller-the-art-of-making-and-marketing-work-that-lasts-ryan-holiday/11708311?ean=9780143109013)* by Ryan Holiday are three great books for creatives and artists.

*[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)*, a book written in 1908, is one of the most practical guides to productivity and time management I’ve ever read.

*[Surely, You’re Joking Mr. Feynman](https://bookshop.org/p/books/surely-you-re-joking-mr-feynman-bound-for-schools-libraries-richard-p-feynman/7364110?ean=9780606412728)* is a fun read full of insightful stories from an intellectual hero of mine. Feynman never took himself too seriously and always questioned everything he learned. He wasn’t satisfied until he *truly* understood how something worked and believed others should have the same mindset. I agree. *[Working](https://bookshop.org/p/books/working-robert-a-caro/12101947?ean=9780593081914)* by Robert Caro gave a unique behind-the-scenes to a prolific historian and biographer who started a book about Lyndon B. Johnson in the 1970s and is still writing it. Caro provides background about his career and gives helpful tips, strategies, and frameworks for aspiring biographers. *[Novelist as a Vocation](https://bookshop.org/p/books/novelist-as-a-vocation-haruki-murakami/18304495?ean=9780451494641)* by Haruki Murakami does the same, but from a novelist’s perspective.

## Fiction
This was the first year I ever got into some fiction, but even then, it was just a few books. Everyone was raving about *[Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow](https://bookshop.org/p/books/tomorrow-and-tomorrow-and-tomorrow-gabrielle-zevin/17502475?ean=9780593321201)*, so I had to read that, and I’m glad I did. I read a few books by Cormac McCarthy after reading an interview he gave to an old magazine – *[Child of God](https://bookshop.org/p/books/child-of-god-cormac-mccarthy/6717125?ean=9780679728740)* and *[The Road](https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-road-cormac-mccarthy/15546292?ean=9780307387899)* – on the same weekend he ended up passing away. I found that very sad but also touching. Right before this great American novelist breathed his last, I was able to enjoy his works, just for a brief moment, while he was still on Earth. I find that sobering, for books connect us to other people in many ways. I read *Slaughterhouse Five* and *The Cat’s Cradle* by Kurt Vonnegut, liking the latter more. I also read *Oliver Twist.* *[So Long, See You Tomorrow](https://bookshop.org/p/books/so-long-see-you-tomorrow-william-maxwell/6711611?ean=9780679767206)* was a sad book, but it kept me turning every page.


My Reading Year, 2023

JFK: Coming of Age in the American Century

“When I was a little kid,” Mickey Spillane said, “we had moved into a school where there was a library that ran underneath the windows–and I remember the teacher saying, ‘Children, someday you’ll be able to read this book, and she held up a copy of Moby-Dick. And I said to the teacher, ‘I like this book!’ She says to me, ‘You certainly didn’t read this book!’ And I said, ‘Call me Ishmael.’ She could never get over that!”

I love that story.

Here's how Mickey Spillane handled critics.

“I have gotten the worst reviews in the world,” he said. “So we made this big ad out of the bad reviews, quoting from them. Then underneath, we’d have a line like, ‘This book sold six million copies.’ The top of the ad said, Mickey Spillane says about his new book, ‘I hope this one gets lousy reviews.’”

The meanest critics can be the best advertisers.

Read more [lessons from Mickey Spillane's life here](https://thewanderingreader.substack.com/p/8-ideas-on-writing-and-life-from), or read [my notes on one of his biographies here](https://www.dltn.io/posts/spillane-king-of-pulp-fiction).



How to handle critics

From a young age, Spillane loved to read. “When I was a little kid,” he said, “we had moved into a school where there was a library that ran underneath the windows–and I remember the teacher saying, ‘Children, someday you’ll be able to read this book’ and she held up a copy of Moby-Dick. And I said to the teacher, ‘I like this book!’ She says to me, ‘You certainly didn’t read this book!’ And I said, ‘Call me Ishmael.’ She could never get over that!”

---

“There are only a certain number of basic plots,” Spillane said. “All stories are an elaboration on these plots and a good background in writing pulp fiction gives you the benefit of stockpiling these elaborations in your mind plus the ability to twist them into elaborations not yet used.” *You have to learn the rules and expectations, so you can break them.


---

Late in life, Spillane recalled his comic-book writing days fondly: “They were the happiest days of my life. I could walk anywhere and nobody knew who I was.” Fame isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

---

Sometimes, you just need a lucky break. After a friend took Spillane’s manuscript of I, The Jury to Jack McKenna of Duenewald Printing Corporation who worked with Fawcett Publications, in an intent for McKenna to pass it on to Roscoe Fawcett, McKenna couldn’t find the time to read the manuscript. His wife, however did. “You like detective stories,” McKenna told his wife. “Read this one.” The next morning, McKenna’s wife shook Jack awake. “Read it! This is different.” She read the entire thing the night before. McKenna would become Spillane’s agent.

---

Intentionally, Spillane never gave a description of his narrator, Mike Hammer. “If you describe a guy as being six-foot-two, stalwart, big-muscled and dark haired,” Spillane said in 1998, “how can a guy that’s short and fat think that he’s the hero in the story? He can’t do that. But if [Hammer’s] not described, that guy can be the hero in his own mind.”

---

Publisher Victor Weybright said, “[T]he literary world abounds in ruined careers in which a poor second book erases all the promise and luster of an initial success.” This came after Spillane showed his second manuscript, For Whom the Gods Would Destroy to the publishers. It wasn’t a bad book, they insisted, just wasn’t the right timing to publish it after how successful I, The Jury had been. So they didn’t reject it, else McKenna would have been able to sell it to someone else. Instead, they shelved it. McKenna’s lack-of-experience showed, because Spillane was given no compensation for this decision.

---

During a conversation between Mike Hammer and his creator, Hammer said to Spillane, “Writing’s a good racket, Mickey, all you need is an idea and a typewriter and you’re in business.”

---

Use what’s unique to you to create something unique to others. The author writes, “Spillane combined his eclectic reading (including pulp fiction) and life experiences (particularly wartime) with a direct knowledge of the elemental appeal of the comic book into a new style of fiction that excited and pleased a wide swath of the reading public.

---

“A perfect book is written with the climax on the last word of the last page,” Spillane said. “…If you took the last word away, you wouldn’t know what the book was about.” His editor, didn’t believe him, so Spillane bet him a thousand bucks that “if he submitted the new Hammer, Vengeance is Mine!, without the last word, the novel would make no sense. “I turned it in without the last word on the last page,” Spillane said grinning. “He said ‘What was the word, what was the word!’ I said, ‘Give me the thousand bucks.’ He gave me the thousand bucks–I gave him the word.” The last sentence of Vengeance is Mine!, of course, is “Juno was a man!”

---

The critics didn’t like Spillane’s use of sex and violence in his books, so he used their reviews for his gain. “I have gotten the worst reviews in the world,” he said. “So we made this big ad out of the bad reviews, quoting from them. Then underneath we’d have a line like, this book sold six million copies. The top of the ad said, Mickey Spillane says about his new book, ‘I hope this one gets lousy reviews.’”

---

Spillane quickly became one of America’s favorite writers. At a restaurant in Florida Keys where Hemingway’s picture hung up on the wall, Spillane stopped by and was asked for his photo to go up on the wall. On his next visit, Hemingway insisted, “Take him down or take me down.” And down Hemingway went. Later, after Hemingway bad mouthed a Spillane in Bluebook magazine, Spillane was asked what he thought of Hemingway and he responded, “Hemingway who?”

---

Victor Saville, a movie director, approached Spillane to make his books into movies. “I arranged a meeting with Spillane,” Saville said. “But not in an office, that was not the Spillane way. He insisted we meet under the clock at the Pennsylvania Railway Station.” A classic detective move, I guess? Their agreement was originally a 50/50 split of the profits, until Columbia Pictures offered Spillane $140,000 cash for four novels. Saville matched the offer, so Spillane went with Saville. Though Spillane chose the right partner, he passed on the better deal. “If Spillane had stuck to my original proposal,” Saville said, “he would have made half a million dollars as his share of the first two pictures.” Apparently, Spillane never really forgave Saville for that, even though it was kind of Spillane’s fault. Part of the deal allowed Saville to have first rights on any new Spillane novels as movies for five years. It didn’t seem like a lot, and to Spillane at the time it didn’t seem to matter, but it would cause a load of headaches in the future for Spillane. Two lessons: Know what you’re signing away and don’t sign away your future.

---

Jane Spillane, Mickey’s third wife, said in an interview:

> We would be asleep with nothing but silence in the middle of the night when I would be shaken out of nowhere from the rustling of Mickey getting out of bed, throwing on a lamp and grabbing a sticky note to write down ideas. No matter how many ideas occurred to him in the middle of the night, he would get up every time, turn on the lamp, and write them down on a sticky note. Then a book would result from his midnight musings.


Lesson: Books are made out of sticky notes ([Anne Lamott uses index cards](https://www.dltn.io/posts/book-notes-bird-by-bird-by-anne-lamott))

---

Mickey was always remodeling a house he and Jane lived in during his later years because “The guy who built it owned a lumber yard, but he didn’t own a level.” I thought that was a creative way to say it was crooked or it was a shoddy job. You could say something similar about someone who wants to write, but maybe uses basic words, “He liked to write, but it seemed like he didn’t own a dictionary,” or something like that.

---

In December of 1972, speaking to Esquire magazine about his clothes, Spillane had an important lesson on spending money: “I own two suits and a sports jacket. Clothes mean little to me.” But he owned “the best driving gear, the best flying gear in the world.” “Clothes,” he said, “were just something you wear in the city.” lesson: spend money on the things you care about.


Spillane: King of Pulp Fiction by Max Collins

## **Impressions**

<InlineImage src={https://res.cloudinary.com/dde1q4ekv/image/upload/v1690152207/9780306826139_oy2vdd.jpg} />

Whenever I watch a political thriller on Netflix I think, "No way, none of this stuff actually happens." *[Crooked](https://bookshop.org/p/books/crooked-the-roaring-20s-tale-of-a-corrupt-attorney-general-a-crusading-senator-and-the-birth-of-the-american-political-scan-nathan-masters/18618188?ean=9780306826139)* proved me wrong. This is a remarkable narrative non-fiction book about politics, Senate investigations, and bribery charges (I promise Nathan Masters makes all of that interesting) that goes all the way up to the top of the executive branch.

This book is about power, money, and the realization that any political office is just held by an ordinary person tempted by both of those things. It also sets the stage for one of the 20th Century's most notorious lawmen: J. Edgar Hoover and the birth of his shoe-shined black-suit slick-hair FBI. Reading this book helped shed some light on why Hoover was so ruthless in his documentation and the discipline special agents had to follow. Maybe he realized that without those things, a “secret police force” would do the deeds of the highest bidder.

## **Notes**

- I know a book will be good when it has a page titled “A Note to Readers” with this warning:

> This is a work of nonfiction, with no invented details or dialogue. Anything between quotation marks comes directly from historical sources, including FBI case files, Department of Justice records, newspaper reports, memoirs, archival collections, and the 3,338-page transcript of the Hearing Before the Select Committee on Investigation of the Attorney General.
>
- “When public officials were in the pocket of powerful interests, the odds would always be stacked against the little guy.”
- “Where else but a courtroom would a soot-stained miner and the mighty Anaconda Company be treated as equals?”
- The FBI first started as, essentially, a secret police force: the Bureau of Investigation. It was created in 1908 by executive action and was acting as the Justice Department’s in-house detective agency. It was not authorized by Congress.
- William Burns was the head of the Bureau Investigation and John Edgar Hoover was his young deputy.
- President Harding was a master at delivering “sonorous and empty remarks. It was his trademark. He even had a name for it–**bloviating**.”
- Calvin Coolidge was nicknamed “Silent Cal.” “Coolidge hated small talk and, although he tolerated social events, favored his own company to that of others. He slept nine hours every night, napped two hours in the afternoon, and in his waking hours went long stretches of time without opening his mouth, even during official functions.” He was “the sly and laconic Yankee rustic, who was cleverer than he appeared,” wrote one observer.
- Harry Daugherty hitched his train to President Harding throughout his whole career. This proved favorable when Harding was elected president, but disastrous after he died. Sure, he’d spent his life helping Harding navigate the ins and outs of political circumstances but, other than that, he hadn’t really **done** anything. After Harding died, his time as a free rider was coming to an end. That’s the danger of hitching your life and career to the success of someone else’s train.
- Just because someone votes to do something, or says they will do something, doesn’t mean they actually will. Robert M. La Follette understood this when, after presenting enough evidence to get a unanimous Senate vote to authorize an inquiry by the Committee on Public Land and Surveys, no one actually did anything. After seven months, the committee hadn’t even had their first meeting yet. The Senators vote was more for show. If something ever ***did*** turn up that was evidence of foul play, they wanted to be able to look back on the vote and say, “Look, we voted for that to pass,” but that doesn’t mean they were incentivized, or willing, to actually do any real work. (51)
- After Senator Burton Wheeler made his first address to the floor, though it was unprecedented he did so being a junior Senator, some people helped out. Sen. William Borah of Idaho said, “Wheeler, there’s a chance for you to make a reputation for yourself…If you’re honest, and you’ve got ordinary intelligence and you’re willing to work.” “How do you figure that,” Wheeler replied. “So damn few want to work.”The bar for doing something great in life isn’t as high as you think. With some hard work and honest intelligence, you can go quite far.
- Wheeler was willing to go outside of the Senate norms to do things no junior senator had done before (crossing party lines) and found out he could do things better that way. Maybe that’s the lesson with bureaucracies, sure there are rules and stupid regulations people have to follow, but if you’re willing to work outside of those norms, respectively of course, you might actually get stuff done.
- “Public trust ultimately came down to nothing more than the private integrity of individuals…A Justice Department true to its name hinged on the honesty of one man.”**No matter how powerful the position someone may have, it's held by a human being. One who is tempted by power, love, money, and success just as much as anyone else is.**
- The Bureau of Investigation was initially created to be just an in-house detective agency for the Justice Department, created under Roosevelt. But when America entered the First World War, the Bureau, at the orders of President Wilson, doubled its detective force and increased its budget to nearly $2 million. Its new job entailed protecting the nation against enemies – foreign and domestic. By 1920, it had 579 sworn field agents assigned to headquarters all across the nation. By that time, it was a full-fledged domestic intelligence agency, doing just about all they can to gain access to and information about anyone who had left-leaning political philosophies.
- **When you embark on a mission, be crystal clear about what your goal is**. For Burton Wheeler, he didn’t want to convict Daughtery in a Court of Law, that would entail a whole other host of problems and resources, he just wanted him out as Attorney General because he was abusing his post. So, all Wheeler had to do was dig up and present evidence in a way that the court of public opinion would resonate with, so they would put enough pressure on Coolidge to get rid of this bad man. Knowing that was the goal, it made it easy for Wheeler to sort through evidence and know what to present, and how, to tell the best story.In the epilogue, the author writes, “Wheeler’s particular genius–which seems almost counterintuitive today–was to seek justice instead in the court of public opinion. There, unbound by the rules of the criminal justice system, his freewheeling investigation forced Daugherty’s retirement from public life and consigned America’s most corrupt attorney general to the judgement of history. For all his successes, Burton Wheeler couldn’t guarantee another Harry Daugherty or William J. Burns would never undermine justice again. But he did show that it was a fight worth undertaking.
- Harry Daugherty had been able to get away so long with his swindling because he had Jess Smith do all of the dirty work. “In matters of official business, Harry Daugherty met with no one but Jess Smith, who then worked out the details with other parties. Two-way meetings were the rule. Three-person conferences were forbidden: too many witnesses.”
- After Coolidge replaced Daugherty as Attorney General, Felix Frankfurter, a Harvard Law professor, cofounder of the American Civil Liberties Union, and former Justice Department lawyer, told Stone, “The key to [your] problem is, of course, men. **Everything is subordinate to personnel, for personnel determines the governing atmosphere and understanding from which all questions of administrative organization take shape.**”Stone appointed J. Edgar Hoover to the head of the Bureau of Investigation, and Hoover accepted on certain conditions: He said, that “The Bureau must be divorced from politics and not be a catch-all for political hacks. Appointments must be based on merit. Second, promotions will be made on proved ability and the Bureau will be responsible only to the Attorney General.”Stone: “I wouldn’t give it to you under any other conditions.”
- “Over these next few months, which would be so critical for the transforming the troubled agency into ‘the greatest detective force in the world,’ as [Hoover] described his goal to the press, the attorney general would personally supervise its major investigations, approve all hiring decisions, and, most importantly, steer the Bureau through a series of major policy changes.”**Doing something great requires actions that don’t scale.**


Crooked: The Roaring '20s Tale of a Corrupt Attorney General, A Crusading Senator, And the Birth of the American Political Scandal

Anne Lamott’s father taught prisoners at San Quentin, and herself, how to write. “But he taught me too,” she writes. “Mostly be example…But while he helped the prisoners and me to discover that we had a lot of feelings and observations and memories and dreams and (God knows) opinions we wanted to share, we all ended up just the tiniest bit resentful when we found the one fly in the ointment: that at some point we had to actually sit down and write.”

And that’s the most important thing about writing. You can read all the books about the craft you wanted, write down all the notes and plots and storylines you want, but unless you sit down in a chair and write word after word after word, you won’t be successful.

---

Lamott’s dad: “This is the great tragedy of California, for a life orientated to leisure is in the end a life oriented to death–the greatest leisure of life.”

---

Lamott: “I read more than other kids; I luxuriated in books. Books were my refuge.

---

********************************************************************************Publication is not all that great. It will not solve all of your problems.********************************************************************************

“I just try to warn people who hope to get published that publication is not all that it is cracked up to be. But writing is. Writing has so much to give, so much to teach, so many surprises. That thing you had to force yourself to do–the actual act of writing–turns out to be the best part…The act of writing turns out to be its own reward.”

> The problem that comes up over and over again is that these people want to be published. They ****kind**** of want to write, but they ******really****** want to be published. You’ll never get to where you want to be that way, I tell them.
>

> Almost every single thing you hope publication will do for you is a fantasy, a hologram–it’s the eagle on your credit card that only seems to soar. What’s real is that if you do your scales every day, if you slowly try harder and harder pieces, if you listen to great musicians play music you’ll love, you’ll get better.
>

---

> ‘But how?’ my students ask. “How do you actually do it?”

You sit down, I say. You try to sit down at approximately the same time every day. This is how you train your unconscious to kick in for you creatively. So you sit down at, say, nine every morning, or ten every night. You put a piece of paper in the typewriter, or you turn on your computer and bring up the right file, and then you stare at it for an hour or so. You look at the cieling, and over at the clock, yawn and stare at the paper again. Then, with your fingers poised on the keyboard, you squint at an image that is forming in your mind–a scene, a locale, a character, whatever–and you try to quiet your mind so you can hear what that landscape or character has to say above the other voices in your mind. The other voices are banshees and drunken monkeys.
>

---

“If I sit there long enough, something will happen.”

---

“’E.L. Doctorow once said that “writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.’ You don’t have to see where you’re going, you don’t have to see your destination or everything you will pass along the way. You just have to see two or three feet ahead of you. This is right up there with the best advice about writing, or life, I have ever heard.”

---

When Lamott was a child, and her older, then then year old brother had a report on birs due the next day that he’d have three months to write, yet hasn’t started, was in tears at the kitchen table, surrounded by binder paper and pencils and unopened books on birds, “immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead.” Then, her father sat down and with his arm around his young boy said, “Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.”

She keeps telling this story because it gives others hope, and hope, she quotes Chesterton, “is the power of being cheerful in circumstances that we know to be desperate.”

---

Write shitty first drafts. “The only way I can get anything written is to write really, really shitty first drafts…Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts…A friend of mine says the first draft is the down draft–you just get it down. The second draft is the up draft–you fix it up.

---

“One writer I know tells me that he sits down every morning and says to himself nicely, ‘It’s not like you don’t have a choice, because you do–you can either type of kill yourself.’”

---

A great way to write: take short assignments and then produce really shitty first drafts of those assignments.

---

**********On characters:**********

- “As soon as you start protecting your characters from the ramifications of their less-than-lofty behavior, your story will start to feel flat and pointless, just like in real life.”
- “One line of dialogue that rings true reveals character in a new way that pages of description can’t. How would your main characters describe their current circumstances to a close friend, before and then after a few drinks?”
- Have a great narrator! That was Ethan Canin’s advice to Lamott. She explains, “If your narrator is someone whose take on things fascinates you, it isn’t really going to matter if nothing much happens for a long time…Having a likable narrator is like having a great friend whose company you love, whose mind you love to pick, whose running commentary holds your attention, who makes you laugh out loud, whose lines you always want to steal.”

****************On plot:****************

- Plot grows out of character. Don’t force your characters into a plot. Let the plot develop based on what all of the different characters do.
- “For the climax, there must be a killing or a healing or a domination. It can be a real killing, a murder, or it can be a killing of the spirit, or of something terrible inside one’s soul, or it can be a killing of a deadness within, after which the person becomes alive again.”
- Alice Adams uses the ABCDE formula when writing short stories. Action, Background, Development, Climax, and Ending.
- If you’re stuck, write a plot treatment. After going through rounds and rounds of edits with her editor, Lamott still didn’t have a working book. So her editor said, “Listen. I want you to write that book you just described to me. You haven’t done it here. Go off somewhere and write me a treatment, a plot treatment. Tell me chapter by chapter what you just told me in the last half hour…”

************************On Dialogue:************************

- “You’re not reproducing actual speech–you’re translating the sound and rhythm of what a character says into words.”
- “If you’re a writer, or want to be a writer, this is how you spend your days–listening, observing, storing things away, making your isolation pay off. You take home all you’ve taken in, all that you’ve overheard, and turn it into gold.
- You ********must******** be able to identify a character by what he or she says. Each one must sound different from the others. “And they should all not sound like you.”
- “Good dialogue gives us the sense that we are eavesdropping, that the author is not getting in the way. Thus good dialogue encompasses both what is said and what is not said.”
- “You want to avoid at all costs drawing your characters on those that already exist in other works of fiction. You must learn about people from people, not from what you read. Your reading should *******confirm******* what you’ve observed in the world.”

---

As a writer, you don’t ever really know when you’re done with writing something. When you’ve toiled and edited and rewritten and agonized over it and when the person who reads your work says “Not bad” then it’s done. “Writing and editing is like putting an octopus to bed.” “If you know that there is simply no more steam in the pressure cooker and that it’s the very best you can do for now–well? I think this means that you are done.”

---

“Writing is about learning to pay attention and to communicate what is going on.”

---

“If you find that you start a number of stories or pieces that you don’t ever bother finishing, that you lose interest or faith in them along the way, it may be that there is nothing at their center about which you care passionately.”

“If your deepest beliefs drive your writing, they will not only keep your work from being contrived but will help you discover what drives your characters.”

“To be a good writer, you not only have to write a great deal but you have to care. You do not have to have a complicated moral philosophy. But a writer always tries, I think, to be a part of the solution, to understand a little about life and to pass this on.”

“Tell the truth and write about freedom and fight for it, however you can, and you will be richly rewarded.”

---

“There’s an old Mel Brooks routine, on the flip side of the “2,000 year old man” where the psychiatrist tells his patient, “Listen to your broccoli, and your broccoli will tell you how to eat it.” It means of course, that when you don’t know what to do, when you don’t know whether your character would do this or that, you get quiet and try to hear that still small voice inside.”

---

“My friend Terry says that when you need to make a decision, in your work or otherwise, and you don’t know what to do, just do one thing or the other, because the worst that can happen is that you will have made a terrible mistake…If you don’t know which way to go, keep it simple. Listen to your broccoli. Maybe it will know what to do. Then, if you’ve worked in good faith for a couple of hours but cannot hear it today, have some lunch.”

---

“A writer is someone on whom nothing is lost.” – Henry James

---

“Hostile, aggressive students insist on asking what I **do** with all my index cards. And all I can say is that I have them, I took notes on them, and the act of having written something down gives me a fifty-fifty shot at having it filed away now in my memory.”

“When I get stuck or lost…I’ll look through my index cards. I try to see if there’s a short assignment on any of them that will get me writing again, give me a small sense of confidence, **help me put down one damn word after another**.”

---

Writing groups are good, but they require people to respond to their work as honestly as possible but without being “abusive or diminishing…You don’t always have to chop with the sword of truth. You can point with it too.”

---

“When you don’t know what else to do, when you’re really stuck and filled with despair and self-loathing and boredom, but you can’t just leave your work alone for a while and wait, you might try telling part of your history–part of a character’s history–in the form of a letter. The letter’s informality just might free you form the tyranny of perfectionism.”

“Here’s the thing, though. I no longer think of it as block. I think that is looking at the problem from the wrong angle. If your wife locks you out of the house, you don’t have a problem with your door. The word *****block***** suggests that you are constipated or stuck, when the truth is that you’re empty.”

******Problems of output are problems of input.******

“The problem is acceptance, which is something we’re taught not to do. We’re taught to improve uncomfortable situations, to change things, to alleviate unpleasant feelings. But if you accept the reality that you have been given–that you are not in a productive creative period–you free yourself to being filling up again. I encourage my students at times like these to get one page of anything written…just for the hell of it, just because they have made a commitment to try to write three hundred words every day. Then, on bad days and weeks, let things go at that.”

---

When young writers emulate famous ones who came before, they’re getting that style on loan until they can develop and find the thing they’re really after: their own voice.

---

“You wouldn’t be a writer if reading hadn’t enriched your soul more than other pursuits.”

---

“I tell you, if what you have in mind is fame and fortune, publication is going to drive you crazy.”

But there is something good that comes from publication. “Publication is the acknowledgment from the community that you did you writing right. You acquire a rank that you never lose…But eventually you have to sit down like every other writer and face the blank page.”

---

“Sometime later you’ll find yourself at work on, maybe really into, another book, and once again you figure out that the real payoff is the writing itself, that a day when you have gotten your work done is a good day, that total dedication is the point.”

******************************************************************************You have to love the work. Focus on effort, not results.******************************************************************************

---

Coach to Cool Runnings team: “if you’re not enough before the gold medal, you won’t be enough with it.”

If you’re not enough before the publication, the reward, or the recognition, you won’t be enough with it either.”

---

When Lamott went to see a pastor because she was “up and down, scattered, high, withdrawing, lost, and in the midst of it all trying to find some elusive sense of serenity,” he told her, “The world can’t give you that serenity. The world can’t give us peace. We can only find it in our hearts.”

“I hate that,” Lamott replied.

“I know,” he said. “But the good news is that by the same token, the world can’t take it away.”

---

“[My students] will not get big houses and stuff, though many of them want these things more than anything else. They don’t believe that if they got these things they’d probably end up even more mentally ill and full of stress and self-doubt than they already are…When I suggest, however, that devotion and commitment will be their own reward, that in dedication to their craft they will find solace and direction and wisdom and truth and pride, they at first look at me with great hostility. You might think that I had just offered them membership in my embroidery club. They are angry people. This is why they write.”

---

“Becoming a writer can also profoundly change your life as a reader. One reads with a deeper appreciation and concentration, knowing now how hard writing is, especially how hard it is to make it look effortless. You begin to read with a writer’s eyes. You focus in a new way. You study how someone portrays his or her version of things in a way that is new and bold and original. You notice how a writer paints in a mesmerizing character or era for you, without your having the sense of being given a whole lot of information, you may actually put the book down for a moment and savor it, just taste it.”

---

When you’ve finished a book, you’ve finished a book! It doesn’t matter how it sells or who reads it. You’ve gone and done it. Day after day you wrote and finished a book.

---

Writing is like “singing on a boat during a terrible storm at sea. You can’t stop the raging storm, but singing can change the hearts and spirits of the people who are together on that ship.”


Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott

## Impressions

*******************American Prometheus******************* is a tale of a modern Galileo, “a scientist-hero martyred by the authorities in America’s anticommunist witch-hunt.” A sordid read full of science and sarcasm, dialogue and drama, love and war.

## Notes

“I was an unctuous, repulsively good little boy. My life as a child did not prepare me for the fact that the world is full of cruel and bitter things.” – Oppie

---

While at a summer camp, Oppie made the mistake of telling his parents that the boys were teaching him “the facts of life.” This prompted a quick visit from his parents and soon, the counselor banned the telling of salacious stories. The boys knew Robert was responsible, so one night, “he was carried off to the camp icehouse, stripped and knocked about. As a final humiliation, the boys doused his buttocks and genitals with green paint. Robert was then left naked and locked inside the icehouse for the night.” Robert, amazingly, never said a word. He stuck it out the remaining weeks; “Robert suffered this gross degradation in stoic silence.” “I don’t know how Robert stuck out those remaining weeks,” a friend said. “Not many boys would have–or could have–but Robert did. It must have been hell for him.” The author writes, “Robert’s seemingly brittle and delicate shell actually disguised a stoic personality built of stubborn pride and determination, a characteristic that would reappear throughout his life.”

---

A teacher said Robert “received every new idea as perfectly beautiful.” I think that is a wonderful goal to aspire towards. This led him to be brilliant. When he was nine, the author writes, “he was once overheard telling an older girl cousin, ‘Ask me a question in Latin and I will answer you in Greek.’”

---

Oppenheimer’s head tutor at Cambridge, Patrick Blackett, was a genius experimental physicist and Oppie sought his approval greatly, yet often failed to attain it. Blackett pushed Robert to do what he wasn’t good at: experiments. This irritated Oppenheimer. “Consumed by feelings of intense jealousy,” the author writes, Oppenheimer poisoned an apple on Blackett’s desk. Julius, Robert’s father, pleaded with the school not to press charges. Some months later, he would attack his friend. After the apple incident, Oppie went to see a psychiatrist, but that never ended well. Herbert Smith explained why, “The trouble is, you’ve got to have a psychiatrist who is abler than the person who is being analyzed. They don’t have anybody.”

---

Robert would declare, “The kind of person that I admire most would be one who becomes extraordinarily good at doing a lot of things but still maintains a tear-stained countenance.”

---

One day, when Oppenheimer sought to gift Paul Dirac some books, Dirac declined: “reading books interfered with thought.” Later, Dirac was perplexed by Oppenheimer’s intellectual range. “They tell me you write poetry as well as working at physics,” Dirac said to Oppie. “How can you do both? In physics, we try to tell people in such a way that they understand something that nobody knew before. In the case of poetry, it’s the exact opposite.” “Flattered,” the author writes, “Robert just laughed. He knew that for Dirac life was physics was nothing else; by contrast, his own interests were extravagantly catholic.

---

During the Spring of 1926, 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. “I’m in difficulties,” Robert replied starkly. “Are the difficulties mathematical of physical?” “I don’t know,” Oppie said. Bohr: “That’s bad.” Years later, Oppie 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.”

**************Lesson:************** Know what problem you’re dealing with.

---

Oppenheimer was smart, and he knew it. During lectures from Max Born at Gottingen, he constantly interrupted with questions and corrections, chalk in hand. He’d declare, “This can be done much better in the following manner…” Naturally, other students complained, but Robert was oblivious to the politeness of Born’s nudges. One day, Maria Göppert, a future Nobelist, “presented Born with a petition written on thick parchment and signed by her and most of the other members of the seminar: Unless the “child prodigy” was reined in, his fellow students would boycott the class. Still unwilling to confront Oppenheimer, Born decided to leave the document on his desk in a place where Robert could not help but see it when he next came to discuss his thesis. ‘To make this more certain,’ Born later wrote, ‘I arranged to be called out of the room for a few minutes. This plot worked. When I returned I found him rather pale and not so voluble as usual.’ Thereafter the interruptions ceased altogether.

---

Robert was also wealthy, and spent money casually on food and clothes. Edward Condon, who just earned a PhD didn’t understand this. Robert didn’t understand Edward’s familial responsibilities. One day, Robert invited Edward and his wife out for a walk, but Emilie explained she had to stay with the baby. Robert replied, “All right, we’ll leave you to your peasant tasks.” After seeing Karl Compton’s two-year-old daughter pretending to read a small red book, which on the topic of birth control. Robert looked at the very pregnant Mrs. Compton and quipped, “A little late.”

---

Becoming a scientist, Oppenheimer said, “is like climbing a mountain in a tunnel: you wouldn’t know whether you were coming out above the valley or whether you were ever coming out at all.”

---

Robert spent a lot of young adulthood in Los Almos. “After a particularly grueling day on horseback, Robert wrote a friend wistfully, ‘My two great loves are physics and New Mexico. It’s a pity they can’t be combined.”

---

Oppie to Frank: “The reason why a bad philosophy leads to such hell is that it is what you think and want and treasure and foster in times of preparation that determine what you do in a pinch, and that it takes an error to father a sin.”

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“The work is fine, not in the fruits but the doing..” Oppenheimer wrote to his brother Frank in the autumn of 1932. “Everyone wants rather to be pleasing to women,” he also wrote to Frank in 1929, “and that desire is not altogether, though it is very largely, a manifestation of vanity. But one cannot aim to be pleasing to women, any ore than one can aim to have taste, or beauty of expression, or happiness; for these things are not specific aims which one may learn to attain; they are descriptions of the adequacy of one’s living. To try to be happy is to try to build a machine with no other specification than that it shall run noiselessly.”

---

One night on a date in the San Fransisco Bay, Robert wrapped a blanket around his date and then said he was going for a walk. He came back shortly after and told said, “Melba, I think I’ll walk down to the house, why don’t you bring the car down?” But Melba had gone to sleep and didn’t hear him. Hours later, she woke up and waited for his return. Upon not coming, she flagged the police down. After searching the bushes for his body, Melba returned home with the police and they found a sleeping Oppie. Apoligizing, Oppie said he is awfully erratic and just “walked and walked–and I was home and went to bed.”

---

Since his emotional depression in 1926, Oppenheimer relied on discipline and work as his guiding principles. In the spring of 1932, those principles were elevated to a philosophy of life. He argued discipline “is good for the soul is more fundamental than any of the grounds given for its goodness. I believe that through discipline, though not through discipline alone, we can achieve serenity, and a certain small but precious measure of freedom from the accidents of incarnation…and that detachment which preserves the world which it renounces. I believe that through discipline we learn to preserve what is essential to our happiness in more and more adverse circumstances, and to abandon with simplicity what would else have seemed to us indispensable.”

---

Oppenheimer didn’t intend to create the hub of theoretical physics at Berkley when he started teaching there, it just kind of happened. “I didn’t start to make a school.” Oppenheimer later said, “I didn’t start to look for students. I started really as a propagator of the theory which I loved. about which I continued to learn more, and which was not well understood but which was very rich.”

**********************Lesson: The odds of you building something great are slim, by definition, they have got to be even more so if you approach that which you do with the intention to “build something great.” But if you follow what you’re curious about, and what you know, you never know who you might bring along with you.**********************

---

One day, Joseph Weinberg met with Oppenheimer to discuss his course of study. After Oppie asked what he had done, not expecting an answer, Weinberg told him he had been working on a theoretical problem. “You have this written up of course,” Oppie asked. He didn’t, but said he would. Two days later, Oppie returned the paper, impressed, and had the student present the paper in place of a seminar. Afterwards, Oppie said what he had presented was “kid stuff” and that there was a “grown-up way to do this kind of problem.” Weinberg spent the next three months working on a complicated calculation, but to no avail. “Now you have learned a lesson,” Oppie said. “Sometimes the elaborate, the learned method, the grown-up method is not as good as the simple and childishly naive method.”

---

Leslie Groves, the Army man who ran point on the Manhattan project, had picked Oppie for the lead man, but he faced a good deal of opposition. When he proposed his name to the Military Policy Committee, he said, “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.”

**************Lesson:************** When facing opposition to an idea, ask for a better solution, if there isn’t one, you win!

---

When Oppie first met Richard Feynman, he knew he wanted him at Los Almos. But his wife, Arline, had tuberculosis and Feynman wouldn’t leave without her. One day in the winter of 1943, Feynman received a call from Oppenheimer. Oppie let Feynman know he had located a tuberculosis sanatorium in Albuquerque. Feynamn was touched, and persuaded to move.

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“Knowledge is itself the basis of civilization., any widening of the borders of our knowledge imposes and increased responsibility on individuals and nations through the possibilities it gives for shaping the conditions of human life.”

– Niels Bohr

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Many scientists didn’t agree with the use of an atomic bomb. One group in Chicago organized an informal committee to discuss the social and political implications of using one. In June 1945, several members presented a 12-page reported that outline that, “It may be very difficult to persuade the world that a nation which was capable of secretly preparing and suddenly releasing a weapon as indiscriminate as the V2 rocket bomb and a million times more destructive, is to be trusted in its proclaimed desire of having such weapons abolished by international agreement.” For peace as the result of destruction was no peace at all.

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Einstein described Oppie as an “unusually capable man of many-sided education.”

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One day when Peter, Robert’s son, Kitty, Robert’s wife, helped him build an electrical toy, “a square box filled with various lights, buzzers, fuses, and switches.” He called this toy his “gimmick.” Two years later, David Lilienthal was visiting the Oppenheimers. While there, Kitty was trying to fix the “gimmick.” After fiddling with it for over an hour but to no avail, she had to stop to cook dinner. Robert took Kitty’s spot and began working on the “gimmick.” As Robert sat on the floor, the author writes, “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.

**************Lesson:************** Your kids are not impressed, nor care, what you do.

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Frank Oppenheimer said, “The whole point of the Exploratorium is to make it possible for people to believe they can understand the world around them. I think a lot of people have given up trying to comprehend things, and when they give up with the physical world, they give up with the social and political world as well. If we give up trying to understand things, I think we’ll all be sunk.”


Notes: American Prometheus by Kai Bird & Martin J. Sherwin

No one influenced the ideas and philosophies of Orville and Wilbur more than their father, the Bishop Milton Wright. He 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.”********************************************************************

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A friend once told Orville that he and Wilbur would always stand as an example of how far Americans with no special advantages could advance in the world. Orville disagree: “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.”

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In 1889, Orville started his own print shop. He and Wilbur began publishing ******************The West Side News******************, “devoted to the goings-on and interests of their part of Dayton on the west side of the river.”

On March 1, a first edition of four pages appeared with a list of local advertisements. You could subscribe for 45 cents a year or two weeks for ten cents.

It strikes me that almost all intellectual figures in the past worked for a newspaper, or started on. Ben Franklin being another prime example. Thoreau and a band of brothers started ************The Atlantic************. It today’s day and age, people start newsletters. Then, they started newspapers.

Occasionally, they would reprint items from other publications. I liked this one a lot. It’s from *****************Architect and Building News***************** and titled “Encourage Your Boy”

> Do not wait for the boy to grow up before you begin to treat him as an equal. A proper amount of confidence, and words of encouragement and advice…give him to understand that you trust him in many ways, helps to make a man of him long before he is a man in either stature or years…

If a boy finds he can make a few articles with his hands, it tends to make him rely on himself. And the planning that is necessary for the execution of the work is a discipline and an education of great value to him.
>

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Wilbur didn’t have an act for business right away. He preferred “intellectual pursuits” instead, writing to his father, “I do not think I am specifically fitted for success in any commercial pursuit even if I had proper personal and business influences to assist me. I might make a living, but I doubt whether I would ever do much more than this. Intellectual effort is a pleasure to me and I think I would [be] better fitted for reasonable success in some of the professions than in business.”

Yet he evidently spent quite some time thinking about business. He wrote to his brother Lorin:

> **In business it is the aggressive man, who continually has his eye on his own interest, who succeeds. Business is merely a form of warfare in which each combatant strives to get the business away from his competitors and at the same time keep them from getting what he already has.** No man has ever been successful in business who was not aggressive, self-assertive and even a little bit selfish perhaps…I entirely agree that the boys of the Wright family are all lacking in determination and push. That is the very reason that none of us have been or will be more than ordinary businessmen. We have all done reasonably well, better in fact than the average man perhaps, but none of us has as yet made particular use of the talent in which he excels other men. That is why our success has been only moderate. We ought not to have been businessmen…

There is always a danger that a person of this disposition will, if left to depend upon himself, retire into the first corner he falls into a remain there all his life struggling for bare existence (unless some earthquake throws him out into a more favorable location), where if put on the right path with proper special equipment, he would advance far. **Many men are better fitted for improving chances offered them than in turning up chances themselves.**
>

---

During their third year in business as bicycle repair men, they started designing their own model of bike. 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.” I thought that was genius. They didn’t focus on the style or the new parts or any “features.” It was all about the benefits, “getting their first.”

---

Wilbur’s first first step to tackling the problem of flight was to deliberately study all that had been published, tried, and tested. On Tuesday, May 30, 1899, Wilbur sat down and wrote a letter addressed to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington. He writes, “I am about to begin a systematic study of the subject in preparation for practical work to which I expect to devote what time I can spare from my regular business. I wish to obtain such papers as the Smithsonian Institution has published on this subject, and if possible a list of other works in print in the English language.”

---

*****Avion***** is a french word for aviation. It was named by a French electrical engineer, Clément Ader.

---

The problem with flight wasn’t getting in the air…it was staying there. At first, wind would help the brothers achieve this most. They had to find the windiest part of the country, so they asked. Wilbur wrote a letter to the United States Weather Bureau in Washington about prevailing winds around the country. In response, they sent extensive records of monthly wind velocities at more than a hundred Weather Bureau stations. This is where they first picked Kitty Hawk.

---

A poem under a chapter heading that I liked:

********************************************************************One ship drives east and another drives west
With the self-same winds that blow.
’Tis the set of the sails
And not the gales
Which tells us the way to go.********************************************************************

– Ella Wheeler Wilxox, “Winds of Fate”

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“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, writing about his attitude towards testing flights at Kitty Hawk.

---

The stars were so bright at Kitty Hawk, “he could read his watch by them.” I ****love**** that metaphor.

---

The Wright Brothers didn’t make history without working hard. John T. Daniels, a Kitty Hawk residence who helped the brothers set up their operation there, said they were “two of the workingest boys” ever seen, “and when they worked, *they worked…*They had their whole heart and soul in what they were doing.”

They also had undoubted courage. Said later in the ************Aeronautical Journal************, ************“Never in the history of the world had men studied the problem with such scientific skill nor with such undaunted courage.”

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. After thier first flight with a motor, Charlie Taylor, the mechanic, 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.
>

---

A visitor to the site at Kitty Hawk, Mr. Huffaker, was amazed by the brothers mechanical ability. Wilbur writes about him:

> He is astonished at our mechanical facility, and as he has attributed his own failures to the lack of this, 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.
>

This is a key lesson the Wright brothers understood: just because they figured ***one thing*** out, didn’t mean they had the ************entire thing************ figured out. They realized that a solution usually leads to another problem, one they didn’t know they would have – **************couldn’t know************** they would have.

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The brothers “stood on the shoulders of many giants” - Lilienthal, Langley, and Chanute – but what they found out was that their data, the tables and charts their heroes had published before them were all wrong. They didn’t work in reality.

**************Lesson:************** Theory rarely matches reality.

---

Again, the hard part about flight wasn’t getting in the air, it was staying there. To do so, the “pilot” had to learn how to fly the wind, and this was very hard to do. In a wonderful presentation, Wilbur delivered a great example. Taking a sheet of paper and dropping it, he pointed out how it would not settle steadily, “but it insists on contravening every recognized rule of decorum, turning over and darting hither and thither in the most erratic manner, much after the style of an untrained horse.”

Wilbur said you could learn to ride this horse in one of two ways:

> One is to get on him and learn by actual practice how each motion and trick may be best met; the other is to sit on the fence and watch the beast a while, and then retire to the house and at leisure figure out the best way of overcoming his jumps and kicks. The latter system is the safest, but the former, on the whole, turns out the larger proportion of good riders.
>

He followed up that if one were looking for safety, he would do well to sit on the fence. “But if you really wish to learn, you must mount a machine and become acquainted with its tricks by actual trial.”

---

The first critique of a new technology, almost always, is what useful thing will it do? This happened with hot air balloons and Ben Franklin when someone asked him what useful purpose the balloons will be for, to which he quipped “What use are babies for?”

Simon Newcomb, an astronomer, wrote in ****************McClure Magazine****************, “The first successful flyer will be the handiwork of a watchmaker, and will carry nothing heavier than an insect.”

---

Talk about an MVP…before they had a motor, the brothers spent three years learning how to just ride and glide on the wind. Once they could soar, float, dive, rise, circle, glide and land…then they tried to add a motor.

---

The thing that stands out the most to me about the Wright brothers is that they never let fame or success make them cocky or live for money. Samuel Langley was their “competitor” for a brief period of time. After his dismal failure, they never made critical or belittling comments about him. They expressed gratitude and respect. McCullough writes, “Just knowing that the head of the Smothsonian, the most prominent scientific institution in America, believed in the possibility of human flight was one of the influences that led them to proceed with their work…”

Wilbur also said about him:

> He possessed mental and moral qualities of the kind that influence history. When scientists in general considered it discreditable to work in the field of aeronautics he possessed both the discernment to discover possibilities there and the moral courage to subject himself to the ridicule of the public and the apologies of his friends. He deserves more credit for this than he has yet received.
>

---

The first time Orville flew with a motor he was asked afterwards if he was scared. “Scared?” He replied. “There wasn’t time.”

---

Samuel Langley, the brothers’ “competition” for a time, had a massive failure with his project. In all, it cost $70,000! For the brothers, their total expenses for everything from 1900 to 1903, including materials and travel from Dayton to Kitty Hawk, was a little less than $1,000, all payed for with profits from their bike shop.

---

Root would say of the brothers, he had been “astonished” by the extent of their library and to find in conversation that “they were thoroughly versed not only in regard to our present knowledge, but everything that had been done in the past.”

---

****************************************“The best dividends on the labor invested have invariably come from seeking more knowledge rather than more power.” – The Wright Brothers****************************************

---

While trying to negotiate the sale of their flyer, naturally, tensions were high, but Wilbur never rattled. McCullough writes, “He could be firm without being dictorial, disagree without causing offense.”

---

After the big successful flight at Le Mans, Léon Delagrange wrote of Wilbur:

> Wilbur Wright is the best example of strength of character that I have ever seen. In spite of the sarcastic remarks and the mockery, in spite of the traps set up from everywhere all these years, he has not faltered. He is sure of himself, of his genius, and he kept his secret. He had the desire to participate today to prove to the world he had not lied.
>

Another spectator said of Wilbur, “He went his way always in his own way, never showing off, never ever playing to the crowd. The impatience of a hundred thousand persons would not accelerate the rhythm of his stride.

---

With the increased attention came increased pressure to fly. People would come from all over to see the spectacle, but there was always a risk that conditions for flight weren’t favorable. Wilbur, in all his quiet confidence, never let that pressure get to him. Once, on the very first flight when the motor turned on, Wilbur didn’t like what he heard. He asked an associate if there was a last minute change to the motor. There was. Wilbur got out of the seat and walked over to the motor to ensure there was nothing out of sorts.

When Orville began test flights with the motor in the US while Wilbur is in Paris, he wrote him a letter

> 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.
>

Later, after they had much success and were back in Fort Meyer for trials, they experienced a 16mph gale, too strong to fly. With the pressure of thousands watching, 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.”

Lesson: Don’t let any one pressure you into doing something you’re not ready for.

---

Amazingly, in the nine years they were flying, they only had one major crash. It was Orville. His guest on the plane, died that day. Wilbur knew it too. He wrote his father it was, “the only time anything has broken on nay of our machines while in flight, in nine years experience.” His was the first death in the history of powered flight. Orville was much too lucky. But the crash did nothing to their reputation. “If Mr. Wright should never again enter an aeroplane,” Squier said, “his work last week at Fort Meyer will have secured him a lasting place in history as the man who showed the world that mechanical flight was an assured success.”

Wilbur blamed himself for the accident. He wrote a letter to Katherine:

> I do not mean that Orville was incompetent to do the work itself, but I realized that he would be surrounded by thousands of people who with the most friendly intentions in the world would consume his time, exhaust his strength, and keep him from having proper rest…If I had been there I could have held off the visitors while he worked or let him hold off while I worked…People think I am foolish because I do not like the men to do the least important work on the machine. They say I crawl under the machine when the men could do the thing well enough. I do it partly because it gives me opportunity to see if anything in the neighborhood is out of order.
>

Wilbur worked so much on the plane, the guys in Paris called him “The Oilcan.”

---

At a banquet for The Aéro-Club de France, Wilbur Wright and his machine were honored. His speech that night sums up his attitude and reflects his humility in all he had done:

> In the enthusiasm being shown around me, I see not merely an outburst intended to glorify a person, but a tribute to an idea that has always impassioned mankind.
>

Northcliffe would say about the Wrights, that he did not think the excitement over them and the intense interest produced by their extraordinary feats had any effect on them whatsoever.

---

In a mark of brilliance, the king of Spain, Alfonso XIII, witnessed the flights, but he wanted another demonstration. “I have seen what you [Wilbur] can do. I want to see what one of your pilots can do.”

---

The time in Europe had amounted to $200,000 in contracts for the family. Nice, but doesn’t seem huge honestly. Later, they signed a contract with the War Department for $30,000.

---

When the family returned to Dayton, they had a huge celebration put on in their honor. The night before, the Dayton Daily News ran an editorial

> 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 celebrations 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 wold 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.
>

---

“A man who works for the immediate present and its immediate rewards is nothing but a fool.” – Wilbur Wright


The Wright Brothers by David McCullough

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.*

9 Lessons on Curiosity and Adventure from Richard Feynman

*You can read more structured notes [on this book here](https://thewanderingreader.substack.com/p/he-wasnt-like-other-scientists). It was originally posted on my newsletter.*

Like any great genius in Feynman’s day, he got his start fixing and playing with science through radios. He’d take them apart and put them back together again, only making them better than they were before. Through this, he got job fixing broken radios. In one instance, he made quite an impression on someone.

The radio in question was made a funny noise when it first turned on but stopped after awhile and was fine. Not an ideal situation, but hey at least the radio still worked. When Feynman got the scene to assess the damage, he heard the sound and the following silence, “How can that happen?” he thinks to himself.

He starts walking back and forth, thinking. “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…” Evidently this took quite some time because the guy says to him, “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 fixed the problem. The guy giving him trouble at first reversed his stance, getting Feynman more jobs and telling everyone, “He fixes radios by ***********thinking!”*********** “The whole idea of thinking to fix a radio–” Feynman writes, “a little buy stops and thinks, and figures out how to do it–he never that was possible.”

---

While working at a hotel his aunt owned, Feynman did a lot of odd jobs. One of those jobs was cutting vegetables in the kitchen, and specifically string beans, into one-inch pieces. It was a convoluted and inefficient process he had to follow, so he changed it up.

“I sat down at a wooden table outside the kitchen, put a bowl in my lap, and stuck a very sharp knife into the table at a forty-five degree angle away from me. Then I put a pile of string beans on each side, and I’d pick out a bean, one in each hand, and bring it towards me with enough speed that it would slice, and the pieces would slide into the bowl that was in my lap.”

This was much more efficient and got the attention of his boss who asked him what he was doing. While answering, Feynman missed a string bean and put his finger through the knife. Instead of having a bunch of beans cut, now he couldn’t use any of them because they were soiled with blood. That was the end of cutting experiments.

---

Sometimes, truth works. For whatever reason, Feynman decided to take the door off of his fraternity house in the middle of the night as a prank. In the morning, everyone asked who took the door. Going around one by one, they would ask each member if they took the door. Being serious, Feynman admitted to taking it: “Yeah, *I* took the door.” But his mates thought he was joking. “Cut it out Feynman; this is **********serious!”**********

---

When you have a different box of tools than everyone else, you can do things they can’t. Feynman learned, though *****************Advanced Calculus*****************, how to solve integrals in a way that wasn’t commonly taught at MIT or Princeton. Therefore, 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’ve learned any skill untraditionally, you may feel like you don’t know ************everything************ people who attended university for that skill do, but you might learn 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 everyone else before you had: not right.

---

While working at Los Almos, every now and then a lieutenant from the Army would come down and check on their work. Feynman’s boss told him that since he was a civillian 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.”

Knowledge is power. Be careful who you share information with. If someone isn’t telling you something, it may be because you’re the lieutenant.

---

Hans Bethe is one of the most remarkable physicists to ever live. Feynman crossed paths with him multiple times at Los Alamos and made quite an impression. During the early stages of the project, Bethe needed someone to bounce his ideas off of. Feynman became that guy because he said it like it truly was, not afraid of his stature. “You see, when I hear about physics, I just think about physics, and I don’t know who I’m talking to, 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, an even more remarkable scientist than Bethe, that Feynman was the guy to talk to when they had a crazy idea. “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.”

“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.”

---

Feynman famously bashed the mission statement of the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS). Though it was home to the likes of John von Neumann, Albert Einstein, and Robert Oppenheimer, its principles, according to Feynman, were misguided.

IAS was started as a research institution. It promised to provide a salary and a place to work for the most brilliant minds in science and math without the hinderance of teaching courses, as was the custom with most universities. Feynman hated this.

> I don’t believe I can really do without teaching. The reason is, I have to have something so that when I don’t have any ideas and I’m not getting anywhere I can say to myself, ‘At least I’m living; at least I’m *****doing***** something; I’m making ****some**** contribution.
>

> When I was at Princeton in the 1940s I could see what happened to those great minds at the Institute for Advanced Study, who had been specifically selected for their tremendous brains and were now given this opportunity to sit in this lovely house by the woods there, with no classes to teach, with no obligations whatsoever. These poor bastards could now sit and think clearly all by themselves, OK? So they don’t get an idea for awhile: They have every opportunity to do something, and they’re not getting ideas. I believe in a situation like this a kind of guilt or depressions worms inside of you, and you begin to *****worry***** about not getting any ideas. And nothing happens. Still no ideas come. Nothing happens when there’s not enough ****real**** activity and challenge: You’re not in contact with the experimental guys. You don’t have to think how to answer questions from the students. Nothing!
>

> 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.
>

---

When you can, it’s important to follow your curiosity and wonder. It may just win you a Nobel Prize. At least, it did for Feynman. Here’s the story.

Within a week of starting as a professor at Cornell, Feynman saw some guy throw a plate with a medallion of Cornell in the center of it. While it was spinning around in the air, 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 come 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.”

---

One of Feynman’s many life lessons can be learned from the stories about him in a bar or a nightclub. Here is an interesting one.

While Feynman was out one night, he asked “The Master” for advice on picking up girls. The Master taught Feynman it wasn’t as hard as he was making it to be. He said you simply buy them a drink and then ask them to sleep with you.

After a few failed attempts, it worked! Feynman was surprised, but this wouldn’t become a regular habit of his.

Still, there is a unique insight he makes: “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.”

---

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.

Don’t let anything master you. Be your own master.

---

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 became lonely.

While 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 just two years.

---

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 goes, “What were Socrates’s ideas on the relationship between Truth and Beauty?” Sadly, the student can’t answer. So he asks the student, “What did Socrates say to Plato in the Third Symposium?” At this, he tells you everything, word for word that Socrates said, in Greek. But what Socrates was talking about in the Third Symposium was 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, but it describes how nature works and what happens in the world. It’s important, always, to make sure you’re actually ********learning******** and not just **********memorizing**********


Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman by Richard Feynman

*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.
>


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

Novelist as a Vocation by Haruki Murakami

The Splendid and the Vile

Working by Robert Caro

## Impressions

When one opens ************The Crack-Up************, they open a portal to a strange new world: the jazz and liquor-filled 1920s. Through a collection of miscellaneous pieces penned by F. Scott Fitzgerald and letters from literary greats such as Gertrude Stein, T.S. Elliot, and Thomas Wolfe, the life behind the words of ****************The Great Gatsby**************** are illuminated. Since a lot of the works are personal reflections, I found myself lost here and there, not understanding the references of the times. Though confusing, I enjoyed that. It makes the words seem timeless.

## Notes

### The best people aren’t interested in politics because it doesn’t pay much

“In the theatrical world extravagant productions were carried out by a few second-rate stars, and so on up the scale into politics, where it was difficult to interest good men in positions of the highest importance and responsibility, importance and responsibility far exceeding that of business executives but which paid only five or six thousand a year.”

### First-rate intelligence

“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.”

## On early success

“But one was now a professional–and the new world couldn’t possibly be presented without bumping the old out of the way. One gradually developed a protective hardness against both praise and blame. Too often people liked your things for the wrong reasons or people liked them whose dislike would be a compliment. No decent career was ever founded on a public and one learned to go ahead without precedents and without fear…The dream had been early realized and the realization carried with it a certain bonus and a certain burden. Premature success gives one an almost mystical conception of destiny as opposed to willpower–at its worst the Napoleonic delusion. **The man who arrives young believes that he exercise his will because his star is shining. The man who only asserts himself at thirty has a balanced idea of what will power and fate have each contributed, the one who gets there at forty is liable to put the emphasis on will alone.** This comes out when the storms strike your craft. **The compensation of a very early success is a conviction that life is a romantic matter.**”

### Egyptian Proverb

“The worst things:

To be in bed and sleep not,

To want for one who comes not.

To try to please and please not.”

### Some things overheard

“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.”

---

“Learn young about hard work and good manners–and you’ll be through the whole dirty mess and nicely dead again before you know it.”

---

“You look to me like a very ordinary three-piece suit.”

### Epigrams, wise-cracks, and jokes

Show me a hero and I’ll write you a tragedy

---

Optimism is the content of small men in high places

---

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.

---

No grand idea was ever born in a conference, but a lot of foolish ideas have died there.

---

Fitzgerald: “The rich are different from us.”

Hemingway: “Yes, they have more money.”


The Crack-Up by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Here are three lessons I learned from reading *The Devil in the White City,* a book on the construction of the Chicago World’s Fair (juxtaposed with a suave, murderous criminal), on human psychology and project management.

## 1. You will always be compared to what came before

Four short years before the Chicago World’s Fair, the French had their turn. At the Paris exhibition of 1889, they unveiled the Eiffel Tower–a majestic display of creativity and ingenuity.

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.

Chicago had to either 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 help responsibly by the whole America 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, your offering, your service, has to be as new and unique as anything that came before, lest it just 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.

## 2. Simple and done well is better than extravagant and rushed

Rain was a menace to the fair. It would wash away the wet paint on buildings and ornate plants of the landscape 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.

## 3. When creating a scene or display, every detail matters

Olmstead, the landscape architect, insisted on not having steamboats on the 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.**

Sometimes, you have to bite the bullet and spend more, or take the less efficient route, to create a great atmosphere or product.

Compliment this with my [book notes from ***********Devil in the White City](https://www.dltn.io/posts/devil-in-the-white-city)* or the founding President of Stanford’s [thoughts on education, politics, and life](https://www.dltn.io/posts/david-starr-jordan-on-life-education-and-politics).


3 Lessons on Human Psychology and Project Management

There’s no better manual on time management than Arnold Bennett’s ***How to Live on 24 Hours a Day*** ([notes](https://www.dltn.io/posts/book-notes-how-to-live-on-24-hours-a-day)). It’s a masterpiece of philosophical advice and practical ideas for how to not fritter one’s day away.

Though the book is short, it’s sort of split into two sections. In the first half, Bennett writes about the preciousness of our time, how ridiculous it is that we often center our days around a job that we hate, and shows how to find 7 extra hours throughout the week.

The second half of the books shares different ways of using that newfound time.

## Find time and be deliberate

The first step to live 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.

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 ever 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’s how to do that:

### **********************Don’t center your day around a job you hate**********************

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 10-6 as being a day within a day. The first day starts at 10am and ends at 6pm. The second day starts at 6pm and ends at 10am.

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

### ********************************************************Be deliberate********************************************************

Bennett finds 30 minutes in the morning for the subject of his text on the train. Since most people don’t ride trains to work anymore, we can find those minutes between 7am and 7:30am.

What are you supposed to do with these new minutes? **Deliberately strengthen the mind**.

From the moment you leave your house to the moment you arrive at work, practice concentrating on something. Whenever your mind wanders from on what it should be focused, drag it back with all your might. At first, you may be able to focus for just 30 seconds at a time. But as you practice, your ability to concentrate will get better.

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 of doing it.

Bennett recommends focusing on a passage from Marcus Aurelius or Epictetus.

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, and TikTok. Don’t waste 30 minutes when your mind is as fresh as it will ever be that day on ephemeral content.

Great. So far, we have found 2 and a half hours every week (30 mins a day X 5 days per week) that didn’t exist before and we’re now using it deliberately. Let’s now turn to our evenings.

Most people come home from work, sit on the couch for an hour, watch the news, and then start making dinner. After dinner, they either go back to tv or *****maybe***** (if we’re lucky) start reading a book.

Bennett advises that instead of having dinner interrupt the middle of your evening, to have it as soon as you get home.

He then advises reserving an hour and a half three days a week for the activities of bettering oneself. In doing so, you still have two weeknights and all of Saturday and Sunday to do whatever you want to do.

Now, what will you do with your 4 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.

If you do want to learn something academic but don’t want to go to 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. You could do the same.

If you want to learn programming, you could take a self-paced bootcamp.

If you want to read, you could embark on a journey to cover famous volumes like **********The Story of Civilization********** or **********The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire**********.

## Some warnings

- **If you choose to embark on this journey, your life will change.** It ***has*** to change. “If you imagine that you will be able to devote seven hours and a half a week to serious, continuous effort,” Bennett writes, “and still live your old life, you are mistaken. I repeat that some sacrifice, and an immense deal of volition, will be necessary.”
- ****************************************************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.
    >
- ******************************************************Don’t commit to too much in the beginning******************************************************. People who embark on this journey fail in one of two ways:
    - They either commit to too little (good), fail to have patience and become unsatisfied with their slow progress, decide to try to do more (bad), become overwhelmed, and quit.
    - Or, they commit to too little (good), become unsatisfied with their lack of progress in a few months, and quit.

    You must resist falling down either of these paths. Commit to little at first. Be patient and let the results compound. You may not make much progress in three months, but you will in six months, and by month seven, you won’t remember what it was like before you started doing this.
    You will try and you will fail, multiple times, but keep going. This isn’t a matter of better time management. This is a matter of self-discipline and motivation. “If you imagine that you will be able to achieve your ideal by ingeniously planning out a time-table with a pen on a piece of paper, you had better give up hope at once,” Bennett says. “If you are not prepared for discouragements and disillusions; if you will not be content with a small result for a big effort, then do not begin.”

- ******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 8 and be thinking the whole time that he has to start reading at 9 and therefore never enjoy the moment of the walk.
- ********************************Don’t be a prig. “********************************A prig is a pert fellow who gives himself airs of superior wisdom,” Bennett writes. “He’s a pompous fool who…has lost an important part of his attire, namely, his sense of humor.”

You will be tempted to look at those who live the way you used to with disgust. Don’t. Don’t be a prig. Their 24 hours have nothing to do with your 24 hours. This isn’t a way to save humanity, it’s a way to save yourself. As Ryan holiday says, “Be strict with yourself and tolerant with others.” It’s called ****self-****discipline for a reason.

## Just Begin

You may be wondering, “Well okay this sounds all well and good, but how do I begin?” Just begin! Bennett says it’s like if someone were to ask you how to get into a cold bath. You would reply, “Well just get in!”

Good luck.


A Practical Summary of How to Live on 24 Hours a Day by Arnold Bennett

## 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

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

## Impressions

***********************How to Live on 24 Hours a Day*********************** is the most timeless, practical guide to time management. It gives both philosophical ideas and practical steps to help you take control of the hours you typically waste to do something that betters yourself with them.

This book, written in 1908, is the complete opposite of anything close to “self-help” books published today. You won’t read anything in here about cold showers, waking up at 4:30am, or going for a 5 mile run every morning.

The advice is simple. The words are witty and refreshing. I highly recommend.

## Notes

- The first step in arranging one’s life that they may live fully and comfortably within one’s daily budget of twenty-four hours is the calm realization of the extreme difficulty of the task, of the sacrifices, and the endless effort which it demands. I cannot too strongly insist on this.
- How to begin: ********************just begin********************. If someone trying to get into a cold both were to ask you, “Sir, how do I start to get in?” You would reply, “Well just get in!”
- You say your day is already full to overflowing. How? You actually spend in earning your livelihood–how much? Seven hours, on the average? An in actual sleep, seven? I will add two hours, and be generous. And I will defy you to account to me on the spur of the moment for the other eight hours.
- The person who works 10 to 6 everyday, 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.
    - Doing this is a grave mistake because it makes the centrality of one’s day just something “to get through” or “have done with.” “If a man makes two-thirds of his day subservient to one-third, for which admittedly he has no absolutely feverish zest, how can he hope to live fully and completely? He cannot.”
    - What this person must do, then, is arrange a day within a day. This second day starts at 6pm and ends at 10am. It is a day of sixteen hours. And during this 16 hours, he has nothing to do but cultivate his body and his soul and his fellow men.
    - **“What? You say that full energy given to those sixteen hours will lessen the value of the business eight? Not so. On the contrary, it will assuredly increase the value of the business eight. One of the chief things which my typical man has to learn is that the mental faculties are capable of a continuous hard activity; they do not tire like an arm or a leg. All they want is change–not rest, except in sleep.”**
- Don’t dedicate the extreme hours of solitude to reading tiny thoughts and other things that are meant to be read with speed. Reading newspaper on the train is wasting a good 30 minutes of quiet time.
- “Can you deny that when you have something definite to look forward to at eventide, something that is to employ all your energy–the thought of that something gives a glow and a more intense vitality to the whole day?”
- One might say they are exhausted from their day’s work because they give so much effort and can’t commit to the evening hours of study. To that, Bennett says great! This book, this advice is not for those who are already living a good life–whom work hard at their jobs because they’re good at them and love them. It’s for the worker who shuffles through the day rising in the morning and just waiting until he can go to sleep again. There are probably some things the hard worker who loves their job can take from the book, like the morning and evening practices of focus and reflection, but they are already not wasting 8 hours/day, so Bennett says let them carry on as they are.

## Practical advice

- Face the facts and tell yourself at 6 that you are not tired–because you’re not. And don’t let dinner interrupt the middle of the evening.
- Work 7 days a week, at first. It is he who has only worked tirelessly for a time who truly appreciates a full day of rest. Especially if you’re young in age. Use that energy. But in the average case, only do 6. And if you so choose to do 7, look at it as an extra source of time, so that anytime you wish you can go back to six without feeling like you’re giving something up.
- So far, we have half an hour in the mornings six days a week and an hour and a half three days a week. With that seven and a half hours put to good use, you’ll be amazed at what you can accomplish. “My contention is that the full use of those seven-and-a-half hours will quicken the whole life of the week, add zest to it, and increase the interest which you feel in event the most banal occupations.”
- During the evenings, give yourself more than an hour and a half to do that which takes an hour and a half. Remember human nature. Remember accidents. Remember distraction.
- From the moment you leave your home to the moment you arrive at work is reserved for strengthening the mind. What you ought to do, then, is to concentrate your mind on something–it can be anything, but Bennett suggests maybe a paragraph from Marcus Aurelius or Epictetus–and when your brain gets off topic, use brute force to think about it again. Doing this trains your mind everyday for long bouts of focus on something.
- Then, reflect. Reflect on your principles, your happiness, and your life. Man know thyself. If you are searching for happiness and you haven’t found it, and yet still don’t reflect, on the “deliberate consideration of your reason, principles, and conduct, you admit also that while striving for a certain thing you are regularly leaving undone the one act which is necessary to the attainment of that thing.”
    - Do so on your journey home. This is a good time to transition from the day to the evening hours and your tired spirit will be in a good position to do so.
- At night, you can study music, art, literature,
- If you choose to study literature at night, here are some tips:
    - Define the direction and scope of your efforts. Choose a limited time period, or a limited subject, or a single author. Define yourself as a specialist for there is much pleasure in being one.
    - Think, as well as read. Devote 45 minutes of reflection for each 90 minute period of reading. Doing so will slow your progress on the book. That’s okay. Don’t worry about that.

## Warnings

- If you imagine that you will be able to achieve your ideal by ingeniously planning out a time-table with a pen on a piece of paper, you had better give up hope at once. If you are no prepared for discouragements and disillusions; if you will not be content with a small result for a big effort, then do not begin.
- Beware of undertaking too much at the start. Be content with quite a little. Allow for accidents. Allow for human nature, especially your own. “Self respect is at the root of all purposefulness, and a failure in an enterprise deliberately planned deals a desperate wound at one’s self-respect. Hence I iterate and I reiterate: Start quickly, unostentatiously.”
    - “When you have consciously given seven hours and a half a week to the cultivation of your vitality for three months–then you may begin to sing louder and tell yourself what wondrous things you are capable of doing.”
- “If you imagine that you will be able to devote seven hours and a half a week to serious, continuous effort, and still live your old life, you are mistaken. I repeat that some sacrifice, and an immense deal of volition, will be necessary.”
- Don’t be a prig.
    - “A prig is a pert fellow who gives himself airs of superior wisdom. He’s a pompous fool who…has lost an important part of his attire, namely, his sense of humor.”
- Following the program is important, but it’s not a religion. You’re the master. Maintain flexibility. But you also have to take it seriously enough for it to work and not just be a cruel joke or something you hope to do. There is a right amount of rigidness and flexibility one must achieve.
- Don’t rush. One may take the dog out at 8 and be thinking the whole time that he has to start reading at 9 and therefore never enjoy the moment of the walk.
- 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.
- Finally, but most importantly, don’t fail. The only way you can fail is by taking on too much. Get your ego under control and commit that which you can reasonably do and no more. If you take on too much, you have a greater chance of failing and if you fail, you’ll quit and never try again.

## Quotes

- 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; 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.”
- “I do not suggest that you should employ three hours every night of your life in using up your mental energy. But I do suggest that you might, for a commencement, employ an hour and a half every other evening in some important and consecutive cultivation of the mind.”
- “The man who begins to go to bed forty minutes before he opens his bedroom door is bored; that is to say, he is not living.”
- “Happiness does not spring from the procuring of physical or mental pleasure, but from the development of reason and the adjustment of conduct to principles.”
- “When one has thoroughly got imbued into one’s head the leading truth that nothing happens without a cuase, one grows not only large-minded, but large-hearted.”
    - “One loses, in the study of cause and effect, that absurd air which  so many people have of being always shocked and pained by the curiousness of life.”
    - **************************************Nothing is humdrum.************************************** There is a cause and effect to everything.
    - **********************He’s saying here, essentially, that if you don’t like literature or art, then study why things are the way that they are–the cause and effect relationship between stuff in the world**********************.
- “The whole field of daily habit and scene is waiting to satisfy that curiosity which means life, and the satisfaction of which means an understanding heart.”
- “The best novels involve the least strain.”
- “The proper, wise balancing of one’s whole life may depend upon the feasibility of a cup of tea at an unusual hour.”


How to Live on 24 Hours a Day by Arnold Bennett

## Impressions

I discovered this book at a used bookstore. There’s something magical about walking into a time capsule that is a used bookstore with a specific type of book on your mind, and walking out with one that satisfies.

Dillard’s sporadic reflections on the life of a creative were refreshing. I enjoy reading fiction authors write about writing because of the life they bring to the page. They craft a story about a non-fiction subject and I aspire to do that. There’s no better way to practice than to read someone who does so, for as Dillard writes in this book, “A writer is careful what he reads, because what he reads, he writes.”

## Notes

**We love that which we pursue.**

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 to the old photographer.

”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 young photographer responds: “Because I had to climb a mountain to get it.”

---

When you are stuck someplace when writing a book, when you have worked and worked and worked and it just won’t go anywhere, either the narrative has messed up somewhere, or you are approaching a fatal mistake. What you had planned will not do. “If you pursue the present course, the book will explode or collapse…”

---

“Your freedom is a by-product of your days’ triviality.”

Your routine allows for flexibility. Discipline creates freedom.

---

Thomas Mann wrote a page a day for 365 days. That is a good-sized book once a year. “My guess is that full-time writers average a book every five years: seventy-three useable pages a day….On plenty of days, the writer can write three or four pages, and on plenty of days he concludes he must throw them away.”

---

“There is neither a proportional relationship, nor an inverse one, between a writer’s estimation of a work in progress and its actual quality. The feeling that the work is magnificent, and the feeling that it is abominable, are both mosquitoes to be repelled, ignored, or killed, but not indulged.”

---

“A pile of decent work behind him, no matter how small, fuels the writer’s hope.”

---

********************************Write, then edit********************************

”The reason not to perfect a work as it progresses is that, concomitantly, original work fashions a form the true shape of which it discovers only as it proceeds their sheen. Only when a paragraph’s role in the context of the whole work is clear can the envisioning writer direct its complexity of detail to strengthen the work’s ends.”

---

“I cannot imagine a sorrier pursuit than struggling for years to write a book that attempts to appeal to people who do not read in the first place.”

---

“You read in the space of a coffin and you can write in the space of a toolshed meant for mowers and spades.”

---

**********************************************************How you spend your day is how you spend your life**********************************************************

”How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour, and that one, is what we are doing. A schedule defends from chaos and whim…A schedule is a mock-up of reason and order–willed, faked, and so brought into being; it is a peace and a haven set into the wreck of time; it is a lifeboat on which you find yourself, decades later, still living.”

“There is no shortage of good days. It is good lives that are hard to come by. A life of good days lived in the senses is not enough. The life of sensation is the life of greed; it requires more and more. The life of the spirit requires less and less; time is ample and its passage sweet. Who would call a day spent reading a good day? But a life spent reading — that is a good life. A day that closely resembles every other day of the past ten or twenty years does not suggest itself as a good one. But who would not call Pasteur’s life a good one, or Thomas Mann’s?”

---

********************************Physical energy leads to mental energy********************************

”When my creative energy flowed most freely, my muscular activity was always greatest.” – Emerson (I think)

---

Jack London, before he undertook to write, got a list of books and the syllabi from the University of California. He spent a year reading the textbooks on philosophy and literature. He also maintained that every writer needed a technique, experience, and a philosophical position.

---

****************************************************Aim for the chopping block****************************************************

When you split wood, if you aim to hit the wood you’re trying to split, you won’t be very successful. Instead, you should aim for the chopping block and cut through the wood; past it.

This, too, is how you should write. “The page, the page, that eternal blankness,” Dillard writes. “The page of your death, against which you pit such flawed excellences as you can muster with all your life’s strength: that page will teach you to write. There is another way of saying this. Aim for the chopping block. If you aim for the wood, you will have nothing.”

---

“Many writers do little else but sit in a small room recalling the real world.”

---

A writer must prepare themselves, every morning, to enter an extraordinary state on an ordinary day.

---

********************************Don’t skip days********************************

”If you skip a visit or two, the work in progress will turn on you. A work in progress quickly becomes feral. It reverts to a wild state overnight. It is barley domesticated, a mustang on which you one day fastened a halter, but which now you cannot catch. It is a lion you cage in your study. As the work grows, it gets harder to control; it is a lion growing in strength. You must visit it every day and reassert your mastery over it. If you skip a day, you are, quite rightly, afraid to open the door to its room. You enter its room with bravura, holding a chair at the thing and shouting, “Simba!”

---

“Why do you never find anything written about that idiosyncratic thought you advert to, about your fascination with something no one else understands? Because it is up to you. There is something you find interesting, for a reason hard to explain.”

---

“The most demanding part of living a lifetime as an artist is the strict discipline of forcing oneself to work steadfastly along the nerve of one’s own most intimate sensitivity.” – Anne Truitt

Thoreau said something similar: “Pursue, keep up with, circle round and round your life…Know your own bone: gnaw at it, bury it, unearth it, and gnaw at it still.”

---

“The writer is careful what he reads, for that is what he will write. He is careful of what he learns, because that is what he will know.”

---

A well-known writer got asked by a college student, “Do you think I could be a writer?”

”Well,” the writer said, “I don’t know…do you like sentences?”

If the student liked sentences, then of course he could be! A well-known painter said something similar when asked how he got to be a painter. “I like the smell of paint,” he said.

---

****************************Ignore the hat, keep doing the work. Note: Similar to success paradox from Greg McKeown****************************

Great writers “worked, respectfully, out of their love and knowledge, and they produced complex bodies of work that endure. Then, and only then, the world flapped at them some sort of hat, which, if they were still living, they ignored as well as they could, to keep at their task.”

---

“Writing every book, the writer must solve two problems: can it be done? and, can I do it?”

---

**********************************************************If you have something good, write it then. Don’t wait.**********************************************************

”Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book, or for another book; give it, give it all, give it now. The impulse to save something good for a better place later is the signal to spend it now.”

---

“Draw, Antonio, draw, Antonio, draw, and do not waste time.” - This was a note found in Michelangelo’s studio after he died. Antonio was his apprentice.

---


The Writing Life by Annie Dillard

## Impressions

Almost every writer or creative person I listen to swears by this book. I had high expectations. Those were met (and exceeded).

Throughout, Pressfield identifies this “thing” that he calls Resistance. Resistance is a force that keeps you from achieving the things you were born to do. Fear is Resistance. Criticism is Resistance. Jealousy is Resistance. Rationalization is Resistance. Resistance is tough, but it’s also a sign that you’re supposed to be doing that thing. The greater something is to your calling or the more that you feel like you should do something, the more Resistance you’ll feel while doing so.

The only antidote to Resistance is to show up every day and do the work. When you focus on the daily process and not the outcomes or the accolades, you give Resistance less power.

Ryan Holiday has [said he reads this book before starting a new creative project](https://www.instagram.com/p/ClEPlD6OWLk/). I plan to adopt that habit.

## My Notes

- Writing isn’t hard. What’s hard is sitting down to write. Making videos isn’t hard. What’s hard is sitting down to film videos. Editing videos isn’t hard. What’s hard is sitting down to edit videos.
- We get jealous of others’ success because their success means they’ve overcome resistance but for some reason, we can’t. “What do they know that we don’t,” we think to ourselves? It also makes us face our own reality. It shows that whatever excuses we’ve been telling ourselves for why we can’t get something done is utterly wrong, because someone else did it.
- Trouble, frustration, complaining, and ill-fortune are all things that keep the working artist from doing their work. Great artists distance themselves from trouble and ensure any distractions they ****can**** control are kept to a minimum.
- Having a condition–being sick, being a victim, etc.–rationalizes the significance to one’s own existence. People that go from condition to condition becomes their work of art, one that is ****much**** easier than the work of art they ******should *****create.** They use the condition as an excuse to keep themselves from their art.
- Unalleviated Resistance turns to unhappiness, boredom, restless, unsatisfied, and so on. This forces us to turn to vices to alleviate the unhappiness. We turn away from art to drugs or substances or distractions to keep entertained. If this is how you feel, you may not have a chronic condition of anything, but instead are chronically avoiding something you should be.
- People are only as free as the extent of their own self mastery. Those who do not govern themselves will find something to govern them: drugs, relationships, vices, etc.
- Amateurs focus on the outcome. Professionals focus on the work. The professional knows that success, like happiness, is a by-product of doing the work. The professional focuses on the work and allows the rewards to come or not to come.
- **********************************************Principle of Priority:********************************************** (a) you must know the difference between what’s important and what’s urgent (b) you must do what’s important first.
- ****************************Professionals:****************************
    - Show up every day
    - Show up no matter what
    - Stay on the job all day
    - Committed over the long haul
    - The stakes for us are high and real
    - We accept renumeration for our labor
    - Do not over-identify with their jobs. ***********Pros recognize that they are not their job descriptions. Ams do. “Resistance knows that the amateur compose will never write his symphony because he is overly invested in its success and over*********** ***********terrified of its failure. The amateur takes it so seriously it paralyzes him.***********
    - Master the technique of their job
    - Have a sense of humor about their jobs. ***********************Pros take it seriously, but not too seriously***********************.
    - Are patient. The amateur thinks they can get their big goal done in 2 weeks. The professional knows it takes years of daily effort to produce consistently, quality work.
    - Seek order. ******************They eliminate chaos from their enviornment so they can banish chaos from their mind.******************
    - Accepts no excuses. *********A pro knows that if he caves in today, he’ll be twice as likely to cave in tomorrow. If you so much as say hello to Resistance, you’re finished.*********
    - Are prepared. ***Not for victory, but for the process. Professionals handle their details. The plans. The small things. They work all of them out.***
    - Dedicates himself to mastering the technique. **************************They do so not because technique is a substitute for inspiration, but rather they want to be prepared with the full arsenal of skills when inspiration finally comes. By toiling by the front door of technique, the professional lets genius enter slyly from the back.**************************
    - Don’t let the actions of others define who they are or what they do. *************The critic won’t be there tomorrow. But you know what will be? The blank page…staring you back in the face.*************
    - Know their limits. *************************************************************************************************************Pros can only be a pro at one thing. So they bring in other pros to help them (lawyers, doctors, accountants, etc.)*************************************************************************************************************
    - Reinvents themselves. *******Pros don’t limit what they can create in the future to that which they’ve created in the past. They recognize that with changing technology and ideas, so must their creations. Amateurs think they’re too good to change.*******
- You will fail. You will be criticized. But that’s the price for being in the arena and not on the sidelines. Pressfield had a horrible review written about his first screenplay in *******Variety*******. But someone snapped him out of his misery. “You’re where you want to be right! Writing full-time?”
- ********************************************************************************************************************Resistance will stop you from achieving greatness. The antidote, the only lasting antidote, is professionalism. Professionals follow the rules, qualities, and characteristics of the previous.********************************************************************************************************************
- “The goal of life isn’t to discover who you ought to be, but to become who you already are.” – me
- The Artist is entitled to their labor, not the fruits of their labor.

## On Resistance

- Any act that rejects short term gratification for long term exceptionality will elicit resistance. Resistance stops you from doing that which you are called to do. And it will do anything to stop you from doing so.
- Resistance is always lying and always full of shit. If you listen to its demanding voice, you deserve ***********everything*********** that you get.
- The more important something is to our calling, the more Resistance we will face while doing it. Resistance attacks our love and our calling. If you are experiencing Resistance in one area, it’s a sure sign that you should be doing and accomplishing that thing. **The thing that you keep trying to do and just can’t, is probably the thing you should be doing.**
- Resistance is omni-directional and only opposes that which desires a higher order. You’ll never feel resistance quitting your hard corporate job to work the drive thru at in n out. You will feel it trying to quit your 9-5 to go work as a missionary in the Congo.
- Resistance is greatest when the finish line is in sight. It’s like the story from *****Odysseus,***** when they were close to the island at first, the crew opened the bag of wind.
- Fear is Resistance. If you’re afraid of something, it’s a sign to do that thing. Resistance is also proportional to Love. If you love something deeply, their will be more Resistance facing you there.
- Healing is Resistance. Telling yourself you can’t create because you’re working on “who you are” or you’re dealing with trauma is a form of Resistance. The part we create from and the part of us that needs healing are not the same. Where we create from is so deep and so within us, that nothing our parents did or our spouse said can touch it
- The outcomes don’t beat Resistance. Sitting down to do the work beats it.
- Support is Resistance. What better way to avoid doing the work than going to a workshop or networking event? “The more energy we spend stoking up on support from colleagues and loved ones, the weaker we become and the less capable of handling our business.”
- Rationalization is Resistance–and it’s oftentimes true! We probably should be helping our pregnant wife, or spending more time with family, or this might be a particularly busy season…but “that all means diddly.” There will ******always****** be enough rationalizations to keep you from work: Resistance.
- Resistance loves pride. Resistance says, ‘Show me someone who is too good to take Job X or Assignment Y and I’ll show you a guy I can crack like a walnut.”

## Quotes

- How many of us have become drunks and drug addicts, developed tumors and neuroses, succumbed to painkillers, gossip, and compulsive cell-phone use, simply because we don’t do that thing that our hearts, our inner genius, is calling us to?
- The warrior and the artist live by the same code of necessity, which dictates that the battle must be fought anew every day.
- There was never a moment, and never will be, when we are without the power to alter our own destiny.
- The counterfeit innovator is wildly self-confident. The real one is scared to death.
- The professional tackles the project that will make him stretch. He takes on the assignment that will bear him into uncharted waters, compel him to explore the unconscious parts of himself.
- It’s one thing to study war and another to live the warrior’s life – Telamon of Arcadia, mercenary of the fifth century B.C.
- “I write only when inspiration strikes. Fortunately it strikes every morning at nine o’clock sharp.” – Somerset Maugham. This echoes another deeper truth: that by performing the mundane act of sitting down and starting to work, he set in motion a mysterious but infallible sequence of events that would produce inspiration, as surely as if the goddess had synchronized her watch with his. He knew if he built it, she would come.
- The artist committing himself to his calling has volunteered for hell, whether he knows it or not. He will be dining for the duration on a diet of isolation, rejection, self-doubt, despair, ridicule, contempt, and humiliation.
- You don’t hear the amateur bitching, “This fucking trilogy is killing me!” Instead, he doesn’t write his trilogy at all.
- The critic hates the most that which he would have done himself if he had the guts.
- The most important thing about art is to work. Nothing else matters except sitting down every day and trying.
- The moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would not otherwise have occurred.
- “Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, magic, and power in it. Begin it now.”


The War of Art by Steven Pressfield

“If someone can just tell me how to catch up [to the Soviets in the space race],” John F. Kennedy thundered to a room full of space advisors. “Let’s find somebody–anybody. I don’t care if it’s the janitor over there, if he knows.”

The tense meeting came after the Russian cosmonaut, [Yuri Gagarin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuri_Gagarin), became the first person in history to orbit Earth. This latest accolade for the Soviet Union was another blow to America’s trepidatious attitude towards the space program. Unfortunately, it wasn’t the worst thing to happen that week. Five days later, the [disastrous Bay of Pigs](https://www.thenewsherald.com/2021/04/18/bay-of-pigs-was-jfks-responsibility/#:~:text=U.S.%20involvement%20in%20the%20Bay,Pigs%20and%20took%20complete%20blame) invasion kicked off. Though Eisenhower planned it, he was no longer in office and the nation needed someone to blame. Kennedy became that someone.

For Kennedy, the answer for America’s next greatest feat had always been to go up. Space was the end all be all of the Cold War. Whoever could get the furthest in space, the quickest, Kennedy believed, would win the Cold War.

After Gagarin became the first man to orbit earth, Kennedy and his administration changed their approach to conquering the eternal sky. No longer could America entertain a tit-for-tat pattern with the Soviet Union. Instead, as Kennedy wrote to a Princeton student, America needed to Leapfrog the Soviet Union. And leapfrog they would.

Spaceflight in America was still young at the time. Before the Second World War broke out, [Robert Goddard](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_H._Goddard) became the first real rocketeer in America. His experiments with liquid-fueled rockets proved they were the way forward. Unfortunately, Goddard was one of many who passed on before they could witness their innovations come true.

Goddard’s research, however, influenced a young engineer in Germany who used Goddard’s work as a foundation to build the [V-2 rocket](https://airandspace.si.edu/collection-objects/missile-surface-surface-v-2-4/nasm_A19600342000#:~:text=The%20V%2D2%20rocket%2C%20developed,fuel%20rockets%20and%20launch%20vehicles): the deadliest weapon used in WW2 against Britain. Unbeknownst to the engineer, Werner von Braun, his design for the V-2 would lay the groundwork for the eventual Saturn V, the rocket that landed two young astronauts on the moon in 1969.

Von Braun and a host of other brilliant German scientists and engineers were brought to America through [Operation Paperclip](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Paperclip), a covert plan to bring the most intelligent German minds to America at the end of WW2. The operation, originally called Operation Overcast, changed its monicker to Operation Paperclip after a security breach. The name was derived from the paperclips military officers would fasten to the folders of the Nazi experts they chose to hire.

Werner von Braun and John F. Kennedy became two backbone figures of the Space Race. Their journey, along with all the drama and political woes of the early 1960s is chronicled in *[American Moonshot: John F. Kennedy and The Great Space Race](https://www.amazon.com/American-Moonshot-Kennedy-Great-Space/dp/006265506X)* by Douglas Brinkley. In the words of a *Kirkus* review of the book:

> [This book is a] look back at the days when American presidents and politicians believed in and promoted science—days when there was a world to win, along with the heavens.
>

The first part of the book is a mini-biography of John F. Kennedy. Brinkley writes about JFK’s childhood, his family life, and his time spent in the Navy. Kennedy’s character is slowly transformed from a party boy to a diplomatic statesman (though the parties never stopped). Paralleled with Kennedy’s life is a brief account of the history of rockets and Werner von Braun’s journey from Nazi engineer to the head of a rocket lab in Huntsville, Alabama.

Once Kennedy gets elected, Brinkley does a magnificent job pulling conversations, reports, scientific facts, and the general consensus at the time all together to paint a full picture of what was going on in America and around the world.

It’s unclear if Kennedy would have put such emphasis on a literal moonshot were it not for the times. Kennedy loved space, yes, and he was enamored with it. But asking for $40 billion from the American people wasn’t something that happened often. Would he have been as brave as to do so without the pressure of the Cold War? Brinkley doesn’t state the answer explicitly, but it can be implied. He cared less about space and more about winning the Cold War and proving to the world that America was the best. This doesn’t diminish his efforts one bit but casts them in an interesting light.

There was one conversation with James Webb, the NASA administrator, that gives a peak behind Kennedy’s motives. In September of 1963, Kennedy and Webb had a private conversation in the White House and you can hear the trepidation and regret in Kennedy’s voice about making “the moonshot” his grand plan.

**Kennedy:** “Do you think the lunar, the manned landing on the moon, is a good idea?”

**Webb:** “Yes, sir, I do.”

…

**Kennedy:** “If I get reelected, I’m not–we’re not– go[ing] to the moon in my–in our period are we?”

**Webb:** “No.”

**Kennedy** (Brinkley notes that his voice is slightly sulky): “We’re not going…yeah.”

…

**Kennedy:** “Why should one spend that kind of dough to put a man on the moon?”

**Kennedy** (Answering his own question): But it seems to me…we’ve got to wrap around in this country, a military use for what we’re doing and spending in space. If we don’t it does look like a stunt.”

Though some in America saw Kennedy’s ambitions for space as a waste of money and time, such as the former president Dwight D. Eisenhower, who Brinkley wrote, “continued to snipe that ‘anybody who would spend $40 billion in a race to the moon for national prestige is nuts,” the majority were inspired by the grand ambition, even though everyone knew money would be required in hefty amounts. A phrase repeated throughout the book is “No bucks, no Buck Rogers.”

But aside from the Eisenhower administration's plans for incremental innovation and a small company named NASA that wasn’t quite sure who to listen to, Kennedy didn’t have much to go on when he took office. His presidency would be a continuous act of spinning plates between Kruschev and the Cold War, working with Lyndon B. Johnson to lobby congress for an ever-increasing pool of funds, and deciding just how ambitious America should be in trying to win the space race. The rewards were high, sure, but so were the risks, and no one let Kennedy forget that. Brinkley writes about the warning Eisenhower’s former science advisor spooked Kennedy with by saying “NASA wasn’t ready for manned space, and that if a Mercury astronaut were prematurely launched on a Redstone rocket, the attempted suborbital flight would be ‘the most expensive funeral man has ever had.’”

Thankfully, the warning didn’t deter Kennedy and the rest of America. JFK, his administration, NASA, James Webb, the Navy, and countless private companies worked together throughout a heyday of technical innovation, budgetary restrictions, and threats of war, to eventually put a man on the moon.

If you’re hoping to read a detailed account of the scientific and technical breakthroughs NASA achieved for the moonshot, this book is not the one. Though the beginning had interesting anecdotes about rockets, the majority of the book is about the political side of the space race and John F. Kennedy. Though interesting and I’m glad I read it, it lacks the technical bravado I was hoping for. That said, it’s a masterclass on power, influence, and Cold War politics.


Not Long Ago in a Galaxy Not Very Far

## Impressions

Captivating, heart-breaking, and awe-inspiring are just a few of the many adjectives I could use to describe this book. The author, Margot Lee Shetterly, did a great job weaving together the lives of “the black women mathematicians who helped win the space race” to show their grit and cant-stop-me attitude mixed with the terrible injustices they had to face.

One thing I realized was that African American’s fought for “freedom” in both world wars but they weren’t offered that same freedom back home. America and the allies painted themselves as a land that loves all and recognized the injustices the Jews were facing in Germany. Yet at the same time, African Americans were still fighting for fundamental freedoms and rights back home. I had never seen that juxtaposition before.

A similar situation happened during the space race. The USSR ensured anyone who so desired could be trained as an engineer. They had waves of people learning the most advanced math, science, and physics. Meanwhile, In America, African Americans were struggling to get a decent grade school education. In 1959 in Prince Edward County, rather than integrate, segregationists defunded the entire county school system. The schools in that district remained closed for five years. “Virginia,” Shetterly writes, “a state with one of the highest concentrations of scientific talent in the world, led the nation in denying education to its youth.”

When the space race took off, Civil Rights activists thought we didn’t have any business reaching out beyond the stars if we couldn’t figure out how to live together beneath them. I see their point.

Lucky for us, Dorthy Vaughn, Mary Jackson, and Katherine Johnson looked these difficulties in the face and persevered. Their work helped John Glenn orbit earth and Neil Armstrong walk on the moon.

## Notes

- Charles Hamilton Houston, one of the NAACP’s top lawyers, reflected on his time in the war in 1942 to the *****************Pittsburgh Courier***************** after he was on a train on the way home and a white man refused to sit by him and a friend. He said, “I felt damned glad I had no lost my life fighting for my country.”
- In 1959, President Eisenhower set the plan for constructing a secret bunker deep under the Greenbrier Hotel
- ‘This is not science fiction’ wrote President Eisenhower in a fifteen-page document called ****************************[Introduction to Outer Space](https://lunar.colorado.edu/jaburns/publicfiles/IntroOuterSpace.pdf).*
- School board’s in white-only districts paid special “school fees” to black families to keep their children in black districts. Virginia colleges did something similar to black graduating students, paying them a “scholarship” to attend college out-of-state.

> But simple luck is the random birthright of the hapless. When seasoned by the subtleties of accident, harmony, favor, wisdom, and inevitably, luck takes on the cast of serendipity. Serendipity happens when a well-trained mind looking for one thing encounters something else: the unexpected. It comes from being in a position to seize the opportunity from the happy marriage of time, place, and chance.
>

**********Star Trek********** wasn’t a show that just made nerds cool. It helped usher in a new era of tolerance in America. Showcasing the different races (and genders) of the universe inspired those who were usually dealt the short end of the stick.

Lieutenant Uhura, a black women and proud citizen of the United States of Africa was fourth in command aboard the spaceship **********Enterprise**********. 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**************, 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, according to Shetterly, King replied:

> ”You can’t leave the show…We are there because you are there.” 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.

**”This is not a black role, this is not a female role,” he said to her. “This is a unique role that brings life to what we are marching for: equality.”**
>

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


Hidden Figures by Margot Lee Shetterly

## Impressions
Though *The Washington Post* touted this book as "The most fully faceted portrait of Hemingway now available", I was unimpressed. The content of the book is detailed, but the writing was rigid. Facts about Ernest's life were written out in a matter-of-fact manner. The stories told, though few, lacked drama or failed to engage one’s imagination. Letters were mentioned and quoted, but you never saw them shown in full detail. I learned more about Hemingway's obsession with bullfighting than I did about his writing habits or philosophy, spare the mention of the *Kansas City Star* writing guide (mentioned below in the notes). I suppose that's what people want though. They want *the man and life behind* the writing, not the writing. I think it’s a well-written book, it just was not what I was expecting and hoping for.

It was also assumed you've read (and memorized) all of Hemingway's works. A plot in a story was mentioned and I'd have to Google what the book was about or how the character acted because it was never explained. A new person in Hemingway's life would be introduced and a passing reference would be made to how they would later become *character X* in one of his novels, but that was it. There was no further commentary about how, or why, or anything.

I’m always hesitant to say any work of art is “bad.” All I can think about is the time and energy the creator put into the piece, and then imagining them reading a review (like I really even matter as a reviewer) saying it’s bad. No work is ever really bad, sometimes it’s just not what we expect, or not something we like. And that’s okay. Because with the 7 billion people in the world, I’m sure lots would love this book. I’m just one of the few who didn’t.

However, I did learn interesting details about the Hemingway-Paris-writers era, which I've long been enchanted by. I closed the book with a fuller understanding of the man who called himself Ernest than I did when I opened it, which is what you hope for when you read a biography. A phrase that might sum up his life: *don't meet your heroes, kid.*

## Notes
- Ernest's grandmother told him that the only regrets she had in life were the things that she hadn't done.
- If you make something easy and fun, you're more likely to do it. Ernest, early on in his writing career, wrote short humorous stories for the school newspaper.
- Jazz, at the time of Ernest's upbringing was shifting to mean the music it refers to now, from a word that originally meant sexual intercourse.
- Ernest's first real writing job was at the *Kansas City Star*. There, he would start to adopt the infamous style he would use throughout his life, thanks to a document The Star provided all of their 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." This 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]."
- Ernest knew it wasn't important enough just to write, but that the writer had to "push the envelope, engage in nothing less than literary revolution, or, in the famous words of Ezra Pound, 'make it new.'"
- Hadley, Ernest's first wife, used a cool analogy when answering whether or not being engaged was the greatest time in her life. She said it wasn't–and that the best things are yet to come. But she compared it to "the difference between studying the sun thru astronomical methods & simply and joyously living in a country saturated by light."
- Ernest would "try to write one true sentence, he vowed in the early days of Paris. He would avoid adjectives. He would work on the iceberg principle, meaning that if the writer knew much more than what actually made its way into the story, or the part of the iceberg that is below the water, and wrote in the right fashion, what was unseen would inform the story, the part that was above water, without the writer voicing it. Writing was a craft, and it had rules, which, if they had to be reduced to a single concept, dictated that the writer be genuine."
- I didn't know this, but early in his career, Ernest would have to battle a stereotype that male writers weren't serious, or that writing, even as a career, was a very feminine practice.
- **In response to his mother's comments about the content of his writings, Ernest replied, "I know what I'm doing and it doesn't make any difference either way what anybody says about it. Naturally, it is nice to have people like it. But it is inside yourself that you have to judge...You have to be your own worst critic."**
- "Ultimately, I suppose, one must judge the degree of one's love for a person by the hush and the emptiness that descends on the day–after the departure." - This was a quote from Gerald Murphy. He and his wife had become good friends with the Fitzgeralds and wrote that in a letter after their leaving.
 - Don't use "something or other" or "etc." in your writing. If you don't want to tell, why bother using three words to say that? #writing-advice
 - "Something permanent being ended for something passing", was a phrase Hadley used to describe Ernest and Pauline, his second wife's love before they had split. I think it's a cool phrase to use.


Ernest Hemingway by Mary V. Dearborn

## Impressions
*Killers of the Flower Moon* opened my narrow mind to a new (for me) genre of writing: narrative non-fiction.

It tells the true story of the Osage murders and gives a unique insight into the early days of the FBI and, more importantly for me, J. Edgar Hoover's philosophy of running the Bureau. I finished it in two days becuase of how gripping the writing is. This story needs to be told more. On that note, I was excited to see a movie, directed by [Martin Scorsese](https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000217/) is coming out in 2023.

Since this was a narrative, I didn't highlight much. I did, however, learn interesting facts about the early days of private detectives and forensic science.

## Notes
- The term "to detect" is derived from the Latin verb "to unroof." According to legend, the devil allowed his henchmen to peer into houses by removing their roofs, so at one point, detectives were known as "the devil's disciples." In 1850, Allan Pinkerton founded the first American provat detective agency and the company's logo was a large, Masonic-like eye, which is what sparked the moniker "private eye."
- Alphonse Bertillion, in 1879, created the first rigorous scientific method for catching repeat criminals. The process, known as Bertillionage, takes notes of body measurments, tattoos, scars, and other distinguishing features to easily identify and capture repeat criminals. Bertillion also created the mugshot.
- Shakespeare:
	- *Where wilt thou find a cavern dark enough To mask thy monstrous visage? Seek none, conspiracy: Hide it in smiles and affability.*
- Hoover, as commonly known, ran the FBI with an iron fist. After firing agents who were drinking on the job, he told White, "I believe that when a man becomes a part of the forces of this Bureau he must so conduct himself as to remove the slightest possibility of causing criticism or attack upon the Bureau."

> History is a merciless judge. It lays bare our tragic blunders and foolish missteps and exposes our most intimate secrets, wielding the power of hindsight like an arrogant detective who seems to know the end of the mystery from the outset.


Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann

## Impressions
Few books touch your soul the way *Letters To a Young Poet* does. The language is enchanting. The problems are wide-ranging and applicable to most people. The main creative outlet addressed in the book is poetry, but the advice applies to anything someone with a creative bone in their body touches with pride and says: *I made that.*

It's a book for the soul, not the mind. Don't expect to to learn tips for managing your creative workload or a process for creating great work. Rather, expect to look at your heart, more than once, and ask it: *Why do you want me to create, little heart?*

## Quotes

- Nothing is less relevant to a work of art than the judgement of other people.

- You ask if your poems are good. You ask me. You've asked others before me. You send them to magazines. You compare them with other poems, and you worry when journals reject them. Now, since you've invited me to advise you, I will ask you to give all that up. You are looking outward, and now you must avoid that at all costs. No one can advise and help you. No one. There is only one thing to do. Go into yourself. Ask yourself why you pursue this thing you call writing. Look and see if its roots draw from the deepest place in your heart. Ask yourself if you would die if you were forbidden to write. Above all, ask yourself in the stillest hour of the night, *Must I do this?* Delve within for the deepest answer. And if you respond to this question with a strong and simple yes, then build your life according to its necessity.

- Therefore, protect yourself from stale motifs and turn to your *own* life. Portray your sorrows and daydreams, your passing thoughts and beliefs stirred by a glimpse of beauty.

- *On how hard it is to give advice to other people:*

	For any one person to advise or help another, so much must come together; a whole constellation of factors must be in play for that to succeed even once.

- Time eludes measurement. What is a year? And ten years is nothing. To be an artist means not to count or reckon but to ripen like the tree that does not force its sap and, trustingly, stands through the storms of spring without fear that summer will not come. It will come. But it comes only to the patient ones, who stand there with eternity stretching around them, quiet, vast, and free of worryt.

- This is one of the toughest tests for creative artists: to remain ever unaware of their best qualities in order not to rob them of authenticity.

- I feel that no person has an answer for the questions and feelings arising from deep within you. For when adressing the most delicate and nearly unsayable, words fail even the best.

- I ask you, dear sir, to have patience with all that is unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves, like closed rooms, like books written in a foreign language.

- In a single creative thought dwell a thousand forgotten nights of love, which infuse it with immensity.

- It is good that you will soon be entering a profession that will ensure your independence and self-sufficiency in every regard. Be patiently watchful lest your inner life be diminished by the requirements of this profession. I consider that to be difficult in the extreme, given the weight of convention and one's own grasp of the duties involved. **But your solitude amid unfamiliar circumstances will be haven and home for you, going forth, you will find your way.**

- Going within and meeting no one else for hours–that is what one must learn to attain...And if one day one grasps that their busyness is pathetic, their occupations frozen and disconnected from life, why then not continue to see like a child, see it as strange, see it out of depth of one's own world, the vastness of one's own solitude, which is, in itself, work and status and vocation?

- It is good to be solitary, because solitude is difficult, and that a thing is difficult must be even more of a reason for us to undertake it.

- To love is not about merging. It is a noble calling for the individual to ripen, to differentiate, to become a world in oneself in response to another. It is a great, immodest call that singles out a person and summons them beyond all boundaries.

- I belive that almost all our sorrows are moments of tension that we fear might cripple us because we are no longer in touch with our banished feelings.


Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke

## Impressions
I could not have been happier with the few hours I spent reading this book. How da Vinci's life ebbs and flows through his curiosity is a whirlwind of unbelievable stories. This book encouraged me to do two things:

1.) **Write more on physical paper.** Isaacson explained how much easier it was to piece parts of da Vinci's life together because most of his journals were still around, unlike most of Steve Job's writing.

2.) **Continue to be unashamedly curious.** Da Vinci wrote down things like "describe the tongue of a woodpecker" in his notebook multiple times. Some of the research was for a painting, but most of it was to soothe his insatiable curiosity. I aim to do the same.

## Takeaways
-  da Vinci's goal in life, through his practice of art and study of science, was no less than to know "everything there was to know about the world."
- Kenneth Clark called da Vinci "the most relentlessly curious man in history."
- He didn't have any traditional education and learning with art, science, or math. Some people would use this as a crutch against him, saying he didn't really know what he was talking about. But he famously whipped back saying what he does doesn't require words, it requires experience. So, Leonardo became a disciple of experience early on. As he got more curious, he learned to use others books and advice better to blend with his experience for the ultimate learning machine. He wrote in a notebook, "He who has access to the fountain does not go to the water jar." Isaacson went on to write, "This makes him different from the archetypal Renaissance Man, who embraced the rebirth of wisdom that came from rediscovered works of classical antiquity." Eventually, though, he realized that **knowledge is a mix between acquired wisdom and life experience.**
- The leading thinkers of Florence "embraced a Renaissance humanity that put its faith in the dignity of the individual and in the aspiration to find happiness on this earth through knowledge."
- Leonardo's only formal education was through an abacus school, where he learned useful math skills for commerce. One skill that was emphasized mainly was how to draw analogies between cases. "Analogies and spotting patterns became for him a rudimentary method of theorizing."
- As a left-hander, da Vinci wrote from right to left on a page and each letter was facing backwards. Often, they had to be read with a mirror. (p. 32)
- One defining method of his works in art is the realistic appearance of light and shadows. He observed greatly how things *should* look in real life and then figured out a way to make that happen on a canvas. But, he never let the realities limit his imagination of what was able to be accomplished in a painting. Reality informed his paintings, but it *never* constrained them.
- A sometimes surprising fact of the life of Leonardo is that he started many, many more works than he actually finished. He was a great artist, but a horrible business man. A hypothesis as to why this is was that his ideas were so close to reality, they could never be pulled off to the degree of perfection Leonardo expected of himself. So he got as far as he could on some paintings and then just stopped. Another reason this happened was because what could be excited Leonardo much more than what was. He got so excited about an idea when he thought of it that he abandoned everything else he was working on. This cycle just continued. 'He was a genius undisciplined by diligence.' He was afraid to call a painting completed, for he knew he would learn something new eventually that would make the piece better.
- da Vinci was not motivated at all by wealth or luxury. In one of his notebooks he wrote, "men who desire nothing but material riches and are absolutely devoid of the desire for wisdom, which is the sustenance and truly dependable wealth of the mind."
- da Vinci's *Virtuvian Man* was birthed from a treatise written by Virtruvius, a Roman military officer and engineer from the first century B.C. What his work did for Leonardo was that it gave a concrete example of the Renaissance humanism: "the relationship between the microcosm of man and the macrocosm of the earth" p.149
- da Vinci, unlike Einstein, struggled with theory, thought experiments, and abstract concepts. He preferred to look at the effects of something and deduce the cause instead of knowing the case and thinking about what effects it may have.
- da Vinci started to work on many problems that he could, and we haven't still, solved. But he showed there is at least a value to trying because even if we may never know how to solve them, it's important to understand why we wouldn't.
	- Lots of examples in page 199 of da Vinci creating something years before it became mainstream. And another on p.272
- Mastery requires focusing intently on the little details.
- Contrary to popular belief, Leonardo was not an individual artist working like a mad genius in his workshop. Instead, he would devise a painting and his assistants worked on it with him to make multiple copies. Sometimes they were duplicates. Other times, though, they were identical in message but differed in form.
- Leonardo thought through sketching. It's a process called "componimento inculto" - an uncultivated composition that helps work out ideas through an intuitive process.
- "America" is named so after Amerigo Vespucci, cousin of Agostino Vespucci, who landed in Brazil with Columbus during his third voyage and correctly surmised they had graced a new continent. #idea
- Leonardo magically transformed "complexity into elegance" through his anatomical drawings. Similarly, great writers are able to magically transform complex subjects, ideas, and philosophies into a beautiful elegance.

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## Quotes
- His curiosity was pure, personal, and delightfully obsessive.
- 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.
- Leonardo: curious, passionate, and always filled with wonder.
- I [Isaacson] 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.
- Like so many writers and artists, da Vinci grew up feeling a part of the world but also detached.
- Florence's festive culture was spiced by the ability to inspire those with creative minds to combine ideas from disparate disciplines.
- There was harmony in proportions, and math was nature's brushstroke.
- "Movements of the soul are made known by movements of the body."
- "Pleasure and pain are represented as twins, because there is never one without the other." - Leonardo
- Leonardo's *Vitruvian Man* embodies a moment when art and science combined to allow mortal minds to probe timeless questions about who we are and how we fit into the grand order of the universe.
- Ideas are often generated in physical gathering places where people with diverse interests encounter one another serendipitously.
- da Vinci's "uncanny abilities to engage in a dialogue between experience and theory made him a prime example of how acute observations, fanatic curiosity, experimental testing, a willingness to question dogma, and the ability to discern patterns across disciplines can lead to great leaps in human understanding."
- "His curiosity, like that of Einstein, often was about phenomena that most people over the age of ten no longer puzzle about."
- "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."
- "As with his study of the flight of birds, Leonardo went from seeking knowledge that could be of practical use and began seeking knowledge for its own sake, out of pure curiosity and joy."
- "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."
- "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." - da Vinci
- "We should put aside our romantic image of the artist alone in his studio creating works of genius. Instead, Leonardo's studio was like a shop in which he devised a painting and his assistants worked with him to make multiple copies."
- On being so obsessed with something else: "In truth, his mathematical experiments have absorbed his thoughts so entirely that he cannot bear the sight of a paintbrush."
- "Sometimes fantasies are paths to realities."
- "Although at times he was irresolute and willing to abandon tasks, his powerful curiosity tended to overcome any hesitations when it came to exploring nature's wonders."
- Leonardo: "Though human ingenuity make 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 wanted to accumulate knowledge for his own sake and for his own personal joy, rather than out of a desire to make a public name for himself as a scholar or to be part of the progress of history." Perhaps that is what made his knowledge and curiosity so "out-of-this-world-like"
- "There is something nice about leaving a little to our imagination. As he knew, the outlines of reality are inherently blurry, leaving a hint of uncertainty that we should embrace. The best way to approach his life is the way he approached the world: filled with a sense of curiosity and an appreciation for its infinite wonders."

## Stories
- An example of his relentless perfectionism can be seen be examining *St. Jerome in the Wilderness.* This painting was done in two phases: the first being in 1480 when he started and the second being in 1510. Under infared analysis of the painting, there were dual neck muscles and other parts added in 1510 that were not part of the original drawing. The muscles and parts added seem to align with the anatomical discoveries da Vinci was making through his autopsys.
- When da Vinci wanted to paint something, he would think about what type of social setting and emotion the piece would represent. When he determined the answer, he would go to places that held that type of emotion and observed people's faces, manners, and dresses, and gestures. Then, "he noted it in a little book which he was always carrying in his belt."
- One notebook page from about 1490 was deemed Leonardo's "theme sheet." It had various drawings, doodles, and sketches of many of the different interests that da Vinci thought of or wanted to think of. (p. 109)
- da Vinci predicted the scientific method, writing, "Before you make a general rule of this case, test it two or three times and observe whether the tests produce the same effects."
- p.438 - Great story about being open minded and willing to change his mind. He thought that springs of the earth, just like blood in the body, is somehow pumped from lower areas to higher. How else could water get up into mountain springs? He was convinced of that explanation, but eventually abandoned it. He realized the water there is from evaporation getting soaked into clouds and then raining.
- Many of Leonardo's paintings were lost or never finished, so there is a lot of mystery and allure around them. For one painting in particular, *Saint Anne* there were three or versions that were circulated. As historians tried to understand which came first to help paint a timeline of his life, they assumed Leonardo began one version of *Saint Anne* in 1501, then changed his mind and drew it a different way. He then changed his mind again to paint something that closely resembled the original sketch from 1501. This was the consensus until, in 2005, a note by Agostino Vespucci was found in a book by Cicero that he was reading. The passage in the book said something along the lines of a painter perfect the head and bust of Venus. Vespucci's comment in the margin was "So Leonardo da Vinci does in all his paintings, such as the head of Lisa del Giocondo, and Anne Mother of the Virgin." From this, we are able to assume he had begun working on the *Mona Lisa* and the final painting of *Saint Anne* in 1503.
- Michaelangelo and Leonardo were rivals. However, people commissioned Leonardo for one style of work and Michaelangelo for another. This is why its important to create things in a style that suits you and not follow the crowd. Eventually, someone will see the need for your style.


Leonardo da Vinci

## Impressions
I bought this book five years ago because it was old and looked cool. That's essentially my filter when buying books in an antique store. I read a few essays from it at the time because I was in a big transcendentalist stage, but never revisisted after that.

Earlier this month, I saw it on my shelf and in a moment of boredom, decided to see who wrote it–David Starr Jordan. Huzzah! *The founding president of Stanford University*?! I was hooked. And enjoyed it. It turned out to be a beautiful illustration of what college is meant to be. It's a collection of his speeches and in it, he shares his vision for what higher education should mean, the relationship between the State and the school, and much more.

The following are direct quotes from the book. Italiziczed words are personal commentary unless otherwise stated.

## Notes

- So, if you learn to use it rightly, this the college can do for you: It will bring you in contact with the great minds of the past, the long roll of those who, through the ages, have bone a mission to young men and young women, from Plato to Emerson, from Homer to Euripides to Schiller and Browning. Your thought will be limited not by the narrow gossip of to-day, but the great men of all ages and all climes will become your brothers. You will learn to feel what the Greek called the “consolations of philosophy.” To turn from the petty troubles of the day to the thoughts of the masters, is to go from the noise of the street through the door of a catherdral. If you learn to unlock these portals, no power on earth can take from you the key. The whole of your life must be spent in your own company, and only the educated man is good company for himself. The uneducated man looks out on life through the narrow windows, and thinks the world is small.
- The world's work, the world's experience does not begin with us. We must know what has been done before. We must know the paths our predecessors have trodden, if we would tread them further. We must stand upon their shoulders–dwarfs upon the shoulders of giants–if we would look farther into the future than they. Science, philosophy, statesmenship, caanot for a moment let go of the past.
- The young man who is aiming at nothing and cares not to rise, is already dead.
- If you say to yourself, "I will be a naturalist, a traveler, an historian, a statesman, a scholar"; if you never unsay it; if you bend all your powers in that direction, and take advantage of all those aids that help toward your ends, and reject all that do not, you will some time reach your goal. *The world turns aside to let any man pass who knows whither he is going.* (Author's emphasis)
- A college cannot take the place of a parent. To claim that it does so, is a mere pretense. It can cure the boy of petty vices and childish trickery only by making him a man, by giving him higher ideals, more serious views of life.
- It is the noblest mission of all higher education, I believe, to fill the mind of the youth with these enthusiasms, with noble ideas of manhood, of work, of life. It should teach him to feel that life is indeed worth living; and no one who leads a worthy life has ever for a moment doubted this. It should help him to shape his own ambitions as to how a life my be made worthy. It should help him to believe that love, and friendship, and faith, and devotion are things that really exisit, and are embodied in men and women. He should lern to know these men and women, whether of the present or the past, and his life will become insensibly fashioned after theirs. He should form plans of his own work for society, for science, for art, for religion. His life may fall far short of what he would make it; but a high ideal must preced any worthy achievement.
- *Jordan believed the country wasn't supporting higher education properly. He thought the funds were going to plant more schools, instead of watering the ones that already exisisted. Naturally, this created a place where there weren't any great schools, just a lot of ok ones.*

  "The funds available [for higher education] have been used for planting, rather than watering–to found a multitude of weak schools, rather than to make a few schools strong."
- The best political economy, Emerson tells us, is the care and culture of men.
- The essence of manhood lies in the growth of the power of choice. In the varied relations of life the power to choose means the duty of choosing right. To choose the right, one must have the wit to know it and the will to demand it. In the long run, in small things as in large, wrong choice leads to death. It is not " punished by death," for nature knows nothing of rewards and punishments. Death is simply its inevitable result. No republic can live--no man can live in a republic in which wrong is the repeated choice either of the people or of the state.
- A Japanese writer, Uchimura, says this of education in old Japan: "We were not taught in classes then. The grouping of soul-bearing human beings into classes, as sheep upon Australian farms, was not known in our old schools. Our teachers believed, I think instinctively, that man (persona)is unclassifiable; that he must be dealt with personally -i.e. face to face, and soul to soul. So they schooled us one by one -each according to his idiosyn-crasies, physical, mental, and spiritual. They knew each one of us by his name. And as asses were never harnessed with horses, there was but little danger of the latter being beaten down into stupidity, or the former driven into valedictorians' graves. In this respect, therefore, our old-time teachers in Japan agreed with Socrates and Plato in their theory of education. So naturally the relation between teachers and students was the closest one possible. We never called our teachers by that unapproachable name, Professor. We called them Sensei, men born before, so named because of their prior birth, not only in respect of the time of their appearance in this world, which was not always the case, but also of their coming to the understanding of the truth.

  It was this, our idea of relationship between teacher and student, which made some of us to comprehend at once the intimate relation between the Master and the disciples which we found in the Christian Bible. When we found written therein that the disciple is not above his master, nor the servant above his lord; or that the good shepherd giveth his life for his sheep, and other similar sayings, we took them almost instinctively as things known to us long before."

  Thus it was in old Japan. Thus should it be in new America.

  In such manner do the oldest ideas forever renew their youth, when these ideas are based not on tradition or convention, but in the nature of man.
- The best spent money of the present is that whichis used dfor the future.
- In other words, the people will always have as agood a government as their intelligence and patriotism deserve, and no better. In the long rungovernemtncan be made better only by the improvement of the public opinion on which it rests.
- It is not your duty to join yourself to organizations which can take away any part of your freedom. It is not your duty to vote the ticket of my party, nor of your party, nor that of any one of the time-honored political organizations into which men naturally fall. For you and I know that the questions which divide the great parties of a free country are not, as a rule, questions of morals or good citizenship. The sheep are never all on one side, nor the goats on the other. Party divisions are based, for the most part, on hereditary tenden-cies, on present expediencies, and hopes of temporary gain, and too often on the distribution of power and plunder, of power to plunder.

  When your party is led by bad men, or when its course is headed in the wrong direction, your State expects you as educated men to know it.
- That you stand aloof from the majority is no proof that you are right and they are wrong.
- The good citizen is a citizen of the world; itself, as citizenshipimproves, becoming one vast community, the greatest of all republics.
- The story of the decline and growth of empires is the stry of the growth of man.
- The degree of tolerance which is shown by any people toward those whose opinions differ from their own s one of the best tests of civiliization.
- The growth of tolerance is one of the most important phases in the hsitory of modern civilization. The right of freedom of the mind, the right of private interpretation, is a birthright of humanity. As the scholar has taken a noble part in the struggle which has won for us this freedom, so should he guard it in the future as one of his highest possessions. It is each man's right to hew his own pathway toward the truth. If there be in this country a town, North, South, East, West, on the banks of the Yazoo, or the Hudson, or the Sacramento, where an honest man cannot speak his honest mind without risk of violence or of social ostracism, in that town our freedom is but slavery still, and our civilization but a barbarism thinly disguised.
- The value of life is measured by its aim rather than by its achievement. Loftiness of aim is essential to loftiness of spirit. Nothing that is really high can be reached in a short time nor by any easy route. Most men, as men go, aim at low things, and they reach the objects of their ambitions. They have only to move in straight lines to an end clearly visible. Not so with you. You are bound on a quest beyond the limit of your vision. There are mountains to climb, rivers to ford, deserts to cross on your search for the Holy Grail. The end is never in sight.
-  What you have done thus far is little in itself.

	  You have reached but the threshold of learning. Your education is barely begun, and there is no one but you who can finish it. Your thoughts are but as the thoughts of children, your writings but trash from the world's waste-paper basket. Nothing that you know, or think, or do but has been better known or thought or done by others.

	  The work of your lives is barely begun. You must continue to grow as you are now growing before you can serve the world in any important way. But the promise of the future is with you.

	  You have the power and will of growth. The sunshine and rain of the next century will fall upon you. You will be stimulated by its breezes, you will be inspired by its spirit. It is not an easy thing to grow. Decay and decline is easier than growth-so the trees will tell you. Growth is slow, and hard, and wearisome. The lobster suffers the pangs of death every time he outgrows and sheds his shell; but each succeeding coat of armor is thicker, and stronger, and more roomy. So with you. You will find it easier not to develop. It will be pleasanter to adjust yourself to old circumstances and to let the moss grow on your back. The struggle for existence is hard; the struggle for improvement is harder; and some there are among you who sooner or later will cease struggling. Such will be the cases of arrested development-those who promised much and did little, those whose education did not bring effectiveness. Be never satisfied with what you have accomplished, the deeds you can do, the thoughts you can think. Such satisfaction is the sting of old age, the feeling that the best is behind us, and that the noble quest is over forever.
- To be known as an apostle or as the devotee of some special idea, often prevents a man from learning or from growing.
- Be a life long or short, its completeness depends on what it was lived for.
- Sin is a man's failure to realize his highest possibilites.


The Care and Culture of Men by David Starr Jordan

## Impressions
I was inspired to buy this book after [hearing the author's conversation on *Armchair Expert*](https://armchairexpertpod.com/pods/steve-brusatte). His enthusiasm for dinosaurs and the mysteries of earth 66 million years ago was contagious. I was hoping for a creatively written book about dinosaurs that helped me learn a lot about their origin. I wasn't disappointed with that notion in mind, but I also wasn't thrilled with the book. At the end, I still felt there was a lot of information missing about how dinosaurs were created, but perhaps that because *no one actually knows.* Either way, I think Brusatte is a good writer and is able to mix academic knowledge with engaging writing, but I was hoping for more academic knowledge and less engaging writing. That said, it was a fun book and I'd recommend it to anyone wanting to learn a bit about dinosaurs, their evolutionary processes, and what the hell happened to all those magnificent creatures.

## Notes
- 252 million years ago, the Permian period of the world ended with a massive mass extinction underneath Siberia. It wiped out 90% of the living things in the world and lasted for a few million years.
- Body fossils, the most popular type, are when parts of the actual animal or plant become fossilized. Trace fossils are when a footprint, bite mark, or something of the like become fossilized. These are valuable because they show how the animal interacted with the environment around them.
- Dinosaurs lived through three periods of geological history: the Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous, which are together known as the Mesozoic Era.
- The earth formed around 4.5 billion years ago. Around 1.8 billion years ago is when we start getting our first complex organisms. They finally started to emerge onto land about 390 million years ago.
- One of the first species to evolve after the end-Permian extinction were the archosaurs. From them, two lineages branch off:
	- First, pseudosuchians, later gave rise to crocodiles
	- Second, the avemetatarsalia developed into pterosaurs, dinosaurs, and the birds we now see today. This group is called the bird-line archosaurs.
- True dinosaurs first entered the picture around 240 and 230 million years ago. The hesitation in accuracy is because its difficult to radiometric date
- The dinosaurs grew up on a one-continent, one-ocean world. Pangea and Panthalassa.
- The high carbon dioxide in the Late Triassic period started a chain reaction: huge fluctuations in temperature, wildfires and humid spells. This made it very difficult for plants to establish themselves in an ever-changing world. Consequently, plant-eating dinosaurs had a difficult time establishing themselves as well, even 20 million years after they first arrived on the scene.
- Convergence - When different types of animals end up resembling each other because of similarities in lifestyle and environment.
- Morphological disparity - A type of comparison done to analyze diversity based on features of anatomy. A bird is more diverse than a jellyfish because birds have a much more complicated system than jellyfish, who are basically just sacks of goo, do. This technique is so effective because so many functions of biology, diet, behavior, growth, and metabolism, are all governed by anatomy.
- Some 30 million years after dinosaurs first came about, they still hadn't had world domination like we think of it. They were being outmanned and outgunned by their crocodile-like adversaries, pseudosuchians.
- At the very end of the Triassic, some 201 million years ago, Pangea, after 40 million years of slow tugging and drifts, finally cracked. This caused magma and lava from underneath the earth's surface to erupt in a massive volcano, the end-Triassic eruptions. In the end, some three million square miles of central Pangea were drowned in lava.
- The end-Triassic eruptions were the best thing that could have happened for dinosaurs. Afterwards, they became more diverse and more adaptive and bigger - outnumbering now the previous crocodile-like pseudosuchians. (Not sure why though, - yet at least.)
- Most 3D models of dinosaurs today are created using photogrammetry. They're able to take pictures of fossils, import them into a computer program and let it build out a skeletal model. From there, you can add organs, muscles, and skin and create a life-like dinosaur, complete with the ability to make it move. Pretty crazy.
- The key to brontosaurs massive size:
	- 1.) Their neck - it allowed them to reach high above the trees, higher than any other plant eating dino. It also allowed them to camp in one spot and gobble up plants from all around, expanding very little energy while doing so.
	- 2. The rate at which they grew was very fast
	- 3. Their lungs were different from all other lungs and it was much more efficient.
		- [Unidirectional lung](http://www.fernbank.edu/birding/respiration.htm#:~:text=Unidirectional%20flow%20means%20that%20air,and%20out%20of%20the%20lungs.)
	- 4. Their bones were hollow, filled with air sacs much like honeycombs and not solid bone.
- [Niche partitioning](https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/earth-and-planetary-sciences/niche-partitioning#:~:text=The%20term%20niche%20partitioning%20refers,Advances%20in%20Ecological%20Research%2C%202016) - When coexisting species avoid competing with each other be behaving or feeding in slightly different ways.
- Tyrannosaurs are actually a group of dinosaurs that are all similar to the T. Rex and are who the T. Rex evolved from. They started to take shape around the middle Jurassic, when sauropods and other dinosaurs were making their big debut. The first ones were very small.
- *Kileskus* was the first tyrannosaur we know of. It was around more than 100 million years before T. Rex.
- T. Rex finally rose to the top of the food chain at the dawn of the Campanian subinterval of the latest Cretaceous period. We're not sure why. There is a theory that volcanic ash and poisonous gas spewed up and made the planet toxic for a while, killing off a bunch of species (that's fact) but we don't know if that helped the T. Rex takeover or it's just a mere coincidence.
- T. Rex lived about 69 to 66 million years ago and thrived in Western North America - which was covered in forest-y coastal plains.
-  Encephalization quotient - A measure of the relative size of the brain compared to the size of the body. Bigger animals will have bigger brains because their bodies are naturally bigger, but that doesn't mean they are smarter.
- Rex had large olfactory bulbs - the lobes at the front of the brain that control the smell. This led to their very keen sense of smell.
- Birds are dinosaurs - just like theropods and sauropods, birds are just another one of the many branches from the dinosaur family tree.
- Natural selection works by favoring certain heritable traits that aid in surviving longer. If a group of offspring all have slightly different colors and one is darker and that helps them camouflage better, and the trait is inheritable, they will pass that on.
	- If a population is somehow divided enough and each subset goes its own way, evolving its own features until the two groups are so different that they can no longer mate with one another, then they have developed into a new species.
- It's no doubt birds evolved from theropods. But they didn't evolve wings to fly at first. Most likely, they evolved to show off and get mates, like the tails of peacocks. Since bigger wings were more impressive, wings kept getting bigger and bigger relative to the size of the body. Eventually, the wings got big enough to support the bird's body in the air.
- The food they ate and their size had a lot to do with why dinos died and why some mammals and reptiles went on to live after the Cambrian explosion.
- The asteroid/comet hit right on the edge of the Yucatan Peninsula.


The Rise and Fall of Dinosaurs by Steven Brusatte

Kevin Kelly, who arguably has written one of the most influential essays regarding the internet and the creator economy, "[1,000 True Fans](https://kk.org/thetechnium/1000-true-fans/)", published "103 Bits of Advice I Wish I Had Known" on his 70th birthday. In the simple article, he gives practical advice, philosophical quips, and everything in between. I thoroughly enjoyed reading it when it came out. So much so, I printed it out and annotated bits I loved and wanted to go deeper on.

To my luck, *Freakonomics* published an interview with him asking about that specific essay. Kelly was able to provide more context on his answers and share a few stories. The following comes from that interview.

---

One of the pieces of advice observe, very factually, that "ninety percent of everything, is crap." Kelly goes on to encourage the reader to, if they find something they don't like, just try finding the ten percent that is actually good. But how to find that ten percent was left as a mystery, until now. Stephen Dubner, the host of *Freakonomics* asked him for his advice on finding the "'non-crap' 10 percent":

> I have to say, this one I’m talking to myself because I often get very impatient. So, the only bit of advice for me is to keep returning to it with as much grace and open-mindedness as possible because nine times out of ten you’re going to be very disappointed. So why are you going to go back the tenth time? Of course, life is limited. We can’t try all the stuff that we don’t like. But when I have a chance and it’s not too difficult, I’ll give things a second or third or fourth chance. And occasionally, I do change my mind and it’s like, “Wow, I’m glad that I pursued that because I didn’t see it in the beginning.”

![KK 2](//images.ctfassets.net/nk2hkdvz2uym/6Dlvh9t1OYyyGdcu3zj99p/c7bc5ef7918a136aa7515df610ebefd9/KK_2.png)

Dubner [cited research](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1998/03/30/open-season-2) that showed when people approach the ages of 30 or 40, they typically are set in the ways of the food they eat and the things they do. Trying new things just isn't much of an idea as you get older. Fortunately, Kelly had some simple advice to staying more fluid as one ages:

> Don’t sit in the same chair every night. I deliberately try not to do that at the table, to make sure I don’t get into these ruts. And I ask my kids to make me a playlist for birthday presents. Give me all the music you’re listening to as a way to hear new things and see if I can get into it. When you go out to eat, order your favorite thing, and then order something you’ve never ordered before. I think it has to be a very deliberate thing. It doesn’t really come easy.

Another bit of advice has to do with the appreciation of luck: "Ask anyone you admire, their lucky breaks happened on a detour from their main goal. So embrace detours. Life is not a straight line for anyone." Kelly expanded on his reasoning for including this:

> I have very little patience with particularly successful people who don’t acknowledge the luck. And if I have gained any knowledge or wisdom over time, it is my increasing realization and admittance that I am the product of luck. There is just no way around it. But having said that, I think you can still choose luck. I have to say this very carefully, in the sense that there are people who are luckier than others, and it’s not because of how they were born. I think there are probably different species of luck. The little bit I’ve read about luck is that people who have decided that they’re lucky are luckier. And so lucky people are expecting to be lucky, and that expectation is self-fulfilling. It’s kind of like that increasing returns — it’s because I have been lucky, I expect to be lucky, and therefore I am going to be luckier. In the same way, if you decide that you’re an unlucky person, you’re not going to be lucky. And that’s also been proven.

![KK3 -01](//images.ctfassets.net/nk2hkdvz2uym/3qE9UddGwZIb4lmfGcov35/0ecae2091ef8adb9a52593890a1db2db/KK3_-01.png)

One of the more practical pieces of advice refers to why your parents probably walked so slowly through museums or monuments, when you just wanted to get to the ice cream: "Always read the plaque next to the monument." His answer to this one seemed personal. It was like he really cared about it because he had learned so much from reading plaques and wants others to experience that joy:

> I was hiking in the Cotswolds just this week, and there was a plaque about a nuclear bunker that we’d walked past and had no idea what it was, or that it was even there. And then there was a plaque for a site that turned out to be a burial mound that they believe is older than the pyramids. There’s always a story about something. And it’s not evident or obvious, and it will always enrich your lives. And there’s a courtesy in the plaque saying, “Hey, I’m pretty interesting. You just spend one minute here, and I’ll tell you. I’ll let you in on the secret.” And then you do it and you say, “Thank you, plaque. That was amazing. I’m so glad you stood there all that time.”

Clearly, Kelly is a thoughtful guy and seems to spend more time than the rest thinking–about life, about living, and about everything in between. Actively *thinking* about the problems were facing–not panicking to solve them–will do us all well. This is what Kelly has to say about spending time in reflection and thinking:

> I think you kind of almost veered onto Alfred Whitehead’s [definition](https://www.gutenberg.org/files/41568/41568-pdf.pdf) of civilization, which was that civilization advanced to the degree which we didn’t have to think about other things. So instead of having to think about where am I going to get enough food to eat, we could think about some other things because we have a system called civilization that provides all the food that we need and more. So I think what I would see over time is us switching where we spend time with our attention and our thinking, up the Maslow hierarchy, away from basic things about survival and shelter, maybe away from just generic things about having a job and being occupied to higher level things of self-realization in the larger sense of not just our own individual self-realization, but where we’re going as a society, as a collective species.
>
> And we have collectively a very difficult assignment, which is, who do we want to be as humans? What do we want humans to be? And one of the reasons why I’m really keen on artificial intelligence is that we’re going to use A.I. to help us answer this question of what do we want humans to be. Because we’re going to be giving them lots of things that we thought we were about and realizing they can do that. And I think this larger identity problem of not just who am I as an individual, but who am I as a human, is where we’ll spend more time. And as we go on, I think this kind of identity crisis, not just on an individual level, but as a collective level, becomes more and more of the conversation.

His article that spawned this interview is a delight to read and I think more people should attempt to publish something similar. I have a doc called "My Life Thesis," where I record principles I want to live by. Most of them I hear from someone on a podcast or read about in a book, but some I've deduced myself–it's quite a lovely experience when this happens.

This type of essay is important because it's likely you have some bits of advice you live by, whether you do so consciously or not. Extracting the pure insight of those bits of advice into one or two sentences helps solidify the lesson and make it more tangible. You likely have much more insight in that little head of yours than you think you do. How much more interesting would the world be if we shared it all?


Kevin Kelly's 103 Bits of Advice, Expanded

Sitting around a campfire listening to stories passed on from generations brings with it a feeling of wonder and joy for the adventures told from long ago.

Each one of these stories is special on its own and they could never be told in a *bad* way.

But you reach another level of captivation when someone who is a great storyteller holds the talking stick and their vocal cords rumble.

Each word lingers in your mind as you anticipate the next set of syllables, waiting to laugh, to cry, and to love. It's a whole new experience.

This is how I felt reading [*What Do You Care What Other People Think? Further Adventures of a Curious Character*](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B004OA6KIS/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1) by Richard Feynman. I have a deep admiration for Feynman's beliefs on life, knowledge, and science, but that admiration went deeper still as I followed the stories of his life told by the man himself.

Feynman, You Sexist Pig!
------------------------

Shortly after giving lectures at CalTech, Feynman was accused of being anti-women because of two stories he told to illustrate different points in his *Feynman Lectures on Physics*. In response to the letter he received, Feynman wrote, "Don't bug me man!" and sent it off.

About a year later, he was in San Francisco receiving an award he was given from writing those books, but not all was well. A group of protesters were in front of the lecture hall giving out flyers with black, large letters titled, "FEYNMAN SEXIST PIG!"

As he started his talk, he addressed the protestor's:

> I'm sorry that my short answer to your letter brought you here unnecessarily. There are more serious places to direct one's attention towards improving the status of women in physics than these relatively trivial mistakes--if that's what you want to call them--in a textbook. But perhaps, after all, it's good that you came. For women do indeed suffer from prejudice and discrimination in physics, and your presence here today serves to remind us of these difficulties and the need to remedy them.
>
> Even though the American Association Physics Teachers has given me an award for teaching, I must confess I don't know how to teach. Therefore, I have nothing to say about teaching. Instead, I would like to talk about something that will be especially interesting to the women in the audience: I would like to talk about the structure of the proton.

Handled with grace and care.

Infinite numbers
----------------

Richard Feynman was an "uncle" to several of his physicist's kids. One such nephew was Henry Bethe, son of Hans Bethe who was a 1967 Nobel Prize winner. After the passing of Feynman, Henry sent a letter to Feynman's wife retelling a magnificent story that illustrates Feynman's playful attitude and ability to simplify the complex. Henry recalls:

Dick [Feynman] turned to me and said, "Did you know that there are twice as many numbers as numbers?"

"No there are not!" Henry quipped back.

But Feynman wouldn't give up, insisting that Henry name a number.

> "One million" A big number to start.
>
> "Two million."
>
> "Twenty-seven."
>
> "Fifty-four."
>
> I named about ten more numbers and each time Dick names the number twice as big. Light dawned.
>
> "I see; so there are three times as many numbers as numbers"
>
> "Prove it," said Uncle Dick. He named a number. I named one three times as big. He tried another. I did it again. Again. He named a number too complicated for me to multiply in my head. "Three times that," I said.
>
>


What Do You Care What Other People Think? By Richard Feynman

## Impressions

*Discipline is Destiny* brilliantly illustrates a depressingly "bro-culture" idea: discipline. This characterization stems from the hustle culture accounts on Instagram or finance bros on Twitter explaining their 4 AM morning routines, cold showers, and 35-minute meditation sessions. This overexposure to a powerful concept has therefore watered down a powerful idea, the idea that *you, and only you, control your life.* This book brings the idea back into reality.

Through 54 short chapters, Ryan Holiday gives rules, ideas, and principles to live a disciplined life. By studying some of the most disciplined people who have breathed life on this Earth, the reader can't help but think, *What if I start to be more disciplined today, right now?* *What if I actually did "attack the dawn?''* *How different would my career be if I really did do the hard things first?* *What if I just showed up every day for the next 5 years? 10 years?* *What would my life look like if I got rid of that thing that controls me?* *What happens if I actually use discipline to shape my destiny?*

## Takeaways

**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 that you can control, so you can control your body and mind in moments that you don't.

**Work before the light and do the hard thing first** - Toni Morrison, speaking on the virtues of waking up early to work, said, "Writers all devise ways to approach that place where they expect to make the contact, where they become the conduit, or where they engage in this mysterious process. For me, light is the signal in the transition. It's not being *in* the light, it's being there *before it arrives*. "

Half of this battle is going to bed early and making sure you get enough sleep. Holiday writes, "The best way to master the morning is to have mastered it the night before."

"Just as days are made of mornings," he also wrote, "lives are made of days. To procrastinate at any time, day or night, young or old, to *push it until later,* is a loser's game."

**Be your own master** - One day in 1949, Richard Feynman felt an increased urge to reach for the flask. It was a 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 has mastery of you. These can be vices like caffeine, alcohol, or drugs. But they can also be virtues like success, working out, and so on. The desire isn't the issue. *It's the need.*

**Work clean, think clean** - Robert Moses liked to work on a large table because it made him more effective and encouraged a better workflow. He believed in processing, or what David Allen's GTD method called an "inbox." When something came in, you dealt with it. And since a table has no drawers, his biographer Robert Caro would write in *The Power Broker*, "there was no place to hide papers; there was no escape from a nagging problem or a difficult-to-answer letter except to get rid of it in one way or another." Holiday says, "The space where great work is done is holy. We must respect it." As Gustave Flaubert says, "Be regular and orderly in your life so that you may be violent and original in your work."

**Just show up. Once you do, enjoy the work** - 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. Showing up when you're tired. Doing the work on the project for the 5th year in a row when it feels like you'll never get it done. 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."

And once you show up...get to work."I come from a part of the world where people did work rather than just talk about it," Joyce Carol Oates said. "And so if you feel that you just can't write, or you're too tired, or this, or that, and the other, just stop thinking about it and go to work."

Encouraging his readers just to show up and work regardless of the arbitrary outcomes, Holiday would write, "Decide what you want to be, and then do that work." If you love the work, you don't care what the outcomes are, the prizes you get, or the money you make. You do it because it's what you love to do.

**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...

**Don't overdo it** - Discipline isn't only resisting the temptation to give up; it's also resisting the temptation to go too far. Working out too much, getting injured, and not working out at all usually take someone to the same place. John Steinbeck referred to those who fell prey to their desires to accomplish a lot and called this the "indiscipline of overwork."

**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.

But that's not enough.

Once you've cleared your plate of only the most essential, you must **focus relentlessly** on that task. Holiday shares an interesting story about Beethoven after a friend asked if he was even listening. "I was just occupied with such a lovely, deep thought," Beethoven replied, "I couldn't bear to be disturbed." Holiday puts it bluntly: "The muses never bless the unfocused."

**Perfectionism is a vice** - "I want it to be perfect," says someone who keeps saying they're writing a book, or a blog post, or making anything at all. "It doesn't matter the cause," Holiday writes, "whether it was from procrastination or perfectionism, the result is the same. You didn't do it."

Don't sacrifice completion for perfectionism. A bad book written is more successful than one in your head.

**Get better every day** - If you're not getting better, you're getting worse. There's a word for this in Japanese, *kaizen*. It means continual improvement. Holiday asks, "How much progress could you make if you made just a little each day over the course of an entire life?"

**Expect much from yourself, little from others** - 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, waking up early, etc.

But that's not an excuse to be soft on yourself. 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 when he said, "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 the way he "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."

**Bring distinction.** - Epaminondas, a general in Greece, was appointed to an insulting office in Thebes--taking care of the city's sewers. Instead of being upset, he did the job with diligence. Holiday shares that Epaminondas declared "that it is not the office that brings distinction to the man, it is the man who brings distinction to the office."

## Notes
- We have two choices: to master ourselves or be mastered by something else.
- We each have a higher and lower self that are constantly battling with each other. The lower self wants to do what's easy. The higher self wants to do what is right. The ancients called this inner battle *akrasia*.
- I'm disciplined, or try to be disciplined, because I'm afraid of who I'd be if I wasn't.
- Lou Gerhig wore his fame lightly, but took the obligations of it seriously.
- You say you love what you do. Where's your proof? What kind of streak do you have to show for it?
	- This is a great question to encourage keeping a reading/writing/working out/golfing log.
- "The one thing all fools have in common, is that they're always getting *ready* to live."
- Anger isn't bad. It's okay to be angry. You just can't *do anything* out of that anger.
- *Mos maiorum* - the unspoken yet also very much spoken way of life of your grandparents.
- July and August are named after Julius and Augustus Cesear.
- Be a hero to the valet.
- Destiny isn't going to be easy. But if it was, would it still be worth anything?

## Quotes
- "We must keep ourselves in check or risk ruin."
- More than talent, life is about temperament. And temperament.
- Although they come from very different places, the desire to skip a workout and the impulse to work out too much end up in the same place.
- No one who is a slave to their urges or to sloth, no one without strength or a good schedule, can greate a good life.
- The queen, you can be sure, always knows more than she says.
- Greatness is not just what one does, but also what one refuses to do. It's how one bears the constraints of their world or their profession, it's what we're able to do within limitations–creatively, consciously, calmly.
- "Remember to conduct yourself in life as if at a banquet. As something being passed around comes to you, reach out your hand and take a moderate helping. Does it pass you by? Don't stop it. It hasn't yet come? Don't burn in desire for it, but wait until it arrives in front og you. Act this way with children, a spouse, toward position, with wealth–one day it will make you worthy of a banquet with the gods."
- Someone else's lack of self-control is not a justification for abandoning your own.
- If you have money, spend it...the problem is when people spend money they don't have, to get things they don't need, at a price nowhere near worth the cost.
- And is "f-you money" really such an admirable goal anyway? To have so much money you don't have to care about anything or anyone? That's not vritue, it's childishness.
- "The modern stoic knows the surest way to discipline passion is to discipline time: decide what you want or ought to do during the day, then always do it exactly at the same moment every day, and passion will give you no trouble." Ryan writes, "The person who wakes up whenever, wakes up and does whatever, orders their day however? This is a person who will never have enough time, who will always be behind."
- "The nearer a man is to a calm mind, the closer he is to strength." – Marcus Aurelius
- "It doesn't matter what you bear. It matters how you bear it." – Seneca
- "If you make a bad bargain, hug it the tighter." (This is something you shouldn’t do, and it illustrates the idea of sunk costs.)


Discipline is Destiny by Ryan Holiday

## Impressions
I had been eyeing this for about a month before I bought it because reading a 400+ page book about the history of the library seemed like a big undertaking. Much to my surprise, it was a fun read and flowed nicely. I expected it to be much more pedantic than it was.

I do wish the contents were organized in a more structured timeline. I don't get why authors who write biographies or histories on something specific try and be creative with the structure by organizing the book by topic, like this one was, or in reverse-chronological order like *[Edison](https://www.amazon.com/Edison-Edmund-Morris/dp/081299311X)* was. This book wasn't completely random and followed a rough outline, but did not advance year to year.

## Actionable Takeaways
1. A good description of a library could be: *making the genius of man public property.*
2. A good way to tell what's important to someone, or a group of people, is to look at where the store things in their home. If they have a special room for something, it's a good indication that whatever is in there means a lot. We can use this strategy to infer books and the process of writing was very important to monastic monks, because they had a dedicated room for this endeavor: the scriptorium.
3. The earlier Stages of libraries had chains connected to books to prevent thieves from stealing anything. Once universities started displaying their books on shelves, the got rid of the chains to make it easier for people to study, but this also meant they lost more books. By 1338, over 300 of the mere 2,000 books in the possession of the College of the Sorbonne had already disappeared.
4. Before the invention of the printing press, books were used as a display of wealth. But once they became cheaper to buy, this practice became less so. It's a good illustration of scarcity creating an appearance of wealth and also how, even hundreds of years ago, people still wanted to "show off."
5. Like with any technological advancement, the incumbents thought printed books were not as equal in value to books written by hand. Those critics were often those who were in the business of writing books by hand or who had an uptight taste. The everyday person didn't care whether it was written by hand or printed, they just wanted the value that could be found inside. This is a great illustration about how people don't care what technology is used to build something–they just want that thing.
6. Throughout history, libraries were always a big target during any war. People could steal books to sell them, sure. But what was of more value was changing the city's ideology, for what people read, they became. So if you want to influence a group of people, they realized one of the best places to do that was the library. So they got rid of any books that talked about "the old way" and replaced them with books that matched that attackers philosophy. We see this play out from the early 1000s even up to WW2.

## Notes
- [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 Cesear who would bring Ceser's plan for a library in Rome to fruition, said Asinius was "the first to make the genius of man public property." I quite like that description for a library.
- "A monk who works is troubled by only one devil, while a monk who is idle is troubled by many." This is similar to Newton's quote about resisting temptation by keeping busy with intellectual practices in *[The Clockwork Universe](https://www.daltonmabery.com/book-notes/the-clockwork-universe)*.
- After the fall of the Roman Empire disrupted the papyrus supply throughout the Mediterranean, parchment became the standard replacement. It was more expensive, but lasted longer and could be written on on both sides.
- The importance of books in the monastic life could be symbolized through the existence of the scriptorium or writing room. For no one ever dedicated a room to something that wasn't important.
- Around the twelfth century, monasteries lost their monopoly on book collections and creations and universities took the reins.
- The word *studio* is derived from the Latin *studium*, which describes a monk's cell.
- Eventually, in the rooms of those colleges, books began to be put on display for anyone to use, rather than locked away in chests like they were in monasteries. This was a positive, for it made knowledge-sharing much easier and people could reference books in a much faster way. This also meant it was easier to lose books. By 1338, over 300 of the mere 2,000 books in the possession of the College of the Sorbonne had already disappeared.
- After the invention of the printing press, owning and collecting books no longer became a status symbol because it was much cheaper to get a book. Before, when things were produced by hand, they were much more expensive and it was a fun thing to "flex" on. That was no longer the case after the invention of the printing press.
	- "Ownership of a library no longer marked a man out as a member of the European social and political elite."
	- Paris became the center of printing in Northern Europe; in the south, it was Venice.
- Though some tried to make an argument that printed books weren't as "worthy" of books that were written by hand, owners didn't seem to mind: "Those buyers who bought a book for its text do not seem to have minded whether it came from a press or a pen."
- Whether the press had any role on the value of books is up for debate, but it certainly had an impact on the creation of libraries. Before the press, wealthy people wanted to make libraries to show off their wealth, but they were open for other people to use. But since the press made it much easier for anyone to get a book, the ruling class, the only people building libraries at the time, weren't as inclined to donate their generous books and money.
- Fernando Colon was one of the first people to recognize building a library for what it is today: a place for all books on all subjects for all people in all languages. This was not the common attitude for most collector's of the day.
- We lost a lot of potential collections and libraries once the owner passed on. Though they had a plan and intention to pass it on to an heir, it was a common thread throughout history that the heir didn't want to bare the responsibility. It was much easier to just get a little pay day from the collections.
- The Reformation had a quite a lasting impact on libraries and it was the beginning of a common pattern that is still happening today. After the Protestant's rose up, a lot of the Catholic works were no longer accurate (which at that point, was a lot of Europe's book stock), so they got rid of the Catholic works in libraries and started to replace them with Protestant works. The Act of Supremacy of 1534 acknowledged King Henry as head of the Church of England. This granted him the power to dissolve monasteries and with it, a lot of their books. Later in 1550, another Act was passed that made owning of the former monastic books illegal, which only sped up the rate of destruction that was currently taking place. But it wasn't just Catholic works that were lost, because when you're in a frenzy of book burning, it's quite difficult to tell the difference between "secular manuscripts of historical importance and works of catholic theology."
- When Queen Mary took over, the reformed books act were reversed and everyone started stacking shelves with catholic works again. This wasn't as vicious of a process as before, but it did have an effect on Oxford and other colleges, for they were where those of the future were being taught. This was again reversed under Queen Elizabeth, which added space for more protestant works again. But to this day, "No Oxford colleges own any Protestant books acquired before the reign of Elizabeth." It makes sense though, for "Why would colleges spend money on books when the books might be confiscated or burned after the next reversal of royal policy?"
	- This pattern of one ideology ruling, burning the others books or trying to censor them, and someone else coming into power would be a running thread through history.
- Between 1550 and 1750, normal tradesmen such as doctors, lawyers, and merchants starting collecting more books. Essentially, they picked up where the monks left off.
- By the middle of the 17th century, the Dutch Republic had become the center of the international book market. Book auctions had been around since the 15th Century, but the Dutch Republic were the first to separate books out from the rest of the estate. They also provided a printed catalogue people could look through ahead of time and come ready to bid. This had an interesting second order effect. Because books were now making much more money posthumously than before, people were much more encouraged to invest in books throughout their life, because they knew it could be used as a sort of an investment for their family when they passed.
- Thomas Bodley restored the Oxford library to what it is today completely on his own dime. He may have been the first to incorporate, strictly, the "silence rule" in libraries. By 1711, this rule had been adopted more widely; where the user in Amsterdam was greeted with this severe warning:
	- "You learned sir, who enter among books, don't slam the door with your tumultuous hand...here it's the dead who speak to them who work." (147)
- Libraries were a popular target to destroy during wars because what people read, they become. So if you wanted to change the culture, starting at the libraries was a good thing to do.
- The success of early public libraries depended on the degree of access and excitement of the leaders to treat it as a genuine public good, not just an off-shoot of their personal collection. **When someone cares about something, they make it last.**
- Starting around 1720, older books became much more valued. Hitherto, a book was valued solely on the contents of it, not when it was published, by whom it was written, or how it was published. This started to change around 1720, as people started to value older manuscripts and earlier printed books as much more valuable as later ones.
- The Library Company of Philadelphia was the world's first subscription library. We can thank Benjamin Franklin for this beautiful addition to the library economy. It still flourishes to this day.
- Fiction became it's own industry around the 19th Century, even though it carried with it a sense of disrespectfulness and "childish" attitude.
- Carnegie, with his generous donation of libraries in the Americas and Europe, truly inaugurated the golden age of the public library.
- WW1 and WW2 destroyed many of Europe's great libraries and books.

## Quotes
- As with so many of the libraries we will meet in this book, neglect was a much more potent enemy than war or malice.
- Libraries were a private encyclopedia of the world's wisdom and follies.

<Subscribe />


The Library: A Fragile History

Book Review and Summary: Revolt of the Public

## Takeaways
-   Writing is the art of using the English language in a way that will achieve the most strength and least clutter.
-   Must constantly ask yourself, 'What am I trying to say?' and say that.
-   School has taught us to use fancy words, jargon, and long transition phrases. Basically anything you learned in school about how to write, do the opposite. People want to know what you're saying in the least amount of words possible.
-   Get rid of every word that doesn't need to be there.
-   **Clutter is the language people speak when they're too scared to say what they mean.**
-   Never use, "I think," "I want to note," "I believe," etc. We know you think it, you're writing it.
-   When you're re-reading your rough draft, try bracketing the words that aren't doing anything. If the sentence still makes sense, ditch those words in the final draft.
-   Style can't be taught or learned, but don't force yourself to sound fancy.
-   Writing is all about sounding personal, but if you want to stay out of the first person, use "I" in the rough draft and replace them in the final draft.
-   There is no audience, you're writing for yourself.
-   If you find something amusing, add it. If you want to go on a tangent, do it. Again, writing is all about sounding personal. Someone has probably written something the way you have, but not with your style, examples, or tangents.
-   Cliche phrases, metaphors, etc., **are to never be used. It's lazy writing.**
-   Use _Websters Dictionary, Second College Edition,_ _Websters Dictionary of Synonyms,_ and _Rogets Thesaurus_ to make sure the word you chose actually means what you said it does. You can save a lot of space simply by using the right word.
-   Use new words if they fill a good need and help you express something you otherwise couldn't. If they don't, never use them again.
-   Separate usage from jargon.
-   Before WWII, people wanted novels and stories. But after Pearl Harbor, people just wanted to know what the hell was going on. They wanted facts, quotes, numbers, etc.
-   Before you start writing, be sure to choose which tone you want to use.
-   Ask yourself:
    -   How will I address the reader?
    -   What tense will I use?
    -   What style do I want to write in?
-   Every piece of non-fiction should leave the reader with one, just one, provocative thought he didn't have before he read the piece.
-   Try to give an extra twist to the last sentence in each paragraph. For example:

    > *I've often wondered what goes into a hot dog. Now I wish I didn't.

    My trouble began when the Department of Agriculture published...– In other words, can a chickenfurter find happiness in the land of the frank?*

-   Always collect more material than you think you will use and don't lead the reader get away. Make sure each sentence begs the reader to read the next.
-   If you've explained the facts and made the point you want to make, just stop.
-   Pick something crazy or a quote that's funny to surprise the readers with as the last sentence to your piece.
-   If a place comes to you easy, don't use it. It's most likely a cliche.
-   Eliminate every fact that is a known attribute. You don't need to use a simile to explain how hot and dry Death Valley was, people know that.
-   Distill the important information from the immaterial.

**Verbs**
-   Use short words. Of the 701 words in Lincoln's inaugural address, 505 are one syllable.

**Adverbs**
-   Most adverbs are unnecessary.
-   Don't write, "The radio blared loudly." Blared means it was loud.

**Adjectives**
-   Most are also unnecessary. "Brown dirt." Duh, dirt is brown.

**Qualifiers**
-   Don't use "sort of," "kind of," "a little," etc.
-   Tell the reader as early as you can that you're switching gears.
-   Use "but," "yet," "nevertheless," at the beginning of the sentence to replace what the reader was about to do.
-   Despite what you were taught in school, **you can start a sentence with "but."**
-   Newspaper paragraphs shouldn't have more than 2-3 sentences.
-   **The quickest fix to any sentence is to get rid of it.**

### Science and Technical Writing
-   If you're struggling trying to come up with simple writing, write about how something works. This is great practice for ordering your thoughts sequentially.
-   Imagine technical writing to be like an upside-down pyramid. Start with the first fact the reader must know to understand something and follow that pattern.

### Business and Professional Writing
-   Say what you want to say. Don't murk it up with big words trying to sound "professional."
-   The way to warm up almost any institution is to locate the missing "I" in the memos, reports, documents, writings, and so on.

## Quotes
- "The man who runs away from his craft because he lacks inspiration is a fool."
- "Ultimately, the product that any writer has to sell is not his subject, but himself."
- "The secret of good writing is to strip every sentence to its cleanest components."
- "A clear sentence is no accident."
- "Writing improves with the direct ratio to the number of things we can keep out that shouldn't be there" (I recognize the irony of this.)
- "Clutter is the official language used by corporations to hide its mistakes."
- "Leaders who bob and weave [with their words], don't inspire confidence."
- "Surprise is one of the most refreshing commodities in writing."
- "Beauty as we understand it, and as we admire it in nature, is never arbitrary."
- "A simple style is the result of hard work and hard thinking; A muddled style reflects a muddled thinker or a person too dumb or too lazy to organize his thoughts."


On Writing Well by William Zinsser

## Impressions

*[Leadership](https://www.amazon.com/Leadership-Six-Studies-World-Strategy/dp/0593489446/ref=asc_df_0593489446/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=532660552781&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=15035015911338731310&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9032520&hvtargid=pla-1411574914459&psc=1)* by Henry Kissinger profiled six leaders who led during a dramatic half-century. The leaders in this book influenced the world that followed the two colossal world wars that engulfed Europe and its allies. Their duties included reorganizing collapsing governments, cities, and countries; humbly accepting defeat and enduring global embarrassment; attempting to create global peace; and much more. These leaders struggled to create long term policies when everything that came before was focused on the immediate.

Kissinger's own experience with each of the leaders made this book all the more interesting. There was plenty of research and due diligence from Kissinger that profiled each subject well, but each chapter ended with Kissinger's reflections and lessons from the personal relationships he maintained with each statesmen. I didn't know that when I started reading it and it was a welcomed surprise. For some reason, these interactions made each subject more personal and real, not just someone whose name is in the history books a few times.

## Practical lessons

- **If you want to have respect in the world, live by principle and not by slogans, pressure, or persuasion**. In a discussion on the qualities of strong leadership, Konrad Adenauer cautioned Kissinger to 'never confuse energy with strength.'

- **Be cautious of whom you show incompetence to, or why you say something can't be done.** "Young man," Eisenhower said to Kissinger, "Never tell anyone that you are unable to carry out a task entrusted to you."

- The First World War eroded trust in the political elite, after Europe's leaders failed to navigate the oncoming disasters.

- **Keep reading and learning widely.** Each of the leaders profiled in this book "were taught a wide range of subjects, including especially the humanities, as if in preparation for the challenges of leadership, for which a sense of history and the ability to deal with tragedy are indispensable. Above all, they received an education which would help them to understand the world, the psychology of others and themselves."

- **Attain 'deep literacy'.** Defined by Adam Garfinkle as '[engaging with] an extended piece of writing in such a way as to anticipate an author's direction and meaning.' "Ubiquitous and penetrating, yet invisible," Kissinger writes, "deep literacy was the 'background radiation' of the period in which the six leaders profiled in this book come of age." He wrote also, "Intense reading can help leaders cultivate the mental distance from external stimuli and personalities that sustains a sense of proportion. When combined with reflection and the training of memory, it also provides a storehouse of detailed and granular knowledge from which leaders can reason analogically...Books record the deeds of leaders who once dared greatly, as well as those who dared too much, as a warning."

- **Discipline (self-mastery) and the ability to take the long view are two essential attributes of great leaders.** This is helpful to know for myself, but also be wary of the opposite in leaders I'm following. If a leader is constantly falling prey to their desires, not doing what they said they would, or constantly looking for short-term wins, Dalton beware.

- **Be direct. Don't be afraid to tell hard truths.** 'Who do you think lost the war?' Adenauer famously said to his fellow members of parliament after they were complaining about the rule and reign of the Allied powers in postwar Germany.

- **Be in tune with reality, but have a guiding vision** Kissinger writes, "Mediocre leaders are unable to distinguish between the significant from the ordinary; they tend to be overwhelmed by the inexorable aspect of history." They are able to identify the essential elements of their state and determine which are necessary, which must be improved, and which must be forgotten.

- **Be bold.** When faced with important decisions, especially with unfavorable conditions, each leader did what had to be done. Thatcher, under doubt from experts and facing an economic crisis, sent a Royal Navy Task Force to recover the Falkland Islands from Argentina. De Gaulle's attitude with France was to act like it was much bigger, more unified, and much more confident than it actually was.

- **Continue with the practice of solitude** Sadat, in prison, initiated his reflective habits. Adenauer followed suit in a monastery as he was in exile. Thatcher made some of the most important decisions while she was reviewing her papers, early in the morning.

- **Paradoxically, they embraced divisiveness. Some divisiveness is okay.** Each leader, rightly so, wanted their people to follow on the path that they lead. Naturally, not everyone would follow. But that's okay. They weren't looking for consensus. Naturally, tension was to follow. When 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 Thatcher did, or seek peace with historic adversaries as Sadat, or build a successful mutliethnic society from the ground up as Lee, 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."

- **Be virtuous** James Q. Wilson defines virtue as, "habits of moderate action; more specifically, acting with due restraint on one's impulses, due regard for the rights of others, and reasonable concern for distant consequences." #quote  Kissinger writes, "Good character does not assure worldly success or triumph, but it does provide firm grounding in victory and consolation in failure."

## Notes

- Any and all systems are in transit between and must balance the effects of a past that forms its memory and a vision of the future that inspires its evolution.

- The vital attributes of leadership are courage and character: courage to make decisions among a set of complex and difficult options and character to continue on that course where the benefits and dangers are not fully realized yet.

- Leaders operate in scarcity, for every situation has certain limitations placed upon it. They operate in time, for each era will have different values and habits that form the eventual outcome. They also operate in competition, with their allies and those they are up against. They also have to make judgements based on intuitions and hypotheses that cannot be proven at the time of a decision.

- Different times call for a different style of leadership, these can be classified as a statesman and a prophet. The statesman understands that one of their tasks is to preserve their society by changing their circumstances rather than be overwhelmed by them. They also must balance an exciting vision with a tough of wariness. Statesmen are suspicious of those who personalize policy, because throughout history, many rules and reigns rooted in personality have come down. The second type of leader, the visionary prophet seeks to erase the past. They are suspicious of anything that's gradual because they seek to upheave the past.

- Konrad Adenauer's strategy to rebuild Germany as an equal with the rest of the powers was composed of four elements: accepting the consequences of defeat; regaining the confidence of the victors; building a democratic society; and creating a European federation that would transcend the historic divisions of Europe.

- His embracing of the humility of the Allies to "babysit" Germany was his plan to turn submission of the rules into a virtue, and he realized that a temporary inequality of conditions was a necessary precursor to equality of status.

- He said, "We cannot and must not assume that with the others there has occurred suddenly a complete change in mood toward Germany, but instead trust can only be recovered slowly, bit by bit."

- To whom can I confide/the secrets of my soul and the cares of my life?

 - De Gaulle's authority rested in his innate sense of personal confidence and an unshakeable faith in France and its history.

  - De Gaulle proclaimed something to be so, and so it was so. He persuaded his people through the creation of a political reality by a sheer force of will.

  - "One must become a man of character. The best way to succeed in action is to know how to dominate oneself perpetually."

- Three principles from Nixon's time in office would benefit the US:

	- The centrality of national interest

	- The maintenance of a global equilibrium

	- The creation of sustained and intense discussions among major countries to construct a framework of legitimacy within which the balance of power can be defined and observed.

- Sadat's tendency toward solitude endowed him with insight and independent thought but also marked him as a loner. Though he had been in the highest echelons of Egyptian power, no one really trusted him when he took over from Nasser because he never stepped into the limelight.

- In 1973, twice Sadat faked-out the Israeli army, causing them to mobilize at great expense. On the third time, Sadat actually struck, this time facing no Israeli reinforcements because, says Israel's then-defense minister that Sadat, "made me do it twice, at a cost of ten million dollars each time. So, when it was the third time around I thought he wasn't serious. But he tricked me!"

## Quotes

- Leadership is needed to help people reach from where they are to where they have never been and, sometimes, can scarcely imagine going.

- Leaders think and act at the intersection of two axes: the first, between the past and the future; the second, between the abiding values and aspirations of those they lead.

- Ordinary leaders seek to manage the immediate; great ones attempt to raise their society to their visions.

- "...what seems inevitable becomes so by human agency."

- Great leadership is more than an evocation of transitory exultation; it requires the capacity to inspire and to sustain vision over time.

- Something is amiss when the relationship between the leadership class and much of the public is defined by mutual hostility and suspicion.

- "Intense reading can help leaders cultivate the mental distance from external stimuli and personalities that sustains a sense of proportion. When combined with reflection and the training of memory, it also provides a storehouse of detailed and granular knowledge from which leaders can reason analogically. More profoundly, books offer a reality that is reasonable, sequential and orderly–a reality that can be mastered, or at least managed, by reflection and planning. And, perhaps, most importantly for leadership, reading creates a 'skein of intergenerational conversation', encouraging learning with a sense of perspective. Finally, reading is a source of inspiration. **Books record the deeds of leaders who once dared greatly, as well as those who dared too much, as a warning.**"

- "For information to be transmitted into something approaching wisdom, it must be placed within a broader context of history and experience."

- "Great leadership results from the collision of the intangible and the malleable, from that which is given and that which is exerted. Scope remains for individual effort–to deepen historical understanding, hone strategy and improve character. The Stoic philosopher Epictetus wrote long ago, 'We cannot choose our external circumstances, but we can always choose how we respond to them.' It is the role of leaders to help guide that choice and inspire their people in its execution."

## Random Tidbits

- "Study history. Study history," Churchill said, "In history lie all the secrets of statecraft." when asked about how one might prepare for the challenges of leadership in may 1953.

- In prison, Anwar Sadat had undergone a profound transformation. Instead of whittling time away in solitary confinement, he developed what he called 'inner strength.' This was his 'capacity...for change.' He said, "My contemplation of life and human nature in that secluded place had taught me that he who cannot change the very fabric of his thought will never be able to change reality, and will never, therefore, make any progress. "


Leadership by Henry Kissinger

*[The Man From the Future](https://www.amazon.com/Man-Future-Visionary-Life-Neumann-ebook/dp/B098TYZN67?crid=3FM501TO8DIZ6&keywords=The%20Man%20From%20The%20Future&qid=1657608834&sprefix=the%20man%20from%20the%20future,aps,140&sr=8-1&linkCode=sl1&tag=slatestarcode-20&linkId=90b726e6acb3d8ccb1fe7b31e3d3ab21&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_tl)* explores the life of a time-traveler. Someone who theorized, pondered, and invented tools that would create the lives of some and destroy the lives of many. [Game theory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_theory), quantum mechanics, [The Manhattan Project](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhattan_Project), computers, and the [RAND Corporation](https://www.rand.org/) are just some of the many disciplines which von Neumann dabbled. This book explores those wide-reaching fields and the many lives they impacted.

After reading, I want to understand two fields better: game theory and the birth of the computer. I want to understand how to use game theory to demolish friends at Risk and I'd like a complete understanding of how the [ENIAC](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ENIAC) created the [EDVAC](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EDVAC) and how that lead to the modern computer. To that, I shall continue my exploration of the shelves of libraries that holds the wisdom of the world–all for my taking.

## Takeaways/Learnings
- The brilliant Hungarian scientists, who were abundant in the physics and math world of the 20th Century, called themselves The Martians because of their strange accents and exceptional intellects–they must have been born on another planet.
	- It makes me wonder though, *why were there so many brilliant minds from Hungary in the 20th Century and specifically, how were they all working together*?
	- Von Neumann would attribute his generation's success to cultural factors that produced "a feeling of extreme insecurity in the individuals, and the necessity to produce the unusual or face extinction."

- Orthogonal polynomials are sets of independent mathematical functions that can be added together to make any other.

- Von Neumann was 17 when he shipped his first publication. It investigated the zeroes of Chebyshev polynomials. This is the first time Von Neumann's voice appears and it wouldn't change much. Freeman Dyson notes, "Johnny's unique gift as a mathematician was to transform problems in all areas of mathematics into problems of logic."

- Schrödinger came up with his famous thought experiment because he was trying to illustrate the ridiculousness that was von Neumann's claim of turning everyday objects into those of quantum mechanics.

> "Von Neumann would carry on a conversation with my three-year-old son, and the two of them would talk as equals, and I sometimes wondered if he used the same principle when he talked to the rest of us." – Edward Teller

- When von Neumann was offered a lectureship at Princeton, his arrival was delayed because he had to "fix a family matter." That family matter would be getting married.

- Fabian Waldinger, an economist, analysed the impact of the war on German research. He found that "university science departments that were bombed during the war recovered by the 1960s, but those that had lost their staff remained sub-par well into the 1980s."

- Von Neumann had an act for driving fast. So much so, in fact, that he would buy a new car every year because he had totaled the previous one. He drove a Cadillac because, he would say, "no one would sell me a tank."

- Feynman hated the idea of the Institute for Advanced Study. The idea of the institute was to allow professors to think deeply about hard problems, without the burden of teaching and getting paid handsomely to do so. Feynman thought the whole idea was a shame, saying: "these poor bastards could now sit and think clearly all day by themselves, ok? They have every opportunity to do something, and they're not getting any ideas...Nothing happens because there's not enough real activity and challenge: You're not in contact with the experimental guys. You don't have to answer questions from the students. Nothing!"

- Von Neumann was an exceptional thinker, but that cost him. His daughter, Marina, said, "Although he genuinely adored my mother, my father's first love in life was thinking, a pursuit that occupied most of his waking hours, and, like many geniuses, he tended to be oblivious to the emotional needs of those around him." His wife, Klari, notes other peculiarities. "A drawer could not be opened unless it was pushed in and out seven times, the same with a light switch, which also had to be flipped seven times because you could let it stay."

- The design for Von Neumann's EDVAC had five distinct parts. The first three were a central arithmetic unit for performing mathematical operations; a central control unit to ensure that instructions were executed in the proper order; and a memory to store the code and numbers. The final components were the input and output units.

- Gleb Watahin once commented to Von Neumann that he was done thinking about mathematics and on to just thinking about bombs. "That is quite wrong, I am thinking about something much more important than bombs. I am thinking about computers."

- In 1947, Jean Batrik, one of the ENIAC's original operators, was hired to program the EDVAC–"the first time anyone had been employed solely for that task. The job of the computer programmer was born."

	- Von Neumann's wife, Klari, wrote complex Monte Carlo simulation to run on the EDVAC. It was the first truly useful modern program ever to have been executed.

- The birth of the field of Game Theory into the world spung from Von Neumann's urge to find neat mathematical solutions to complicated real-world problems.

> "The task of the perfect strategist is to gain the upper hand with as little effort as possible." – Emmanual Lasker

- Von Neumann boiled games down to a series of events. Some events depended entirely on chance, which he called 'draws'; and other which depend on the "free decision" of the players, which he called 'steps.' Each player's goal in a zero-sum game, is to minimize the amount they can lose while minimizing the amount they can win. This became known as Von Neumann's 'minimax' theory.

> "Any event may be regarded as a game of strategy if one looks at the effect it has on participants" - von Neumann.

- Chess, tic-tac-toe, and other similar games von Neumann calls games of "perfect information" because all the moves are available to every player. Every game of perfect information must end in a win or a draw and there is always only one optimal move for each player at a time.

> "The point of bluffing is not so much that you might win with a bad hand, as that you want to encourage the opposition to bet with middle-range hands when you have a good hand." – Kenneth Binmore

- When formulating a strategy, one always has to account for actions of a completely rational enemy.

- For a machine to copy itself, von Neumann argues three things are required. 1) The machine must have a set of instructions that describe how to build another like it. 2) It must have a construction unit to build new automaton by executing the instructions. 3) Finally, it needs a way to copy the instructions and insert them into the new machine.

- Floccinaucinihilipilification - The habit of regarding something as worthless.

- The first conference dedicated to artificial life was at Los Alamos in September, 1987.

- John McCarthy and Marvin Minsky originally coined the term "artificial intelligence" and founded one of the first labs to study it at MIT in the 1950s.

- Terrified of his own death, von Neumann saw the catholic priest while he was in the hospital. Marina, von Neumann's daughter, said he was thinking of Pascal's wager and had always believed that in the face "of even a small possibility of suffering eternal damnation the only logical course is to be a believer before the end." According to her, von Neumann once told her, "Catholicism was a very rough religion to love in but it was the only one to die in."

- In a page of her unfinished memoirs, von Neumann's longtime wife, Klári writes: "I would like to tell about the man, the strange contradictory and controversial person; childish and good-humored, sophisticated and savage, brilliantly clever yet with a very limited, almost primitive lack of ability to handle his emotions–an enigma of nature that will have to remain unresolved."


The Man From The Future

*You can purchase [the book here](https://www.amazon.com/Pieces-Action-Vannevar-Bush/dp/1953953204).*

I've been wondering lately how the process of scientific research has developed over the years and this book helped shed some light on a potential answer. As I understand, it was Bush who helped create the current funding structure between the government and universities, as he thought it was of great importance for the military to work with the best civillian researchers, all of whom held positions at a university.

[Vannevar Bush](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vannevar_Bush) was an engineer, inventor, and administrator who headed the [U.S. Office of Scientific Research and Development](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Scientific_Research_and_Development) (OSRD) during WWII. Bush reported directly to President Roosevelt. Essentially all of the R&D of military equipment and operations were conducted through this department. This book is a culmination of those experiences distilled down to the lessons Bush learned about dealing with "tyros", going toe to toe with Churchill, his philosophy on organizational structure, what's wrong with the patent system, how engines work, an ode to teachers and colleges, and much more.

The foreword to this book, written by Ben Reinhardt, puts it well by saying:

> So dive in. Have fun with it. Be curious. Skip around. Go deep. **I went into this book with little more than a name and came out with the closest thing to a mentor someone you've never met can be.**

I echo that statement.

## Practical Takeaways
- Change depends on two things: someone to work in a new way and an effective organization to bring those changes around. One is not more important than the other.

- A leader's job is coordination. It requires a trust in the people doing the actual work (Bush did not appreciate how Churchill handled many scientific matters during the war), and it requires a clear line of communication with someone 100% responsible and able to make a drastic decision if that need be. Bush recounts times where there was confusion as to who could actually make a decision about going forward and this lead to more confusion and frustration.

- This country pays greater attention to those who yell and complain about how something works today, or how it once worked, and seems to ignore those who are quietly working away towards a solution–especially those trying to work towards a solution within the confines of the current "screwed up" system.

- The success of our democratic government is dependent on at least two things: 1) We must learn and impress upon ourselves the difference between the freedom to do what we please and the infringement upon the right's of others to do the same. 2) The nature and stability of the democratic system itself. Namely, the success and cooperation between the three branches of the government, and, whether when its forces get out of play, it has within itself the ability to restore itself to equilibrium.

- A key trait of great leaders and workers is not just that they can get the job done when everything is going well, but that they know what to do and how to do it when everything goes wrong.

- There are two primary ways to lose a battle (with all other things being equal): The first is by having confused lines of communication. The second is to have someone in charge with poor judgement.

- A program, product, or initiative is guaranteed to fail if the CEO, leader, or president does not actively seek to make it work. If they don't care about it or are indifferent to it, it will not succeed. It may be average, but it won't ever achieve greatness.

- The more complex something becomes, the more likely it is that just one thing can break or go wrong and cause throw the whole system into shambles. This is true of engineering and of relations and organizations.

- In any large organization, there has to be a system for tracking and maintaining innovations that arise outside a specific field that would be useful for it. If not, they will get tossed aside and thrown in the "not useful" pile when in reality it was very useful, just for a different department.

- In meetings where strategy is being discussed, there should be someone present who is a master of technical advancements that are just being put into use or will be put into use sometime in the near future.

- Any group working in isolation will not sufficiently make adequate technological advancements.

- In an industry that is standardized, where basically all companies are making profits, small changes can be introduced but nothing major will happen. There is no sense in disrupting something that seems to be working out okay, especially if the future is unknown.

- An invention by itself is usually useless. It must be paired with promotion, financing, development, engineering, and marketing if the inventor wants to actually make some money and go somewhere with it.

- There are two main ways to go about inventing something. One is to identify something the public needs and hurry to make something that fits that need. The other is to develop new knowledge in areas where there may be useful results and see where it leads.

- When giving a speech, or really any conversation for that matter, don't start talking unless you know the exact sentence you're going to say at the end. Also, look at someone in the back row. If they become restless, put more volume into your voice. If they are still restless, stop talking.

- When someone gets to the age where they start observing, understanding, and questioning how things in the world are done, they separate into three groups: The first is those who meekly conform to how things have always been and follow suit. The second, a smaller minority, attack the system and get really rebellious. A smaller third group, who is usually overlooked, propose to do something about what they don't like and propose to accomplish this by working within the system itself–repairing from the inside out.

- Great teachers can teach you a lot about pride, humility, accomplishment, and a great many other virtues without ever saying a specific word about any of those topics.

- For anyone working in a professional setting, understanding human relations and having sound social skills are just as important, if not more, than being a master of the actual facts of the field in which they operate.

## Notes
- Anybody who is serious about creating enduring change realizes that it's critical to understand the origins of the institutions that shape our world.

- This book, provides a perspective "on the modern innovation environment as an evolved system with simple origins."

- Ben Reinhardt in the foreword: "I went into this book with little more than a name and came out with the closest thing to a mentor someone you've never met can be."

- The development of the atomic bomb fell into two phases, as I imagine most big technical breakthroughs follow. The first was the actual underlying physics behind it. The second was how to actually use those physics for something beneficial. I think this pattern is common: first comes the idea/discovery/breakthrough and then comes the "Okay, so what can we actually do with it." That is all fine and well, but we must be careful not to ask the second question too soon, for if no use is discovered, the breakthrough might be tossed to the waste bin. We must be able to recognize the value of the idea and not just the use case for the idea.

- The tyro, as new recruits were called by the Romans, have contempt for channels of authority and ducks around them. They just butt into all sorts of levels and clash into the train of gears. A common type of tyro is the chap who assumes and flaunts his boss's authority, either without the boss's knowledge or simply because the boss does not realize the havoc being caused.

## Quotes
*The following are direct quotes from Bush's words in the book.*

- Youth has always been in rebellion and should be if society is not to become static.

- The study of history can aid in avoiding mistakes, provided it is recent history and accurate, that is, before it has degenerated into a myth.

- The essence of civilization is the transmission of the findings of each generation to the next.

- "Much of this book will be devoted to how we can keep our business rolling in the right direction."

- Apparently in this strange country, we just continue practices that injure our neighbors until enough people get mad and make us quit.

- For, after all, there is happiness in the world, in this cruel and confused world, if we but seek it, and welcome it when it appears.
- Little things become submerged when great things are dominant.

- There should never be, throughout an organization, any doubt as to where authority for making decisions resides, or any doubt that they will be promptly made.

- When he knows stumbling blocks may get in the way of a joint effort in which he is engaged, a man who is light on his feet tries to anticipate them, to figure out where they may arise and why, and how best to evade them...Planning strategies means taking into account the personal quirks of some individual who almost always is the source of the blockade, and devising ways to annul his blockade by disarming him, by avoiding him by and end run, or, if necessary and possible, by knocking him on the head–figuratively of course.

- As we subdivide fields of learning and render all of them more precise and more intricate, no man can be a master of all, but a man who sets his mind to it can become a valuable amateur in fields outside his mastership.

- A man of intelligence can become well acquainted with a subject in surprisingly short time if he puts his mind to it. This is not to master it, but to arrive at a point where he speaks the language and can judge whether a proposal before him has been thought through and is sound. If a man is a good judge of men, he can go far on that skill alone.

- A lot of invention appears merely because of curiosity and with little thought at the time of possible utility.
- I think any man who has a bit of ingenuity in his soul gets quite a lot of fun out of following around with things that do not amount to anything, for the reason that when he does so, he has no pressures.

- It would be well if people, youth in particular, recognized the debt society owes to the quiet workers whom we never hear of, especially those who are led on by their curiosity and their desire to explore, with very little thought about acclaim or fortune.

- The inventor who works alone, who is isolated from the current trend of thought, and who hence does not grasp where the real opportunities lie, seldom makes a worthwhile invention.

- The reward of a great teacher lies in the success in later life of his students.

- Teachers are a vital ingredient in the long and delicate process by which the young mind attains the ability to make informed wise choices between alternatives at any level of simplicity or sophistication. The teacher's task... is to guide the student mind in its search for knowledge–the gathering of information, the understanding of its implications and applications, the consequent growth of knowledge, and, it is to be hoped, the ultimate growth of wisdom.

- One learns about teaching by observing teachers, by being taught, by teaching, and by thinking about it. Above all, it depends upon the realization that teaching is an art, as elusive as the art of painting or sculpture, that it is an individual art, developed by each man for himself, that it must be genuine and not forced, and that its mastery can bring joy and satisfaction.

- He taught me pride of scholarly accomplishment. And he never said a word to me on that subject.

- If a college or university is permeated with a spirit of success, so will its students be, and one who expects success is well on the way to attaining it.

- For every professional man...an understanding of human relations, the acquisition of a sound and effective grasp and practice in regard to them, is fully as important as excellence in the knowledge of facts and principles applicable to the area in which he operates.

- The basic function of education is to ensure that the experience of one generation may be passed on to the next. It is the ability to make this transfer that distinguishes man from beast.

- As an actual fact, much of the failure of management is due to a mistreatment of simple elementary principles rather than to any lack of handling of complex affairs.

- Alongside the course of mathematics of electric circuits, we need a course in the history of ideas. And we need that balance whenever older minds seek to help younger minds on the way of life.

## Random Tidbits
- What work needs to be done to remove the constraints preventing today's impossibles from becoming tomorrow's amazing?

## Books/sources recommended
- Preparing Tomorrow's Business Leaders, Drucker
- Bush's Meet the Press interview in 1959
- Bush's article on the memex


Pieces of the Action

## Impressions
I’ve been wanting to read this book for quite some time now. The title got me hooked because one of the main questions I seek to answer in life is, “How did we get here?” And “Where are we going?” This book did a pretty good job of shedding some light on that topic, but not as much as I’d hoped it would. It talked a lot about the people who made discoveries and the drama between them more so than it did about actual information about “nearly everything.” The stories about the people who made certain discoveries were important and interesting, just not what I was expecting. It was also about 100 pages too long. Nonetheless, I learned some interesting things.

## Insights
- Before the universe began, there was nothing. There was no space outside the singularity, the really small dot of matter composed of material that was about to bang, and there was no time. So there was no "where" and there was no "before".
- The first remittance of the Big Bang was discovered, unknowingly, in 1965 by two scientists. At the time, they didn't know what they were hearing, but it was in fact light that had travelled across the universe and stretched so much it was now microwaves.
- Inflation Theory - Proposed by Alan Guth, this theory says moments after the Bang, the universe inflated from something you can hold in your hand to something that was the size of Earth today. This explains the ripples and eddies in our world.
- Most star systems are double-starred, which makes our single starred system (the sun) a slight oddity.
- If a supernova were to form within 10 light years of the earth, we'd be goners. But we don't have to worry about that happening. For a true supernova to form from a collapsed star, the star has to be ten to twenty times the size of the sun to begin with and the closest thing we have to that is 50 light years away, called Betelgeuse.
- Isaac Newton was wild. Very neurotic and kinda crazy, but he was brilliant. His masterwork, *Principia*, described the mathematical principles of natural philosophy and at the heart of it was his three laws of nature. This made Newton instantly famous. He was the first person to really create a universal law of sorts, that being gravity.
- By the late 18th Century, scientists knew the shape, size, and weight of the earth thanks to some precise measurements by a variety of scientists using a variety of techniques. They did not know, however, how old the earth was.
- How fast galaxies are moving away from us is called their recessional velocity.
- The word molecule comes from the Latin word for "little mass." Atoms make up everything, but most scientists talk about atoms in terms of molecules instead of atoms themselves. Molecules are two or more atoms working together in a stable way. If you have two Hydrogen atoms and then through on an Oxygen atom, you get a water molecule.
- Ernst Mach was the name behind the speed of sound - Mach 1.
- Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle - An electron is a particle but a particle that can be described in terms of waves. The uncertainty around the theory is that we can know the path an electron takes as it moves through a space or we can know where it is at a given instant but we cannot know both.
- Two forces keep atoms together - strong nuclear force and weak nuclear force. The strong force binds atoms together and allows the protons to stay in the nucleus. It's strong, but doesn't have a wide range of effect. This is why elements with big, crowded nuclei are so unstable. The force can't hold on to the protons in the nucleus, so some escape and then you get a new element.
- Hadrons, a collective term to describe protons, neutrons, and other particles governed by strong nuclear force are made up of quarks - rhymes with larks. Richard Feynman wanted to call these partons, but was overruled. Quarks are sub-divided into sub categories - up, down, strange, charm, top, and bottom-which are refered to as their "flavors." These are even further divided into red, green, and blue.
- A Mars sized object slammed into Earth to create the Moon out of debris. This was very good for us, since the moon helps earth so much. But if it happened in 1986 or last Wednesday, we wouldn't be so pleased about it.
- The elements of chemistry are very strange... Oxygen and hydrogen are two of the most combustible elements in the world, but put them together and they make water. A similar thing happens with Sodium and Chlorine. Chlorine is a harsh chemical useful for cleaning and sodium is explosive. Smash them together and you get sodium chloride, or what most people call salt.
- When elements don't occur naturally on Earth, they become extremely toxic to us. Plutonium is a good example.
- Temperature is really just a measure of the activity of molecules.
- Storm clouds can contain enough energy for four days of power for the US. These clouds can contain updrafts and downdrafts and are often side by side, which is why pilots don't like to fly through them. The lighter particles tend to become positively charged, the heavier particles become negatively charged and stay at the base of the cloud. The negative particles want to race towards the positively charged earth - creating lightning.
- Overcast clouds are formed when moisture-bearing updrafts lack the oomph to break through a level of more stable air above, and instead spread out, like smoke hitting a ceiling.
- Darwin originally proposed that all organisms competed for resources, and the ones that had some innate advantage would prosper. That advantage would be passed on to the offspring. This is how species evolved. He first explained this is "Descent with modification."

## Quotes
- [One cannot] predict future events exactly if one cannot even measure the present state of the universe precisely.
- Every living thing is an elaboration on a single original plan. As humans, we are mere increments–each of us a musty archive of adjustments, adaptations, modifications, and providential tinkerings stretching back 3.8billion years.
- "Nobody knows quite how destructive human beings are, but it is a fact that over the last fifty thousand years or wherever we have gone animals have tended to vanish, in often astonishingly large numbers.
- "It's an unnerving thought that we may be the living universe's supreme achievement and its worst nightmare simultaneously."
- "We really are at the beginning of it all [life.] The trick, of course, is to make sure we never find the end. And that, almost certainly, will require a good deal more than lucky breaks."

## Stories/Studies
- One of the most unlucky scientists, Guillaume Le Gentil (p. 54)
- Mary Anning found a strange 17 foot long sea monster fossil which is now known as ichtyosaurus embedded in the English Channel. For the next 35 years, she collected and sold fossils to tourists. It's long been held that she coined the original tongue twister, "She sells sea shells by the sea shore."
- Sometime in the 1950s, during the mass production phase of lead, a lot of studies were conducted to see the effects of lead. The problem was that most studies were funded by lead producers. In one such case, a doctor who had no training in chemical pathology conducted a study where they gave lead samples to volunteers in increasing doses. After, they tested their urine and feces for lead samples. But what the doctor didn't know was that lead isn't produced as a waste product. Rather it gets absorbed by the blood and bones - which is why it was so dangerous. It makes me think, shouldn't the fact that there was no lead being produced in waste send of a warning light?

# Questions
- If the earth formed from the Big Bang, where did the oceans come from - and how were the oceans already so deep compared to land?Was it just one big grand canyon like thing before someone turned the hose on and filled it with water?
	- “We have identified a vast reservoir of Earth-like water in the outer reaches of the solar system,” said Darek Lis, a scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in Pasadena, California, and lead author of the study. “Water was crucial for the development of life as we know it. We not only want to understand how Earth’s water was delivered, but also if this process could work in other planetary systems.”
	- https://www.nasa.gov/feature/comet-provides-new-clues-to-origins-of-earth-s-oceans
- What was the Reign of Terror in Paris and why was Marie Antoniette beheaded?
- If the universe is expanding, where is it expanding to? Or expanding in?


A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson

I chose to read a 500+ page biography on a strange renaissance artist because, [much like Einstein](https://www.daltonmabery.com/essays/albert-einstein), I was fascinated with how he approached the world through curiosity. I read Isaacson's biography of [Einstein](https://www.daltonmabery.com/book-notes/einstein-his-life-and-universe) first, and he made comments about how da Vinci's life was filled with even more wonder and curiosity than Einstein's, and I wanted to know how, what that was like, and how I can do the same.

It turns out it's simple: Never complete what you say you're going to and spend years perfecting every intricate detail of your work. Easy, right?

Joke aside, da Vinci was infamous for not completing most of his commissions (more on that later) and was also known for spending hours perfecting the stroke of a tiny rock in the background that the normal layman would probably never see. But this isn't what made him so intelligent and wise in a broad array of fields. Oh no. That, he can thank his "relentless curiosity" for. His goal in life, above being an amazing painter, war machine architect, or city designer, was to know "everything there was to know about the world." Although he didn't quite get there, it wasn't for a lack of trying.

✓

How did da Vinci's life start?
------------------------------

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 custom in that day for the sons of tradesmen to acquire the skills of the father, but da Vinci didn't have that luxury since he was illegitimate. That fact also made it very difficult to engage in proper schooling, which da Vinci lacked. Most people would attempt to use this as a crutch against him later in life. But to him, it was a strength. What he did didn't require *words* but *experience*, which he learned early on how to become an apprentice of. Da Vinci, going against the typical image of the "Renaissance Man" that loved acquiring knowledge and wisdom from lost work, once wrote:

> He who has access to the fountain does not go to the water jar.

As he matured though, it became clear that knowledge is neither all experience or past wisdom, but a combination of both.

Though da Vinci lacked education in the traditional sense, 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.

On da Vinci's art
-----------------

One critique I have with the book is that Isaacson doesn't go into much detail about how da Vinci got into the different paths of life. Nevertheless we know da Vinci became an apprentice of Andrea del Verrocchio (1435 - 1488) at about 14 years old, but it seems he was mostly a natural.

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.

Being a disciple of experience, da Vinci noticed when he looked at something in real life, it wasn't obvious where one object ended and another began, like it is so often painted 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 very airy and kind of smashed together.

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.

The genius of Da Vinci isn't realized in his incredible observational skills about how the world works though. Instead, it was realized in his ability to make those observations appear on a canvas. This was the true genius.

When he had an idea for a new painting, he would think about what type of social setting and emotion the piece should illustrate. When he got his answer, he would go to the places that held that type of emotion and observe how people behave, how their bodies are positioned, and what their faces look like. Then, "he noted it in a little book which he was always carrying on his belt." But da Vinci didn't just recreate that scene on a canvas. He used that as a starting point in reality and would add imagination and fantasy to make the painting truly come alive. Isaacson notes:

> 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 a bit better. He seemed to get by 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 hypothesis.

One hypothesis is that *what could be* excited Leonardo much more than *what was*. He got so excited about an idea when he thought of it that he abandoned everything else he was working on. This cycle just continued. 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. This was found in one of his notebooks:

> 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 he may have not been able to finish paintings, was because his ideas were so close to reality, they could never be pulled off to the degree of perfection Leonardo expected of himself. So, he got as far as he could on some paintings and then just stopped. He didn't like to finish pieces because he would inevitably learn a new technique or fact about how a body should be positioned that he could use to make the piece better. To him, nothing was more beautiful than representing Nature like it ought to be represented:

> 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.

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, one can see there were dual neck muscles and other parts added in 1510 that were not part of the original drawing. The muscles and parts added seem to align with the anatomical discoveries da Vinci was making through his autopsies (coming soon). 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.

So back to the autopsies. Da Vinci was so much a disciple of experience that he dissected some 300+ bodies throughout his lifetime. This wasn't some crazy fantasy for him though, he wanted to understand the layout of the human body so he knew which muscles moved which body parts. He also did a detailed analysis of the skull and brain.

He made very, very detailed drawings of his work and debated with himself about writing a treatise on the anatomy of the human body. He discovered things about how the body works centuries before someone would make the "real" discovery. But because Leonardo didn't have the organizational skills, drive, or desire to publish many of his writings or drawings, he didn't get credit for them until they were discovered.

Lesson: Be more curious
-----------------------

Da Vinci never intended to be a famous painter and artist, he simply went about his life as he thought he should and had some lucky breaks along the way. So even though he didn't intend for his life to come under a microscope 500 years later, 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.


Book Review: da Vinci

## Notes

During the 1650s and 60s, the universal view at the time was that the world had been falling apart since Adam and Eve were banished from Eden. Any time disaster struck, it was because God was angry at the Europeans. This is why floods and earthquakes are still called, "acts of God."

The custom of saying "Bless you" dates from 1660s England. When someone would sneeze, it was thought of as the first sign of the bubonic plague. Saying "bless you" was a gesture to hope you didn't suffer and die.

The Royal Society was one of the first groups to welcome experiments to test ideas. At the time, accepted wisdom and eye-witness testimony of the past was the most credible form of "evidence." Anyone going against the grain and trying to seek out something "new," was not doing what they should be doing.

The Royal Society also created the idea of expressed knowledge and to do experiments in public and to share what you discover with others. Until then, discoveries and intricacies of fields were kept secret for only those who were "worthy". One might tell someone about their discovery or find, but the details were written in code, only to be used if someone tried to argue them. The early group of the Royal Society would have understood Gore Vidal's remark, "it is not enough to succeed. Others must fail."

The first time a major scientific discovery was announced in print via a periodical, was Newton's observation that white light actually contains all colors of the spectrum. He did so in a 1672 edition of *Philosophical Transactions*, the first ever scientific journal and that was started by the Royal Society.

"Planet" is Greek for *wanderer*.

Greek physics began by dividing its subject into two pieces:\
1.) One was the cosmos above, where motion represents the natural state of things and goes on forever.\
2.) The other was Earth, where *rest* is the natural state of things and motion must have an explanation.

After Galileo and Newton, science would "communicate in the language of mathematics, the measure of quantity," a language "in which no terms exist for good or bad, kind or cruel... or will and purpose and hope." The word *force* would cease meaning "personal power" and instead mean *mass X acceleration*.

Upon the invention of the telescope, Galileo made sure to point out the warfare uses first, even though he knew the true beauty would be in looking at the heavens with it. But this got the general public excited about what he saw and they understood it merely makes far away images look closer, and doesn't make a mirage of something. If he didn't do that, people may have excused his findings, blaming a technical error on the telescope.

**The Great Chain of Being** - a Seventeenth Century idea that all objects that had ever been created, from sand to angels, had a particular rank in a great chain that extended from the lowest to the low to the God's right hand. In this vein, there was a strange dichotomy between God being a mathematician and designing everything beautifully, and God allowing randomness to play (dichotomy because the physicists chose the former and biologists chose the later, but I'm not sure how they are mutually exclusive.)

Pythagoras discovered that there was a harmony in music if the instruments that were making the sound were similar in ratio. For example, if a blacksmith hit a piece of iron with a 12 pound hammer and the same piece of iron with a 6 pound hammer, the sound would be harmonious. But not if he hit the iron with a 9 pound hammer.

Was math invented or discovered? The Greeks came to say discovered, but it's an interesting thought.

-   On the one hand, geometry and algebra as concepts are clearly invented by humans. When have you ever gone for a walk and tripped over a 3?

-   On the other, what could be more obvious than that the truths of mathematics are facts about the world, whether or not humans catch on to them at all. If two dinosaurs were drinking water and two more came to join them, would that not meant there were four dinosaurs all together?

There are only five "Platonic Solids," three-dimensional objects where each face is symmetrical and all the faces are identical.

Though Kepler's incessant shape-rotating proved to be sort of useless, he did provide one correct answer in his *Mystery of the Universe.* Since he mapped each orbit of the planets getting bigger and bigger as you got further from the sun, that had to have meant it was moving slower. Therefore, whatever force *propelled* the planets around the sun must have grown weaker with distance. Before Kepler, the works of the sky had been descriptive and predictive, not explanation. No one before him had thought to ask *how the planets move about their courses*.

#### Kepler's Laws:

1.  The planets travel around the sun in an ellipse with the sun at one focus.

2.  The line from a planet to the sun is always equal in area in equal times. So the line from where a planet was one day 1 to the sun and where that planet was on day 10 to the sun can be connected and form a triangle. That area is always equal during an equal time period.

3.  His third law is confusing, but the speed of planets can be multiplied by the length of the year raised to the 3/4th power. *Note: I'm not sure I've been given a clear definition.*

Any object launched into the air--arrow, bullet, cannonball--travels in a curved path like a parabola. The moving object covers the same horizontal distance during each second of its flight.

Horizontal movement of a falling object and vertical movement of a falling object are always independent of one another. This means the horizontal speed of something doesn't impact the vertical speed and so on. So a bullet fired from a gun and a bullet dropped below the gun, let go at the same time, will hit the ground at exactly the same time. If you launch something like this from a high enough altitude, and by the time it falls 4 feet the earth would have dropped 4 feet due to its curvature. This would continue happening, the object falling and falling and the earth curving and curving. This is how a satellite works.

The Law of Pendulums--a pendulum takes the same time to swing through a small arc as through a large one.

In the mind of Aristotle, math and science were to be used to understand the physical, real world better. There was no point in talking about a sphere rolling forever or weights falling in a vacuum because it wouldn't affect the day to day life. In Galileo's view, this was backward. The way to better understand the world was to look beyond those day to day distractions and focus instead on the deeper truths that governed those things. Even though there may never be a vacuum in nature, understanding how things react in a vacuum helps to understand those day to day interactions. It's here that the concept of *abstraction* is so important, it was a means by seeing truth unadorned by sinful man.

Zeno, the famed Greek philosopher, had tripped up those who came after him with his strange fables. Often, they had to do with motion and time, usually infinity specifically. It was difficult to find an answer to those fables, though philosophers debated for ages. Eventually, the Greeks decided they'd stay away from motion and time all together. This could be a reason as to why they seemed so infant in motion and time theories.

-   Galileo was the first to come up with a sort of definition, being: If a small section of a larger set of numbers is the same size as the large set. But even he didn't go much further than this observation/insight.

-   Eventually, they were able to find a conclusion to Zeno's problem. If they added up 1 and then 1/2 and then 1/4 and then 1/8 and then 1/16 and so on, the number would hit it's limit at about 2 - it would never go higher than that. So they concluded it would take 2 seconds to get to the other side of the room. This also helped solve the "speed at X distance problem". Before, they would decrease to a smaller and smaller limit: "X speed between 12 and 12:30, between 12 and 12:15, and so on. They realized this too had a limit and that would be the approximated speed at X distance."

Calculus is the Latin word for *pebble.* A reference to the heaps of stones once used as a calculating aid in addition and multiplication.

God could have made humans as intelligent as dogs. The world may be a bit happier that way, because we wouldn't be able to understand and conceive of evil, cancer, sickness, or disaster--but this assumes God's intention was to create a happy, meaningless world. Surely that wasn't God's goal. So this begs the question, *what is God's goal?* Why would he give us the capability and capacity to understand the good and the bad things of this world, but be able to do only very little about them all. Essentially, we're living at the mercy of them. God had conceived every possible universe, and this was the best one, given the boundaries God put on himself (not the boundaries that were on God). If he designed us in a way that we only chose good and never evil, we may be great but we'd be completely autonomous beings.

v = 32t is the only equation we need to determine the speed of a falling object at any give time. Where v is velocity and t is time elapsed.

Acceleration is a measure of how fast velocity is changing. Velocity is a measure of how fast position is changing. And position (my words here) is a measure of how fast everything around an object is changing in relation to that object.

## Quotes

The group was one of curious men studying the heavens and scribbling in their notebook.

God was a mathematician, seventeenth-century scientists firmly believed. He had written His laws in a mathematical code. Their task was to find the key.

On Newton's lack of travel: "The man who explained the tides never saw the sea" p.48

"To those who do not know mathematics it is difficult to get across a real feeling as to the beauty, the deepest beauty, of nature. If you want to learn about nature, to appreciate nature, it is necessary to understand the language that she speaks in." -- Richard Feynman

Change came not from finding new answers to old questions but from abandoning the old questions, unanswered, in favor of new, more fruitful ones.

Aristotle had asked *why*. Galileo has asked *how*. Aristotle's *why* explained the world. Galileo's *how* described it.

What is a man in the midst of infinity? -- Pascal

Both telescope and microscope had opened up new worlds. The new vistas served to reinforce the belief that on every scale the universe was a flawless, harmonious, and unimaginably complex mechanism.

Only those who themselves have wandered lost, wrote Einstein, know the misery and joy of "the years of searching in the dark for a truth that one feels but cannot express; the intense desire and the alternations of confidence and misgiving, until one breaks through to clarity and understanding."

"The mission of science was to honor God and the best way to pay homage was to discover and proclaim the perfection of his plans."

The discovery of Pythagoras' Theorem was so amazing because:\
- One, Simply by thinking, without using any real tools, they had discovered one of nature's secrets, and eternal and never-before suspected truth about the structure of the world.\
- Second, they could prove it. Unlike other observations, this was definitely provable and not just true but *necessarily* true. "One of God's thoughts, finally grasped by man."

Abstraction is the pathway to truth.

"As a blind man has no idea of colors, so have we no idea of the manner by which the all-wise God perceives and understands all things" -- Newton

"A world with sin was better than a world without choice."

Giant wars are fought on narrow battlegrounds.

"For the price Newton had to pay for being a supreme intellect was that he was incapable of friendship, love, fatherhood, and many other desirable things. As a man he was a failure; as a monster he was superb" -- Aldous Huxley


The Clockwork Universe by Edward Dolnick

## Impressions
I didn't have many impressions before reading this book, other than being excited by the beautiful design and color theory. I also assumed it to be of some importance because Stripe Press was the publisher. I'm happy to say it did not disappoint.

I wrote about this in [my summary/review of this book](https://www.daltonmabery.com/essays/book-review-and-summary-revolt-of-the-public), but Gurri's writing helped me navigate the world as I see it today, which will be invaluable for navigating the world in the future. It combines geopolitics, social phenomena, and historical events into a cohesive narrative about the world. It also gave me language to talk about certain political situations.

## Key Learnings
Under conditions of scarcity, sources of information become authoritative. Increase the access to information and you decrease the authority of any one person on that topic.

There are two groups going head to head right now, The Public and The Authorities. **The Public**, from Walter Lippmann: "is not a fixed body of individuals. It is merely the persons who are interested in an affair and can affect it only be supporting or opposing the actors." Guru agrees with this, but thinks the public today has become an actor: "It is composed of amateurs, and it had fractured into vital communities, each clustered around an affair of interest to the group." **Authority** pertains to the source. We believe something because of who said it. At an individual level, this standing is achieved by a professionalization. The person in authority is trained in a certain way and has access to hidden knowledge. But at an institutional level, there is lasting authority. This authority doesn't waiver with people. They have a certain connection to monopoly conditions on their field. These are government, corporations, research institutes, foundations, and so on.

Gurri's thesis is that a revolution in the nature and content of communication ended the top-down control elites exerted on the public during the industrial age. This is only true though, if we can show that information can actually influence the arrangement of power and create real-life effects and those effects have to be big enough to create a real crisis of authority.

We are, what Gurri calls, *homo informaticus* (HI), or information man. HI is literate and has access to newspapers, radio, movies, and TV. This is a new threat to the regime, because the public "with a longer reach may gain access to information that subverts its story of legitimacy." That story of legitimacy is currently the only thing holding the "public" to obeying/following the authorities power. The regime would try to control this new form of media, and can do so to a current extent, but the sheer volume of channels prohibits it from doing so completely. "As messages and images proliferate, it becomes progressively hard to determine exactly what their relationship is to the regime's justifying story."
This new channel of information broadens HI's field of vision to think about different worldviews. No longer is there one idea or opinion. "When judging his government, HI can then do so in light of alternative possibilities–different views of the same policy or event, different values invoked for an action or inaction, different performance by other governments, real or imagined." Since HI can't absorb *all* of the new information, he has to be selective. So he picks and chooses, as do other members of the public, who they listen to, what they watch, and inevitably, what they believe. Since all information has to either be mediated or recieved directly, the mass media mediators no longer can persuade the public to think one way about the regime.

The two groups came to a head in 2011, a period Gurri refers to as the "Phase Change." Most of the people, in each of the phase change events of 2011 were young, middle class, educated. "Sectarian ideals propelled them into politics." Neither, did any of the movements insist in a new way of governing, new policies or plans to move forward. They made no demands, but felt free to accuse.

Though the Occupy Wall Street movements didn't have large numbers compared to Tel Aviv or Egypt, it somehow tipped the scales for the public to distrust government institutions and with it, democracy. Their message was that the 1% tyrannized the other 99%, who was supposedly part of the march, but they didn't actually represent that 99%, only a small subset of people within that 99%. Somehow though, their message became interpreted as: "This is how the American public is feeling."

Thanks to the information sphere, the public sees their unmet expectations daily of the Center-based institutions. The public uses that information to attack the legitimacy of the institutions. Sometimes they're right in attacking the corruption, but other times they go to far. This all stems from the fact that the Center can't say "we don't know" and they're too busy making sure "bad science" from amateur's doesn't spread. This supposed confidence of certainty is received by the public as legit, until it isn't and they say something that isn't true or something happens that they said wasn't going to, because inevitably it will because they can't be certain of every little thing.

For a government to fail, two things must occur:

1. First some empirical event must occur that is perceived as a failure.
2. Second, The relationship between the government and the governed must somehow be ruptured. Trust must be broken for failure to have lasting consequences.

If the industrial age hierarchies of contemporary democracy are suffering a crisis of authority (they are), and if the public is on the move and expecting impossibilities (yes), then all things being equal, the system will continue to bleed away legitimacy–and there will be those who argue it should be put out of its misery. Gurri explains the road we're on leads to nihilism. The Nihilist heard George W. Bush say the war in Iraq was about weapons of mass destruction, but none were found there. He heard Obama say unemployment would be capped, only for millions to lose their job. But he doesn't see these as failures. He assumes the government are liars and cheaters. Without his digital devices, the nihilist would be nothing. Instead, he is overly informed about those few odd topics that obsess him, "and he produces a torrent of hard-core negations posted about about the world around him."

## Quotes
"When proof for and against approaches infinity, a cloud of suspicion about cherry-picking data will hang over authoritative judgement."

"Even the simplest human events constitute complex systems ruled by nonlinearities. Within such systems, teasing out a single episode and proclaiming it the prime mover makes as much sense as picking a grain of sand and calling it 'the beach'."

"The anxiety to control information in those who already controlled the guns should alert us that political power may be less "hard""

"Propaganda was the totalitarian's admission that his power wasn't total."


Revolt of the Public

## Impressions
I began reading this book when it came out and stopped about 3/4 of the way through. It just wasn't for me at the time. But it was a delightful read now. Peterson talks about some really interesting ideas in the book that it didn't think were applicable, but apparently they were. At times, the writing was a bit dense and too heady, but that's what you get from an intelligent college professor.

## Actionable Takeaways
1. Nature and the world are not static. Therefore, anything or anyone that acts like it is static will eventually come to ruin. Instead, nature and the environment is dynamic. It begs for a constant tango between the inhabitants of the world as it mutates. Companies, ideas, and people that worked awhile ago aren't going to work today if they keep doing the same thing.
2. Anxiety and depression cannot be treated easily if the person has unpredictable daily routines. The system in the body that regulates those emotions and feelings are closely linked to the circadian rhythm. Ensuring you're sleep habits are regular can be a great place to start.
3. Life is a constant battle fighting to maintain order, but learning how to thrive in chaos.
4. consciousness can be defined as knowing exactly how and where we can be hurt and why.
5. One of the main differences between man and animal is man's knowledge of what's going on in the world. More specifically, man's desire and ability to cause trouble and pain and suffering for the sake of it.
6. Everyone has to experience a season of intense suffering, sadness, or loneliness so they know what they know where they don't want to go. This could give your life Meaning (note the capital M.) "I'm on this earth to help myself and anyone who wants to come with me to stay away from X, Y, and Z."
7. Don't be friends with someone whose friendship you wouldn't recommend to your son, daughter, sister, or mother.
8. Before you help someone, find out why that person is in trouble. It's likely they're in trouble partly because of their actions. Not to judge them, just to know how they ended up in the spot they are.
9. If you are succeeding at everything, it's most likely not because you're so freaking talented at so many different things. Rather, it probably means you're just not doing anything new, difficult, or challenging. Sure, you may be winning. But you're not growing. And what's the point of winning at something if it doesn't make you better? **Victory in the present shouldn't take precedence over trajectory across time.**
11. The fundamental moral goal of a parent or care taker over a child is to not shelter children completely from misadventure and failure, so they never experience pain or failure, but how to make sure they learn something from their failure so that useful knowledge may be gained with minimal cost.
12. There are two general principles of discipline. First, limit the rules. Too many rules makes kids go crazy. Second, use the least amount of force necessary. Don't go straight from 0-100 on the punishment scale. Work your way up and only get to the end if the child isn't cooperating on the previous levels. However, sometimes the highest form is necessary, like when a child is doing something that could quickly lead to something fatal. Then, it's necessary to get the kid to stop immediately, no questions asked.
13. A natural disaster is an act of God - you couldn't have predicted its arrival. But you can do what's necessary to prepare for one. You know, eventually, your car will stop working or need maintenance. It's inevitable. So you can either choose to ignore the warning lights, or maintain a schedule of maintenance and put money aside for the inevitable 4-figure repair cost.
14. Some of the worst people to be around are those who have decided to live life through a single axiom: "The right is bad." "Government is bad." They filter everything through this axiom and believe, truly believe, that everything that happens can be viewed through that. Too much money? The government isn't spending enough. Not enough money? The government is spending too much. Natural disaster? The government wasn't prepared enough (okay this one may be true.)
15. 2 types of people: "Did what I want to happen, happen? No. Therefore I did something wrong and I still have something to learn." "Did what I want to happen, happen? No. Therefore this thing is unfair. Someone else is to blame."
16. Stubborn refusal to change in the face of error is stupidity.
17. The purpose of memory is not to remember the past. It's to stop the same bad thing from happening over and over again. If something bad happens, and you know why, you can stop that bad thing from happening again.

## Quotes
- "It's not what we don't know what gets us in trouble. It's what we know for sure that just ain't so." -
- "If mother nature wasn't so hell-bent on our destruction, it would be easier for us to exist in simple harmony with her dictates."
- "An idea is more credible when it emerges as a consequence of investigations in different realms." #note-taking #slipbox
- "When life suddenly reveals itself as intense, gripping and meaningful; when time passes and you're so engrossed in what you're doing you don't notice–it is there and then that you are located precisely on the border between order and chaos."
- "You can't long tolerate being swamped and overwhelmed beyond your capacity to cope while you are still learning what you need to know. Thus, you need to place one foot in what you have mastered and understood and the other in what you are currently exploring and mastering." #mastery
- "It is far better to render beings in your care competent than to protect them."
- "If there is a rifle hanging on the wall in act one, it must be fired in act two. Otherwise it has no business being there." #writing #details #quote
- "Those who fail to learn from the past doom themselves to repeat it."
- "It's easier to put off until tomorrow what needs to be done today, and drown the upcoming months and years in today's cheap pleasures."
- "Attend to the day but aim at the highest good."
- "If a society does not adequately reward productive, pro-social behavior, insists upon distributing resources in a markedly arbitrary and unfair manner, and allows for theft and exploitation, it will not remain conflict-free for long. If its hierarchies are based only on power, instead of the competence necessary to get important and difficult things done, it will be prone to collapse, as well."
- Someone living a life-lie is attempting to manipulate reality with perception, thought, and action, so that only some narrowly desired and pre-defined outcome is allowed to exist.
- "A naively formulated goal transmutes, with time, into the sinister form of the life-lie."
- If you don't believe in brick walls, you will still be hurt when you run headlong into one. Then you will curse reality itself for producing the wall.

## Questions
- Are you so sure the person crying out to be saved has not decided a thousand times to accept his lot of pointless and worsening suffering, simply because it is easier than shouldering any true responsibility?
- What have I done wrong and what can I do to make things at least a little bit more right?


12 Rules For Life

One Sentence Summary
--------------------

At all costs, you must be willing to innovate the way you do business and what your company delivers; "Innovate or Die" mentality.

Two Key Takeaways
-----------------

1.  When you innovate, everything has to change, not just the way you deliver a product
2.  Defining long-term priorities (3 or less), sticking to them, and repeating them often will be a sure sign of a successful and coherent organization.

Chapter 1: Starting at the Bottom
---------------------------------

-   "I didn't have a clear idea of what 'success' meant, no specific vision of being wealthy or powerful, but I was determined not to live a life of disappointment.
-   Having dedicated time to think every day is important. Creating space in each day to allow your thoughts to wander beyond your immediate job responsibilities. "I'm certain I'd be less productive and less creative in my work if I didn't also spend those first few hours away from email and text messages."
-   Learning to embrace new technologies, try every new gadget, and break every stale format is critical to a company today. One must have an "Innovate or Die" mentality.
-   "There's no innovation if you operate out of fear of the new or untested."
-   There's a delicate balance between demanding that your people perform, and not instilling a fear of failure in them. That balance is critical to find.
-   "In your work, in your life, you'll be more respected and trusted by the people around you if you honestly own up to your mistakes."
-   Be decent to people. Treat everyone with empathy and fairness.
-   "Excellence and fairness do not have to be mutually exclusive." You can be an excellent company, and care about the people you work with and serve.

Chapter 2: Betting on the Talent
--------------------------------

-   "True integrity - a sense of knowing who you are and being guided by your own clear sense of right and wrong - is a kind of secret weapon."
-   "One person's unwillingness to give a timely response can cause so much unnecessary strain and inefficiency."
-   The ability to look at things not as a catastrophe, but as a puzzle to be solved, will drastically shift the way your team approaches the problem.
-   "My instinct throughout my career has always been to say yes to every opportunity."

Chapter 3: Know What You Don't Do (And Trust in What You Do)
------------------------------------------------------------

-   "You can't pretend to be someone you're not or to know something you don't."
-   "Managing creative processes start with the understanding that it's not a science - everything is subjective; there is often no right or wrong."
-   "I'd much rather take big risks and sometimes fail than not take risks at all."
-   "If you want innovation - and you should, always - you need to give permission to fail."

Chapter 4: Enter Disney
-----------------------

-   Don't invest resources and time into your company that will give small returns. It's not worth taking up people's time with.
-   When two leaders have a dysfunction relationship, there's no way that the rest of the company beneath them can be functional.
-   "Managing your own time and respecting others' time is one of the most vital things to do as a manager."
-   When finding yourself in a hopeful situation that it'll work out without being able to explain *how* it'll work out, that's when you need ask clarifying questions.

1.  What's the problem I need to solve?
2.  Does this solution make sense?
3.  If I'm feeling some doubt, why?
4.  Am I doing this for sound reasons or am I motivated by something personal?

Chapter 5: Second In Line
-------------------------

-   Don't let ambition to get too far ahead of opportunity
-   Do the job you have well. Be patient. Look for opportunities to pitch in and expand and grow. Make yourself one of the people, through attitude and energy and focus, that your bosses feel they have to turn to when an opportunity arises.
-   "Good leadership isn't about being indispensable; it's about helping others be prepared to possibly step into your shoes - giving them access to your own decison making, identifying the skills they need to develop and helping them improve, and, sometimes being honest enough to tell them why they're not ready for the job.

Chapter 6: Good Things Can Happen
---------------------------------

-   Optimism in a leader, especially in challenging times, is vital
-   "it's about believing you and the people around you can steer toward the best outcome, and not communicating the feeling that all is lost if things don't break your way. The tone you set as a leader has an enormous effect on the people around you. No one wants to follow a pessimist.

Chapter 7: It's About the Future
--------------------------------

-   Determine Your Priorities. **You only get three**. "Priorities are the few things you're going to spend a lot time and capital on."
-   Communicate your priorities clearly and repeatedly. It's what separates great managers from the rest.
-   The way to get people to admire the company working for you, is to create products they're proud of.
-   Don't let negativity from people you barley know, affect the way you feel about yourself.
-   Don't let blows to the ego populate and stay long in your mind.

Chapter 8: The Power of Respect
-------------------------------

-   "Don't let your ego get in the way of making the best possible decision."
-   "If you approach and engage people with respect and empathy, the seemingly impossible can become real."
-   Be willing to disrupt your companies business model if it will have a positive affect in the long-term.
-   Give people authority. If you trust them to do a job, give them *total* control over that department, the job, and the decisions needed to be made in that field.

Chapter 9: Disney-Pixar And a New Path to the Future
----------------------------------------------------

-   Long-shots aren't usually as long as they seem.
-   Weigh all sides of a decision. Don't let the negatives drown out the positives. Just because they're more negatives, they may not be as dramatic as they few positives.
-   "Nothing is a sure thing, but you need to at the very least be willing to take big risks. You can't have big wins without them."

Chapter 10: Marvel and Massive Risks That Make Perfect Sense
------------------------------------------------------------

-   "Surround yourself with people who are good in addition to being good at what they do."

Chapter 11: Star Wars
---------------------

-   "The worst thing you can do when entering a negotiation is to suggest or promise something because you know the other person wants to hear it, only to have to reverse course later."
-   Don't project anxiety onto your team. It's counterproductive.

Chapter 12: If You Don't Innovate, You Die
------------------------------------------

-   Short-term loses are guaranteed if you shift your business model. It won't look positive, but adjusting course to a long-term change is the best thing you can do for an organization.
-   "Being present for your people - and making sure they know that you're available to them - is so important for the morale and effectiveness of a company."
-   "When you innovate, everything needs to change, not just the way you make or deliver a product."

Chapter 13: No Price On Integrity
---------------------------------

-   "A companies integrity depends on the integrity of its people."

Chapter 14: Core Values
-----------------------

-   "Wherever you are along the path, you're the same person you've always been"


The Ride of a Lifetime: Lessons From 15 Years as CEO of The Walt Disney Company

One Sentence Summary
--------------------

Tipping Points can be caused by the right people, with the right information, in the right context; all we have to do is find those variables.

Two Main Takeaways
------------------

1.  If content isn't sticking or getting through to an audience, don't change the content. Change the way the content is delivered.
2.  Having a clean work space, providing a loving home, being in a nice, clean neighborhood, and enjoying where we work - anything about our environment has a much more dramatic impact than what we think or what we say.

Chapter 1: The Three Rules of Epidemics
---------------------------------------

-   Epidemics are the function of people who transmit infectious agents, the infectious agent itself, and the environment in which the infectious agent is operating
-   The Tipping Point is the moment of Critical mass, the threshold, the boiling point
-   The Law of the Few -
-   One very influential persons hops on a trend, or gets a lot of people sick, starting the epidemic.
-   The Stickiness Factor -
-   There are specific ways of making information memorable. Simple changes can be made to the presentation and how information is structured that make a *huge* difference on the impact of the message
-   The Power of Context -
-   The context in which people incur a stimuli has a massive impact on how that person responds - not necessarily the stimuli itself.
-   *Humans are a lot more sensitive to the environment than we think.*

Chapter 2: The Law of the Few
-----------------------------

-   There are very few people who have enough influence and impact to tip an epidemic. But those who do, start waves in things they pursue.
-   The messenger matters. They're the ones who make something stick

Chapter 3: The Stickiness Factor
--------------------------------

-   Sesame Street started telling stories more and in the stories were lessons taught. They found the more they taught things in narrative form, the more kids remembered the lessons
-   The ideas in Sesame Street were not profound. Instead, the understood how they presented the messages and lessons was what meant a kid remembering the lesson or not. Changing the way information is presented can have a massive impact on how well things stick.
-   There are people out there who can start epidemics, you just have to find them - The Law of the Few. There is also certain ways to package information that makes it irresistible and will move people to action, you just have to find out what that is - The Stickiness Factor

The Power of Context (Part One)
-------------------------------

-   The Broken Window Theory - Criminologist James Q. Wilson and George Kelling; Argued that crime is the result of disorder. Therefore, if broken windows in homes go un repaired for certain lengths of time, people will assume there is no order and crime will be inevitable.
-   Following that rule, epidemics can be tipped by tinkering with the smallest form of environment or context
-   Fundamental Attribution Error - When interpreting other people's behavior, humans overestimate character traits, and underestimate the importance of the situation and context one is in.
-   *The best person in the world could steal money if in the right circumstance and context. On the opposite end, the worst person in the world could change depending on the situation and circumstance they're in.*
-   The immediate context of behavior is more important than the context of your thoughts

The Power of Context (Part Two)
-------------------------------

-   Small, close-knit groups have the power to magnify the epidemic of a potential message or idea.


The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell

Key Insights
------------

### Books allow you to enter an invisible world

"When you first open a book, you enter a liminal space. You are neither in this world, the world wherein you hold a book, nor in that world (the metaphysical space the words point toward). To some extent this polydimensionality describes the feeling of reading in general--one is in many places at once."

### Not all books can be read the same way

"If books were like roads, some would be made for driving quickly--details are scant, and what details are there appear drab--but the velocity and torque of the narrative is exhilarating. Some books, if seen as roads, would be made for walking--the trajectory of the road mattering far less that the vistas these roads might afford."

This description of books really hit home for me. I think it helps me solidify the fact that not every books can be read the same way, and that's okay! Some books need time to read and absorb the information. Others, you can zip right through without having to think twice about it.

### The Eye-Voice Span

The distance between where ones eyes are looking on a page and where , on the page, one's inner voice is reading.

### Reading is not a series of sequential "nows"

"Past, present, and future are interwoven in each conscious moment--and in the performative reading moment as well. Each fluid interval comprises an admixture of: the memory of things read (past), the experience of consciousness "now" (present), and the anticipation of things to be read (future).

This is evident in how we picture fictional characters. Some books open with the description of characters, like *Once Upon a Time...In Hollywood*. But most of the time, we learn a little about a character at a time and add that to a "picasso-esque" image in our minds of what we think the character looks like, updating it with each bit of information.

### All good books are mysteries

"At heart, all good books are mysteries. Authors withhold information. This information may be revealed over time. This is one reason we bother to turn a book's pages. A book my be a literal mystery, like *Murder on the Orient Express*, or a metaphysical mystery, like *Moby Dick*, or a mystery of purely architectonic kind--a chronoptic mystery, like *The Odyssey*.

### A description can be a rank or purpose (in a book and in life)

If you're reading a mystery novel and a character is introduced with a mustache, as a reader, you draw assumptions about that characters role in the book. Descriptions, therefore, can be a rank and a purpose.

"[Descriptions] tell the readers whether they are dealing with a pawn, a rook or a bishop."

This happens in life too. We draw assumptions about co-workers, strangers, and friends based on their appearance until we get to know them for who they actually are. People who are obsessed with playing "the game of life" will treat bishops and rooks much different than they do pawns, to their [the person who treats people differently based on their assumed "status"] detriment of course.

### A great author is able to 'bear witness' of reality well

"When we remark that a novel is 'finely observed,' we are praising the writer's ability to bear witness. This bearing witness is composed of two acts: the author's initial observation in the real world, and then the translation of that observation into prose. The more 'finely observed' the text, the better we readers recognize the thing or event in question."

### Readers perform their books

"We perform a book--we perform a reading of a book. We perform a book, and we attend the performance. As readers, we are both the conductor of the orchestra, as well as the audience."

### On Imagination

"Imagination is a turning-away from the mind-independent world. Imagination, you could say, is like an "inward eye."

### Words work like keys, unlocking something special in the reader

"Words are effective not because of what they carry in them, but for their latent potential to unlock the accumulated experience of the reader. Words 'contain' meaning, but, more important, words potentiate (increase the power or likelihood of) meaning..."


What We See When We Read

Summary
-------

Winners never quit is an incorrect statement; they do quit, they just know what to quit and when.

### Two Key Takeaways

1.  When starting a new venture or skill, know when to quit. Have it outlined and don't quit unless you reach that threshold
2.  Sometimes quitting is the best way to reinvent yourself in an organization. Don't mistake being in a cul-de-sac for being in The Dip.

### Part 1: Being the Best in the World is Seriously Underrated

-   MYTH - Winners don't quit
-   TRUTH - Winners do quit. The just quit the right stuff at the right time.
-   *Michael Jordan quit baseball to focus on basketball in high school. Think he regrets doing that?*
-   The reason people end up being the best in the world is they were able to push through the mundane and the boring long enough to become the best.
-   Zipf's Law - The people who are #1 get much more results (money, followers, capital) then number two because the marketplace loves a winner
-   "Just about everything you learned in school is wrong, but the wrongest might very well be this: Being well rounded is the secret to success
-   Strategic quitting is the secret of successful organizations. Reactive quitting and serial quitting just leaves your burnout, frustrated, and like you haven't accomplished anything

#### **Three Types of Curves:**

-   **Curve 1 - The Dip**
-   The low point after the initial excitement of learning a new skill or starting a new project. This could be the paperwork to get certified, the legal stuff to starting a business, etc.
-   Being able to stick through the dip longer, lean into the dip, and make something of it are the people who end up on top.
-   The Dip filters out all the people who weren't motivated. This is why people on the other side of the dip of highly compensated - scarcity. Scarcity creates value.
-   **Curve 2 - The Cul De Sac**
-   Going around and around in a dead end, hoping for a way out
-   Doing the hard things; dealing with the annoying customer for example, is the reason you're not replaceable. Be thankful for the dip.
-   "A woodpecker can tap twenty times on a thousand trees and get nowhere but stay busy, or he can tap on one tree twenty-thousand times and get dinner" *You decide which woodpecker to be*
-   Simple Rule to Follow - If you can't make it through the dip, don't start.
-   **Curve 3 - The Cliff**

#### **Seven Reasons You Might Fail to Become the Best in The World**

1.  You would run out of time (and quit)
2.  You run out of money (and quit)
3.  You get scared (and quit)
4.  You're not serious about it (and quit)
5.  You lose interest or settle for being mediocre (and quit)
6.  You focus on the short term instead of the long term (and quit when the short term gets too hard)
7.  You pick the wrong thing at which to be the best in the world (because you don't have the talent and quit)

-   There are only two options: (1) Quit or (2) Be Exceptional. Average is for losers
-   The opposite of quitting isn't trying harder. The opposite of quitting is an invigorated new strategy designed to break the problem apart.

### Part 2: If You're Not Going to Get to #1, You Might as Well Quit Now

-   Failing and quitting are not one and the same. Failing happens when there are no other options to pursue your dream, or when you quit so often that you've used up all your time and resources.
-   Instead of, "Winners never quit" mantra, it should be, "Never quit something with great long-term potential just because you can't deal with the stress of the moment."

#### **Three Questions to Ask Before Quitting**

1.  Am I panicking?
2.  Who am I trying to influence?
3.  What sort of measurable progress am I making?

-   The tactics you use in your organization are not the organization. The moment the way you do business is no longer part of winning The Dip - you *must* switch tactics.
-   Write down on a piece of paper when you're willing to quit
-   *If I lose $2,000* i*n one year of operations, I'm out.*
-   Don't enter a market that's too big for you to make a splash in. The pressure will be too high and your message will get lost. Pick a small market and grow from there.


The Dip by Seth Godin

Summary
-------

A short read, but interesting nonetheless. This book doesn't have a ton of practical insights, but gives some motivation to show what you're doing in public. An interesting argument and helpful for someone like me who is so young and feel like I haven't "accomplished" anything yet.

Key Insights
------------

Nothing is original.

The writer Jonathan Lethem has said that when people call something "original," nine out of ten times they just don't know the references or the original sources involved.

Collecting various good ideas from different forms of culture is an essential skill to writing and having influence.

Your job is to collect good ideas. The more good ideas you collect, the more you can choose from to be influenced by.

Take on the identity of the 'someone' before you actually are the 'someone'

1\. Pretend to be something you're not until you are---fake it until you're successful, until everybody sees you the way you want them to; or 2. Pretend to be making something until you actually make something.

It's not just about taking their style. Understand how they are thinking, understand why they wrote one thing over another.

Wilson Mizner said if you copy from one author, it's plagiarism, but if you copy from many, it's research.

Don't just steal the style, steal the thinking behind the style. You don't want to look like your heroes, you want to see like your heroes.

If you just mimic the surface of somebody's work without understanding where they are coming from, your work will never be anything more than a knockoff.

Emulation is when imitation goes one step further, breaking through into your own thing.

So: Copy your heroes. Examine where you fall short. What's in there that makes you different? That's what you should amplify and transform into your own work.

If you have an idea for how something "should" be in life, make that thing. Don't sit around complaining or wishing something existed.

The manifesto is this: Draw the art you want to see, start the business you want to run, play the music you want to hear, write the books you want to read, build the products you want to use---do the work you want to see done.

"Complain about the way other people make software by making software."

Being seen and being a creative is about sharing your work as you're going. Don't worry about being an 'overnight success' - enough people will see you when you're there. Start now and show your work.

You don't have to do it. Focus on the wildly important things.

In this age of information abundance and overload, those who get ahead will be the folks who figure out what to leave out, so they can concentrate on what's really important to them.


Show Your Work by Austin Kleon

Summary
-------

This book is very helpful for anyone who wants to get into freelance or agency marketing. It gives some practical writing advice, but it's mainly tips and strategies on how to create good campaigns inside of an agency.

Outline
-------

### Chapter 2: Writing, Rewriting, and Re-Writing

The majority of our job is not coming up with great ideas. It's crafting the words and art around other people's ideas to make them great.

How to Write Headlines:

-   Sit in front of the page and write line after line after line in quick succession until your lines are loosely connected to where you started.
-   Once you get that perfect line, rewrite in 20 different ways. Flop the structure, start with the verb. Start with the noun.

Advertising has killed these words. Use them sparingly:

-   Perfect
-   Unique
-   Intersting
-   New
-   No Wonder
-   Special
-   Not to Mention
-   That's Why
-   First
-   Only
-   Exclusive
-   Special
-   No Matter

Before you put pen to paper, think about how you're going to say what you're going to say. British voiceover?

Don't EVER use these words in headlines:

-   Like
-   Stuff
-   Things

Never let people guess the next word you're going to use.

Create tension with headlines. Example:

-   Dull line: Take your work out of the office with a mobile broadband card.
-   Line with Tension: The office is no place to work.

#### How to Steal Headlines Like a Pro:

1\. Find a well-known saying and twist it.

-   "Start acting your *younger* age"
-   "Make your long story look short"

2\. Be bland, then play with it

-   This: Great signal in Kansas City.
-   Becomes this: KC's drenched in our sweet and tangy signal sauce

3\. Take the crappy line from a creative brief and make it not crappy

4\. Big small/High low

-   Finding a parallel you can make in the language between opposites
-   "Small Rates. Big Deal."
-   "Pay a little, get a lot."
-   "Giant horsepower. Tiny Price."

5\. Duck. Duck. Goose

-   Two quick thoughts followed by one longer thought
-   "It's this. It's that. It's going to change the way you do this forever"
-   "Word, word, word, twist."

### Chapter 3: More Words? You've got to be kidding. (Body copy and other longer form writing)

Don't make body copy an explanation for the headline. If that's the case, the headline isn't clear enough.

Think title & story. The title hints at what you're about to read, the story is what you read.

Write the body first, then think of the headline.

To properly write body copy for a product, the product must solve a problem or be a resolution to some situation. The first part of this process is defining that conflict.

Logic and order come more in the editing page. For now, just keep writing content.

One of the fastest ways to class up your language is to use VERB NOUN:

-   Hammer away.
-   Feather past
-   Anchor in.

Be specific.

If a story doesn't seem right, consider a convincing argument.

-   Logos - Does this make sense?
-   Pathos - Is there emotion? What is the reader feeling?
-   Ethos - Who are you and why should I care?

Rule #1 - Is this something you'd want to read? If not, I don't want to read it either.

### Chapter 4: TV or online video

The script will be a lot more attractive to a director if you let them put their own mark on it

Think through your choices very well

Trust your gut and other people's, but be wary of logical explanations for errors. No person will be there to explain to ever home viewer why it is the way it is.

### Chapter 5: Digital, social, and all of that

Put yourself in the role of the first time viewer. Does the single post make sense, even though they haven't seen the rest of the campaign?

When brainstorming, think of what you want people to take away from the campaign. List them out and start from there.

If your tone is funny, it has to be funny from the banner on Twitter to the About Us page on the website.

Some of the best digital experiences mimic the physical world or work on top it. Try to make digital less digital.

Read copy aloud. If a joke is supposed to be a punchline, have that line come up delayed.

If you're asking anyone to do something that's more difficult than lifting a feather, they won't do it.

As much as you can, don't make anyone click or tap through an ad. You lose people that way.

When optimizing for SEO, think like a person trying to find you. Not the words you think represent you or the brand.

### Chapter 6: Experimental Marketing

There's something unique about warped scale. A building is boring, but a shrunken building is cool. A thumbtack is lame, but a giant thumbtack is cool.

Make an exclusive guest list

Alcohol. 'Nough said.

You don't need to convince every on earth that the product is cool, just the people everyone on earth look up to.

### Chapter 7: Pitching new business

If any idea takes longer than 15 seconds to explain, kill it.

An easy way to create a manifesto is have an intriguing thought in the beginning, a line at the end that could be a tagline, and fill in the rest of it with language that flows from your insight to the line at the end.

A good test of your idea is to think if it would still be clever if you were presenting it in a noisy food court and you had to stop for a minute halfway through presenting it.

### Chapter 8: The delicate art of presenting

Solve your client's underlying problem, and there's no stopping what you're allowed to get away with. Sometimes, it's as simple as them not wanting to get yelled at by their boss. If that's the case, offer them extra help in impressing them with case studies, facts, data, etc.

Clients don't care about your awards or training. They want you to tell them an insight that they didn't know in a way that they can believe.

Let your client into the thinking. They often don't realize you spent 2 hour deciding which font to use.

If an idea is dead, move on. Don't let a client talk an idea to death over and over again. It wastes time. Take notes on what they don't like and move on.

Pick someone before the meeting to own the idea.  Everyone else shouldn't talk or explain it unless they are directly asked a question.

Don't use the world "cool" to present an idea. Use the word "smart".

### Chapter 9: Words of Advice

Making memorable work is not the agency's job. It's yours.

Don't wait for someone else to decide it's time for your career to start.

One assignment grows into the next, and into the next. Weasel in anyway you can.

### Chapter 10: Inspiration on being a creative

You're probably not the best. Put your ego aside and learn from other's.

Press is a better measure of success than awards.

### Chapter 11: How to deal and avoid politics

Let your clients kill your work and lean on your boss.

As a starting creative, your job is to prove your Creative Director right

Few will take risks, everyone will take credit.

No matter who says it, if it's a good idea, run with it.


Junior: Writing Your Way Ahead in Advertising

One Sentence Summary
--------------------

The Essentialist mindset is all about doing less, but better

Two Key Takeaways
-----------------

-   Focus on your objectives. There's no way to do everything you want to do well, but you can do 1-3 things *exceptionally* well
-   Saying no is apart of life. Have one decision that makes a thousand. When presented with an opportunity to do something or take on a new task, make sure you are 100% down. If you're even 90% down, it should be an automatic 'No'! (if you have the luxury to do that of course).

Chapter 1: The Essentialist
---------------------------

-   When you spend time focusing on too many objectives, you end up minoring in major activities, which makes work very frustrating
-   Instead of making a millimeter of progress in a million directions, you can begin to make major progress in the things that are truly vital
-   ***Less but better***
-   Essentialism is not about getting more things done, it's about getting the *right* things done; making the wisest investment of your time to feed the things with the most ROI
-   The way of the essentialist means to make decision based on design, not default. Being able to distinguish the vital few tasks from the trivial many, allow you to do the things you deliberately choose to do
-   "If you don't prioritize your life, someone else will"

Paradox of Success

-   Phase 1 - When you have such clarity on what to do, you do that thing really well
-   Phase 2 - Success leads to a reputation of the 'go-to person' in that field or area. This leads to an increase in options and opportunities.
-   Phase 3 - Increased opportunities, which is really just an increase in demand for your time,
-   Decision Fatigue - The more choices we have to make, the more the quality of our decisions deteriorates.
-   The word 'Priority' came into the world in the 1400s. For 500 years, it remained singular until in the 1900s when people started talking about priorities - you can't have more than three important things you're focusing on
-   To help discern between what to do and what not do, ask yourself, "Will this activity or effort make the highest possible contribution toward my goal?"

Chapter 2: The Invincible Power of Choice
-----------------------------------------

-   Learned Helplessness plays out in two ways either: (1) Sometimes they check out and stop trying, or (2) They become hyperactive, they accept every opportunity presented and throw themselves at every assignment

Chapter 3: The Unimportance of Practically Everything
-----------------------------------------------------

-   *You must understand that certain types of effort yield higher rewards than others*
-   The Power Law Theory - certain efforts actually produce exponentially more results than others
-   An Essentialist discerns more so he can do less

Chapter 4: Trade-Off: Which Problem Do I Want?
----------------------------------------------

-   The worst thing an organization, or person, can do is ignore the reality of trade-offs. Every decision you make will be a trade-off to something else.
-   If you don't make the hard choice to decide your trade-offs, someone else is going to make it for you
-   Johnson & Johnsons mission statement says the customers are first, and the shareholders second. That is why when they had to recall Tylenol, even though they lost $100 million, they did it anyway. The customers safety was more important than a price point [[Story]] [[Infinite Game]]
-   Essentialists ask the tougher but more liberating question, "Which problem do I want?"
-   When faced with a decision where one option prioritizes family and another friends, health, or work, you need to be prepared to ask, "Which problem do you want?"

Chapter 5: ESCAPE - The Perks of Being Unavailable
--------------------------------------------------

-   To discern what is truly essential, we need space to think, time to look and listen, permission to play, wisdom to sleep, and the discipline to apply highly selective criteria to the choices we make.
-   Newton, when asked how he discovered the law of universal gravitation, replied, "By thinking on it continually". What he thought on, he thought on continually or nearly exclusively

Chapter 6: LOOK - See What Really Matters
-----------------------------------------

-   In every set of facts, something essential is hidden
-   *The problem might not be the problem. You must have the ability to look at the high level picture of what's going on.*

Chapter 7: PLAY - Embrace the Wisdom of Your Inner Child
--------------------------------------------------------

-   Bob Fagan, a researcher who has spent 15 years studying the behavior of Grizzly Bears, discovered bears who played the most tended to survive the longest. In a world continuously presenting unique challenges and ambiguity, play prepares the bear for a changing planet
-   Play helps in reducing stress which is key to creativity because stress plays a big role of being an enemy of productivity and other exploratory parts of our brain
-   Stress increases the activity in the amygdala, while reducing the activity in the hippocampus, the thing that's responsible for cognitive function

Chapter 8: SLEEP - Protect the Asset
------------------------------------

-   Essentialists choose to do one fewer thing right now, in order to do more tomorrow
-   Read, "Sleep is the New Status Symbol for Successful Entrepreneurs"

Chapter 9: SELECT - The Power of Extreme Criteria
-------------------------------------------------

-   If the answer isn't a definite 'Yes' then it should be an automatic 'No'
-   Assigning numerical values to your decisions can help you make the right decision, instead of staying stuck in indecision.
-   Evaluate an option and think about the single most important criterion for that decision. Give that option a score between 0 to 100. If you rate it any lower than 90%, change the score to 0 and say no
-   Don't say yes to something just because it's an easy reward. Doing that runs the risk of having to say no to a more meaningful one down the road
-   Write down the opportunity. Next, write down a list of three 'minimum criteria' the options need to pass in order to be considered. Third, write down a list of 'extreme criteria' they would need to pass in order to be considered. If the opportunity doesn't pass both lists, it's a no

Chapter 10: CLARIFY - One Decision That Makes a Thousand
--------------------------------------------------------

-   If a team is disorganized and not having results, that's a clear warning sign for a lack of clarity. People are confused about what their roles are and experience stress, confusion, and frustration. When there is a high level of clarity, people thrive.
-   Done right, an essential intent is one decision that settles one thousand later decisions
-   Organizations who can answer, "If we could be truly excellent at only one thing, what would it be?" will thrive. If all of their employees can answer that question, the games over - they win

Chapter 11: DARE - The Power of a Graceful "No"
-----------------------------------------------

-   You can say no and regret it for a few minutes, or you can say yes and regret it for a few days, weeks, months, or even years

**HOW TO SAY NO GRACEFULLY**

1.  Separate the decision from the relationship
2.  You don't have to use the word, "No"
3.  Focus on the trade off
4.  Remind yourself that everyone is selling something
5.  Saying no often requires trading popularity for respect. Be okay with that.
6.  A clear "No", can sometimes be more graceful than a vague or noncommittal "Yes"

-   Essentialists accept they can't be popular with everyone all of the time

Chapter 12: UNCOMMIT - Win Big By Cutting Your Losses
-----------------------------------------------------

-   Don't continue investing time, money, or energy into something you know is losing proposition.
-   One helpful question to ask yourself is, "If I did not have this opportunity, how much would I be willing to sacrifice in order to obtain it?"
-   Ask someone who is not emotionally involved in the situation and unaffected by the choice you make to give
-   Apologize. Be honest and tell the person that when you made the commitment, you thought there would be less responsibilities

Chapter 13: EDIT - The Invisible Art
------------------------------------

-   Latin root of the word decision - cis or cid - literally means, "to cut" or, "to kill"
-   When added on to an email thread, or when sitting in a meeting, wait to give your two cents. Observe what other people's ideas are and edit out what you think you *need* to say.

Chapter 14: LIMIT - The Freedom of Setting Boundaries
-----------------------------------------------------

-   When asked to do something, it can be intimidating to push back. However, what is worse than defending your priorities is what happens if you don't - the ability to choose what you're doing and eventually what is most essential in your own life
-   Don't solve everyone's problem for them. Forcing people to solve their own problems is equally beneficial for them as it is for you

Chapter 15: BUFFER - The Unfair Advantage
-----------------------------------------

-   Adding buffer into your schedule is an unfair advantage because no one does it
-   Work will expand the time allotted to it - Parkinson's Law - this can be a harmful thing, but also positive if scheduled properly
-   Planning Fallacy - Coined by Daniel Kahneman in 1979, refers to how people often times underestimate how long a task will take, even though they haven't done it before. They feel good because stuff if, 'planned', but not properly. This will just lead to a busy day where nothing gets done
-   *I'd rather do one thing incredibly well, then start 5 things and finish none of them in any given day*
-   Add a buffer into your schedule of 50%. If you think a task will take two hours, schedule three hours to accomplish it

Chapter 16: SUBTRACT - Bring Forth More by Removing Obstacles
-------------------------------------------------------------

-   Constraints (bottlenecks) hold the entire organization and company up. You can improve everything else, but if the bottleneck isn't improved, nothing will flow more efficiently.
-   Instead of focusing on the efforts and resources that need to be added, an Essentialist focuses on removing the constraints or obstacles that needed to be removed. First, y**ou must be able to determine what the clear, desired outcome is**. Until then, you don't know what's constraining you.
-   Ask yourself, "What are the obstacles standing between me and getting this done?" and "What is keeping me from completing this?" Make a list of those obstacles, and prioritize them based off the question, "what is the obstacle that, if removed, would make the majority of other obstacles disappear?"

Chapter 17: PROGRESS - The Power of Small Wins
----------------------------------------------

-   Don't go for the big, flashy wins. They don't matter. Instead, go for the small, everyday wins that have consistent results
-   Two primary internal motivators for people are achievement and recognition for achievement.

Chapter 18: FLOW - The Genius of Routine
----------------------------------------

-   "Routine in an intelligent man is a sign of ambition" - W.H. Auden
-   Routine is essential to being an essentialist. Without it, non-essentials distractions will always win
-   Every habit is made up of a cue, a routine, and a reward
-   Cue - A trigger that tells your brain to go into automatic mode and which habit to use
-   Routine - The behavior itself; can be physical, mental, or emotional
-   Reward - This helps your brain figuring out whether the habit is worth repeating or not

Chapter 19: FOCUS - What's Important Now?
-----------------------------------------

-   The only way to operate at your highest level of contribution, you must deliberately tune into what is important in the here and now
-   Don't get so caught up in past mistakes, or future opportunities that you can't focus and dominate the present
-   "Execution is easy if you work hard at it and hard if you work easy at it"
-   "In work, do what you enjoy. In family life, be completely present." - Lao Tzu

Chapter 20: BE - The Essentialist Life
--------------------------------------

-   Don't get caught up in the paradox of success.
-   Choose your priorities, do everything that accomplishes those and nothing that doesn't
-   Choose essential.


Essentialism by Greg Mckeowen

### The goal of science is to discover why the universe acts the way that it does.
• "There was a harmonious reality underlying the laws of the universe, and the goal of science was to discover it."

• What science teaches us, is the correlation between factual evidence and general theories, something well illustrated in Einstein's life.

### Einstein's success was rooted in his ability to question the mundane things in life and not respect authority
• Einstein's success at life came from marveling at the mysteries that struck others as mundane, questioning conventional wisdom, and challenging authority.

• Throughout his life, Einstein never lost his sense of wonder at the magic of nature's phenomena. He retained the ability to hold two thoughts in his mind simultaneously, to be puzzled when they conflicted, and to marvel when he could smell and underlying unity. "People like you and me never grow old," he wrote an old friend, "We never cease to stand like curious children before the great mystery into which we were born."

• Einstein's scientific success had come in part from his rebelliousness. There was a link between his creativity and his willingness to defy authority. He had no sentimental attachment to the old order, thus was energized by upending it. His stubbornness had worked to his advantage.

• The explanation that Einstein himself most often gave for his mental Accomplishments was his curiosity. As he put it near the end of his life, "I have no special talents, I am only passionately curious."

• Curiosity, in Einstein's case, came not just from a desire to question the mysterious. More important, it came from a childlike sense of marvel that propelled him to question the familiar, those concepts that, as he once said, "the ordinary adult never bothers his head about."

### Einstein was a purely theoretical physicist. He never ran experiments himself.
• One of the interesting things about Einstein is that he never ran experiments. He was purely theoretical. In his papers, he would end them by explaining a few ways someone who wanted to test it, could, and if they did, they should get in touch with him.

• I love this because it shows that you don't have to solve a problem to be a critical thinker. Merely thinking about the problem is something that can go along way

### Einstein didn't let anything get in the way of his science
• Einstein was a true loner and didn't really want to let much get in the way of his scientific endeavors. He is quoted while trying to divorce Marić to marry Elsa saying, "For I shall never give up the state of living alone, which has manifested itself as an indescribable blessing."

### Einstein had a beef with quantum theory
• After his theories of relativity had made their way, he explored the world of quantum mechanics and basically spent the rest of life trying to create a unified field theory. His beef with quantum mechanics was that things seemed to appear to work chaotically at a subatomic level. There was no way to predict how particles are interacting with each other, outside of observing it. But once you observe it, that influences the particles and you're not seeing it for what it truly is.

• Einstein thought this preposterous. He couldn't come to believe that the good Lord would have created beautiful and subtle rules that have determined *most* of what happened in the universe, while leaving a few things completely to chance.

• This attitude was in direct contrast to his belief as a younger scientist. He thought there was nothing that could be known unless it was observed, which led him to relativity. But now he's saying that there must be rules that govern the universe, no matter one's ability to observe it. In a way, his dive into quantum mechanics was the start of him becoming the old order and a new wave of scientists saying, "We don't know that."

• Einstein, as he got older, couldn't help but believe that there was some higher spirit - an organizer or creator of all the rules in the universe. No way he thought all of this just happened. There's too much simplicity for things to just happen the way that they did.

• Einstein believed that all scientific theories, leaving aside their mathematical expressions, ought to lend themselves to so simple a description "that even a child could understand them."

• *Esse est percipi* - To be is to be perceived. From [George Berkeley](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Berkeley#:~:text=Berkeley's%20immaterialism%20argues%20that%20%22esse,God's%20nothing%20can%20be%20real.)

### Einstein's belief in God changed, but never his attitude towards organized religion:
• "I'm not an atheist. The problem involved is too vast for our limited minds. We are in a position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many languages. The child knows someone must've written those books. It does not know how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. They child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangement of the books and doesn't know what it is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even the most intelligent human being toward God. We see the universe marvelously arranged and obeying certain laws but only dimly understand these laws."

• "The most beautiful emotion we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead, a snuffed-out candle. To sense that behind anything that can be experienced there is something that our minds cannot grasp, whose beauty and sublimity reaches us only indirectly: this is religiousness. In this sense, and in this sense only, I am a devoutly religious man."

• "My religiosity consists of a humble admiration of the infinitely superior spirit that reveals itself in the little that we can comprehend about the knowable world. That deeply emotional conviction of the presence of a superior reasoning power, which is revealed in the incomprehensible universe, forms my idea of God."

• "Everyone who is seriously involved in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that a spirit is manifest in the laws of the Universe–a spirit vastly superior to that of man, and one in the face of which we with our modest powers must feel humble. In this way, the pursuit of science leads to a religious feeling of a special sort, which is indeed quite different from the religiosity of someone more naïve." p.388

• *The main argument between science and religion, as Einstein states, is not whether or not there is a God. It's that scientist's job is to study the laws and rules of the universe and they can't comprehend that those would change based on the interaction of a diety. Divine will, or human free will, does not play a role in the cosmic causality* p.391

• Asked whether or not we have free will, he responed, "No. I am a determinist. Everything is determined, the beginning as well as the end, by forces over which we have no control...– We all dance to a mysterious tune, intoned in the distance by an invisible plater."

• For some people, miracles are evidence that God exists. For Einstein it was the absence of miracles that reflected divine providence. The fact that the cosmos is comprehensible, that it follows laws, is worthy of awe.

### Schrodinger's Cat was an experiment to help Einstein prove the craziness of quantum theory

As some believed the observation of a particle would interrupt the particles state, so its nucleus was both alive and dead until it was observed. This made sence at a quantum level, but when abstracted to a more real life scenario, it seemed crazy. This is where the cat came into play. p.453

### Einstein worked until he couldn't work any longer
The last thing he wrote, before he went to sleep for the last time, was one more line of symbols and numbers that he hoped might get him, and the rest of us, just a little step closer to the spirit manifest in the laws of the universe.

### President Eisenhower on Eisntein:
<blockquote>
No other man contributed so much to the vast expansion of the 20th century knowledge. Yet no other man was more modest in the posession of the power that is knowledge, more sure tha power without wisdom is deadly.
</blockquote>

### The NYT on Einstein after his death:

<blockquote>
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 come about? The most thoughtful wonderer who appeared among us in three centuries has passed on in the person of Albert Einstein.
</blockquote>

### Humility goes a long way
The world has had a lot of geniuses. What made Einstein special was that his mind and soul were tempered by his humility - the belief that no one had the right to impose ideas and beliefs on others.

### Just a beautiful quote
Isaacson on Einstein, "He was a loner with an intimate bond to humanity, a rebel who was suffused with reverence. And thus it was that an imaginative, impertinent, patent clerk became the mind reader of the creator of the cosmos, the locksmith of the mysteries of the atom and the universe."


Einstein: His Life and Universe

### Summary and Review
Phenomenal book. There are so many interesting lessons on creativity, innovation, and history that I've never read elsewhere. I will be coming back to this book constantly and excited to read more from Steven Johnson. There hasn't ever been a book I liked so much where I thought, "I wish I wrote this" other than this one. Really, really enjoyable.

### Why glass is transparent
> Most materials absorb the energy of light. On a subatomic level, electrons orbiting the atoms that made up the material effectively “swallow” the energy of the incoming photon of light, causing those electrons to gain energy. But electrons can gain or lose energy only in discrete steps, known as “quanta.” But the size of the steps varies from material to material. Silicon dioxide happens to have very large steps, which means that the energy from a single photon of light is not sufficient to bump up the electrons to the higher level of energy. Instead, the light passes through the material. (Most ultraviolet light, however, does have enough energy to be absorbed, which is why you can’t get a suntan through a glass window.) But light doesn’t simply pass through glass; it can also be bent and distorted or even broken up into its component wavelengths. Glass could be used to change the look of the world, by bending light in precise ways. This turned out to be even more revolutionary than simple transparency.

### What early glasses were called
> Those early spectacles were called *roidi da ogli*, meaning “disks for the eyes.” Thanks to their resemblance to lentil beans—lentes in Latin—the disks themselves came to be called “lenses.”

### The Hummingbird effect of Gutenberg's printing press and glasses
Hummingbird Effect - When an innovation in one field exposes a flaw in some other technology. In the case of the printing press, that "technology" was our anatomy.

> But Gutenberg's great breakthrough had another, less celebrated effect: it made a massive number of people aware, for the first time, that they were farsighted. And that revelation created a surge in demand for spectacles.
>
> What followed was one of the most extraordinary cases of the hummingbird effect in modern history. Gutenberg made printed books relatively cheap and portable, which triggered a rise in literacy, which exposed a flaw in the visual acuity of a sizable part of the population, which then created a new market for the manufacture of spectacles. Within a hundred years of Gutenberg’s invention, thousands of spectacle makers around Europe were thriving, and glasses became the first piece of advanced technology—since the invention of clothing in Neolithic times—that ordinary people would regularly wear on their bodies.

### The creation of fiber optics
> Scientists at Bell Labs then took fibers of this super-clear glass and shot laser beams down the length of them, fluctuating optical signals that corresponded to the zeroes and ones of binary code. This hybrid of two seemingly unrelated inventions—the concentrated, orderly light of lasers, and the hyper-clear glass fibers—came to be known as fiber optics. Using fiber-optic cables was vastly more efficient than sending electrical signals over copper cables, particularly for long distances: light allows much more bandwidth and is far less susceptible to noise and interference than is electrical energy.

### On the benefit on transporting commodities
> The history of global trade had clearly demonstrated that vast fortunes could be made by transporting a commodity that was ubiquitous in one environment to a place where it was scarce. To the young Tudor, ice seemed to fit the equation perfectly: nearly worthless in Boston, ice would be priceless in Havana.

### "Multiple Invention"
> Those patents rippling across the planet are an example of one of the great curiosities in the history of innovation: what scholars now call “multiple invention.” Inventions and scientific discoveries tend to come in clusters, where a handful of geographically dispersed investigators stumble independently onto the very same discovery.

This happened with the light bulb, relativity, ice, flight, and so much more.

### Breakthrough innovations are a collection of ideas repackaged in new ways

 > To imagine a world of flash-frozen food, Birdseye needed to experience the challenges of feeding a family in an arctic climate surrounded by brutal cold; he needed to spend time with the Inuit fishermen; he needed to inspect the foul containers of cod-fishing trawlers in New York harbors; he needed the scientific knowledge of how to produce temperatures well below freezing; he needed the industrial knowledge of how to build a production line. Like every big idea, Birdseye’s breakthrough was not a single insight, but a network of other ideas, packaged together in a new configuration.

 > Fifty-eight years in the making, his [Galileo] slow hunch about the pendulum’s “magical property” had finally begun to take shape. The idea lay at the intersection point of multiple disciplines and interests: Galileo’s memory of the altar lamp, his studies of motion and the moons of Jupiter, the rise of a global shipping industry, and its new demand for clocks that would be accurate to the second. Physics, astronomy, maritime navigation, and the daydreams of a college student: all these different strains converged in Galileo’s mind.

### The invention of Sears, Roebuck catalog
> With watches spiking in popularity across the country, a Minnesota railroad agent named Richard Warren Sears stumbled across a box of unwanted watches from a local jeweler, and turned a tidy profit selling them to other station agents. Inspired by his success, he partnered with a Chicago businessman named Alvah Roebuck, and together they launched a mail-order publication showcasing a range of watch designs: the Sears, Roebuck catalog. Those fifteen pounds of mail-order catalogs currently weighing down your mailbox? They all started with the must-have gadget of the late nineteenth century: the consumer-grade pocket watch.

### Why timezones zig-zag
> Allen designed the map so that the divisions between time zones zigzagged slightly to correspond to the points where the major railroad lines connected, instead of having the divisions run straight down meridian lines.

### How satellites triangulate your position
> Those satellites are sending out the most elemental of signals, again and again, in perpetuity: the time is 11:48:25.084738 . . . the time is 11:48:25.084739. . . . When your phone tries to figure out its location, it pulls down at least three of these time stamps from satellites, each reporting a slightly different time thanks to the duration it takes the signal to travel from satellite to the GPS receiver in your hand. A satellite reporting a later time is closer than one reporting an earlier time. Since the satellites have perfectly predictable locations, the phone can calculate its exact position by triangulating among the three different time stamps.

> Like the naval navigators of the eighteenth century, GPS determines your location by comparing clocks. This is in fact one of the recurring stories of the history of the clock: each new advance in timekeeping enables a corresponding advance in our mastery of geography—from ships, to railroads, to air traffic, to GPS. It’s an idea that Einstein would have appreciated: measuring time turns out to be key to measuring space.

### How our idea of innovation affects our policies
> If we think that innovation comes from a lone genius inventing a new technology from scratch, that model naturally steers us toward certain policy decisions, like stronger patent protection. But if we think that innovation comes out of collaborative networks, then we want to support different policies and organizational forms: less rigid patent laws, open standards, employee participation in stock plans, cross-disciplinary connections.

### Why it's important to learn about the past
> Learning from the patterns of innovation that shaped society in the past can only help us navigate the future more successfully, even if our explanations of that past are not falsifiable in quite the same way that a scientific theory is.

### The greatest innovator's were time travelers, making discoveries years before they were sometimes useful. This is how they did it:
> If there is a common thread to the time travelers, beyond the nonexplanation of genius, it is this: they worked at the margins of their official fields, or at the intersection point between very different disciplines.

> The garage is the space for the hacker, the tinkerer, the maker. The garage is not defined by a single field or industry; instead, it is defined by the eclectic interests of its inhabitants. It is a space where intellectual networks converge.

### Real innovation comes when you get lost in your craft
>But if you want to be like Ada, if you want to have an “intuitive perception of hidden things”—well, in that case, you need to get a little lost.

>But those disciplinary boundaries can also serve as blinders, keeping you from the bigger idea that becomes visible only when you cross those borders.


How We Got to Now

## Impressions

*I didn't really know what to think of this book before I started reading it. I really like Morgan Housel's blogs and so it was a no brainer whether or not to buy his book when it came out. I was pleasantly surprised with the actionable insights and takeaways for managing money. Though the focus is mainly on the psychology, as you could imagine, it does give some practical tips.*

*This book would pair well with [Ramit Sethi's I Will Teach You To Be Rich.](https://www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com/) Housel's book gives some psychological factors to think about and Sethi gives more practical advice on how to actually manage your money.*

## Actionable Takeaways
1. Just because you say you will do something when everything goes to hell doesn't mean you actually will. It's easy to *say* you'll buy when the market crashes and there is blood in the streets. But it's a totally different thing to actually do that when your portfolio is down 35% in one day.
2. Usually when people think about the market crashing 30%, they *only* think about the market crashing 30%. The problem with that is that when the market actually crashes 30%, it's because there is a massive deadly pandemic or a horrific terroist attack.
3. Managing money well is all about behavior.
4. Every decision someone makes, makes sense to them at the time. If you're baffled at how someone is behaving, try to think like they do. No one makes a decision thinking, "This makes no sense to me but I'm going to do it."
5. Good investing isn't getting crazy high, one-off returns. Instead, it's getting pretty average returns for an absolutely unbelievable amount of time.
6. Planning is important, but the most important part of every plan is to plan on the plan not going according to plan.
7. Saving is as much psychological as it is tactical. Yes it requires you to physically put money away in an account somehow, but it also requires that you spend less. And you can't spend less if you're worried about what other people think of you.
8. Just because something hasn't happened before doesn't mean it can't happen. No one expected The Great Depression until it did. No one assumed WW2 would break out until it did. Don't use history, or the lackthereof as a predictor of future catastrophes. The future will most likely be much worse.
9. If you make too little money, you will never be able to retire. If you make too much money, you regret working so hard all of those years. The solution? Stay in the middle.
10. Not everyone is playing the same game. And one when group of people playing for a certain outcome get their moves and tactics from another group of people playing for a different outcome, the result is catastrophic.
11. Wealth is created by suppressing what you could buy today in order to have more stuff or more options in the future.
12. Use the money you earn to buy control over your time. Because the ability to do what you want, when you want, with who you want, is the biggest wealth benefit of all.

## Quotes
- "History never repeats itself. Man always does."
- "Be careful who you praise and admire. Be careful who you look down upon and wish to avoid becoming."
- "Getting money is one thing. Keeping it is another."
- "“It’s not whether you’re right or wrong that’s important,” George Soros once said, “but how much money you make when you’re right and how much you lose when you’re wrong.” You can be wrong half the time and still make a fortune."
- "But doing something you love on a schedule you can’t control can feel the same as doing something you hate."
- "Every bit of savings is like taking a point in the future that would have been owned by someone else and giving it back to yourself."
- "The historical odds of making money in U.S. markets are 50/50 over one-day periods, 68% in one-year periods, 88% in 10-year periods, and (so far) 100% in 20-year periods. Anything that keeps you in the game has a quantifiable advantage."
- "A good rule of thumb for a lot of things in life is that everything that can break will eventually break
- "Bubbles do their damage when long-term investors playing one game start taking their cues from those short-term traders playing another."
- "Growth is driven by compounding, which always takes time. Destruction is driven by single points of failure, which can happen in seconds, and loss of confidence, which can happen in an instant
- "Expecting things to be bad is the best way to be pleasantly surprised when they’re not."
- "Coming to terms with how much you don’t know means coming to terms with how much of what happens in the world is out of your control."
- "Use money to gain control over your time, because not having control of your time is such a powerful and universal drag on happiness. The ability to do what you want, when you want, with who you want, for as long as you want to, pays the highest dividend that exists in finance."
- "I can afford to not be the greatest investor in the world, but I can’t afford to be a bad one."

## Bonus (Stories, illustrations, & things that made me go wow.)
- A quote about another partner Warren Buffett did business with and how he wanted to get rich quick:
	 > Warren, Charlie, and Rick made investments together and interviewed business managers together. Then Rick kind of disappeared, at least relative to Buffett and Munger’s success. Investor Mohnish Pabrai once asked Buffett what happened to Rick. Mohnish recalled: [Warren said] “Charlie and I always knew that we would become incredibly wealthy. We were not in a hurry to get wealthy; we knew it would happen. Rick was just as smart as us, but he was in a hurry.” What happened was that in the 1973–1974 downturn, Rick was levered with margin loans. And the stock market went down almost 70% in those two years, so he got margin calls. He sold his Berkshire stock to Warren—Warren actually said “I bought Rick’s Berkshire stock”—at under $40 a piece. Rick was forced to sell because he was levered.
- > In Pharaonic Egypt … scribes tracked the high-water mark of the Nile and used it as an estimate for a future worst-case scenario. The same can be seen in the Fukushima nuclear reactor, which experienced a catastrophic failure in 2011 when a tsunami struck. It had been built to withstand the worst past historical earthquake, with the builders not imagining much worse—and not thinking that the worst past event had to be a surprise, as it had no precedent.


The Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel

Summary
-------

Being able to think and solve problems in a general sense allows for innovative breakthroughs and discoveries in a niche field.

My Top Two Takeaways
--------------------

1.  Before determining a solution to a problem, make sure to completely understand the type of problem it is. Not all problems are as they seem on the surface.
2.  Don't measure someones work-ethic or 'grit' based on an observation in a specific field. For example, the worst thing someone can do is base one's entrepreneurial spirit and drive on their homework scores. They're two completely different fields and one is not parallel to the other.

Chapter 4: Learning, Fast and Slow
----------------------------------

-   One of the best ways to produce real, long lasting learning is practicing retrieval.
-   The Generation Effect - Struggling to answer on your own, even a wrong on, enhance subsequent learning
-   Deliberate Difficulties - Making your study sessions or practice harder and harder in increments
-   Test taking cannot be an accurate measurement of long-term lasting learning. Real learning is hard to do quickly, like most schools expect during a week of new curriculum, but fleeting knowledge is easy.
-   Fleeting learning is based on before your eye progress - while deep learning is not. Deep learning cannot be measured in hours, more like days and weeks
-   Before determining the solution to the problem, you must figure out what problem you're solving. Not all problems are what they seem.
-   Far Transfer - When a knowledge structure is so flexible that it can be applied effectively even in new domains or extremely novel situations.

Chapter 5: Thinking Outside Experience
--------------------------------------

-   Analogical Thinking - The practice of recognizing conceptual similarities in multiple domains or scenarios that may seem to have little in common on the surface.
-   Takes the new and makes it familiar, or takes the familiar and makes it new
-   "If you need a large force to accomplish some purpose, but are prevented from applying such a force directly, many smaller forces applied simultaneously from different directions may work just as well" Karl Duncker
-   Taking the Inside View - When you make judgements based narrowly on the details of a particular project that are right in front of us.
-   The most successful problem solvers are the ones who can identify the deep structure of the problem before they proceed to match a strategy to it.
-   Retrograde Motion - The movement of Mars when it reverses direction in the sky, does a little loop, and then continues on in the same direction.
-   Dunbar, a scientist, saw that the labs most likely to take unexpected findings into new knowledge for humanity made a lot of analogies, and made them from a variety of base domains.

Chapter 6: The Trouble With Too Much Grit
-----------------------------------------

-   Peregrinations - Travel or wander around from place to place
-   Match Quality - The term economists use to describe the degree of fit between the work someone does and who they are- their abilities and proclivities
-   Learning things is not as important about learning about oneself.
-   Every single person before taking on a new endeavor should identify terms under which they should quit.
-   *If I start this business, and I lose more than $2,000 in the first year*
-   The trouble with grit is that it isn't an accurate measure - grit is subjective to the person and what they love/what they're trying
-   Sunk Cost Theory - The more we have invested and even lost, the longer we will keep going and say, 'almost there' even though it's obviously failing. We don't want to lose the investment we gained by quitting.

Chapter 7: Flirting With Your Possible Selves
---------------------------------------------

-   Aviatrix - A female pilot
-   Leadership training is as simple as looking at any situation and asking, "what would teach me the most in this situation and how can I be of service?"
-   Be a Dark Horse in Life - Look at life and say, 'this is who I am. These are my motivations. I need to do this, that, and this to be there.'
-   All Dark Horses have short-term goals - don't think *too* far in the future
-   Our preferences for work and life are not going to stay the same as we age, because we don't stay the same. It's okay to move on. It's okay to switch careers - especially in today's day and age.
-   Instead of asking *if* someone is gritty, ask *when* are they gritty. This will reveal passions and motivational situations.
-   One way to make decisions is to not think too far in the future - look at all the possible options and choose the one that will give you the most options afterward
-   Ibarras Aphorism - I know who I am when I see what I do
-   Bad things could end up good, and good things could end up bad. You don't know what is until it's over. Don't react before the situation ends.
-   Want to find your talent? Try things.

Chapter 8: The Outsider Advantage
---------------------------------

-   Outside-In Thinking - Finding solutions in experiences far outside of focused training for the problem itself.
-   Viewing a problem in your industry, through the lens of all your experiences in that industry can sometimes lead to a brick wall. To come up with creative solutions to problems, frame the problem in a more general sense, not specific to the industry its happening in.
-   Einstellung Effect - A psychology term for the tendency of problem solvers to use only familiar methods even if better ones are available
-   Clandestinely - Secretly; Kept a Secret

Chapter 9: Lateral Thinking with Withered Technology
----------------------------------------------------

-   Lateral Thinking - A term coined in the 60s' for the reimagining of information in new contexts, including drawing parallels between to seemingly disconnected or unrelated ideas that can give them new uses
-   Functional Fixedness - A tendency people have to consider only familiar uses for objects
-   The more uncertainty there is to a problem, the more important having a analogical, lateral thinker on the team of problem solvers
-   Serial Innovators can be defined as people who are/have: a high tolerance for ambiguity; systems thinkers; repurposing what is already available; synthesizing ideas from many different sources.
-   When we expect a hyperspecialist, because of their expertise in a narrow area to magically be able to extend that knowledge to a new area, the results can be disastrous.
-   *A specialist in dog food advertising, can not be given the job to work as a fast-food advertiser.*

Chapter 10: Fooled By Expertise
-------------------------------

-   Hedgehogs - People who know one big thing
-   Foxes - People who know many little things
-   *Foxes see complexity in what others mistake as just simple cause and effect*
-   Most cause and effect relationships are not deterministic, they are probabilistic. There are variables, and things do not always repeat as precisely as they once did or have before. Foxes understand that they are always in a new learning environment and not everything is as it seems.

Chapter 11: Learning To Drop Your Familiar Tools
------------------------------------------------

-   Sometimes decisions can be made based off of the wrong data. Not all data is useful, and sometimes the data you have can be not enough. Before making a decision based on data, ask, 'Is this the data we need to make the decision we need to make.?'
-   When The Challenger exploded, there was a very simple warning that could have been analyzed, and fixed by the NASA scientist. Only problem was they were missing the data necessary to make the proper decision, but no one caught it.
-   Dropping the familiar tools you use to solve familiar problems is what you need to do when solving unfamiliar problems. Different problems require different tools.
-   Over Learned Behavior - Doing the same thing over and over again in response to the same challenges until the behavior has become so automatic that they no longer recognize it as a situation-specific tool. That answer now becomes the answer to *every* problem instead of just the situations in which its supposed to be used.
-   The most effective leaders and organizations had range; they were paradoxical. They could be demanding and nurturing, orderly and entrepreneurial. They embraced ambiguity and clear cut systems.
-   There is a difference between the Chain of Command and the Chain of Communications
-   Most organizations make these one in the same - the CEO talks to the executives, who talk to the middle managers, who talk to the managers, who talk to their teams.
-   Successful and healthy organizations have an established Chain of Command, but not a chain of communication. The engineers can talk to the executives whenever something comes up, and no one bats and eye - that's actually encouraged.

Chapter 12: Deliberate Amateurs
-------------------------------

-   Take the skills you have in one domain, and apply them to a different problem in a different domain.
-   "A paradox of innovation and mastery is that breakthroughs occur when you start down one road, but wander off for a ways and pretend as if you have just begun.'


Range by David Epstein

When it comes to our ideas and mindsets, we're one of three personalities.

We're either a preacher, a prosecutor, or a politician.

Preacher mode comes out when our long-held, sacred beliefs are in jeopardy. We preach elegant messages and illustrations to protect and promote our precious ideas.

Prosecutor mode reveals itself when we see mishaps, flaws, or illogical thinking in someone else's argument. We do everything we can to prove them wrong and win our case.

Finally we all become "influential" politicians when we're trying to win over a crowd or an audience. We flash a smile, crack some jokes (or laugh at their corny jokes), all in hopes they will choose our idea to start thinking.

## The Danger

But there's danger in each of these. As Adam Grant puts it in the book, "**The risk is that we become so wrapped up in preaching that we're right, prosecuting others who are wrong, and politicking for support that we don't bother to rethink our own views."**

Once we choose how to think of something, we often stick to that mindset no matter the evidence that presented to us.

So instead of being a stupid "P", Grant proposes we need to all be scientists. Don't worry, you don't have to quit your job and go buy a white lab coat, although you could. Instead, being a scientist means to search for truth, embrace evidence that seems to differ from your current position, and run experiments and tests to discover what the world holds beyond the views you've held for the past twenty years.

If you change your mind in preacher mode, it's a sure sign of weakness. But in scientist mode, it shows you have intellectual integrity.

But what if we're in scientist mode, have the data and research, but can't get other people to change their mind. Then what do we do?

<Callout title="Note" Content={Note, there are times when preaching and prosecuting make the argument stronger. Grant puts it this way, "Research suggests that the effectiveness of these approaches hinges on three key factors: how much people care about the issue, how open they are to our particular argument, and how strong-willed they are in general"} />

Through an incredible story about how Steve Jobs was first resistant to creating the iPhone, Grant demonstrates there is power in arguing what will stay the same. Change is scary. People might think if things are going well in the moment, why change what we're doing now? But when you affirm what's going to stay the same through this change, they're more open to hearing and enacting your idea. They realize, "Oh, not that much is *actually* changing. A,B,C, and D are all staying the same, we're just changing E. Sure, let's try it."

## Counterfactual Thinking

If reinforcing what will stay the same won't help, you could try leading them down a path to imagine a world in which their lives circumstances would have unfolded differently. This is what psychologists call "Counterfactual thinking."

It's easy to forget how influential things like where we were born, who raised us, or where we went to school can be on our thinking. If you can successfully get someone to understand how easy they might have held different initial opinions or stereotypes, they might be much more willing to change their view.

If you're in a heated debate, argument, or conflict at work (or elsewhere), it can helpful to ask, "What evidence would change you mind?" Because sometimes, that answer is nothing. And that's okay. I don't know about you, but I'd rather know that before I spend hours investing in trying to do so.

## The Confident Impostor

I played baseball for 15 years as a child (My goal was to play in college, but I had other plans I guess.)

No matter where we played or who we played against, there was always the teammate or parent on the bleachers who thought they could do a better job of coaching the time than the actual coach. Sometimes they honestly might have been able to, there weren't many requirements for being a baseball coach in travel ball. But most of the time, they weren't.

That's what's called the armchair quarterback. The parent or fan who thinks they know how to do a better job than the actual coach. Armchair quarterbacks confidence exceeds competence.

On the other end of the spectrum is the imposter syndrome. This is a bit more common than the armchair quarterback but people who have imposter syndrome's competence exceeds their confidence. They are actually really good at what they do, but don't believe in themselves enough or don't want others to think they are good.

Obviously either end of that spectrum is negative. If your confidence exceeds your competence, you're just a jerk. But if you're competence exceeds your confidence, you won't get anything done and no one will trust you. So the ideal amount of confidence lies somewhere in the middle. Your competence and your confidence need to be in sync. You have to be confident in your ability to achieve a goal in the future, yet humble enough to question whether you have the right tools or you're the right person for the job.

It's when someone *lacks* skills in a certain area that they're afraid to ask for help or for someone else to do it. When someone tries and forces them to change their mind, they just double down. If that person is leading your team, you're headed straight for a nose dive that ends in a fiery crash.

Humility is a reflective lens: It helps us see weaknesses clearly. Confident humility is a corrective lens: it enables us to overcome those weaknesses.

## You Are Not Your Ideas

When we think we know better than someone else, it's not just the armchair quarterback doing all that work by themselves. He's got a teammate and that teammate is the totalitarian ego.

The totalitarian ego is like a mini-dictator living inside your head, sitting right next to that pesky little armchair quarterback. Their job is to control the facts that flow into our heads, swatting down anything that disproves our hypothesis about a topic.

This happens in a two-step process:

First, the opinions that we hold are shielded in "filter bubbles." These filter bubbles get bigger and bigger with the more information that *proves* our opinion; and with the bubble grows the ego.

Once these opinions are reinforced by enough confirming data, they're sealed behind an impenetrable safe that forms an echo chamber of information  only saying what we want it to say. Sound familiar?

There's only one cure to this totalitarian ego and it comes from Daniel Kahneman -- detachment.

As a psychologist, Kahneman doesn't go a day without thinking of a new, weakly held opinion. But also as a psychologist, his job is to look at the studies, interpret the data, and see if his hypothesis was right. And if it wasn't, change it. The only way he's able have so many fleeting ideas is that he refuses to let his beliefs become apart of his identity.

One practical way to go about this tomorrow is whenever you form a new idea, opinion, or hypothesis about how something works, ask yourself, "What would have to happen to prove this false?"
