☕ saturday mornings - October 22, 2022
world-class skillsets, the river of time & discovering your nature
Happy Saturday all!
I hope you’re having a great start to your weekend. I don't know about you, but October has flown by.
What I’ve been up to:
I finished up a busy week of midterms then headed to San Sebastián for a relaxing weekend by the ocean.
I've had a few amazing conversations with friends this week. It's made me question whether I overweight listening to the conversations of others (podcasts) instead of having my own, both from an enjoyment and learning perspective.
Here's a recap of the most interesting ideas I've explored this week.
Thanks for stopping by 😊
✍️ Quote I’m pondering:
Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert, on how to combine skills to become world-class:
“If you want something extraordinary [in life], you have two paths:
1. Become the best at one specific thing.
2. Become very good (top 25%) at two or more things.
The first strategy is difficult to the point of near impossibility. Few people will ever play in the NBA or make a platinum album. I don’t recommend anyone even try.
The second strategy is fairly easy. Everyone has at least a few areas in which they could be in the top 25% with some effort.
In my case, I can draw better than most people, but I’m hardly an artist. And I’m not any funnier than the average standup comedian who never makes it big, but I’m funnier than most people. The magic is that few people can draw well and write jokes. It’s the combination of the two that makes what I do so rare. And when you add in my business background, suddenly I had a topic that few cartoonists could hope to understand without living it.
Capitalism rewards things that are both rare and valuable. You make yourself rare by combining two or more “pretty goods” until no one else has your mix.”
In other words, creating an atypical combination of two or more skills you’re merely competent at can give you a unique, world-class skill set.
✍️ Another quote I’m pondering:
Richard Koch, British management consultant, angel investor, and author, on his advice to students:
“Discover what you are best at doing and enjoy that is different from what your all your peers are doing that requires relatively little effort from you.
Then put huge effort into honing that skill so it becomes monstrously greater than anyone else’s. Keep demanding that each year you make your peculiar talent more peculiar and much more potent.
Don’t care about making money. If you have a fantastically different and useful skill everything else you want will follow.”
This rings similar to Peter Thiel’s advice to avoid competition.
📚 Book passage I loved:
Time is a river, a violent current of events, glimpsed once and already carried past us, and another follows and is gone.
― Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
💡 Idea from me: Attuning to your Nature
“The happiest people discover their own nature and match their life to it.”
― Ray Dalio
We live in a world of mimetic desire. External validation has become a form of currency. As a result, many people aim to create a life that others will approve of, rather than one that is aligned with their nature.
Authenticity is hard. It takes a lot of courage, a lot of patience, and a refusal to engage in competitive status games. But, in my life, I've seen a strong correlation between my ability to pursue authenticity - engage in activities that are authentic to me - and my happiness.
Yet, with the lifestyles and goals the world puts on a pedestal - things everyone "should" want - it's easy to forget who you are. Who you were as a kid. We're incentivized to bury our nature and climb the same ladder everyone else is clambering up.
We fear being viewed as crazy or lazy or unambitious if we outwardly admit we don't want the same things as everyone else. Money, followers, a ton of friends, a big house, a luxurious car, or monthly vacations. Or whatever Kim Kardashian has.
This seems to be one of the fundamental struggles of being human. Nearly 2000 years ago, Seneca wrote, “you must consider whether your nature is more suited to practical activity or to quiet study and reflection, and incline in the direction your natural faculty and disposition take you... We labour in vain against nature's opposition.”
Many spiritual practices instruct students, as a first step, to track down outer lives that more closely reflect their inner values. Freya Stark, explorer and travel writer, even claims “there can be no happiness if the things we believe in are different from the things we do”.
Personally, I enjoy two or three hours of free time to read and walk and write and exercise. It makes my day much better. But admitting this wasn't easy and it's still something I struggle to be proud of.
The journey of life is one of discovering what you were made to do, and pursuing it to the best of your abilities. Marcus Aurelius reminds us life's true delight is to do the things we were made for.
And, although difficult, the choice is simple: we either become who we are, or we don't. In Brené Brown's words, you either walk inside your story and own it or you stand outside your story and hustle for worthiness.
It's the harder path. But, like anything in life, work brings rewards.
As Ralph Waldo Emerson notes, “To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.”
❓ Question for You:
This week’s question builds on the quote from Scott Adams above.
What are two (or more) skills you could combine to create your own world-class skill set?
📸 Photo of the week:
Architecturally, Bilbao is one of the most impressive cities I’ve visited.
There is a term called the ‘Bilbao Effect’ when “powerful architecture holds the potential to transform a sleepy city into a bustling metropolis”.
Beautiful architecture can serve as an “economic cure” for certain cities, bringing in hundreds of millions of dollars in economic activity and tax revenue.
In Bilbao, This effect is seen most prominently in the Guggenheim Museum, a contemporary art museum built alongside the river that looks like a massive, asymmetrical, shining steel ship.
If you have any feedback or just want to be friends, feel free to reach out.
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Have a fantastic weekend.
Much love to you and yours,
Tommy