Fire and Knowledge

The world you inhabit is the world you make. Your reputation precedes you, biasing the way new colleagues deal with you. Your first moves, friendly or hostile, tip the balance for future interactions. When you exhibit trust, you will most often find trustworthiness. When you are selfish, you will most often find selfishness. When you compete, others must resort to competition. If you choose to play the game strictly for your own advantage, your attempts at collaboration will indeed be, [as Thomas Hobbes said], “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”

—Rodd Wagner & Gale Muller, The Power of 2 (2009), p. 95

A man ought to be a friend to his friend and repay gift with gift.
People should meet smiles with smiles and lies with treachery.

—Edda, a 13th century collection of Norse epic poems, as quoted in Rodd Wagner & Gale Muller, The Power of 2 (2009), p. 94

First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do.

—Epictetus

When I was young I read a lot of books, observed people around me, and came to the conclusion that most people’s lives are completely boring. So I made a rule for myself — find out what most people are doing, and do something else.

—Paul Lutus, Confessions of a Long-Distance Sailor

Love everyone.

We live in a culture of pervasive criticism and snark. We dismiss less-successful-seeming people as losers. We fall into the trap of office politics, aligning with one group or the other, hoping it’s got the inside track. How pointless.

Most people you meet at work—regardless of rank or title—know something you don’t. Many people, again despite where they sit in the hierarchy, can be a mentor to you about something. So try to shed your cynicism and listen to every voice. It will make you smarter and more humble. And if smartness and humility end up being the two main traits people see in you, you’re going to be a winner, no matter what the GDP.

—Jack & Suzy Welch, “Dear Graduate (Crisis Version)“

Remarkable coincidences are rare. But they do happen.

I ran into this one the other day. Puzzle expert Cory Calhoun noticed that this text from Shakespeare:

To be or not to be: that is the question, whether tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune

can be rearranged (anagramed) into:

In one of the Bard’s best-thought-of tragedies, our insistent hero, Hamlet, queries on two fronts about how life turns rotten.

Sometimes remarkable coincidences are, in fact, just remarkable coincidences.

I have onset insomnia. I lie awake at night for a couple hours thinking about all the things I’m going to do or what I did that day. I think about new ideas. I think about new businesses I could start, projects I should do, essays I should write. It’s ridiculous, but I’ve done it ever since I can remember.

I was browsing Tim Ferris’s blog and found out he has the same thing. Here is what he does about it:

I have — as do most males in my family — what is called “onset insomnia.” I don’t have trouble staying asleep, but I have a difficult time falling asleep, sometime laying awake in bed for 1-2 hours.

There are two approaches that I’ve used with good effect without medications to address this: 1) Determine and set a top priorities to-do list that afternoon for the following day to avoid late-night planning, 2) Do not read non-fiction prior to bed, which encourages projection into the future and preoccupation/planning. Read fiction that engages the imagination and demands present-state attention.

I’m often guilty of reading non-fiction before bed. The worst is if I read something about business or entrepreneurship or new ideas. I’ll end up thinking about it for hours while I stare at the ceiling.

Writing a to-do list the day before is a great idea. I’ve been trying to do that simply because it helps to have a focus as soon as I start my day. But this gives me another reason to do it.

If you don’t make mistakes you’re not working on hard enough problems. And that’s a big mistake.

—Frank Wilczek, as quoted in Timothy Ferriss, The 4-Hour Workweek (2007), p. 279.