Fire and Knowledge

The first essential step toward helping the poor is to not become one of them.

—Christopher Howard

Autonomy, complexity, and a connection between effort and reward are, most people agree, the three qualities that work has to have if it is to be satisfying.

—Malcolm Gladwell, Outliers (2008), p. 149

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.

If you need a new job, consider becoming a hot dog vendor:

The average income for a hot dog vendor, working year round is about $100,000/year. The maximum income for you, is essentially unlimited. A hot dog with bun and toppings costs an average of 50 cents. An average vendor resells a hot dog for $2.25.

* Sell 100 hot dogs a day you will earn $58,500/year
* Sell 250 hot dogs a day you will earn $146,250/year

So I could make a lot more selling hot dogs than doing web design? Who would have thought?

Make mistakes of ambition and not mistakes of sloth.

—Niccolo Machiavelli, as quoted in Timothy Ferriss, The 4-Hour Workweek (2007), p. 220.

By working faithfully eight hours a day, you may eventually get to be a boss and work twelve hours a day.

—Robert Frost, as quoted in Timothy Ferriss, The 4-Hour Workweek (2007), p. 207.

Wake up later gives 10 Useful Tasks for Slow Times for freelancers.

If there is a new social contract implicit between employers and employees today, it should be this: You give me your labor, and I will guarantee that as long as you work here, I will give you every opportunity—through either career advancement or training—to become more employable, more versatile.

—Thomas Friedman, The World is Flat (2005), p. 292.