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- 20: Notes To Self
20: Notes To Self
Power Line, Chronic Dissatisfaction, Making Connections, Complementary Creativity, Complexity
Luke Clancy
December 29, 2023
Yo, it’s Luke!
I just finished an absolute bender. Read all 5 Percy Jackson books (~1600 pages) in 9 days. Feels good to touch grass again. Reply with any books that you couldn’t put down!
Here is your weekly dose of 5 noteworthy ideas & things I learned about last week. Click on each link to dive further on that topic.
1. Power Line At Lake Pontchartrain, Louisiana
2 cool things about this power line:
The curvature of the Earth
Take a second and think about how you would build this. So many issues would arise! The planners, operators, engineers, etc solved a million problems to make one powerline. Impressive.
After reading this article and chatting with my friend Toby, I think I found the 3-step cure to the ‘ole I’ll-be-happy-and-great-once-I-get-this-or-achieve-that-itis. Aka chronic dissatisfaction.
Realize Your Limited Perspective: Understand that your personal experiences, while forming the 80% of your worldview, represent 0.00001% of the world's happenings. This skewed perception influences how you think the world operates. Whether we like it or not, we are all terribly ignorant!
Challenge Your Mental Narratives: Be conscious of the stories you tell yourself. Our ignorance is vast, yet we often make assumptions about how beneficial something might be. When you think about it, that’s pretty stupid. I mean we limit the number of life experiences, hobbies, or friendships we could have because we assume they won’t be fun or fruitful. Yet we haven’t even given them a fair shot!
Explore Without Expectation: Recognize that your assumptions can lead to uninformed decisions and self-limitation. Shift your mindset from "What can this do for me?" to "Have I given this a fair chance?" Approach new experiences with a curious mind and open soul; you might discover a newfound passion!
I’ve been internalizing this mindset for the past few years and it has made my life so damn fun.
When you just try to grow for the sake of growing and explore for the sake of exploring, life becomes more rich and beautiful!
Chris became an all-time venture capitalist mainly because he can connect with others. He gave some tips in an article. These are the ones I liked:
The best way to be highly influential is to be human to everyone you meet.
Being a good listener is about two things: 1) Demonstrating that you’ve heard exactly what was said by the other person, and 2) encouraging them to continue. This breaks down into what’s called “backchanneling” — offering short, enthusiastic responses as the other person talks (i.e. “yeah” “mm-hmm” “totally” “I can see that”), and asking follow up questions that reference the information you were just given.
Your brand is what people think or say about you when you’re not around. When they see your name in their inbox, think about what you want their first reaction to be.
Your brand actually comes from you doing great, consistent work on time. That’s it.
4. “A real artist must be good at many things.”
I like essence of this.
By putting genuine effort in multiple creative pursuits, your taste and ability see patterns across the human experience improves.
Dancing makes me a better writer, which makes me a better speaker, etc. They build off of each other.
5. The World Is Far More Complex Than Our First Glance
The answer to "What idiot made this!?" is almost always "A well-intentioned person making tradeoffs you hadn't even considered.”
Thanks for wanting to know more today than you did yesterday! If you liked this edition, send it over to a friend who would like it too 🤝
Cheers,
PS: Have a topic you think I’d like learning about? Send it to me here.
PPS: Got questions you want me to answer? I made an anonymous form for that.