The Wisdom Wall

“there is something inherently unbalanced about Excellence in a singular domain, because you are focusing all of your energy on one thing. There's something dysmorphic about like the athlete's physique. And that's probably just the physical manifestation of also, if you could look at their mind and their priorities,…”

“And what would happen today is that this person would be basically shoved by one half of society, and then perversely, like, embraced by another darker side of society that Doesn't like those people, right? And you would see him get radicalized and fight against cancel culture. You know, you would, you, we almost know…”

“whatever the margin of error would be between one decision or the other is far smaller than whatever the opportunity costs of not having it done. And moved on to the next thing are.”

“I think the problem with a lot of idealistic people, particularly people who are interested in social change or social justice, is that they're, This preoccupation with how they want things to be puts them at odds with how they are and actually makes it much less likely that you'll be able to do anything with it.”

“The idea of just quickly being able to copy and paste stuff is antithetical to what I'm doing and why, like, it's the ritual that's important, and the act of taking it longhand is very important. Obviously, if it's like a, you know, huge paragraph, I'm gonna type it out, but it's still no copying and pasting. That's…”

“what you don't do, what I think is the most dangerous thing for writers to do, is to just, and maybe it works when you're writing fiction, I don't know, but sitting down and just writing. Like, you can't hit a target that you didn't aim for.”

“People think, like, the execution is the hard part, but to me, the thinking is the hard part, so I'm not going to think for free and then get paid to execute. I would rather get paid to think and then maybe get paid a little bit more to execute, or if you want to hire someone else to execute, that's fine.”

“often to be successful as an entrepreneur, you get there by not listening. You get there by not listening to the odds, not listening to the doubts, not listening to the critics, and then You succeed. So then you get this very wicked learning environment where you succeeded precisely because you did not listen to the…”

“How I got here is separate and independent from the fact that I currently am here. I might need to, at some point, examine those causes so I can learn from it, but my impulse to dissect And blame and question what has happened is actually just a really convenient distraction from the choice in front of me right now,…”

“Journaling is to stoicism as meditation is to Buddhism. It is the practice of having a conversation with yourself about your thoughts, and beliefs, and values, and actions”

“By you saying what I, what I make up about that is, or the story I tell myself about that is, Or the way that sounds to me is you are not expressing your interpretation of reality as reality. And therefore you are offering the person the opportunity to correct or update or contextualize that thing.”

“And, and so I think, to me, Stoicism is a set of exercises and insights and practices to help you understand those emotions, process those emotions, and not be ruled by those emotions.”

“And I think when the Stokes thought about joy and happiness, they were thinking about a more resilient form of that emotion, not Fun, uh, smiling, cheerfulness, happiness, but like a happiness of a person who is surviving the blows of fate and flourishing as a human being in good situations and bad ones.”

“It clearly takes more discipline to walk away early or on top than it does to go for the sixth ring or the three-peat or whatever. Those things are extraordinarily hard, but clearly if Less people do this other feat. It must be because it's even harder.”

“kind of like what seems like a lot of money to you as a kid always remains a lot of money to you, even as your income goes up.”

“I think that's the thing about most compulsive tendencies is they're not based on anything. You have this belief that if you don't do it, things will fall apart. It's not based on anything real. And most of the time what you get is not even the reward for doing it. You get the relief for Having not, not done it. The…”

“It's somewhat productive, and it's socially adaptive. Doing heroin, or, you know, uh, drinking all night tends not to have positive social reinforcement, but being really good at what you do, and Thriving on that feeling of being validated for being good at what you do is, uh, is nevertheless a pretty wicked feedback…”

“And so I think the more indifferent and probably ignorant you are of what your peers are doing, the healthier you are and the, the Cleater your compass reading will be.”

“Wouldn't it be far better to think of virtue as a verb? Aristotle says, like, how do you get better at playing the flute? It's by playing the flute. How do you become a more generous person? It's by doing more generous actions.”

“We're expecting rightfully so for parents to spend a lot of time with their children, but the world is not conducive to that at all, unless you've retired or you're not working.”

“Never is the AI able to predict the next couple words in that sentence. I've always found that very interesting. And it's a reminder to me that still the, the act of creative genius of, of doing Not any sentence, but like the right sentence, the right way with the right words”

“Like I've been saying recently, like success is how much you see your kids and power is how much control you have over your schedule.”

“When I feel jealousy, I try to remind myself that you can't pick and choose. Like if you want what someone has, You have to trade your whole life.”

“Strategy is by definition choosing certain objectives and not choosing other objectives, and if you try to straddle two strategies, you'll destroy yourself.”

“I would say at the root of most mistakes, both personally and sort of historically, um, it's one of the passions, right? Envy, lust, anger, fear, uh, you know, pain, uh, you know, the, those sort of emotional states that take us out of the rational part of ourselves and into some sort of frenzied or flurried or…”

“The irony of success is that there are infinitely more distractions from that success. Um, and as you get more successful, the higher the, uh, price or bribe attached to those things is, right?”

“So let's say I'm continually saying yes to a bunch of stuff on the first book. There's a five percent, you know, decrease in quality. And then the next book, there's a 10% decrease in quality. And the next one, there's a 15%. Now I've significantly fallen off. It was imperceptible. To me at the time, but the audience…”

“to judge your success, Comparative to other people in this profession is just a recipe for complete misery.”

“You can write your best book, and it could sell the fewest amount of copies. You could get the most critical reception, and it could, ah, it could sell the fewest amount of copies. All you should really focus on is like, are you proud of it? Did you do what you set out to do with it?”

“inherently, the insatiability is the key differentiator in a lot of high performers, and I think there's a Stefan Zweig quote where he says, like, never before has a conqueror been surfeited by conquest, meaning, like, no conqueror was ever like, I won, and now I'm good.”

“If, and you, you almost certainly can't just do it on raw willpower or talent alone anymore. It requires a team. It requires an environment. It requires a routine. You know, it requires all those things.”

“Because, like, the real cost is not money. It's in how many years of being able to do this it cumulatively deprives you of.”

“at the root of most mistakes, both personally and sort of historically, um, it's one of the passions, right? Envy, lust, anger, fear, uh, you know, pain, uh, you know, the, those sort of emotional states that take us out of the rational part of ourselves and into some sort of frenzied or flurried or consumed part.”

“self-discipline is the standard to which you hold yourself. That, to me, that's what moderation is, like, not what you can do, but what you allow yourself to do. Not what's legal, but what you, what you choose.”

“wisdom is not just the pursuit of knowledge and understanding. But particularly the almost intuitive sense of, like, how much courage is required, how much temperance is required, right? What is the right thing? So wisdom, the final virtue is the virtue that kind of unlocks when and how to apply the other virtues”

“I think when the Stoics talk about joy, they are trying to remind you that if joy for you is only possible when things are going amazing, your joy or your happiness is therefore out of your hands.”

“we're really good at giving advice to other people and then not so good at applying it ourselves because we have that cognitive distance, uh, distance, you know, we're able to It's, our identity is less at stake or our emotions are less tied up in it.”

“The problem is financial upside is always clear. Opportunity costs are sometimes clear, but often not clear.”

“if you haven't practiced it in the little areas, it's very unlikely you're going to be able to do it. Like when the game is on the line or your career is on the line or like the Eyes of the world are upon you.”

“instead of, you know, reducing your opponent's argument to a straw man, um, this sort of caricature, um, The least, uh, you know, uh, charitable interpretation of what they think and why, you know, actually really put yourself in their shoes. Try to argue it as, as well as possible. Usually, not only will you find that…”

“In this case, I'm going to do the easier one first because stalling out is the main thing that I want to avoid. It's not that I'm going towards the path of least resistance, but I'm going towards where I'm going to make forward progress,”

“if you haven't practiced it in the little areas, it's very unlikely you're going to be able to do it, like, when the game is on the line, or your career is on the line, or, like, the eyes of the world are upon you.”

“if I was to sort of sum up the central maxim there, it would be, you don't control the world around you, you control how you, you control your thoughts, you control how you respond to the world around you, and so the Stoics are Focused exclusively on that stuff, and that's a, not just a competitive edge, but it's a…”