20191218

Wed Dec 18 06:00:01 EST 2019 ======================================== Slept from one to eight. Colder. Partly sunny. Scattered flurries through the day. Highs in the lower 20s. Northwest winds 15 to 20 mph. Wind chill readings zero to 10 above zero. A dusting of snow on the ground this morning. Watched some anime. Cleaned the kitchen. https://www.perell.com/blog/2019/12/11/coolest-things-i-learned-in-2019 > One of the best pieces of advice I ever got, back when I was 23 and newly out of school, is this: look around and figure out who you want to be on your team. Figure out the people around you that you want to work with for the rest of your life. Figure out the people who are smart & awesome, who share your values, who get things done — and maybe most important, who you like to be with and who you want to help win. And treat them right, always. Look for ways to help, to work together, to learn. Because in 20 years you’ll all be in amazing places doing amazing things. > Writing is the most scalable professional networking activity - stay home, don’t go to events/conferences, and just put ideas down. > Building your network, your audience, and your ideas will be something you’ll want to do over your entire career. Think of your writing like a multi-decade project. > "The easiest way to be discovered right now in technology and perhaps many fields is to create your own independent blog and write. There is a huge dearth in availability of good, current, first party content today. > The single most important advice I can give to actually write is to write. > The thing that happens which you don’t see until you write is that your content engages some of the smartest people who are lurking around the internet. And they reach out to you." > Twitter is the most amazing networking and learning network ever built. > For someone whose pursuing their dream job, or chasing a group of mentors or peers, it’s remarkable. In any given field, 50-80% of the top experts in that field are on Twitter and they’re sharing ideas, and you can connect to them or follow them in your personal feed. > If you get lucky enough and say something they find interesting, they might follow you, and the reason this becomes super interesting is that unlocks direct message, and now all of a sudden you can communicate directly or electronically with that individual. Very, very powerful. > If you’re not using Twitter, you’re missing out. > Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. > A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. > Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through. > One of the most striking hypotheses in Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel was that technology diffused more easily along lines of latitude than along lines of longitude because climate changed more rapidly along lines of longitude making it more difficult for both humans and technologies to adapt. Thus, a long East-West axis, such as that found in Eurasia, meant a bigger “market” for technology and thus greater development. Fifteen-minute walk in the evening. Cold. Servings: grains 8/6, fruit 3/4, vegetables 3/4, dairy 2/2, meat 3/3, nuts 0/0.5 Brunch: celery, banana, orange, coffee Lunch: left-over pizza, a beer Afternoon snack: cucumber, apple Dinner: Thai 121/77

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