Sunday Snippets #3
you can bend the world to your will a surprising percentage of the time
Three clippings from the collection this sunny Sunday. Enjoy.
How To Be Successful, Sam Altman:
A big secret is that you can bend the world to your will a surprising percentage of the time—most people don’t even try, and just accept that things are the way that they are. People have an enormous capacity to make things happen. A combination of self-doubt, giving up too early, and not pushing hard enough prevents most people from ever reaching anywhere near their potential. Ask for what you want.
Obviously this has caveats, and frequently you’ll find yourself bumping into grinding bureaucracy when trying to make things happen. But I think it’s an empowering way to look at at the world, reminiscent of this great Steve Jobs video.
If You Have Writer's Block, Maybe You Should Stop Lying, Sasha Chapin:
Perhaps you’ve complained before that you don’t have anything to write about. That your “mind has gone blank,” that you don’t have any ideas.
The remedy is simple, although it does involve a short, sharp shock of frankness with oneself. Stop lying about who you are, and write the things that are actually inside you.
Sure, it takes discipline to open the document and begin typing rather than continuing to scroll Twitter. But once you begin, it shouldn’t feel like trying to squeeze champagne out of wrought iron. It should feel like opening a floodgate—whether that results in a furious swell or an amiable trickle.
Polyamory Is Boring, Scott Alexander:
At least in my very limited experience, jealousy is a paper tiger, sort of the post-9/11 al-Qaeda of emotional states. You spend all this time worrying about it and preparing for it and thinking it is going to be this dreadfully imposing enemy, and in the end it sends one guy with a bomb in his shoes onto a plane, whom you arrest without incident.