Scrapbook

Mar 02, 2023

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A collection of the best quotes, insights and advice that I’ve come across that I try to revisit, consider, and learn from

About

In 2020 I was given a blank black notebook - initially I wanted to fill this with notes from each book that I finished. But as with many things in life my appetite for being consistent with this lasted about as long as a “sharing bag” of walkers crisps. So it became a place where if anything I read, heard or thought really resonated with me in that moment I’d write it down.

A few times a month I think about whether there’s anything that should be written into it, if there isn’t - that’s ok. But anything that makes it in is something that I think is timeless. Advice that I’ll always want to live by, a quote that should always resonate. It’s also a way of looking back at how my interests change, shift and evolve as I get older. So I’ve decide that whenever I write something into that notebook I’m gonna also add it to this page as well which I’ve called the scrapbook.

Entries

Quote: Paul Graham - 19/11

“It's hard to do a really good job on anything you don't think about in the shower”

Quote: Sahil Bloom - 19/11

“When faced with a difficult decision, ask yourself what your 80-year-old self and 10-year-old self would want you to do. Your 80-year-old self is most concerned with the long-term compounding of the action, while your 10-year-old self will remind you to have some fun. “

Book: A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara - 10/22

“Well, the hardest thing about being a parent is recalibration. The better you are at it, the better you will be.”

Book: The Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel - 10/22

“Be nicer and less flashy. No one is impressed with your possessions as much as you are. You might think you want a fancy car or a nice watch. But what you probably want is respect and admiration. And you’re more likely to gain those things through kindness and humility than horsepower and chrome.”

Quote: Growth - 08/22

“Anyone who isn’t embarrassed of who they were last year probably isn’t learning enough” - Alain de Botton

Book: Upstream by Mary Oliver - 07/22

“Attention is the beginning of devotion”

“Logic and Sermons never convince, the damp of night drives deeper into my soul” - Walt Whitman

Quote: Thought - 07/22

“Life begins where thought ends”

Concept: Completion Centric Planning - 06/22

  • Ask yourself what’s the closest I can get to finishing this today, focusing on project completion rather than task completion saves us from Zeno’s paradox of productivity - “Give me any project and I can fill days with easy, fun little tasks on the project without ever completing them”.

    • Quote: Forgiveness - 06/22

    “Forgiveness is accepting the apology you will never receive”

    Book: The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck - 04/22

  • Choose better things to give a fuck about. When you give better fucks you get better problems. And when you get better problems you get a better life.
  • We aren’t afraid of rejection. We’re afraid of confirming something that threatens the identity we’ve created for ourselves.
  • Entitled people flip between thinking they’re awesome and deserve special treatment, and that they’re a waste of space so deserve special treatment.

    • Concept: Radical Candor - 03/22

  • As a manager you need to care deeply about your people, but be brave enough to directly challenge them.

    • Book: How to Win Friends and Influence People - 03/22

  • Be hearty in your approbation and lavish in your praise.
  • When giving feedback never say but, make mistakes seem easy to correct and give the person a good reputation to live up to.
  • Don’t talk about yourself, be an active listener and be interested.
  • Avoid arguments, if you need to then establish common ground right away.

    • Book: The Almanac of Naval Ravikant - 01/22

  • If you’re evenly split on a difficult decision, take the path more painful in the short term.
  • A happy person isn’t someone who’s happy all the time. It’s someone who effortlessly interprets events in such a way that they don’t lose their innate peace.
  • Set a very high aspirational hourly rate, outsource anything below this.
  • You want to be the most successful version of yourself whilst working the least hard possible.

    • Quote: Being Understood - 01/22

    “It’s a fault to wish to be understood before we have made ourselves clear to ourselves”

    Quote: As we are - 09/21

    “We don’t see things as they are, we see things as we are.”

    Twitter Thread: On careers by @lcamtuf - 09/21

  • Friendships last longer than jobs
  • When being a good person clashes with doing a good job, it’s time to pause
  • Don’t let work define you

    • Book: Anthropocene Reviewed - 08/21

    “Anyone trying to decide what to do with their life: Pay attention to what you pay attention to”

    “Don’t just do something, stand there”

    “when you’re living in the middle of history, you never know what it means. I am living in the middle of the internet. I have no idea what it means”

    Quote: Criticism - 04/21

    “Behind every criticism there’s a wish. So say what you want, don’t say what the other person does wrong.”

    Book: Anxious People - 03/21

    “We can’t change the world, and a lot of the time we can’t change people. No more than one bit at a time. So we do what we can to help whenever we get a chance. We save those we can. We do our best. Then we try to find a way to convince ourselves that that will just have to… be enough. So we can live with our failures without drowning”

    Book: 21 Lessons for the 21st Century - 03/21

  • The most important skill we need to teach young people is resilience, they will experience more change in their lives than any generation before

    • “These thoughts aren’t me. They are just some biochemical vibrations. Then you realise you have no idea who - or what you are. This can be the beginning of the most exciting journey of discovery any human can undertake”

    Film: No Country for Old Men - 03/21

    “All the time you spend trying to get back what’s been taken from ya, more is going out the door. After a while you just have to try and get a tourniquet on it.“

    Article: Exec 101 - Sriram Krishnan - 02/21

    “You have to be elected, even if you have already been selected.

    Wait what? I just went through months of vetting and interviews to get this role. Or you went through years of consistent performance to finally get this promotion. Yes you did, no one cares.”

    Book: 4 Hour Work Week - Tim Ferris - 02/21

    Book in 3 lines

  • Don’t wait until retirement to have fun and pursue your dreams. Do this constantly throughout your life and have mini-retirements.
  • Find sources of income that are automatic outside of your job.
  • Question why you’re doing what you’re doing. What are the 20% of things that are bringing you 80% of your success/happiness. Apply this principle to everything.

    • Video: How we took Instagram to a billion users - 02/21

  • If you find yourself wondering if something you’re building doesn’t have enough features, you’re normally wrong
  • Product market fit never comes from being n+1
  • Do the simple thing fast, worry about hypothetical problems later. You won’t know what the real problems are until you actually have them.

    • Article: How to be Lucky - 02/21

  • Serendipity isn’t passive luck, it’s actually the passive process of spotting and connecting the dots. It’s about seeing bridges where others see gaps
  • It’s naural to underestimate the unexpected, but when you do you tune out opportunities to create “smart luck”

    • TV: Little Fires Everywhere - 02/21

  • Never judge someone for keeping a secret, just them on why they kept it

    • “You didn’t make good choices, you had good choices”

    Quote: Jeff Bezos - Decision Making - 02/21

    “Most decisions should be made with 70% of the information you wish you had. If you wait for 90% you’re probably too late.”

    Quote: How to write usefully - 01/21

    “Useful writing tells people something true and important that they didn’t already know, and then tells them as unequivocally as possible.”

    Video: The Shape of Stories - Kurt Vonnegut - 01/21

  • In Hamlet, Shakespeare respects that we often don’t know enough about life to know what is good news and bad news. Things just happen, life is ambiguous and it isn’t simple, so neither are great stories.
  • Given the complexity of life we need to appreciate the moments when we do know that things are good.
  • Encourage yourself to say “If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is”. link.

    • Quote/Passage: Being Present - 01/21

    I said: What about my eyes

    He said: Keep them on the road

    I said: What about my passion

    He said: Keep it burning

    I said: What about my heart

    He said: Tell me what you hold inside it

    I said: Pain and sorrow

    He said: Stay with it. The wound is the place where the light enters you.

    Quote: History - 01/21

  • History doesn’t repeat itself; it rhymes

    • Book: Takeaways from A Promised Land by Barack Obama - 01/21

  • Cherish and foster your relationships with people more than anything else in the world
  • Politics is about story telling, a good story is more important than the facts or reality every time
  • We can believe in idealistic principles. But to work towards them you have to be a realist, accepting compromises and small wins when they’re possible.

    • “Accidents and happenstance determine more than we care to admit; and that the best we can do is to try and align ourselves with what we feel is right and construct some meaning out of our confusion, and with grave and nerve play at each moment the hand we’re dealt”

    TV: Bojack Horseman - 01/21

    “I’ve always tried to be an us with people even when it seemed like a bad idea, I file like now I’m finally learning to be a me”

    Film: Soul - Pixar, Pete Docker - 01/21

  • Life doesn’t have to have a meaning or purpose. The meaning of life is just to live.

    • “How are you going to spend your life?”

    “I’m not sure, but I do know I’m going to live every minute of it”

    Quote: Forgiveness - 12/20

    “If we can forgive what’s been done to us… if we can forgive what we’ve done to others… if we can leave our stories behind. Our being victims and villains. Only then can we maybe rescue the world” - Chuck Palahniuk

    Book: Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle - 12/20

    Takeaways:

  • Accept or act - if there’s something on your mind those are the only 2 things you can do
  • The problems of the mind can’t be solved by the mind