Now this is funny.

"Naval Ravikant: "The only true test of intelligence is if you get what you want out of life" "There are two parts to that. One is getting what you want, so you know how to get it. The second is wanting the right things, knowing what to want in the first place. I could want to be a 6'8" basketball player and I'm not going to get that. That's wanting something you can't get. But there's also wanting something that's a booby prize, prizes that are just not worth having, or that create their own problems." Naval explains how people end up in places they never meant to be: "If you're not careful, you can end up in a place in life not only that you don't want to be, but one you didn't even mean to get to. Usually people end up there because they're going on autopilot with societal expectations. Or out of guilt. Or out of mimetic desire, our desires are picked up from other people. Go to law school, go to med school, go to business school. Or it might be what your parents expect. Guilt is just society's voice speaking in your head so you'll be a good little monkey." He shares a problem most people have: "We run on these four-year cycles. You join a startup, you vest over four years. College is four years. High school is four years. You go to law school, that's a 5-year cycle. You become a lawyer, that's a 40-year cycle. These are very long cycles. But the amount of time we spend deciding what to do and who to do it with? Very short. We spend one month deciding on a job where we're going to be for 10 years." Naval's rule: "If you're making a four-year decision, spend a year thinking it through. Really thinking it through. 25% of the time." He explains the Secretary Theorem: "It turns out the optimal time to search is about a third. By a third of the way through, you've seen enough to know what the bar is. Then anybody who meets or exceeds that bar is good enough. But here's the key: it's not time-based. It's iteration-based. You need to take opportunities quickly and bail out quickly. If you look at failed relationships, the biggest regret is usually staying after you knew it was over." Naval reframes the 10,000 hour rule: "Malcolm Gladwell popularized 10,000 hours to mastery. I'd say it's actually 10,000 iterations to mastery. Iteration is not repetition. Repetition is doing the same thing over and over. Iteration is modifying it with learning and doing another version. That's error correction. If you get 10,000 error corrections in anything, you will be an expert." On pessimism vs. optimism: "You want to be skeptical about specific things, every specific opportunity is probably a fail. But you want to be optimistic in the general. Something in here is going to work out. If something fails, it was a learning experience. It was an iteration. As long as you learned something, it's a win. You don't want to jump into the first thing. But once you find the match, you have to be willing to go all in. Move your chips to the center of the table." He concludes: "Most people are stuck in this gray bit. 'I'm half in, but I don't really know.' That doesn't work. It's a barbell strategy, black or white. Explore quickly, cut losses fast. Then when you find the right thing, compound into it.""

What men really want.

Life supports that which brings more life.

Who hates you if you try to empower the "wrong" group of people? That could be a signal you're making the right investment.

Rest in peace to the legendary Chuck Norris.

“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.” Annie Dillard

You can tell someone isn't telling the truth when they declare outcomes separate from process.

Fiat currency enables people with bad ideas to execute them without, in some sense, directly paying the price that threatens their survival.

Wars continue as long as the proponents can afford it.

“The moment you begin apologizing for how you manage your time, you are essentially apologizing for your priorities, which means apologizing for your life.” — Maria Popova I recommend not apologizing for being alive.

“Use what talents you possess; the woods would be very silent if no birds sang there except those that sang best.” Henry van Dyke

The joy I experience when my son laughs is beautiful. I hope you go get your own spouse and son.

Other than becoming intimate with God and being married, having my son is the most meaningful change my life has ever taken.

I can still hold my son in my arms. What a profound gift.

Wealth is not greed. Wealth is good. Because it can help bring more life. View quoted note →

I love my son!

I was buying 5 quarts of motor oil at AutoZone about 20 miles from Sedona Arizona. The employee selling it to me was telling me how stupid or ignorant some customers could be. At some point I mentioned using AI as a tool, and he started to give me push back on the idea. People seem, whether in person or on Nostr, almost weirdly religious or ideological about AI. Somebody in my comments got almost incredulous over me using Grok. Others think AI is evil by nature. I don't buy any of that garbage. AI is an understandable tool, with certain causes and effects. Like a wrench. It has leverage. It has limits. Some people will use it well to serve life. Others won't. But it's here to stay, and humanity will get used to it like every else. Or, some won't. Either way, the cat is out of the bag and no one can stop it.

Announcement! My 5th book, How to Build Deeply Authentic Relationships with Yourself and Others, is now available! Buy on Amazon:

Amazon

How to Build Deeply Authentic Relationships with Yourself and Others: 12 Vantage Points for the Extremely Intelligent and Intuitive to Cultivate Qu...

Book description: Most people live analogously, according to what other people are doing, not according to what works. Some of the relational imitating people do, works. But a lot of it doesn’t work, not in the long run, and has downstream emotional and relational consequences that lead to broken marriages, friendships, businesses, and dreams. For people who are extremely intelligent and intuitive, lacking a first principles based approach to relationships can result in loneliness and misunderstandings. In reality, even though interpersonal relationships can be challenging they don’t have to be perpetually hard. They can even be joyful, intimate, fun, and peaceful. But it requires the right tools, principles, and vantage points, so you can see what’s real in relationships and align yourself with it. How to Build Deeply Authentic Relationships with Yourself and Others is a series of 12 extremely high utility vantage points that give you the eyes to see what’s real in your relationships with yourself and those around you. Tactics can be short lived and ineffective. Extremely intelligent and intuitive people need to see what’s real in any given business, parent to child, or spouse to spouse relationship in order to use the words and take the actions that align with what the relationship needs. The 12 vantage points Levi M. Johnson writes about come from 20 years of personal research, sorting out what doesn’t work, and integrating what does work, with Jesus. In this book you will learn how to: Speak truth Notice and honor yourself Love yourself Seek first to grok, then to be grokked Speak the language other people are likely to understand Notice your values and the values of other people, and be able to articulate them Notice, implement, respect, and love boundaries Forgive yourself and other people Make deals Interact with minimum necessary force Attend to bids for attention Leave people better than you found them Once you’ve integrated this system of relational operation, and regularly apply it to yourself and your relationships, whether personal or professional, the deeply authentic relationships you’ve always wanted will begin to form. Gradually, with work, isolation, loneliness, and misunderstandings will fade, and leave behind what is truly real about you, others, and genuine interpersonal connections. If this is the journey you want to take, you can buy How to Build Deeply Authentic Relationships with Yourself and Others, and embark on the adventure of your life, since the truth will set you free but not until it’s done with you.

“Your capacity to say ‘No’ determines your capacity to say ‘Yes’ to greater things.” E. Stanley Jones