Daniel Wall

[Sahil Bloom @SahilBloom]

WARNING: Longer post (but worth reading or bookmarking for later).

Your life has seasons.

Each one is unique. Characterized by its own distinct desires, struggles, opportunities, and identity.

But one reflection I've had recently is just how easy it is to completely disassociate with the present season.

To give all your time and energy toward a longing for some nostalgic memory of a prior season or an anticipation for some beautiful state of a future season.

You look back at the past and all you see is sunshine. Because it all worked out. You forget (or glaze over) the struggle you endured. You're here today. You made it. You're alive. You're doing fine.

You look forward at the future and dream on what could be. You'll have so much more. More freedom. More purpose. More health. More deep connection. More everything.

The past is beautiful and the future feels limitless. So, logically, you slowly start to treat everything about the present as the bridge. A dash connecting your past and your future. A gap to be crossed as quickly as possible.

Everything you do today is in anticipation of some eventual end state.

I'm doing this now, so that I can have that later.

Unfortunately, the danger of that dissociation with the present is significant. You may spend your entire life living for a future that has a decidedly mirage-like property. You inch closer, but when it's right in front of you, it disappears and reappears on the horizon.

You may spend your entire life skipping through the present, deferring your presence, your joy, and your very humanity to a future that never comes.

In a classic French fable, a young boy is gifted with a magic ball of golden thread. He's told that if he simply pulls on the thread, time will leap forward. The catch, of course, is that once it's pulled, it can never be put back.

The young boy takes advantage of the newfound powers. Each time he's faced with a boring day at school, a frustrating set of chores, or a scolding from his parents, he pulls the thread, skipping through to the good parts.

As an adult, he continues, leaping through mundane struggles in his marriage, the friction of having a newborn, and the boredom at work. He finds himself pulling on the thread more and more, avoiding even the most minor inconveniences of his life.

But when he wakes up one day and sees an old man looking back at him in the mirror, he's filled with regret. He realizes in that moment that as he chose to skip through the boredom, struggles, and friction, so too did he miss the real texture of being alive.

How often do we all do the same? How easily do we default into this disassociation? Disconnecting from the present in anticipation of some future.

A mentor recently asked me this:

"Where are you going and why are you in such a rush?"

It hit me hard.

And to be honest, I haven't stopped replaying those words since he said them.

Why are you in such a rush?

The world wants you to rush into everything. Rushed decisions. Rushed conversations. Rushed relationships. Rushed timelines.

In doing so, you slowly relinquish your agency. You give up your claim on your own life. Surrender authorship to a pen that was never even yours.

In a world that wants you to rush, the ultimate act of rebellion is presence.

Be in the season you're in. Don't romanticize the past, don't fantasize the future. Be here. Be now. Be in this. All of its texture, depth, and struggle. All of its joy, tension, and pain. Sit with the uncertainty. Become friends with it. Fall in love with it.

Because every single thing you do today is something your younger self dreamed of and something your older self will wish they could go back and do.

The good old days are happening, right now.

And the next time you find yourself skipping through the present, remember these words:

Where are you going and why are you in such a rush?

[Chamath Palihapitiya @chamath]

https://t.co/vPrPSUjTJG

[Derek Bodner @DerekBodnerNBA]

Turning Mikal Bridges, Cam Johnson, 4 first-round picks and a swap into Jalen Green, Dillon Brooks and a late lotto pick in a middling draft in the span of just 28 months is franchise detonation levels of asset mismanagement.

[Jacky @MCFC_Jacky]

Top Kevin De Bruyne Moments for Manchester city

A thread 🧵

[The Kobeissi Letter @KobeissiLetter]

WOW. This would be historic:

Both Elon Musk and Coinbase's CEO have now proposed putting ALL US spending on blockchain.

This means $6.9 TRILLION of US spending PER YEAR would be placed on a decentralized ledger.

What does this mean? Let us explain.

(a thread)

[Daniel Wall @Dwall24]

@KobeissiLetter @AmoneyLB3

[Turo @turo]

It’s been about 48 hours since the horrific attacks in New Orleans and Las Vegas that shocked us all on New Year’s Day. We are heartbroken for the victims and their families, and outraged at the abuse of our platform. Read our CEO’s response: https://t.co/mvxob36H5s

[Turo @turo]

We’re excited to partner with @Uber to bring Turo’s expansive selection of over 1,600 makes and models to Uber Rent, beginning in early 2025!

[. @J0nesToChina]

@USMNT SACK GREGG

[U.S. Soccer Men's National Team @USMNT]

Gio, with the icing on the cake 🍰

[U.S. Soccer Men's National Team @USMNT]

“Christian, did you see the score?”

[U.S. Soccer Men's National Team @USMNT]

The full squad. 🇺🇸

[Neuralink @neuralink]

https://t.co/OMIeGGjYtG

[Sawyer Merritt @SawyerMerritt]

Jim Cramer on @elonmusk’s Ketamine use: “Here’s a man who admits he had depression, admits that he’s taking a drug that had helped million of people, and for that he’s pilloried? There are many people who would never be brave enough to admit that they take this drug.”

[The Kobeissi Letter @KobeissiLetter]

Stock concentration is now at Great Depression levels:

According to Goldman Sachs, the market cap of the largest stock is now 750 TIMES the market cap of a 75th percentile stock.

To put this in perspective, even at the peak of the 2000 Dot-com bubble the metric only hit 550x.

We officially have a higher stock concentration than the peak of the Great Depression in 1932.

The top 10% of stocks in the US now reflect ~75% of the entire market.

Big tech IS the stock market.

[Sawyer Merritt @SawyerMerritt]

First Cybertruck rental just went live in New England. I’m pretty sure it’s the least expensive one on Turo at $399/day.

It’s @EZebroni⁩’s truck. https://t.co/ivi7e9SQie

[MrBeast @MrBeast]

I’m gonna give 10 random people that repost this and follow me $25,000 for fun (the $250,000 my X video made)

I’ll pick the winners in 72 hours

[Billy Oppenheimer @bpoppenheimer]

As he was struggling to break into Hollywood, Matt Damon read about how Quentin Tarantino did it:

Essentially, he got a big-name actor (Harvey Keitel) to want to star in Tarantino’s first movie (Reservoir Dogs) then leveraged that to get the movie funded.

“And so,” Damon said,

“We wrote ‘Good Will Hunting’ and that part that Robin [Williams] eventually took—we called it ‘the Harvey Keitel part.’”

“Ben [Affleck] and I wrote the movie specifically because we wanted the parts as actors…But we knew [we needed] a big-name actor who could get us some money because Ben and I were worth nothing.

And so we wrote ‘the Harvey Keitel part’ really open-ended. So we could adjust it: if Morgan Freeman or Denzel Washington wanted to come in and play it—we could make that character from Roxbury [a neighborhood in Boston], and we could explore the historic racial tension in Boston. If Meryl Streep took the part—instead of a father-son relationship, we could make it a mother-son relationship.

So we really left it open-ended because we wanted to cast as wide a net as possible because we were just trying to get the movie made.”

“And then once we got Robin to sign up to do it, that’s really what got us a green light to make it…He changed our lives.”

Takeaway 1:

In one of my favorite talks, "Runnin' Down A Dream," the venture capitalist Bill Gurley explains that while studying the career trajectories of three of his heroes—the restauranteur Danny Meyer, the coach Bobby Knight, and the musician Bob Dylan—he noticed a pattern:

They studied the career trajectories of the icons in their respective industries. Like Damon, they studied how others successfully got their foot in the door then climbed to top of their profession. And then, they took similar steps towards doing the same.

Coincidentally, Tarantino did this too. He made scrap books for each of his favorite filmmakers: Brian De Palma, Howard Hawks, Douglas Sirk, and Martin Scorsese. "I was like a film historian," Tarantino said. "I was obsessed with studying how they did it, the evolution of their careers."

"Greatness isn't random," as Gurley puts it. Instead, it's usually a predictable step along a studied path of strategically modified emulation and, of course, determination.

Takeaway 2:

In the clip above, Damon goes on to explain that, not only did Robin Williams sign on to be in "Good Will Hunting," he also went off script and improvised one of the most iconic lines ("Son of a bitch, he stole my line") in the movie.

It reminded me of something Pixar co-founder Ed Catmull writes in his book, Creativity. Inc.:

"Getting the right people is more important than getting the right idea…If you give a good idea to a mediocre team, they will screw it up. If you give a mediocre idea to a brilliant team, they will either fix it or throw it away and come up with something better."

- - -

“Bob Dylan said, 'I'm a musical expeditionary.' I looked up 'expeditionary'—it's to travel for scientific research or exploration. And that's what Dylan did...For hours upon hours upon hours, he studied what other artists did. He was a mimic. He was studying, studying, studying.” — Bill Gurley

Follow @bpoppenheimer for more content like this!

[Chris Bakke @ChrisJBakke]

Navigating "corporate speak" isn't easy.

Here's a helpful guide I put together:

"Let me check with my team" = No

"Possibly" = No

"On my roadmap" = Not happening

"This will be done in Q4" = This will be done in Q2 next year

"Disagree and commit" = I hate you

"Per my last email" = Try reading, for once in your life

"Challenging landscape" = We're going out of business, quickly

"Digital transformation" = We're going out of business, slowly

"Let's circle back" = We'll never speak of this again

"Take it offline" = We'll never speak of this again

"30,000 foot view" = I don't know what I'm saying

"Low hanging fruit" = Easy promotion

"Open up the kimono" = HR violation

"We use AI" = We don't use AI

"We use machine learning" = We don't use machine learning

"All hands on deck" = Let's actually try for once, please