Bob Dylan--The Philosophy of Modern Song on Audible. There's a reason he won a Nobel Prize for literature. Don't let the bad title or subject matter scare you away. The man knows his way around the english language, as well as anyone still breathing.
Rick Rubin/David Whyte -- last week.
We are thrilled to announce the launch of avra — a 7-week program designed specifically for post-Series A CEOs looking to scale their companies effectively.
As most startup founders are first-time CEOs, the journey can be daunting, and resources are scarce. That’s why we created avra : to bridge that gap and provide structured, actionable insights from those who’ve been there.
Each week, you’ll dive deep into essential topics like hiring and managing leaders, how to accelerate shipping velocity, and refine strategic planning. Every session is taught by experienced CEOs and operators from the world’s best companies.
Since launching last year, we’ve run three cohorts, with 37 CEOs participating in the program.
Don’t just take our word for it—hear from the avra founders directly!
Carl Jung... Read it five or six times today. Bookshelves of truth in a few paragraphs. Do your future self a favour
“People do not realize just how much they are putting at risk when they don’t accept what Life presents them with, the questions and tasks that Life sets them.
When they resolve to spare themselves the pain and suffering, they owe to their nature. In so doing, they refuse to pay Life’s dues and for this very reason, Life then often leads them astray.
If we don’t accept our own destiny, a different kind of suffering takes its place: a neurosis develops, and I believe that that Life which we have to live is not as bad as a neurosis. If I have to suffer, then let it be from my reality. A neurosis is a much greater curse! In general, a neurosis is a replacement for an evasion, an unconscious desire to cheat Life, to avoid something. One cannot do more than Live what one really is.
And we are all made up of opposites and conflicting tendencies. After much reflection, I have come to the conclusion that it is better to Live what one really is and accept the difficulties that arise as a result—because avoidance is much worse.
Today I can say: I have been true to myself I have done what I could to the best of my knowledge and conscience. Whether it was right or not, I cannot say. Suffering was inevitable in any case. But I want to suffer for those things which really belong to me.
A decisive factor for me in choosing this path was the knowledge that if I did not respond fully to my Life’s purpose and challenges, then they would be inherited by my children, who would have to bear the burden of my unlived Life in addition to their own difficulties. I am aware of what a heavy burden was passed on to me by my parents. Such a burden cannot simply be shaken off. You find yourself weighed down with an inheritance that you have to accept and carry around, like a snail carrying its house on its back.
Being ‘smart’ and behaving reasonably are not enough to get you through Life. You may well spare yourself some trouble, but you cut yourself off from your own Life in the process. I have seen the fate of those who have not Lived their own Lives, and it is simply horrible.
People who Live out their destiny and fulfill it to the best of their knowledge and abilities have no reason for regret. In a way, Voltaire was right when he said one only has to regret surtout ce que l’on na pas fait (‘especially what we did not do’).
It is of immense importance that we as humans accept the debts incumbent on us.
In old age it is not the wonderful things that we perhaps missed out on seeing or experiencing that we will regret, but rather the moments when we let Life pass us by.”
@awilkinson Consider hiring a Chief of Staff who loves doing what you don’t you trust and is good at it.
I tried having multiple EA’s one for work one for personal. Fail.
Chief of Staff + bad ass EA = success.
“You seek your destiny; you succumb to your fate. Destiny originates within the self; fate comes from outside. Fate is the force that lies beyond individual will and control; it pushes you from behind. Destiny is the attracting force in front of you that acts like a magnet and that you choose to acquire.” Howard Suber The Power of Film
Announcing Maven: We’ve created a new kind of social network - a serendipity network - that’s directly inspired by insights from open-endedness and Why Greatness Cannot Be Planned.
iPhone: https://t.co/D9kBHiH97D
Android: https://t.co/fOcq6spuuX
It's very different....
More 👉
On Maven, you follow interests instead of following people. The result is it’s no longer a popularity contest because you don’t need followers and we don’t count likes. The open-ended approach in effect provides an alternative to objective popularity-driven social media. And the resultant change in incentives means genuine, curiosity-driven conversations are more likely because getting attention stops being the primary concern.
If you’re familiar with ideas from open-endedness and quality diversity within AI and ML, Maven draws from these research areas to bring you a far broader diversity of views and serendipitous opportunities for engagement.
Everyone on Maven has an equal chance of engagement on day one because of the fact that you don’t need to gain followers. Maven effectively exposes everyone to posts that match their interests. So you’ll see more deep discussion and less click-bait and brand-building, because those things don’t accomplish anything on Maven.
It’s basically a large-scale experiment on open-endedness with humans in the loop, applied in the social domain.
(with amazing co-founders @jsecretan and @BlasMoros)
Some of my favorite questions to ask yourself to triangulate on what might be your life’s work:
1) Where do you feel great resistance or fear?
Steven Pressfield wrote: “Fear is an indicator. Fear tells us what we have to do…Resistance is experienced as fear; the degree of fear equates to the strength of Resistance. Therefore the more fear we feel about a specific enterprise, the more certain we can be that that enterprise is important to us and to the growth of our soul. That’s why we feel so much Resistance. If it meant nothing to us, there’d be no Resistance…So if you’re paralyzed with fear, it’s a good sign. It shows you what you have to do…“I do have a rule that I have learned and that I believe and that is that the stronger the resistance that you feel towards something, the more important it is that you do that thing is. [Puts a bottle of water in front of him] If this is our dream—our novel or our startup or whatever it is—and we set it out in the sunshine…immediately a shadow is gonna fall from this thing. Resistance is the shadow. So the shadow is exactly proportionate to the dream. If it’s a big dream, there’s gonna be a big shadow. IN other words, the more resistance you feel to something, the more certain you can be that there's a big dream there and that you've gotta do it.”
Campbell wrote “the cave you feel to enter holds the treasure you seek”
2) What that you do looks hard to others but feels easy to you?
@paulg wrote “If something that seems like work to other people doesn't seem like work to you, that's something you're well suited for…The stranger your tastes seem to other people, the stronger evidence they probably are of what you should do. When I was in college I used to write papers for my friends. It was quite interesting to write a paper for a class I wasn't taking. Plus they were always so relieved. It seemed curious that the same task could be painful to one person and pleasant to another, but I didn't realize at the time what this imbalance implied, because I wasn't looking for it. I didn't realize how hard it can be to decide what you should work on, and that you sometimes have to figure it out from subtle clues, like a detective solving a case in a mystery novel. So I bet it would help a lot of people to ask themselves about this explicitly. What seems like work to other people that doesn't seem like work to you?”
3) What would you keep doing no matter how much money you had? Or even better, what couldn’t you get paid $1B to stop doing? @FoundersPodcast always brings up this question. You’ll know you are onto something if I couldn’t pay you to stop doing it.
A corollary: @m2jr asked @pmarca , “what’s your advice to people who want to build something great?” Marc said, “The first piece of advice is, ‘don’t do it.’ The reason that’s the first piece of advice is that if you can be talked out of it, you definitely shouldn’t do it. If you listen to advice #1, you shouldn’t do it. If you ignore advice #1, you might have the personality type to be a founder.”
4) what’s the weirdest thing you spend a lot of time on? Or, what’s a passion you’d be embarrassed to admit publicly?
Weird is good. Normal is competitive. The stranger your thing, the more low status, the more unusual…the less competition you’ll face, the more you’ll learn, the more fun you’ll have, and the more you’ll be able to contribute.