You’re impatient with everyone else. You yell at other cars in traffic who don’t move up fifteen feet. You’re impatient with the old lady who’s writing a check in front of you at the cashier. You’re impatient with your roommate, or your girlfriend, or your children, who don’t do as you would.
Why aren’t you impatient with yourself? With how fast you’re getting things done? With where your life is headed? With how much time you’re wasting?
Certain words or phrases, or demeanors, or attitudes convey certain things. Â Your every action makes an expression, either bolstering or betraying you. Â Stand up straight, look people in the eye, speak clearly and without hesitation, and people are inclined to believe you know what you’re talking about. Â Slouch, glance, stutter, and mumble, and people are inclined to believe you’re incompetent.
Likewise, if you behave selfishly, whether with your ideas or your money, people get the impression that you have little else to give. Â The guy who announces he has a great new idea or invention or process, but of course can’t talk about it, expresses that this is all he’s got. Â His tank is empty, there’s no reserve, and he’s never finding another filling station. Â It’s this, or nothing.
But those who behave selflessly, as almost all successful people do, express that their ideas and creativity are limitless. Â And because of this, they usually are.
“Fear is your best friend or your worst enemy. It’s like fire. If you can control it, it can cook for you; it can heat your house. If you can’t control it, it will burn everything around you and destroy you. If you can control your fear, it makes you more alert, like a deer coming across the lawn.â€
Free will exists, right? We are in control of our own minds and thus our own actions?
That’s what most of us like to believe, but what if a simple parasitic organism robbed us of at least part of that freedom? We know this happens quite regularly in the rest of the animal kingdom. For example:
Consider Polysphincta gutfreundi, a parasitic wasp that grabs hold of an orb spider and attaches a tiny egg to its belly. A wormlike larva emerges from the egg, and then releases chemicals that prompt the spider to abandon weaving its familiar spiral web and instead spin its silk thread into a special pattern that will hold the cocoon in which the larva matures. The “possessed†spider even crochets a specific geometric design in the net, camouflaging the cocoon from the wasp’s predators.
Why shouldn’t it also happen in humans? The possibility that we’re not as free as we thought is gaining credence. One of the first culprits identified is Toxoplasma gondii, a single-celled protozoan found in cat feces, which produces self-destructive behavior in rats:
She quickly confirmed, as previous researchers had shown, that infected rats were more active and less cautious in areas where predators lurk. But then, in a simple, elegant experiment, she and her colleagues demonstrated that the parasite did something much more remarkable. They treated one corner of each rat’s enclosure with the animal’s own odor, a second with water, a third with cat urine, and the last corner with the urine of a rabbit, a creature that does not prey on rodents. “We thought the parasite might reduce the rats’ aversion to cat odor,†she told me. “Not only did it do that, but it actually increased their attraction. They spent more time in the cat-treated areas.†She and other scientists repeated the experiment with the urine of dogs and minks, which also prey on rodents. The effect was so specific to cat urine, she says, that “we call it ‘fatal feline attraction.’â€
These same effects are present in humans. In fact, men infected with T. gondii actually find cat urine much more attractive than men who are not infected. But more relevant, rates of schizophrenia and suicide increase with population-wide increase in the prevalence of T. gondii infection. Whether this particular parasite is any real cause for alarm is still up for debate. Jaroslav Flegr, the man conducting many of the studies on T. gondii, thinks his results are more of a curiosity than a cause for alarm.
But if the rest of the animal kingdom is anything to go by, this is certainly not the only organism that might have an effect on our thoughts and actions.
The whole article can be found at the Atlantic, and is definitely worth a read.
A quick tip on preventing procrastination:
Whatever it is you want to do, whether it’s check email or facebook, or read the news, or play a game, or whatever, recognize that it will be there later. The news will always be there to read. That game isn’t going away. Facebook updates will all be there at the end of the day.
Unless it’s something that must be done now, don’t divert your attention. Â After all, those things will still be there at the end of the day, or the end of the week, when you have otherwise unoccupied time.
The minutes, once used, are gone forever.
“Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasmâ€
Failure is part of all entrepreneurial processes. Â Even if you’re wildly successful right out of the gate, even if you’re Facebook, failure is still ubiquitous. Â Projects fail. Â Marketing efforts fail. Â Whole products and features fail and must be killed. Â Hiring efforts fail.
Failure is a part of all creative processes.  There’s a reason we find so many paintings by masters underneath other paintings.  Everybody, even the very best, fail.  They produce material that just doesn’t work.  New styles or mediums that just don’t come together.  New ideas that don’t fit anywhere.  They’re always attempting new things, and failing at them.
Failure is a part of all growth processes. Â If you’re not constantly experiencing failure, you’re doing something wrong.
Someone wrote to me today asking how to improve their photography. Â I wrote back a short reply, and realized it is in no way limited to photography:
Hi S.,
Thanks very much!
My advice to you would be to look at great photos everyday. The world is now full of phenomenal photography. Devour as much of it as you can. Break down why you like the photos you like. Find a photo you enjoy and examine the light, the composition, the color, everything about it.
Then, shoot at least one photo a day, every day. Many days you will be very busy, or very tired, but shoot something anyways. It’s those times where you’re sitting at your desk at 11:30 at night, realizing you haven’t shot anything yet, and searching around your desk and room for a new composition that really helps you understand how to make a photo.
Do that for six months and you’ll regularly be producing good work. Do that for six years, and you’ll regularly be producing fantastic work.
It’s funny that sometimes answers are so obvious in one realm, because we have experience there, but completely escape us in another, even when those answers are exactly the same.
Most people think of charity is something to be done weekly, monthly, or yearly. Â A tithe, or a purged closet to Goodwill, or serving Thanksgiving meals to the homeless.
But charity can be practiced on a more immediate, more constant level.
The simplest, and most beneficial, way to do this is to always assume positive intent.  Assume everyone around you means well.  This isn’t all that difficult, because most of the time it’s true.  At worst, nearly the entirety of man is consumed with himself at any given moment.  He’s not malicious.  He doesn’t mean ill. In fact, man is hardwired to want those around him to be healthy, happy, and successful.
Whenever something can be taken in more than one way, be it a quick remark, or a brief email or a performance review, always view it with charity.
Even when you’re wrong, you’ll still almost always come out ahead.
We’re now deep into the fourth generation of the self-help guru.  This generation shares much with its predecessors, including fondness for the shortcut.  People like Tim Ferriss have  made their name on finding and exploiting these shortcuts, or “hacks” as they’re called by this generation.  Many of these shorts are extremely valuable, as is the idea of seeking out and exploiting new shortcuts.
But, this is a dangerous precipice to walk. Â Shortcuts will only get you so far, and spending enormous amounts of time searching them out is generally a fool’s errand.
Followers of people like Tim Ferris find it easy to create a fantasy world where anything is possible in 30 or 60 days. Â Six pack abs, becoming a social butterfly, founding the next dot com darling, or living dream life: it’s easy to believe it’s all just a few hacks away. Â If we could only find the right tactics, the right shortcut, we’ll be there.
This is how losers think.
Getting really good at something is a pursuit measured in years, not months. Certainly not days.
Michael Bloomberg shares some excellent advice:
Always ask for the order, and second, when the customer says yes, stop talking. Â I have watched more people make great presentations, whether they’re trying to sell to their family or in business or in government, and never get to the point of what they’re trying to get out of it. Â And too many times when the customer says yes, the person who got that answer just doesn’t stop talking.
His second point seems almost counter-intuitive, but I’ve seen any number of people talk themselves out of a deal. Â They get someone excited, whether its customer or a parent or a girlfriend, they get a “yes”, and then they keep talking. Â Only a few unhelpful sentences later, that “yes” turns into a “wait a minute, let me think this over.”
When you get to yes, just shut up.
Inauthentic people are obsessed with authenticity.
– Jonathan Frazen
On average, you have 78 years total to live. The first 18-25 are, hopefully, spent learning.  This leaves you with between 53 and 60 years to produce something worthwhile. Spending 2 years doing something you don’t enjoy is 3.4% of the rest of your life.  3.7% if you get out of school when you’re 25.  Hopefully.  If you’re unlucky, it might be 10% or 20% or 50%.
What are you getting back for that two year investment?
That 3.4% to 3.7% of your life is non-refundable.
It better be worth it.
As part of Facebook’s S-1 filing today, Mark Zuckerberg wrote a letter to shareholders. Â In it, he outlines the culture and process that helped make Facebook’s phenomenal success possible. Â If you notice your way of doing business, or creating art, differs wildly from Zuckerberg’s, it might be time for some reassessment. Â Clearly, he’s doing something right:
The Hacker Way
As part of building a strong company, we work hard at making Facebook the best place for great people to have a big impact on the world and learn from other great people. We have cultivated a unique culture and management approach that we call the Hacker Way.
The word “hacker†has an unfairly negative connotation from being portrayed in the media as people who break into computers. In reality, hacking just means building something quickly or testing the boundaries of what can be done. Like most things, it can be used for good or bad, but the vast majority of hackers I’ve met tend to be idealistic people who want to have a positive impact on the world.
The Hacker Way is an approach to building that involves continuous improvement and iteration. Hackers believe that something can always be better, and that nothing is ever complete. They just have to go fix it — often in the face of people who say it’s impossible or are content with the status quo.
Hackers try to build the best services over the long term by quickly releasing and learning from smaller iterations rather than trying to get everything right all at once. To support this, we have built a testing framework that at any given time can try out thousands of versions of Facebook. We have the words “Done is better than perfect†painted on our walls to remind ourselves to always keep shipping.
Hacking is also an inherently hands-on and active discipline. Instead of debating for days whether a new idea is possible or what the best way to build something is, hackers would rather just prototype something and see what works. There’s a hacker mantra that you’ll hear a lot around Facebook offices: “Code wins arguments.â€
Hacker culture is also extremely open and meritocratic. Hackers believe that the best idea and implementation should always win — not the person who is best at lobbying for an idea or the person who manages the most people.
To encourage this approach, every few months we have a hackathon, where everyone builds prototypes for new ideas they have. At the end, the whole team gets together and looks at everything that has been built. Many of our most successful products came out of hackathons, including Timeline, chat, video, our mobile development framework and some of our most important infrastructure like the HipHop compiler.
To make sure all our engineers share this approach, we require all new engineers — even managers whose primary job will not be to write code — to go through a program called Bootcamp where they learn our codebase, our tools and our approach. There are a lot of folks in the industry who manage engineers and don’t want to code themselves, but the type of hands-on people we’re looking for are willing and able to go through Bootcamp.
The examples above all relate to engineering, but we have distilled these principles into five core values for how we run Facebook:
Focus on Impact
If we want to have the biggest impact, the best way to do this is to make sure we always focus on solving the most important problems. It sounds simple, but we think most companies do this poorly and waste a lot of time. We expect everyone at Facebook to be good at finding the biggest problems to work on.
Move Fast
Moving fast enables us to build more things and learn faster. However, as most companies grow, they slow down too much because they’re more afraid of making mistakes than they are of losing opportunities by moving too slowly. We have a saying: “Move fast and break things.†The idea is that if you never break anything, you’re probably not moving fast enough.
Be Bold
Building great things means taking risks. This can be scary and prevents most companies from doing the bold things they should. However, in a world that’s changing so quickly, you’re guaranteed to fail if you don’t take any risks. We have another saying: “The riskiest thing is to take no risks.†We encourage everyone to make bold decisions, even if that means being wrong some of the time.
Be Open
We believe that a more open world is a better world because people with more information can make better decisions and have a greater impact. That goes for running our company as well. We work hard to make sure everyone at Facebook has access to as much information as possible about every part of the company so they can make the best decisions and have the greatest impact.
Build Social Value
Once again, Facebook exists to make the world more open and connected, and not just to build a company. We expect everyone at Facebook to focus every day on how to build real value for the world in everything they do.
You can’t do much better than this, reproduced by the fantastic site, Letters of Note:
In August of 1865, a Colonel P.H. Anderson of Big Spring, Tennessee, wrote to his former slave, Jourdan Anderson, and requested that he come back to work on his farm. Jourdan — who, since being emancipated, had moved to Ohio, found paid work, and was now supporting his family — responded spectacularly by way of the letter seen below (a letter which, according to newspapers at the time, he dictated).
Dayton, Ohio
August 7, 1865To My Old Master, Colonel P.H. Anderson, Big Spring, Tennessee
Sir: I got your letter, and was glad to find that you had not forgotten Jourdon, and that you wanted me to come back and live with you again, promising to do better for me than anybody else can. I have often felt uneasy about you. I thought the Yankees would have hung you long before this, for harboring Rebs they found at your house. I suppose they never heard about your going to Colonel Martin’s to kill the Union soldier that was left by his company in their stable. Although you shot at me twice before I left you, I did not want to hear of your being hurt, and am glad you are still living. It would do me good to go back to the dear old home again, and see Miss Mary and Miss Martha and Allen, Esther, Green, and Lee. Give my love to them all, and tell them I hope we will meet in the better world, if not in this. I would have gone back to see you all when I was working in the Nashville Hospital, but one of the neighbors told me that Henry intended to shoot me if he ever got a chance.
I want to know particularly what the good chance is you propose to give me. I am doing tolerably well here. I get twenty-five dollars a month, with victuals and clothing; have a comfortable home for Mandy,—the folks call her Mrs. Anderson,—and the children—Milly, Jane, and Grundy—go to school and are learning well. The teacher says Grundy has a head for a preacher. They go to Sunday school, and Mandy and me attend church regularly. We are kindly treated. Sometimes we overhear others saying, “Them colored people were slaves” down in Tennessee. The children feel hurt when they hear such remarks; but I tell them it was no disgrace in Tennessee to belong to Colonel Anderson. Many darkeys would have been proud, as I used to be, to call you master. Now if you will write and say what wages you will give me, I will be better able to decide whether it would be to my advantage to move back again.
As to my freedom, which you say I can have, there is nothing to be gained on that score, as I got my free papers in 1864 from the Provost-Marshal-General of the Department of Nashville. Mandy says she would be afraid to go back without some proof that you were disposed to treat us justly and kindly; and we have concluded to test your sincerity by asking you to send us our wages for the time we served you. This will make us forget and forgive old scores, and rely on your justice and friendship in the future. I served you faithfully for thirty-two years, and Mandy twenty years. At twenty-five dollars a month for me, and two dollars a week for Mandy, our earnings would amount to eleven thousand six hundred and eighty dollars. Add to this the interest for the time our wages have been kept back, and deduct what you paid for our clothing, and three doctor’s visits to me, and pulling a tooth for Mandy, and the balance will show what we are in justice entitled to. Please send the money by Adams’s Express, in care of V. Winters, Esq., Dayton, Ohio. If you fail to pay us for faithful labors in the past, we can have little faith in your promises in the future. We trust the good Maker has opened your eyes to the wrongs which you and your fathers have done to me and my fathers, in making us toil for you for generations without recompense. Here I draw my wages every Saturday night; but in Tennessee there was never any pay-day for the negroes any more than for the horses and cows. Surely there will be a day of reckoning for those who defraud the laborer of his hire.
In answering this letter, please state if there would be any safety for my Milly and Jane, who are now grown up, and both good-looking girls. You know how it was with poor Matilda and Catherine. I would rather stay here and starve—and die, if it come to that—than have my girls brought to shame by the violence and wickedness of their young masters. You will also please state if there has been any schools opened for the colored children in your neighborhood. The great desire of my life now is to give my children an education, and have them form virtuous habits.
Say howdy to George Carter, and thank him for taking the pistol from you when you were shooting at me.
From your old servant,
Jourdon Anderson.
(Source: The Freedmen’s Book; Image: A group of escaped slaves in Virginia in 1862, courtesy of the Library of Congress.)
Be so good they can’t ignore you.
Being good is easy to ignore. Lots of people are good.
When you’re just good, you give someone else the power to decide your future. Whether it’s a hiring manager, or a boss, or a coach, just being good leaves your fate in their hands. And, I hate to break this to you, but the person who controls your fate probably doesn’t give a shit about you. Even if he does, people make mistakes. If two people are in the same league, even if one is a bit better, a lot of people will fail to see that. Don’t leave it up to them.
If Mike Tyson was just good, he would have been ignored. He was a angry kid, a thug with a lisp. He would have been the last guy to get a shot at a title if boxing was a popularity contest. But Mike Tyson was a brutal fighter. He pulverized opponents. His skill couldn’t be ignored. And when he got into the ring, he didn’t let the fight go to the judges. Mike Tyson knocked people out. It’s pretty tough to ignore that. Especially if you’re the one on on the canvas.
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