Just start: Why Arnold Schwarzenegger was smarter than Alexander The Great
Hey all,
Something that comes up a lot in creative and entrepreneurial circles is the question of whether or not to go all-in on the thing you care about at the first opportunity. Opinions differ, but I’m going to say it’s a clear no, for three key reasons:
Survivor bias is a real thing. Everyone’s heard about Alexander the Great burning his fleet to galvanise his forces as he went to war with Persia, but nobody hears about the viking chieftans who tried the same trick and saw it go horribly wrong. You’ve heard of the people this strategy worked out for, but not the ones that ended up with no boats.
In his excellent book 9 Out Of 10 Climbers Make The Same Mistakes, Dave MacLeod points out that simply having to wrangle another serious interest alongside a full-time job forces you to learn to be extremely efficient with your time. If you have a 9-5, you know that every second you’re spending on your side-project counts.
Arnold Schwarzenegger had made a million dollars in real estate before he started to seriously pursue movie stardom — meaning that he could be picky about the roles he took, because he didn’t need the money. Mark Rober kept his job at Apple even once his YouTube channel was a roaring success, partly because so he would never end up chasing ad revenue with videos he didn’t want to make. Having a regular income might mean you can make better decisions.
If you’re a hedge fund manager who’s decided to jack it all in to become a yoga teacher, please ignore all of the above: you know a lot more about your finances than me. But if you’re just starting out, I recommend not making your ‘thing’ your main thing — at least until it’s self-sustaining.
Have a great weekend!
Joel x
Stuff I like
📖 Book - We Are Bellingcat by Eliot Higgins
You’ve probably heard of Bellingcat, the collective of online researchers and investigators that used publicly available information to conduct narrative-shifting investigations of things like Russian troop movements and the poisoning of Sergei Skripal. This book — a sort of combined how-to and biography from its founder — is fascinating not just an introduction to open-source intelligence, but because it shows what happens when you build on the skills and interests you have to create a dedicated community.
📝 Article - How Not To Talk To A Science Denier by Tom Chivers
Technically this is actually an old review of a book called How To Talk To A Science Denier, by someone else, but it’s actually a brilliant insight into how all of us convince ourselves that we are Reasonable and Smart while other people are Deluded and Foolish. It also contains an excellent summary of the differences between Popperian and Bayesian thinking, so if you’re a bit hazy on what either of those two things mean, it’s worth reading just for that.
🎶 Hype Music - Level It Up by The Coup
Sorry To Bother You — a conspiracy-comedy about a call centre worker changing his accent that’s far more surreal than that sounds — is must-watch stuff, its soundtrack is grindset dynamite, and this is its best tune. OYAHYTT and Hey, Saturday Night, both by director Boots Riley, are also absolute bops.
🔧 Stuff I’ve made
Should I worry about…?
I’ve started writing a new column for the Guardian, which is basically an excuse for me to read up on the research for, and interview smart people about, a whole lot of different health concerns. The second one is about sleep, and I’ve packed in as much sensible advice as I can.
What I wish I knew when I started Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu
I got my black belt in BJJ earlier this year, and as with any skill, the path to actual progress looks a lot clearer when you’re higher up the hill. This video has already proved pretty popular with grapplers, but I hope it also has some helpful advice for people who’ll never step on a mat.
🪶 Quote of the week
Most hackers I met were men who showed very little interest in anything beyond code. And jiujitsu. Hackers love jiujitsu. It is the physical equivalent of solving puzzles, they tell me.
From This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends by Nicole Perlroth
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