👑 On Taking Action, Imitation, and Finding The Torture You Love.

“Just do it. Just pick up a camera and start shooting something. Don’t wait to be asked, because nobody’s gonna ask you. And don’t wait for the perfect conditions, because they’ll never be perfect. It’s a little bit like having a child. If you wait until the right time to have a child, you’ll die childless. And I think filmmaking is much the same thing, you just have to take the plunge and start shooting something. Even if it’s bad, you can always hide it. But you will have learned something.”

“What this meant in practice was that we deliberately sought hard problems. If there were two features we could add to our software, both equally valuable in proportion to their difficulty, we'd always take the harder one. Not just because it was more valuable, but because it was harder. We delighted in forcing bigger, slower competitors to follow us over difficult ground. Like guerillas, startups prefer the difficult terrain of the mountains, where the troops of the central government can't follow. I can remember times when we were just exhausted after wrestling all day with some horrible technical problem. And I'd be delighted, because something that was hard for us would be impossible for our competitors.”

"I get happier about the harder it is because I know that no one else will follow... it flips from being this thing that you're like oh poor me to oh poor everyone else who's going to have to try."

“The poker books and self-help courses will never tell you this, but the first step towards succeeding at anything depends on finding a way to cram the most experience into the shortest amount of time.”

“From the bodybuilding days on, I learned that everything is reps and mileage. The more miles you ski, the better a skier you become; the more reps you do, the better your body. I'm a big believer in hard work, grinding it out, and not stopping until it's done, so the challenge appealed to me.”

“This may be the last generation that has a powerful tool like the Internet, and the focused attention span to do deep work”

Seinfeld: “I’m never not working on material, ever”

Interviewer: “So even when you’re sitting with your wife, you’re sitting with the kids, it’s material”

Seinfeld: “Every second of my existence I’m thinking, ‘could I do something with that?’”

Interviewer: “That sounds torturous”

Seinfeld: “Why?!”

Interviewer: “So if I came over to your house and we’re hanging out, you’re kind of really looking for material?”

Seinfeld: “Not kind of. I’m looking for material. All the time”

Interviewer: “That’s being at work 24 hours a day—it’s neurotic!”

Seinfeld: “Making jokes is not work, it’s a gift!”

Interviewer: “So when you’re with your wife are you authentically with her or are you thinking ‘ooo, what she just said is universal and I can relate to that’?”

Seinfeld: “No, I’m not authentically with her, nor am I authentically with you right now. I’m looking for a joke right now and guess what, there’s nothing here”

Interviewer: “But how do you remember all this material?”

Seinfeld: “What else have I got to do? You do it over & over & over—you say to Tiger Woods, ‘how do you remember which club to use?’—what the hell else has this guy got to do?!”

Interviewer: “So when someone says to you, ‘oh you have it so easy, you’re so naturally funny’, yes you are naturally funny and you do have that ability to figure stuff out but they don’t realise the amount of work that goes into it”

Seinfeld: “It’s like going into the gym everyday. You know how you walk in everyday and you go ‘oh jeez I gotta do this again’.”

Interviewer: “It sounds like a tortured life”

Seinfeld: “It is, but your blessing in life is when you find the torture you’re comfortable with. And that’s marriage, it’s kids, it’s exercise, it’s not eating the food you wanna eat. Find the torture you’re comfortable with, and you’ll do well.”

Interviewer: “Do you ever dream of the day where you could go with your wife to a Chinese restaurant and not think about material?”

Seinfeld: “I’d shoot myself in the mouth. what fun is life if I’m not making jokes all the time”

Interviewer: “But you said it’s a torture, also?”

Seinfeld: “It’s a torture I love.”

“Genghis Khan's ability to manipulate people and technology represented the experienced knowledge of more than four decades of nearly constant warfare. At no single, crucial moment in his life did he suddenly acquire his genius at warfare, his ability to inspire the loyalty of his followers, or his unprecedented skill for organizing on a global scale. These derived not from epiphanic enlightenment or formal schooling but from a persistent cycle of pragmatic learning, experimental adaptation, and constant revision driven by his uniquely disciplined mind and focused will.”

“One thing that I’ve been doing my whole life is ending the day thinking about the most important question in what I do. Then waking up in the morning first thing—pre-input—and brainstorming on it. This is an incredibly powerful tool. Hemingway wrote about it in his writing process, and it’s been a huge part of my life for decades. When you do this, you’re systematically opening the channel between the conscious and the unconscious mind, and you can do that systematically, day in-day out, rhythmically.”

“Fuck plans. You got a plan, you will fail. I’ve got no room for the feeble plans. What’s a plan? A plan’s an excuse for not living today, because you’ll be able to live better tomorrow. So I’ll accept the job I don’t truly love, I’ll do words that don’t really satisfy me, I’ll stay with this woman or this man even though we fell out of love 5 years ago. Fuck that. No, maybe I’m wrong and we’ll all live forever, in which case it doesn’t matter. Waste a few years. But what if this is it? Has that ever occurred to you? What if this is it? One life. Birth. Living. Death. And you waste a single fucking second of that.”

“Insist on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift you can present every moment with the cumulative force of a whole life’s cultivation; but of the adopted talent of another you have only an extemporaneous half possession. That which each can do best, none but his Maker can teach him. No man yet knows what it is, nor can, till that person has exhibited it. Where is the master who could have taught Shakspeare? Where is the master who could have instructed Franklin, or Washington, or Bacon, or Newton? Every great man is a unique.”