The young man knows the rules, but the old man knows the exceptions. #OliverWendellHolmes, Sr.…Walk good. 28all. Eya. *JW, NL, MM, MG, CC*

The Warm-Up: 

“Your life could be completely different by the end of 2021. It’s all about what you start today, and whether you stick to it and see it through.” ~Orange Book

The Core: 

“Complexity impresses your peers. Clarity impresses your customers.” ~Jack Butcher

“In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.” ~Dwight D. Eisenhower

“It is not time that changes man nor knowledge; the only thing that can change someone’s mind is love.” ~Paulo Coelho, Eleven Minutes

“In 2021, normalize saying ‘no’ without needing to over-explain yourself. If someone is offended by your boundaries, that is their problem.” ~Steven Bartlett

“You don’t need to be twice as good to get twice the results. Focus on being a bit better than yesterday. The world will do the rest of the work for you.” ~Shane Parrish

“We can never judge the lives of others, because each person knows only their own pain and renunciation. It’s one thing to feel that you are on the right path, but it’s another to think that yours is the only path.” ~Paulo Coelho

“Bitcoin is an exit from Wall Street. Social media is an exit from mass media. Homeschooling is an exit from industrial education. Remote work is an exit from 9-5. Creator economy is an exit from employment. Individuals are leaving institutions.” ~Naval Ravikant

“Most people did well in academics as these goals were defined by the external world. But people who do well in life are those who define audacious goals for themselves and work hard to meet them. Most people have no goals after they graduate. Non concrete goals are wishes.” ~Kunal Shah

“There is no such thing as one-way liberation. When we free ourselves we automatically free everyone around us. When we grant ourselves permissions to live as our truest selves, we automatically grant permission to everyone around us to do the same.” ~Glennon Doyle on Unlocking Us with Brene Brown

“Speak these truths aloud, for it is only in silence that horror can persist. The courage to call a thing by its true name galvanizes the human spirit to address it. If that condition serves one’s desires, it will be embraced with a full heart. If it is destructive to one’s path, it will be deliberately dismantled over time.” ~Michele Harper, The Beauty in Breaking

“Tony was very fearless…I remember he asked me what my definition of success. I can’t remember what my answer was, but I remember his. His answer was: ‘the willingness to lose it all, believing in an idea so much that you’re just willing to be wrong.’ That really is a beautiful definition, and that really is how I think of Tony — very brave.” ~Jewel, remembering her friend, Tony Hsieh 

“Habits are the compound interest of self-improvement. The same way that money multiplies through compound interest, the effects of your habits multiply as you repeat them. They seem to make little difference on any given day and yet the impact they deliver over the months and years can be enormous. It is only when looking back two, five, or perhaps ten years later that the value of good habits and the cost of bad ones becomes strikingly apparent.” ~James Clear, Atomic Habits

“ ‘We are so used to finding a distraction to help us when we should be addressing what’s in front of us… the world needed to slow down … we should slow down, too.’…Way argues the lack of vulnerability in male friendships is rooted in a misogynistic, homophobic culture that discourages emotional intimacy between men. But it’s also part of a culture that does not value adult friendship in general.” ~Samantha Schmidt, No game days. No bars. The pandemic is forcing some men to realize they need deeper friendships.

“As a father, I often contradict myself, and I know I could do a better job of practicing what I preach, but I’ve also learned that if the message is true, don’t forget it, and forgive the messenger, even if he does. I hope to give my children the opportunity to find what they love to do, work to be great at it, pursue it, and do it. Rather than cover their eyes from ugly truths, I want to cover their eyes from fictional fantasies that will handicap their ability to negotiate tomorrow’s reality. I believe they can handle it.” ~Matthew McConaughey, Greenlights

Last Set: 

“God breaks the heart again and again and again until it stays open.” ~Hazrat Inayat Khan

Food for Thought I: 

One New Year’s Day, Jimbo pinged me: “Son, I didn’t get an initial love—reminder that I didn’t email you I texted you my favorite above.” That’s why I love him. I know he wasn’t out to get his initials above as much as he was holding me accountable and ensuring that the poem below didn’t get loss in the mix. Shoutout to brother Largey for writing “Not Gone” back in July:

“I am standing upon the seashore. A ship, at my side, spreads her white sails to the moving breeze and starts for the blue ocean. She is an object of beauty and strength. I stand and watch her until, at length, she hangs like a speck of white cloud just where the sea and sky come to mingle with each other. Then, someone at my side says, ‘There, she is gone.’ Gone where? Gone from my sight. That is all. She is just as large in mast, hull and spar as she was when she left my side. And, she is just as able to bear her load of living freight to her destined port. Her diminished size is in me -- not in her. And, just at the moment when someone says, ‘There, she is gone,’ there are other eyes watching her coming, and other voices ready to take up the glad shout, ‘Here she comes!’ And that is dying...” ~Henry Van Dyke, Gone From My Sight

Food for Thought II: 

“Humans evolved in societies where there was no leverage. If I was chopping wood or carrying water for you, you knew eight hours put in would be equal to about eight hours of output. Now we’ve invented leverage... As a worker, you want to be as leveraged as possible so you have a huge impact without as much time or physical effort. 

A leveraged worker can out-produce a non-leveraged worker by a factor of one thousand or ten thousand. With a leveraged worker, judgment is far more important than how much time they put in or how hard they work. 

For example, a good software engineer, just by writing the right little piece of code and creating the right little application, can literally create half a billion dollars’ worth of value for a company. But ten engineers working ten times as hard, just because they choose the wrong model, the wrong product, wrote it the wrong way, or put it in the wrong viral loop, have basically wasted their time. Inputs don’t match outputs, especially for leveraged workers.

What you want in life is to be in control of your time. You want to get into a leveraged job where you control your time and you’re tracked on outputs.” ~Naval Ravikant on the importance of leverage, The Almanack of Naval Ravikant (Saw it on James Clear’s 3-2-1)

Food for Thought III: 

Why you should not bring your authentic self to work | Jodi-Ann Burey | TEDxSeattle

“The worst advice given to (young) people? ‘Follow your passion.’” | Theo Priestley on LinkedIn