1/ there is this sense when you are young that your accomplishments need to be a list of things that seem impressive to others. A list of several items you did.

This isn't actually right, so here is another suggestion.

2/ I remember being 26 and writing about reading 52 books a year. I wrote blog posts about it. They got copied. It became "a thing." Now it's in Twitter bios. It looks impressive but it's insanely useless and I shouldn't have done it.
3/ what I should have known at that time is that only young idiots like myself, with no accomplishments, find list of tiny achievements impressive. Anyone who has actually done anything of substance doesn't gaf
4/ what is actually difficult, and worthwhile, instead is to do ONE single thing for a very, very long time. It's much harder and much rarer and results in outlier outcomes much more often.

Of course you can find this out too late if you are chasing the dragon of Ted talks etc
5/ if I had only worked on a startup for a year, I would've gotten nowhere, the same way that if you lift for 3 months, it achieves nothing. Everything good in life comes from perseverance, but at the beginning, you're just like "I need to be somebody!!!"
If I had read one book 52 times - the right one - instead of racing through 52 books year after year, I think I would have been able to write Moby Dick by now. But the surface level stuff was too attractive, too shiny.
7/ all of this is because it's the nature of the mins and the body to give up once things are hard- it's why grit is so valuable. It's why Jeff Bezos is the richest guy and not the dude who did 10 startups for that same period. Compounding efforts produce outlier results.
I'm lucky that I am 39 now and have done enough to feel that my monkey ambition brain is satisfied (for now). I was meeting a dude the other day and he goes "why did you start your company, did you get sick of writing New York Times best sellers?"

Like ha ha, but he's right.
Now that I'm on the other side of it, I realize a ton of that time was wasted. Focus is what gets you places. Being deeply good at a single thing, or good enough at two things.

In case you're wondering, for me, that's a-product and b-getting people to believe in me + my thing.
10/ so conclusion- choose one thing and spend 5 years on it. At the end of one year you won't have a ton of signal that it's working.

Example - My gf is one year into her ceramic sculpting and she just did her first show. People like what she does but she wants it to go faster.
11/ if she quits now, it dies (and she proves herself right).

But year 2 is easier. Your network is wider. More people see your thing and recognize it. Your second set of pieces get seen enough to develop your reputation. Etc.
12/ so on with year 3, 4, 5, etc. Now you're really somewhere! And most people have quit. So you're now way ahead in a much less crowded pack!

PS this is her thing in case you're wondering.

https://t.co/9s2NagzZk6
13/ in startups, same issue. How credible is the guy who raised 100m$ vs the guy who raised 10.

Not 10 times more.

100x more.
14/ real conclusion now

When you feel like quitting, the thing you should really get out of it is not "I quit" but instead

"ah! Most people probably quit at this time. If I continue, good things will happen and it'll be less competition."

Have a good weekend, and get to work.

More from Life

TW: suicidal ideation.

At the darkest days of the abuse I was being subjected to I decided to attend a conference for women in Los Angeles. I convinced my mother in law to pay for it because I couldn’t afford it. @ChristineCaine was preaching. I was desperate...
1/


I wanted to die, I didn’t see a way out and I had tried everything. I imagined many ways to die daily. The most recurring one was throwing my car down a bridge I had to drive over every day. I never did it because my kids were in the car and I was afraid one of them would...

2/

survive or I’d kill someone on the way down.

Christine spoke about honoring your pastors even when they weren’t great, she spoke of us expecting too much of pastors and how wrong that was. She said God would use our testimony if we submitted to our pastors.

3/

She said “honor your pastors, God will honor you.” She said more about having disagreed with her pastors but she submitted and God honored her and now she’s blessed. How if they are faithfully serving God, we need to support them and not forfeit what God has for us.

4/

I felt my heart drop into my stomach. I got up and went to the bathroom because I couldn’t breath and I felt like I was going to faint if I didn’t scream. I now know I was having a panic attack. I sat on the toilet w/my head between my legs, breathed and wept..
5/

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The YouTube algorithm that I helped build in 2011 still recommends the flat earth theory by the *hundreds of millions*. This investigation by @RawStory shows some of the real-life consequences of this badly designed AI.


This spring at SxSW, @SusanWojcicki promised "Wikipedia snippets" on debated videos. But they didn't put them on flat earth videos, and instead @YouTube is promoting merchandising such as "NASA lies - Never Trust a Snake". 2/


A few example of flat earth videos that were promoted by YouTube #today:
https://t.co/TumQiX2tlj 3/

https://t.co/uAORIJ5BYX 4/

https://t.co/yOGZ0pLfHG 5/