Men need to know when to take responsibility.

They also need to know when to refuse it.

Thread.

Every time you meet someone above you, you have a chance to move up.

It’s a rare golden opportunity to encounter those at the top.

Here's how you attract a founder, investor or an executive (FIEs) as your mentor.

Thread.

You NEVER know who the person you’ve encountered really is. You don’t know what he knows, what he is capable of, who he knows, who his connections are.

Assume they are the 1%.

Founders/Investors/Executives (FIEs) look for specific qualities before deciding to invest in someone.

You need to know WHY you want to be a mentee under FIEs.

You need EVERYTHING mapped out & prepped.

If it’s for an idea: know your strategy, distribution channel, market, competitors, biz plan etc.

If it’s a job seek: know your aim, your plan & career objective etc.

Then you need a 2 step approach.

1. Provide value that makes you worthy enough to be mentored.

2. Receive value in exchange, that will help progress whatever it was that made you sought out a mentor in the first place.

If you do this, ascension is inevitable.

FIEs read body language.

They can instantly tell whether you’ve got it or not.

Focus on 3 things:

-Chest out
-Eye contact
-Speak slowly

Nod. Accommodate your words with hand gestures. And don’t interrupt.

Ever.

If you do, apologise & let them speak.

How to find the motivation to do something.

Requested by followers

Thread

I lean heavily towards psychoanalytic theory & Nitzschean philosophy.

That means with regards to this thread,

I believe not everyone has the ability to be motivated. And those that do, have multiple personalities constantly affecting their motivation.

Ill address accordingly.

Nietzsche believed not everyone can achieve an aim,

that they lack self-determination; which is a combination of self-control & self-legislation i.e

the ability to write laws in place that will help attain an aim while suppressing desires that directly/indirectly disrupt it.

This thread assumes you have the ability to set yourself an aim that generates enough motivation for you to pursue it.

Obviously the "how" of this thread will fail those who don't possess this quality.

Some will disagree & claim everyone possesses it.

And yet still fail.

Having the motivation to do something cannot be pinpointed or quantified. There's infinite amount of reasons on what compels people to do things.

But there is room to work and generate motivation for those who have none,

(assuming they possess the trait in temperament).

How to present yourself as a man who is worth investing in.

Requested by followers.

Thread

Anyone who plays the status game is not worthy of any seriousness.

But that does not mean, those who are serious & competent should look & behave in a cheap manner.

People are watching. To be worthy of investing in, you must show degree of status.

It’s the world we live in.

Be relaxed and still. Nothing should faze you. Your reaction to good news, should be equal to bad news: neutral.

Learn to downplay an achievement, while remaining calm when encountering failure.

It shows resilience towards hard times, & self control during good times.

Control your emotions. Or at least mimic the emotions of the person you’re talking to. Emotions are the portal in which regrettable behaviours emerge.

You instantly lack reliability when you uncontrollably release your emotions.

Read my shadow integration threads.

Maintain respect. Don’t swear. Profanity instantly makes you look cheap. It makes you look weak & not in control.

“Can’t trust a man who doesn’t swear” is trash nonsense.

Truth is, you can’t rely on a man who fails to control his words at the right time & right place.

How to vet a woman. Qualify her by setting your standards.

Thread

If you want to vet a woman properly, you need to separate two components that makes up who she is;

Macro scale - her deep values that make up her belief system.

Micro scale - her everyday habits & behaviours.

Macro cannot be easily modified, the micros can.

A woman's belief system in life takes one of two pathways,

she either chooses a path of independence, where her values shape around it,

or she chooses to seek femininity.

One directly conflicts with the other. The more independent she becomes, the less feminine she is.

Obviously you want a feminine woman. And that would mean to vet how far she is willing to go in her line of career. If career ascension is her aim, her belief system does not align with yours.

Her career must stop somewhere for her to be able to regain her feminine nature.

Determine how agreeable she is. By default, all women are more agreeable than disagreeable.

That means a woman who's gone out of her way to become disagreeable (for example career ascension) is a red flag, unless circumstances justify it.

Intolerance is a trait of a leader who elevates everyone around him.

If you want to lead, you must become intolerant.

Thread

Know that the degree of your tolerance is disproportional to the quality of your leadership.

The more tolerant you are, the lower the quality.

Because its not easy to uphold strong qualities & values.

Tolerance leads to erosion of your high standards.

Your responsibility as a leader is to create a culture where, whether its your followers, employees, family,

can grow and become exceptional in what you're directing them towards.

You need to protect this culture & cultivate it.

The protection of this culture will depend on

-your conviction to your leadership objective

-the values you need to uphold to attain this objective

-rejecting values that directly conflict with the attainment of your objective

Every time you compromise your leadership by accomodating lesser values through tolerance,

you not only weaken your own conviction, but you disrespect those who follow you,

who rely on your resilience to maintain the coherence & integrity of the culture you seek to build.

If you have less revenue/growth/success than you wish you had, then the best thing you can do is OWN IT.

Write a tweet, tell your friends, and move on.

Once you own it, you fix it.

99% of people on Twitter/social media/internet won't do this.

Being radically transparent and honest is a competitive (and life) advantage.

From @RayDalio's Principles:

My new product has 14 users and <$400 monthly revenue. I've spent the last 4 months on it.

I'm going through a lot of pain to validate and grow it.

But if anyone asks me how it's going I will tell them exactly that.

If I asked them, I would hope they would give me the raw truth as well. Truth builds trust.

I think that goes for your internet audience as well. Authenticity is attractive.

I see this with @starter_story all the time - people don't want to share their revenue yet because they don't have any, or it's not high enough (not all cases but often).

I wish I could tell them that getting the cat out of the bag would actually fix the problem itself!!

1) I was 30 years old. And in what many would consider a dream job. But I was pretty miserable. Because I knew I was letting my real dream--to become a screenwriter/filmmaker--die.

2) Sitting in my office one night, it hit me, if I did let the dream die, I would become toxic, because that's what death does, and that toxicity would ooze out of me, onto those I loved.

3)In that instant, I decided to make a shift, to find a way to finally, after years of denying it, do the thing. Try, at least. So I went to my best friend, @DavidLevien, who was already writing, and asked him for help.

4) David gave me The Artist's Way and said that when we had the right idea, he and I would write a screenplay together.

5) Soon thereafter, I had to good luck of walking into an illegal poker club in NYC, called David in the middle of the night, and we decided to write the thing.

!. Simple Sabotage Tips
Unhappy with Everyday Life?
Frothing at the Mouth against oppressive bureaucracy?
Sick of petty tyrants and tin pot dictators?
Tormented by intrusive modern technology?
Feel like "sticking it to the man"?

2. The following is taken from sections 11,12 of the OSS's Simple Sabotage Field Manual, a 1944 document that has been declassified. The OSS became the CIA after WWII. The full document is

3. (a) Organizations and Conferences
Insist on doing everything through "channels." Never permit short-cuts to be taken in order to, expedite decisions.

4. Make "speeches." Talk as frequently as possible and at great length. Illustrate your "points" by long anecdotes and accounts of personal experiences.
Never hesitate to make a few appropriate "patriotic" comments.

5. When possible, refer all matters to committees, for "further study & consideration"
make the committees as large as possible - never less than 5
- Bring up irrelevant issues as frequently as possible
- Haggle over precise wordings of communications, minutes, resolutions

I suspected this country would one day kill me but I am not ready to go yet. Last night, a good non-Northern doctor helped to give me a new lease of life when I could have been on my way out. Throughout much of the North, our primary concern is like the people of every other...

...region: having a good life and ensuring our children have opportunities to prosper. Being free to live without terror, build assets, practice our faith and celebrate our culture. Like all tribes, every tribe in the North has a heritage to be proud of and teach their young in..

...Most of our leaders, like leaders of all regions, have betrayed and deceived us. They have been selfish and cunning. They have left us at the mercy of terrorists and thugs. In most areas, we are on our own to survive while they wine and dine with evil-doers. We take up the...

...work others cannot or will not do... for money just like others do what they do for money. Yet when the masses are merely trying to survive, others blame the innocent poor among us for somehow causing all the country’s woes. What blinds us from knowing who are real enemies...

...and who are innocent masses caught up in the countless systemic injustices that those in power have constructed and maintained for their personal (not tribal) benefit? What manner of colonial education and...

A frequent question I get when talking with senior designers: Will my growth as a designer stall if I start managing?

There is often a second question underneath that, which is:
Will I no longer be respected as a design leader if I can't keep up as a designer?

Thread below👇

My short answer to "Will my growth as a designer stall if I manage?" is yes, absolutely, if "designer" is someone who produces design work.

Managing a 5-8 ppl team does not leave you time to design. When you don't practice a craft, you should not expect to get better at it.

However... (and this is a BIG however)...

What you *can* continue to grow (as both a design manager and a designer) is the following:

1) Your design eye
2) Your design voice

A strong design eye means that others trust you to know what is good.

It means your taste is well-honed through extensive study of an area.

It means your sense for usability, simplicity and aesthetics is well-developed even at subtle or fine granularities.

Very early in my design career, my manager asked me to review some design portfolios. I sat there, petrified, clicking through dozens of links. I could tell which ones were really bad, but many of the portfolios seemed good! I could not really distinguish between them on quality!