Quotes I like. Ordered from newest to oldest.
The only free cheese is in the mousetrap (Беспла́тный сыр то́лько в мышело́вке)
I’m in the arena trying stuff. Some will work, some won’t. But always learning. You’re anonymous and afraid of your own shadow. Enjoy the sidelines.
Not every elected official who rides transit will be a good elected official. But every good elected city official will ride transit.
Your first minutes on the streets of an unfamiliar city are always special: what happens in later months or years can never supplant them. These minutes are filled with the visual equivalent of nuclear energy, a kind of nuclear power of attention. With penetrating insight and an all-pervading excitement, you absorb a huge universe – houses, trees, faces of passersby, signs, squares, smells, dust, cats and dogs, the color of the sky. During these minutes, like an omnipresent God, you bring a new world into being: you create, you build inside yourself a whole city with all its streets and squares, with its courtyards and patios, with its sparrows, with its thousands of years of history, with its food shops and its shops for manufactured goods, with its opera house and its canteens. This city that suddenly arises from nonbeing is a special city; it differs from the city that exists in reality – it is the city of a particular person.
What after all does it matter? A single, seemingly ordinary, rather technical insurance case. One among the many hundreds of rulings judges make each year.What does it matter? A case but a speck in the recesses of interstellar space and in the four-plus billion years since our solar system’s birth. What does it matter, this case deserted by both space and time?To be human is to live in the here and now. This small case extracts courageous meaning from the vast impersonality in which it resides. Its immediacy confounds infinity; its passions light the dark. We have given it our best; the litigants have given it their best. The trial court has done the same. We do not overlook for a moment the tragic passing of the insured but neither can we ignore the contract under South Carolina law that defines the insurer’s obligation. The judgment of the district court is ac cordingly affirmed, and thissingle case in all its smallness now reigns important and supreme.
Now the branches come too close to grinding irrevocably against one another in a conflict that promises to diminish both. This is a losing proposition all around. The Judiciary will lose much from the constant intimations of its illegitimacy, to which by dent of custom and detachment we can only sparingly reply. The Executive will lose much from a public perception of its lawlessness and all of its attendant contagions. The Executive may succeed for a time in weakening the courts, but over time history will script the tragic gap between what was and all that might have been, and law in time will sign its epitaph.
It is, as we have noted, all too possible to see in this case an incipient crisis, but it may present an opportunity as well. We yet cling to the hope that it is not naïve to believe our good brethren in the Executive Branch perceive the rule of law as vital to the American ethos. This case presents their unique chance to vindicate that value and to summon the best that is within us while there is still time.
In sum, and for the reasons foregoing, we deny the motion for the stay pending appeal and the writ of mandamus in this case. It is so ordered.
Netflix, door dash, and true crime podcasts have stolen more dreams than failure ever will.
Shipping is a feature. A really important feature. Your product must have it.
Your beliefs clash with reality? Change your beliefs. This is what beliefs are for. Can't do this? May as well not bother having beliefs.
Your morals conflict with reality? Change reality. This is what morals are for. Can't do this? May as well not bother having morals.
For fifty years, our economic mission in America, at its core, has been to build bigger houses farther apart from each other. And boy have we succeeded: a nation of starter castles for entry-level monarchs, built at such remove one from the next that the car is unavoidable.
The X can stay Y longer than you can stay Z.John Maynard Keynes:
The market can remain irrational longer than you can stay solvent.
If a cop follows you for 500 miles, you’re going to get a ticket.
I learned very early the difference between knowing the name of something and knowing something.
Yes, the planet got destroyed. But for a beautiful moment in time we created a lot of value for shareholders.
Do not fall into the trap of anthropomorphising Larry Ellison. You need to think of Larry Ellison the way you think of a lawnmower. You don't anthropomorphize your lawnmower, the lawnmower just mows the lawn, you stick your hand in there and it'll chop it off, the end. You don't think 'oh, the lawnmower hates me'—lawnmower doesn't give a shit about you, lawnmower can't hate you. Don't anthropomorphize the lawnmower. Don't fall into that trap about Oracle.
Show me the incentive and I’ll show you the outcome
I cannot remember the books I've read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me.
you can grind to help secure our collective future or you can write substacks about why we are going fail
If you were a character in a book, what would your readers be yelling at you to do?
One of the biggest mistakes that I observed in the first year of Jack’s life was parents that have this language around weather being good or bad. Whenever it was raining, you’d hear moms, babysitters, dads, talk about, “It’s bad weather. We can’t go out,” or, “It’s good weather. We can go out.” And so that means that, somehow, we’re externally reliant on conditions being perfect in order to be able to go out and have a good time. So Jack and I never missed a single storm. I don’t think we’ve missed a single storm, rain or snow, going outside and romping in it. And we’ve developed this language around how beautiful it was. And so now, whenever it’s a rainy day, Jack says, “Look, Dada, it’s such a beautiful rainy day,” and we go out and we play in it. And I wanted him to have this internal locus of control – to not be reliant on external conditions being just so.
Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass under the trees on a summers day, listening to the murmur of water, or watching the clouds float across the blue sky, is by no means a waste of time.
We must do something. This is something. Therefore, we must do this.
Get in the van
Almost No One is Evil. Almost Everything is Broken.
Everything that has uplifted and comforted and saved me has people who rightly abhor it. Everything that I rightly abhor has uplifted and comforted and saved others. Grant me the compassion to protect and respect them. Grant me strength to protect and respect my own needs.
- If X, I desire to believe X
- If not X, I desire to believe not X
- Let me not become attached to beliefs I may not want
In short, people have a mechanism in their minds. It stops them from saying something that could lower their status, even if it’s true. And it propels them to say something that could increase their status, even if it’s false. Sometimes, local norms can push against this tendency. Certain communities (e.g., scientists) can obtain status among their peers for expressing truths. But if the norm is relaxed, people might default to seeking status over truth if status confers the greater reward.
You build what you measure
Make mistakes of ambition and not mistakes of sloth. Develop the strength to do bold things, not the strength to suffer.
I want to taste the rainbow, not eat dirt!
- Every moment can’t remain
- And every life won’t stay the same
- With time comes a layer of rust
- And our bones will turn to dust
- Everyone will fall away
- And every season is built on change
Conviction, it turns out, is a luxury of those on the sidelines
Death will change you if you can't change yourself.
- What is true is already so.
- Owning up to it doesn't make it worse.
- Not being open about it doesn't make it go away.
- And because it's true, it is what is there to be interacted with.
- Anything untrue isn't there to be lived.
- People can stand what is true,
- for they are already enduring it.
Dad lore is when your dad tells you the stories of his life before he met your Mother. These seem amazing compared to your childhood
You don't have to do shit you don't want to do.
A man sets himself the task of portraying the world. Through the years he peoples a space with images of provinces, kingdoms, mountains, bays, ships, islands, fishes, rooms, instruments, stars, horses, and people. Shortly before his death, he discovers that that patient labyrinth of lines traces the image of his face.
The question isn't who is going to let me; it's who is going to stop me.
Your mind is for having ideas, not holding them.
It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself in a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.
Nine women can't make a baby in one month.
If a man never contradicts himself, the reason must be that he virtually never says anything at all.
Dear Global Economy, we thank thee for thy economies of scale, thy professional specialization, and thy international networks of trade under Ricardo's Law of Comparative Advantage, without which we would all starve to death while trying to assemble the ingredients for such a dinner as this. Amen.Relevant song: Landsailor by Vienna Teng Fan
A long time ago man saw Times Square and sat in silence. A few people asked him what he thought. He said this would be beautiful if I couldn't read.
...concepts are the currency of unserious people.
Don't treat your character flaws like they're cute.
I think people should have a right to be stupid and, if they have that right, the market's going to respond by supplying as much stupidity as can be sold.
If others would think as hard as I did, then they would get similar results.
‘the secret is practice.’ Which is the world’s all-time favorite unhint.
The only way out is through.
Yes, and...
Markets can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent.
...seventy-two moves to a draw, a prize specimen of the irresistible force meeting the immovable object, a battle without armor, a war without blood, and as elaborate a waste of human intelligence as you could find anywhere outside an advertising agency.
Unnecessary is the enemy of fun.
- The fear is what keeps you alive
- Break the fucking chains, take back your life
- The fear is what keeps you insane
- Break the fucking chains, take away the pain
The ability to play chess is the sign of a gentleman. The ability to play chess well is the sign of a wasted life.
Soon there will be war. Millions will perish in sickness and misery. Why does one death matter against so many? Because there is good and evil and evil must be punished, even in the face of armageddon. I will not compromise in this.
Every time my wife wants to divorce me, I suggest couples therapy. It'll buy you at least four days.
A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyse a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.
The beatings will continue until morale improves.
Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels.
Everybody wants to be a bodybuilder, but nobody wants to lift no heavy-ass weights.
We sleep safe in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm.
If you’ve never missed a flight, you’re spending too much time in airports.
If you’ve never been rejected, you’re not asking enough.
If you’ve never regretted a blog entry, your blog is boring.And miscellaneous comments:
If you’ve never gotten food poisoning, you haven’t been eating interesting enough food.
If you’ve never gotten a speeding ticket, you’re driving too slow.
If you live to be a hundred and twenty, then you haven’t made the most of your time on this earth.
If you’ve never made a fool of yourself on the dance floor, you’re not getting out enough.
If you’ve never been fined $250,000, you’re paying too much for your DVDs.And my own:
If you never get food on your clothes, you're eating too cleanly.
If you’re not running red lights, you’re wasting your time sitting at them.
If you're not making grammar or spelling mistakes, you're spending too much time proofreading.
Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.
If the only thing keeping a person decent is the expectation of divine reward, then brother, that person is a piece of shit; and I'd like to get as many of them out in the open as possible.
A good stock of examples, as large as possible, is indispensable for a thorough understanding of any concept, and when I want to learn something new, I make it my first job to build one.
- I reserve my right to feel uncomfortable, reserve my right to be afraid
- I make mistakes and I am humbled every step of the way
- I want to be a better person, I wanna know the master plan
- Cast your stones, cast your judgement, you don't make me who I am
Spaces between walls. Objects and their history. Memories knotted to everything collected here.
It is April and the house is empty. There is snow on the ground still somehow. Wandering alone throughout you are certain you hear echoes.
There is what leaves and then what does not when you lose someone. The shared history retained in mutually familiar things. Senses that trigger a sort of travel through time. Fabric softener, garlic, the coffeemaker, ordinary sights and smells, items. You spend X years of your life assigning memories to experiences, designating a section of your existence for storing the details and emotions attached to them good or bad and when you lose someone none of that goes with it. The objects remain in the space you share with them and so do the meanings they've earned. This moment or that moment, funeral or first kiss, fully remembered and realized in the tendrils and folds and lightning sparks of the unconscious every time one intrudes upon the landscape you occupy. The slightest hint of familiar scenery, the faintest smell, the feel of the thin air in the desert some years back, the dimensions of the rooms of the house or any common touch, all beckoning back with accidental reminisce moments that shape and absence, that almost bring it back to you there or else bring you back to it. Trips you take backwards and forwards through history.
You are wandering alone in the spaces between the walls and you are certain you hear echoes. It is April and there is snow on the ground.
- I must not fear.
- Fear is the mind-killer.
- Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
- I will face my fear.
- I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
- And when it has gone past, I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
- Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.
Do not treat others the way you would not like them to treat you.
The young man, who does not know the future, sees life as a kind of epic adventure, an Odyssey through strange seas and unknown islands, where he will test and prove his powers, and thereby discover his immortality.
The man of middle years, who has lived the future that he once dreamed, sees life as a tragedy; for he has learned that his power, however great, will not prevail against those forces of accident and nature to which he gives the names of gods, and has learned that he is mortal.
But the man of age, if he plays his assigned role properly, must see life as a comedy. For his triumphs and his failures merge, and one is no more the occasion for pride or shame than the other; and he is neither the hero who proves himself against those forces, nor the protagonist who is destroyed by them.
I often find myself trying to justify my existence; how can I write about science when I'm not a professional scientist, or philosophy when I'm not a professional philosopher, or politics when I'm not a professional policy wonk? When I'm in a good mood, I like to think it's because I have something helpful to say about these topics. But when I'm in a bad mood, I think the best apology I can give for myself is that the discovery drive is part of what it is to be human, and I'm handling it more gracefully than some.
Find the problem, fix the problem.
Banality is like boredom: bored people are boring people, people who think that things are banal are themselves banal. Interesting people can find something interesting in all things.
I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.
I control my charities now; they do not control me. I am master of my time; it is not wasted wantonly among a thousand thoughtless folks. And while I find ways to do more than ever for those who really deserve help — the young, the sick, and the bereaved — I no longer allow myself to be sacrificed by the selfish demands of those who are perfectly able to take care of themselves.
Suppose one reads a story of filthy atrocities in the paper. Then suppose that something turns up suggesting that the story might not be quite true, or not quite so bad as it was made out. Is one's first feeling, 'Thank God, even they aren't quite so bad as that,' or is it a feeling of disappointment, and even a determination to cling to the first story for the sheer pleasure of thinking your enemies are as bad as possible? If it is the second then it is, I am afraid, the first step in a process which, if followed to the end, will make us into devils. You see, one is beginning to wish that black was a little blacker. If we give that wish its head, later on we shall wish to see grey as black, and then to see white itself as black. Finally we shall insist on seeing everything -- God and our friends and ourselves included -- as bad, and not be able to stop doing it: we shall be fixed for ever in a universe of pure hatred.
Life is full of cycles, great and small. Personal development is linked to lasting change. We pass through various stages, some achieved consciously, others reached accidentally. Daniel Levinson proposes that one's life cycle is composed of four 25-year eras. Confucius argued for six cycles. Aristotle thought there were three stages. The details don't much matter only that we change over the course of our lives and—sometimes—we have the opportunity to direct that change. At other times life appears simply "to happen" and we find ourselves on a different road, or continent.
For a lot of passionate, highly driven and motivated professionals the greatest critic they face is themselves. Many of you will intimately understand when I say the biggest critic in the room is yourself. For many seeking to perform at their peak including high performing individuals, there is a consistent internal dialogue raging inside. This internal dialogue often takes the form of intense self-criticism - where no matter how well one performs they still remain highly critical of their performance. No matter what differences I gauge in high performers, self-criticism appears to be a consistent one. What more, this self criticism rarely materializes into doubt or something that would sabotage performance. Rather it is used as a productive means to improve. That is because the harshest critic should always be ones self - because no one else stands to lose or gain more by the absence of criticism and its impact on performance. Just make sure enable improvement not impinge performance.
If something's important enough you should try. Even if the probable outcome is failure.
Relentlessly prune bullshit, don't wait to do things that matter, and savor the time you have.
But ascending hierarchies of competence is vital even for the 99% of us who will not become elite athletes, CEOs, or superstars. Improving at a valuable skill is meaningful, and rising through the ranks provides validation of that meaning. It brings self-confidence and fulfillment. It demonstrates your worth to others and to yourself. When developed well, the masculine traits are virtues independent of any competition. They enable people to simply live better in the world, enjoying success as a well-deserved reward rather than a fleeting stroke of luck, and seeing setbacks as challenges rather than tragedies.
There was no God to turn to for mercy. There was no government to provide order. Civilization was ancient history, Europe a faint and faraway place. Inside the ship, as the heel increased, even the most primitive social organization, the human chain, crumbled apart. Love only slowed people down. A pitiless clock was running. The ocean was completely in control
You can never take too many pictures.He was referencing documenting a machine's disassembly for putting it back together more easily and correctly. Storage space is incredibly cheap nowadays, and pictures are relatively low-space. You can delete what you don't need, but can't take anything after you haven't. This also applies to personal photos.
Two days of travel separate this young man (and young he is, with few firm roots in life) from his everyday world, especially from what he called his duties, interests, worries, and prospects—separate him far more than he had dreamed possible as he rode to the station in a hansom cab. Space, as it rolls and tumbles away between him and his native soil, proves to have powers normally ascribed only to time; from hour to hour, space brings about changes very like those time produces, yet surpassing them in certain ways. Space, like time, gives birth to forgetfulness, but does so by removing an individual from all relationships and placing him in a free and pristine state—indeed, in but a moment it can turn a pedant and philistine into something like a vagabond. Time, they say, is water from the river Lethe, but alien air is a similar drink; and if its effects are less profound, it works all the more quickly. (Page 4)
A human being lives out not only his personal life as an individual, but also, consciously or subconsciously, the lives of his epoch and contemporaries; and although he may regard the general and impersonal foundations of his existence as unequivocal givens and take them for granted, having as little intention of ever subjecting them to critique as our good Hans Castrop himself had, it is nevertheless quite possible that he senses his own moral well-being to be somehow impaired by the lack of critique. All sorts of personal goals, purposes, hopes, prospects may float before the eyes of a given individual, from which he may then glean the impulse for exerting himself for great deeds; if the impersonal world around him, however, if the times themselves, despite all their hustle and bustle, provide him with neither hopes nor prospects, if they secretly supply him with evidence that things are in fact hopeless, without prospect or remedy, if the times respond with hollow silence to every conscious or subconscious question, however it may be posed, about the ultimate, unequivocal meaning of all exertions and deeds that are more than exclusively personal—then it is almost inevitable, particularly if the person involved is a more honest sort, that the situation will have a crippling effect, which, following moral and spiritual paths, may even spread to that individual's physical and organic life. For a person to be disposed to more significant deeds that go beyond what is simply required of him—even when his own times may provide no satisfactory answer to the question of why—he needs either a rare, heroic personality that exists in a kind of moral isolation and immediacy, or one characterized by exceptionally robust vitality. Neither the former nor the latter was the case with Hans Castorp, and so he probably was mediocre after all, though in a very honorable sense of that word. (Page 31)
training is about stress. about the artful application of force. we say art because there are too many factors – there can be no formula… this is like talking about love. the more specific you get the further you are from being useful. we can say “find the problem, fix the problem” – when we start to go past that, we start to hedge our bets a lot… we say “usually” or “it depends” – we answer questions with more questions, we push and pull – we try and get to the next step. to find the weak link, to address the thing that is holding us back. it can be a small muscle. a movement pattern. a timing issue. one of the many forms of psychological weakness… each problem has number of solutions, each with a cost and with side effects – the “right answer” is , at best, right for that person at that time in their struggle. this is where paths diverge, where selling things and truly helping seem to be mutually exclusive, where a discussion on working out turns into a self help seminar...
it comes down to a decision. how far do you want to take this? how far are you willing to take this? i am impressed by physical feats insofar as they are the reflection of this willingness. of the hard work and attention to detail. to stare into that mirror, to seek out critical feedback, to realize that the only way to improve is to explore your weaknesses – to dig into the most uncomfortable places, to poke and prod that the things we hate and the things we are afraid of. to realize that we train to maximize our potential. we work to express the very best of ourselves, to hone the edge, to grind away everything that does not make us better. we seek stress. we seek dissenting opinions and challenging moments. we do this to get better. training is a discussion, a conversation – pressure and adaptation. it is a cycle of problems and solutions and side effects and new problems. cause and effect are often intertwined, we can solve the problem – we just need to act. feedback loops. two way streets. they are all threads, a web… tug on one long enough and you will touch the whole, but only if you are willing to be wrong, only if you are willing to be uncomfortable, only if you are willing to let go of your favorite thing and examine the one that actually has a chance helping. it is a curious blend of focus, dedication, and ADHD. of knowing when to pursue, to persevere, and when to step away. this is when it helps to have a coach. a sounding board. anyone really, as long as they care enough to not care about your feelings. to not nod their head and tell you you are doing good but to ask questions, to pick and prod and demand that you make sense.
we are often too close to our own problems, we warp them with our perception. emotion clouds judgment. the simple question you should always ask when training is “why didn’t i do better?” – “what stopped me from achieving X?” – “what did that training session accomplish?” – “how have i been changed?” and after all that, you must ask yourself how full of shit those answers are. questions lead to questions because the goal here is to change. to become. here is the rub – no one can feel what you feel, therefore no one is as qualified in dictating your training as yourself. in the same breath i will assert that, when it comes to your own progress, you are probably the most biased and untrustworthy source of information available. i feel that the problem often lies in the framing. we don’t know how to think about solving our own problems, too often we look at other peoples process – the prescriptions one specific individual used to get themselves from point A to point B. we are not that person. we are not in that place. we have to learn how to progress. to assess ourselves and make appropriate changes. we have to listen, to learn and to filter. to understand our strengths and weaknesses. to understand what makes us who we are and what is holding us back. only when we understand (or at least can start to comprehend) how our own lens warps the facts can we start to make use of others. to talk to people who are smarter than us. watch people who are better than us. most of us dont have to worry about being innovative because there is already someone out there solving our problem if we would just listen. if we are able to filter out our own distortion and make use of the information. remember to strive. to search the next step. watch video of your movements. talk to friends. talk to enemies. find out where you are and where you want to go. spot the difference.
figure out why you are doing what you are doing. our choices, our actions move us either closer to our goal or further away. Kate Moss said that “nothing tastes as good as skinny feels” – Conan had his own feelings on “what is best in life” – sort yourself out. find out where you’re at, what you expect, and what you are willing to pay. balance that equation. in short – start the arduous process of unfucking your head. basically, you have to learn how (and why) to change. it is just as simple and just as complicated as that. the more general the audience, the more likely any specific advice would be wrong. trying to be generally helpful can only help so much – trying to figure out an overarching explanation seems to be falling into the same trap. the important thing is to ask questions. to find peers, serious, passionate people to talk to. to learn from. don’t forget the lessons you bled to learn, but don’t forget that you are not necessarily that person anymore.
do not mistake the container for the contents, or the symbol for the source.
if the goal is to change, what you want to do and what you want to be will, at times, be mutually exclusive. deal with it.
every tool has a time, a place, a purpose, and a price. armor that saves your life in battle will guarantee you drown in the ocean. choose wisely. change when appropriate.
your toolkit alters your perception. we see what we expect to see and we see what we know how to fix. be aware.
make progress. a car will get you to the beach, but it will keep you from experiencing the ocean. necessary does not mean permanent. learn, grow, and move on.
dont be lazy. dont be stupid.
ask questions, lots of questions – but not at the expense of actually doing something.
at work, we naturally resent the people who get paid more and work less than we do. We almost never notice the people who are paid less and work more than we do.
The main thing I was doing during those years was de-institutionalizing myself, learning to navigate the hours of the day and the thoughts in my head with no teacher or boss telling me what to do. I had to learn to relax without getting lethargic, to never put off washing the dishes, to balance the needs of the present and the future, to have spontaneous fun but avoid addiction, to be intuitive, to notice other people, to make big and small decisions. I went through mild depression and severe fatigue and embarrassing obsessions and strange diets and simplistic new age thinking. It's a long and ugly road, and most of us have to walk it, or something like it, to begin to be free.
Somebody asked the other day, "Hey, can an ordinary guy on the street become the Man of Steel with your workout?" And I say no, because there's not a universal physical recipe. If it took 20 years to achieve your current condition, then maybe, if you dedicate all your extra time outside of work and family responsibilities, you could change your current physical condition in a meaningful way with 3 months of constant attention and hard effort. But to change the habits that you developed over those 20 years, and that caused the current condition that you're in? That's going to take years to overwrite.
Until those habits become automatic—until you're confronted by the doughnut tray at the office and you don't even notice that it exists anymore, and you don't have to go through this process of "Do I get the doughnut? Don't I get the doughnut?"—then you have to pay attention. There are 168 hours in a week. One hour three times per week in the gym is no counterbalance to all of the other behavior in those other 165 hours.
Some will "succeed" as they will pay for guides and Sherpas to break a trail, fix a hand rail of rope, carry their packs and lower the mountain to their level with bottled oxygen.
Recognize the need for change. Revolt against old behavior and habits. Resolve to be consistent and persistent. Define Point B: what you want to achieve, clearly. Define Point A: an honest, unsentimental account of your present state. Decide on a deadline, and give yourself a penalty for missing it. Be realistic. Design the training program: seek guidance.
"When there is no enemy within, the enemies outside cannot hurt you" -- Winston S. Churchill. What do you see in this picture? I see some of the most dedicated and badass men on the planet. I see some damn cool moustaches. I see years of dedication. I see amazing skills, knowledge and experience. I see some taken too soon. But most importantly I see unity. I see a team bound together for a common worthwhile objective, albeit uncommon in their valor and collective capability. They are not all the same - their political views differ, their ethnic backgrounds are varied, and in actuality, as is always the case in alpha personality environments, they probably don't even all like each other. But that doesn't mean squat overall. They are professional warriors. They put that [expletive] aside for the common good, they all wear the same uniform and place the same flag upon their sleeve and many on their chest. For they recognize divided they may fall, together they will not. Perhaps some people should remember the power of unity and remember Churchill's words that when there is no division within, external adversaries cannot hurt you.
Using a slow cooker isn't as much of a short cut when the recipe calls for sixteen ingredients you don't have.
Gilovich’s distinction between motivated skepticism and motivated credulity highlights how conclusions a person does not want to believe are held to a higher standard than conclusions a person wants to believe. A motivated skeptic asks if the evidence compels them to accept the conclusion; a motivated credulist asks if the evidence allows them to accept the conclusion.
I suggest that an analogous bias in psychologically realistic search is motivated stopping and motivated continuation: when we have a hidden motive for choosing the “best” current option, we have a hidden motive to stop, and choose, and reject consideration of any more options. When we have a hidden motive to reject the current best option, we have a hidden motive to suspend judgment pending additional evidence, to generate more options—to find something, anything, to do instead of coming to a conclusion.
It was a lovely starlight night—they had just reached the top of the hill of Villejuif, the platform from whence Paris, like some dar sea, is seen to agitate its millions of lights, resembling phosphoric waves,—waves indeed, more noisy, more passionate, more changeable, more furious, more greedy, than those of the tempestuous ocean,—waves which never lie calm, like those of the vast sea,—waves ever destructive, ever foaming, and ever restless.
To understand why people act the way they do, we must first realize that everyone sees themselves as behaving normally...Most people see themselves as perfectly normal, from the inside. Even people you hate, people who do terrible things, are not exceptional mutants. No mutations are required, alas. When you understand this, you are ready to stop being surprised by human events.
It doesn't have to be fun to be fun.From the essay Twitching with Twight (included in Kiss or Kill):
Live the lifestyle instead of paying lip service to the lifestyle. Live with commitment. With emotional content. Live whatever life you choose honestly. Give up this renaissance man, dilettante [expletive] of doing a lot of different things (and none of them very well by real standards). Get to the guts of one thing; accept, without reservation or rationalization, the responsibility of making a choice. When you live honestly, you can not separate your mind from your body, or your thoughts from your actions.
The fit are healthy and strong; and many, as a consequence, save themselves decorously on the battle-field and escape all the dangers of war; many help friends and do good to their country and for this cause earn gratitude; get great glory and gain very high honours, and for this cause live henceforth a pleasanter and better life, and leave to their children better means of winning a livelihood.
Each man lives for himself, uses his freedom to achieve his personal goals, and feels with his whole being that right now he can or cannot do such-and-such an actin; but as soon as he does it, this action, committed at a certain moment in time, becomes irreversible and makes itself the property of history, in which it has not a free but a predestined significance. There are two sides to each man's life: his personal life, which is the more free the more abstract its interets, and his elemental, swarmlike life, where the man inevitably fulfills the laws prescribed for him. Man lives consciously for himself, but serves as an unconscious instrument for the achievement of historical, universally human goals. An action once committed is irrevocable, and its effect, coinciding in time with millions of actions of other people, acquires historical significance. The higher a man stands on the social ladder, the greater the number of people he is connected with, the more power he has over other people, the more obvious is the predestination and inevitability of his every action. "The hearts of kings are in the hands of God." Kings are the slaves of history. History, that is, the unconscious, swarmlike life of mankind, uses every moment of a king's life as an instrument for its purposes. (Page 605)
Sometimes a perfect storm of fundamental errors, bad luck, and [expletive] incentives come together to ruin a person’s life, and there is no fix. That’s horrible, and tragic, but it’s probably just reality.
Just because science doesn’t know everything doesn’t mean you can fill in the gaps with whatever fairy tale most appeals to you.
If you can’t admit to yourself that you’ve done better than others—or if you’re ashamed of wanting to do better than others—then the median will forever be your concrete wall, the place where you stop moving forward. And what about people who are below average? Do you dare say you intend to do better than them? How prideful of you! ... Tsuyoku naritai! I’ll always run as fast as I can, even if I pull ahead, I’ll keep on running; and someone, someday, will surpass me; but even though I fall behind, I’ll always run as fast as I can.
You are never entitled to your opinion. Ever! You are not even entitled to “I don’t know.” You are entitled to your desires, and sometimes to your choices. You might own a choice, and if you can choose your preferences, you may have the right to do so. But your beliefs are not about you; beliefs are about the world. Your beliefs should be your best available estimate of the way things are; anything else is a lie. [ . . . ] It is true that some topics give experts stronger mechanisms for resolving disputes. On other topics our biases and the complexity of the world make it harder to draw strong conclusions. [ . . . ] But never forget that on any question about the way things are (or should be), and in any information situation, there is always a best estimate. You are only entitled to your best honest effort to find that best estimate; anything else is a lie.