my week summarized by the best content i consumed (in no particular order)
- Einstein’s Dreams by Alan Lightman
- How hard should I push myself?
“How hard should I push myself?
It’s a question I ask myself a lot, and I bet you do too. On the one hand I really want to push myself. I’m ambitious, I want to leave it all out on the field — some of my peak work moments have come from times when I’ve pushed myself to a place where I didn’t think I could go. We all have more ability to adapt to stress and pressure than we think we do.
On the other hand, I want to be kind to myself. I wonder how much the drive to push myself is really just a drive to make up for something that I feel is missing or inadequate — and whether pushing myself will actually fill the hole. I also sometimes wonder whether letting myself off the hook is just laziness masquerading as self-care. It’s hard to tell.”
3. The Unauthorized Story of Andreessen Horowitz
“With Wennmachers’ encouragement Andreessen penned a now historic Op-Ed in the Wall Street Journal in 2011, titled, “Why Software is Eating the World.” The phrase became so ubiquitous that it can seem like everything eats the world these days.
‘Margit is really a hidden founder of this firm,’ a startup founder who has raised money from the firm told me. ‘The power dynamics there is, Marc, Ben, and Margit.’”
“‘You’ll figure it out. Have a good evening.’
He lightly tapped the office door with his open hand twice, as if he was slapping it five. And then walked off.
There was a moment of silence before we got right back into it. We figured it out — or at least we tried. Ultimately, we didn’t appreciate the move to the more “open” web would have on the proprietary AOL platform; nor would the Times appreciate the traffic AOL brought and our ability to allow them to experiment on a new generation of Internet users. We met somewhere in the middle, maybe even paid them, and it turned into a relatively good relationship over the years.
The thing is, maybe we got it right. Or maybe we didn’t. I assume Bob knew that. I’d also like to believe he didn’t really care. Or rather, he cared about the outcome but equally cared about making sure his team — us junior members — thought for ourselves. To empower us. To demonstrate his trust in us by specifically letting us make the decision. And figure it out.”
5. The Hater With A Heart of Gold
“I think there’s a little bit too much of people who think of writing as a career. And they don’t think of it as something that you do as an art, or whatever you want to call it, in a cheesy way. It is inherently cheesy to think about it like that, because you’re like, well, I’m not painting some masterpiece. But for me it was important to enjoy what I was writing and to enjoy the process of writing.
Let me start over. I do think young people should have a day job. If you’re young and you don’t quite know what to do yet, and there’s no real money or any sort of clout, you’ll find the things you actually like. But you shouldn’t pigeonhole yourself into taking writing jobs that you hate, because you’ll end up hating writing.”
