Hidden Potential – Adam Grant

Hidden Potential by Adam Grant
Date read: 8/9/24. Recommendation: 8/10.

This is a great complementary book to Range by David Epstein, that focuses on dispelling the belief that greatness is mostly born. Grant illuminates how we can achieve greater things by focusing on the forces fueling our progress. The book is built around three sections: developing character skills, creating structures to sustain motivation, and building systems to expand opportunity. I love the sections about asking for advice, not feedback, character vs. personality, and the power of writing to clarify your thinking. Check out my notes below or Amazon for details and reviews.

My Notes:

Character:
“Character is often confused with personality, but they’re not the same. Personality is your predisposition—your basic instincts for how to think, feel, and act. Character is your capacity to prioritize your values over your instincts.” Adam Grant

“If personality is how you respond on a typical day, character is how you show up on a hard day.” Adam Grant

The primary character skills that matter most are proactivity, determination, and discipline. 

Discomfort:
“Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experiences of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, vision cleared, ambition inspired, and success achieved.” Helen Keller

Becoming a creature of discomfort requires three kinds of courage: “to abandon your tried-and-true methods, to put yourself in the ring before you feel ready, and to make more mistakes than others make attempts.” Adam Grant

Similar to voluntary hardship: “Embrace, seek, and amplify discomfort.” Adam Grant

Writing:
“Writing is more than a vehicle for communicating—it’s a tool for learning. Writing exposes gaps in your knowledge and logic. It pushes you to articulate assumptions and consider counterarguments.” Adam Grant

“Unclear writing is a sign of unclear thinking.” Adam Grant

Reading:
Reading improves comprehension and activates analytical processing. Reading is the key to building critical thinking skills. While listening helps promote more intuitive thinking.

Pay attention to what you pay attention to: “If we want our kids to enjoy reading, we need to make books part of their lives. That involves talking about books during meals and car rides, visiting libraries or book stores, giving books as gifts, and letting them see us read. Children pay attention to our attention: where we focus tells them what we prize.” Adam Grant

Growth mindset:
Absorptive capacity: “Absorptive capacity is the ability to recognize, value, assimilate, and apply new information.” It hinges on how well you acquire new information and the goal you’re pursuing when you filter new information—ego or growth?

Seek advice, not feedback:
People suck at giving feedback, it focuses on past performance. Instead, ask for advice, and it shifts people’s mindset to focus on more specific suggestions and constructive input. 

Useful Not True – Derek Sivers

Useful Not True by Derek Sivers
Date read: 6/17/24. Recommendation: 9/10.

One of my favorite things about Derek’s book is that he never tells you what to do. There’s never a checklist at the end of each chapter pretending to give you the answer or steps to follow. His books are just observations and stories. The value is in how you see yourself reflected and the connections they lead you to. In Useful Not True, Derek invites us to reframe our ideas around adopting thoughts because they’re useful, not because they’re inherently true. My favorite chapters focus on choosing beliefs for the actions they lead to, meaning as something that’s all our own, and judging individual ideas rather than attempting to classify someone as exclusively one thing—brilliant, foolish, right, wrong, etc. There is no other writer who is as succinct and thought-provoking.

Check out my notes below and Derek’s website to grab your copy.

My Notes:

“This book is about reframing. It should persuade you to adopt thoughts because they’re useful to you, not because they’re true.” Derek Sivers

Perspective:
Your perspective might be useful but it’s not the entire picture. “No picture is the whole picture. Everyone selects an angle and presents just one point of view.” Derek Sivers

 Ground yourself in today’s actions:
People claim the power of visualization but none of us know how we’re going to react to what happens. It could be surprisingly good or bad once you get beneath the surface (Parable of the Chinese Farmer). Focus on today’s actions.

Judgments disguised as facts:
“People try to pass off judgements as facts. For example:
Calling someone ‘needy’ means ‘I couldn’t give that person what they wanted.’
Calling someone ‘stubborn’ means ‘That person didn’t give me what I wanted.’
Notice that words like these sound like facts about the person being judged, but they tell you more about the person judging.” Derek Sivers

Rewrite the rules:
“Rules set expectations and the terms of the game. They’re a useful starting point, but they’re not the final answer.” Derek Sivers

“The world is as negotiable as a flea market in Marrakesh. Only a fool doesn’t haggle. Whenever presented with rules, think of it as a game that can be changed.” Derek Sivers

Being wrong isn’t a threat:
Adopt a scout mindset (see Julia Galef): “It’s helpful to be wrong or confused. Being wrong makes you try a different approach. Feeling confused makes you clarify or question your assumptions. It’s intellectual humility.” Derek Sivers

Experiencing events that aren’t actually happening:
We can’t waste so much of our lives spiraling through arguments, conflicts, and threats in our heads when, in reality, actual events aren’t nearly that dire. Imaginary conversations are an obsessive trick we use to keep ourselves safe. Not everyone is an enemy. Not every passing comment is a threat. No one is spending that much time thinking about or plotting against you.

You are the strange one:
“Did ancient people really worship Zeus, Athena, Odin, Loki, Thor and all of that? They knew those were just stories, right? Foreigners have weird beliefs we call superstitions. But when it comes to our own beliefs? No no no! Those are just true!” Derek Sivers

Use beliefs to your advantage:
“Beliefs cause emotions. Emotions cause actions. Choose a belief for the action it will cause.” Derek Sivers

“What is the point of beliefs if they don’t shape actions?” Derek Sivers

Judge the contents not the box:
Best-selling book filled with wisdom but a few sentences were found to be plagiarized so people dismiss the whole book. “That’s the problem with judging a box instead of its contents. It’s seeking ‘true’ instead of useful. When any aspect of a package is flawed, it no longer feels ‘true’, so all of it is discarded. Then you lose the benefits — the baby with the bathwater.” Derek Sivers

One idea you disagree with doesn’t mean a person is “bad” or “unintelligent.” People can have both good ideas and bad ideas.

Meaning:
“Nothing has inherent meaning. Whatever meaning you project into it is your own.” Derek Sivers

Meanings are useful, not true: “Meanings can help you feel your life is important, with a narrative and purpose. Meanings can help you make peace with events out of your control. Meanings can give you a reason to persist in difficult times. But they’re internal, not external. They’re yours, not others’.” Derek Sivers

Let your voice evolve:
“Great artists change their trademark style, to keep growing. Stop defining yourself in a limiting and over-simplified way. You have different aspects to your personality…Directions take turns. Going one way can work until it doesn’t. To get you where you want to go next, what direction is needed?” Derek Sivers

Is it useful? What are you going to do with it?
“Instead of asking if it’s true, ask yourself if it’s useful to you.” Derek Sivers

Read Write Own – Chris Dixon

Read Write Own: Building the Next Era of the Internet by Chris Dixon
Date read: 5/12/24. Recommendation: 9/10.

Regardless of your views on web3, blockchain, and crypto, this is worth reading. Dixon discusses how the internet evolved, the pitfalls of big tech, and the three types of networks—protocol networks, corporate networks, and blockchains. As he explains, just as internet startups undercut the high prices of traditional businesses, blockchain networks expose the soft underbelly of corporate networks: high take rates. While the future won’t unfold exactly as he details, the book is a useful exercise in challenging ourselves to consider if there’s a better way. One where builders and creators reap more of the rewards from our work and our content, rather than being exploited by large technology companies. Remember, “If it’s free, then you’re the product.”

Check out my notes below or Amazon for details and reviews.

My Notes:

Networks are the killer app of the internet:
Web, email, social apps, payment apps, marketplaces are all networks. 

Pitfalls of Big Tech:
How big tech architects networks: “To restrict and constrain startups, impose high rents on creators, and disenfranchise users. The negative effects of these design choices are threefold: (1) they stifle innovation; (2) they tax creativity; (3) they concentrate power and money in the hands of a few.” Chris Dixon

Facebook and Twitter cut off third-party companies that were building apps on their platforms in the early 2010s. No new startup activity takes place on top of social networks and no new startups have survived because the biggest platforms are anticompetitive.

Anticompetitive: “Amazon learns which products in its marketplaces are top sellers and then undercuts their makers with its own cheap basic versions…It would be as if Target controlled not just its store shelves but also the roads that all stores build on.” Chris Dixon

“If it’s free, then you’re the product.”

Network design:
Network design = the way nodes connect, interact, and form an overarching structure.

“Network design determines outcomes.” Chris Dixon

Three types of networks:
Protocol networks: open systems controlled by communities of software developers and other network stakeholders (email, web). Money and power flow to network edges, incentivizing systems to grow around them.

Corporate networks: owned and controlled by companies, instead of communities (Facebook, Uber, Venmo, etc). Similar to walled gardens that are controlled by a single groundskeeper or a cathedral. Money and power flow to the network center (companies who own the networks) and away from users and developers at network edges. 

Blockchains:  Software that governs a network of hardware devices and establishes inviolable rules, solving for problems where all power and money naturally flow to the middle (as with corporate networks), and better align incentives. Similar to a bazaar, rather than a cathedral or walled garden. “They can connect people in social networks while empowering users over corporate interests. They can underpin marketplaces and payment networks that facilitate commerce, but with persistently lower take rates. They can enable new forms of monetizable media, interoperable and immersive digital worlds, and artificial intelligence products that compensate—rather than cannibalize—creators.” Chris Dixon

“Asking ‘What problems do blockchains solve?’ Is like asking ‘What problems does steel solve over, say, wood?’ You can make a building our railway out of either. But steel gave us taller buildings, stronger railways, and more ambitious public works at the outset of the Industrial Revolution. With blockchains we can create networks that are fairer, more durable, and more resilient than the networks of today.” Chris Dixon

“Networks built on blockchains can combine the best features of prior networks, benefiting builders, creators, and consumers and ushering in a third era of the internet.” Chris Dixon

Blockchains:
“Whereas most technologies tend to automate workers on the periphery doing menial tasks, blockchains automate away the center. Instead of putting the taxi driver out of a job, blockchain puts Uber out of a job and lets the taxi drivers work with the customer directly.” Vitalik Buterin 

“Blockchains are a software abstraction that overlay on top of physical devices. They’re state machines. Just as the meaning of “computers” once shifted from people to machines, so too has the term since encompassed not just hardware but software as well.” Chris Dixon

“Blockchains are by design resilient to manipulation. They are built on top of a network of physical computers that anyone can join, but that is extremely difficult for any one entity to control. These physical computers maintain the state of the virtual computer and control its transitions to new states. In Bitcoin these physical computers are called miners, but the more common term today is ‘validators’ since what they’re really doing is validating state transitions.” Chris Dixon

“Blockchains are useful for enabling coordination among people who don’t have preexisting relationships. They are most useful when they are not just multiplayer but massively multiplayer—in broad use across the internet.” Chris Dixon

Encourage bottom-up, emergent economies: “Token rewards are like land grants, incentives given to contributors for various activities. Tokens confer ownership, enshrining property rights. Take rates are like city taxes, fees the network charges for access and transactions. DAOs are like city governments, responsible for overseeing the development of infrastructure, resolving disputes, and allocating resources to maximize the network’s value.” Chris Dixon

“Blockchains provide a sensible organizational structure for networks. Tokens are the natural asset class.” Chris Dixon

Tokens:
“The read era of the internet was defined by the website which encapsulated information. The read-write era was defined by the post, which encapsulated publishing, making it easy for anyone, not just web developers to reach broad audiences. The internet’s latest phase—read-write-own era—is defined by a new simplifying concept: tokens, which encapsulate ownership.” Chris Dixon

“Blockchains represent a radical departure from the status quo. Through tokens, they flip the script on digital ownership—making users, rather than internet services, owners.” Chris Dixon

“In the physical world, people would be upset if they had to start over whenever they visited a new place. We take for granted that we have a persistent identity and can take objects from place to place. The concept of ownership is so deeply embedded in our lives that it’s difficult to imagine how the world would look if that were taken away. Imagine if the clothes you bought could be worn only in the venue you bought them in. What if you couldn’t resell or reinvest in your house or car? Or what if you had to change your name wherever you went? That is the digital world of corporate networks.” Chris Dixon

“The digital world would be a better place if ownership were as widespread there as it is in the physical world.” Chris Dixon

“Tokens have all earmarks of a disruptive technology. They are multiplayer, like websites and posts, the disruptive computing primitives of earlier internet eras. They become more useful as more people use them—a classic network effect that primes them to be much more than mere playthings. The blockchains that underpin them are also improving at a rapid rate, driven by platform-app feedback loops that generate compound growth. Tokens are programmable, so developers can extend and adapt them for myriad applications, such as social networks, financial systems, media properties, and virtual economies. They are also composable meaning people can reuse and recombine them in different contexts, amplifying their power.” Chris Dixon

Rewarding users for constructive contributions to the network: “Blockchain networks use token incentives to motivate developers.” Chris Dixon

“Tokens provide a new way to skip advertising and acquire customers through peer-to-peer evangelism. Tokens empower individuals to become stakeholders in networks, not just participants.” Chris Dixon

Authentic communities are the best way to go viral: “Bitcoin and Ethereal don’t have companies behind them, let alone marketing budgets, and yet tens of millions of people own their tokens.” Chris Dixon

“Blockchain networks bake community ownership into their core design.” Chris Dixon

Disruptive technologies:
“When disruptive technologies debut, they’re often dismissed as toys because they undershoot user needs.” Chris Dixon

This is the reason Western Union passed on acquiring the phone ; they couldn’t understand how rapidly it would improve and how it would serve its primary customers, businesses, and railroads. And the same thing happened with Dell and Microsoft with smartphones. 

Disruptive technologies are also misaligned with incumbent business models. No startup is going to beat Apple at making or selling better phones. “A more interesting startup idea would be something that makes phones less valuable. This is something Apple is far less likely to pursue.” Chris Dixon

Rise of corporate networks:
Early-mid 2000s everyone was building toward an open web with Web 2.0. Communicating through open APIs to improve the internet experience for users. Then the iPhone debuted, smartphones exploded, and power became concentrated with a select few. By 2013 Americans spent as much of their time on their phones looking at Facebook, as the entire rest of the web. Corporate networks shifted from “attract to extract” model, sacrificing interoperability and open ecosystems. It’s a natural progression, companies generally always do whatever it takes to maximize profits. Otherwise, they die.

Composability:
A property of software that allows smaller pieces to be assembled into larger compositions. “The power of composability is that once a piece of software is written, it never needs to be written again.” Chris Dixon

Composability hasn’t reached its full potential because the rules are constantly changing in corporate networks and developers need financial resources to host and run the software. Blockchain networks provide strong commitments that their prices and access rules won’t change. And the network itself covers its own costs by distributing token rewards to its validators. 

“Blockchain networks turn ‘Don’t be evil’ into ‘Can’t be evil.’ Their architecture provides strong guarantees that their data and code will forever remain open and remixable.” Chris Dixon

Take rates:
“Just as internet startups undercut the high prices of traditional businesses, blockchain networks expose the soft underbelly of corporate networks: high take rates.” Chris Dixon

Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter share almost nothing with network participants, extracting about 99 percent of their networks’ primary revenue source, advertising. Great for their profit margins, but terrible for creators who provide content without reciprocation. 

“Early network participants create significant value for corporate networks, yet they rarely receive fair compensation for their efforts.” Chris Dixon

Popular blockchain networks (Ethereum, Uniswap, OpenSea) have very low take rates (0.06%-2.5%), allowing money to pass directly to network participants (users, developers, creators). 

“Thick networks claim more profits for the center of the network and create thin complementary layers, with lower profits, for creators and software developers. Thin networks do the opposite, generating less profit for the network core and more profit for complements.” Chris Dixon

“Roads should perform basic functions, but you don’t need them to be hotbeds of innovation…On the other hand, you do want lots of creative entrepreneurs building around the roads: creating new shops and restaurants, constructing new buildings, expanding neighborhoods, and so forth. Roads should be thin, and their surrounding should be thick. Social networks should be thin utilities, like roads. They need to support basic features and be reliable, performant, and interoperable. That’s about it. The rest of the features can be built around the network.” Chris Dixon

“The web developed as a thin network—and look at the results. The network itself is a simple protocol (HTTP), and all the innovation happens on top, at the level of websites.” Chris Dixon

“The broader societal goal should be to build new tech stacks where users, creators, and entrepreneurs are not squeezed but rewarded.” Chris Dixon

Counter arguments:
“A reasonable skeptic might doubt the viability of a specific network or whether the world needs blockchain networks at all. Maybe the internet has enough networks. Maybe corporate networks are sufficient and will keep winning, either because users are too locked in already or because they’ll always outcompete blockchains in areas like user experience.” Chris Dixon

Future:
“In 2007, the big question for mobile was, what kinds of mobile apps would matter? Today the big question for blockchains is, what kinds of blockchain networks will matter? Blockchain infrastructure only recently matured enough to support internet-scale applications. The industry is likely now nearing the end of its incubation phase and entering its growth phase. It is a good time to be asking what a killer blockchain network might look like.” Chris Dixon

“For the internet to be an accelerator of deep creativity, it needs a better economic engine. Creating new jobs isn’t just nice; it’s necessary. As new technologies like AI automate work, social networks can be a counterweight that provides people with fulfilling career opportunities.” Chris Dixon

How to Live – Derek Sivers

How to Live: 27 conflicting answers and one weird conclusion by Derek Sivers
Date read: 5/3/24. Recommendation: 9/10.

True to form, Derek Sivers offers a succinct, thought-provoking read that examines conflicting philosophies. The book considers independence AND commitment, orienting yourself toward the future AND placing greater value on what has endured, focusing on the immediate seconds in front of you AND thinking super-long-term. In the end, living well is about balance and holding competing ideas in mind.

Check out my notes below or Derek’s website to see top highlights and grab your copy.

My Notes:

Self-sufficiency:
“Whoever you blame has power over you, so blame only yourself.”

“You can’t be free without self-mastery.”

“If you are proud of what you made, it was a success.”

Commitment:
“You can stop seeking the best option. Pick one and irreversibly commit.” 

“When you can’t change your situation, you change your attitude towards it.”

“Enthusiasm is common. Endurance is rare.”

Trust:
“Trust helps your happiness more than income or health.”

“Be absolutely honest with everyone. Stop lying, completely. You lie when you’re afraid. You live to avoid consequences. Always say the truth. Take the painful consequences.” 

Stillness:
“In your most peaceful moments, your mind is quiet. You’re not thinking you should be doing anything else.”

“There’s no deeper happiness than wanting nothing.”

Perspective:
Loosen the grip your current concerns have over you: “A year from now, will it be important? Ten years from now? Zoom out as far as you need to make it unimportant. Then you’re free of it.”

Challenge:
“Striving makes you happy. Pursuit is the opposite of depression.” 

“Everything good comes from some kind of pain. Muscle fatigue makes you healthy and strong. The pain of practice leads to mastery. Difficult conversations save your relationships.” 

“Wealth brings the pain of responsibility. Fame brings the pain of expectations. Love brings the pain of attachment. If you avoid pain, you avoid what you really want.” 

Seek discomfort: “The softer the chair, the harder it is to get out of it.”

Communication:
“To communicate clearly, you have to think clearly. Writing is refined thinking.”

“Small talk is just a way of matching the other person’s tone and mood. It helps them be comfortable with you.”

“Whenever you’re thinking something nice about someone, tell them.”

Fulfillment:
“Shallow happy is what you want now. Deep happy is what you want most.”

“Shallow happy is trying to conquer the world. Deep happy is conquering yourself.”

Momentum:
“Don’t be the dragon in the mountain, just sitting on your gold. Don’t lose momentum in life. Once you’ve done it, take it with you and do something else.”

“Jump into action without hesitation or worry. You’ll be faster and do more than everyone else. What takes them a month will take you an hour, so you can do it ten times a day.” 

Create:
“The way to live is to create. Die empty. Get every idea out of your head and into reality.”

“Most people die with everything still inside of them.”

“Which would you rather be? Someone who hasn’t created anything in years because you’re so busy consuming? Or someone who hasn’t consumed anything in years because you’re so busy creating?”

“Originality just means hiding your sources.”

Moderation:
“Balancing everything is how to live.”

Relentless – Tim Grover

Relentless by Tim S. Grover
Date read: 3/4/24. Recommendation: 8/10.

Having trained and worked with some of the greatest athletes for decades—Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, Dwayne Wade—Grover details their mindsets, how they operate, and what drives them. The common thread between top performers is that they’re relentless, ruthless, and trust their instincts. It’s a great counter to many of today’s popular self-help books that talk about reducing stress, embracing slow productivity, and maintaining balance. Grover shares insightful, counterintuitive advice on running towards stress, imposing your standards, and seeking respect over friendship. Not for everyone, but if you’re in the mood for a book about cultivating a killer mindset, check this one out.

Check out my notes below or Amazon for details and reviews.

My Notes:

On criticism that his book isn’t prescriptive enough:
“‘It doesn’t tell you what to do.’ That is 100 percent accurate. Why should anyone want to be told what to do? The whole point of this book is that in order to be successful, to truly have what you want in your life, you must stop waiting to be told what to do and how to do it. Your goals, your decisions, your commitment. If you can’t see the end result, how can anyone else see it for you?” Tim Grover

Trusting yourself:
Working with NBA legends: “He flew two thousand miles to hear these two words: Don’t think.” Tim Grover

“This book is about following those instincts, facing the truth, and getting rid of the excuses that stand between you and your goals.” Tim Grover

“Here’s the key: I’m not going to tell you how to change. People don’t change. I want you to trust who you already are…” Tim Grover

“When you become too focused on what’s going on around you, you lose touch with what’s going on deep inside you.” Tim Grover

Standards:
“From this point, your strategy is to make everyone else get on your level; you’re not going down to theirs. You’re not competing with anyone else, ever again. They’re going to have to compete with you.” Tim Grover

“Physical dominance can make you great. Mental dominance is what ultimately makes you unstoppable.” Tim Grover

Cleaners:
Most intense, driven competitors. Refuse limitations. Do whatever it takes. Addiction to success defines you.

“Why do I call them Cleaners? Because they take responsibility for everything. When something goes wrong, they don’t blame others because they never really count on anyone else to get the job done in the first place.” Tim Grover

Dark side:
“Cleaners have a dark side, and a zone you can’t enter. They get what they want, but they pay for it in solitude. Excellence is lonely. They never stop working, physically or mentally, because it gives them too much time to think about what they’ve had to endure or sacrifice to get to the top.” Tim Grover

All Cleaners have slow-burning anger, but it never becomes blind rage. Channel this into results, staying steady and unemotional. Get to work. 

“A Cleaner thinks, if I’m feeling nervous, how the fuck are they feeling? They have to deal with me.” Tim Grover

Pressure:
“Most people run from stress. I run to it. Stress keeps you sharp, it challenges you in ways you never imagined and forces you to solve issues and manage situations that send weaker people running for cover. You can’t succeed without it. Your level of success is defined by how well you embrace it and manage it.” Tim Grover

“Everyone wants to cut back on stress, because stress kills. I say bullshit. Stress is what brings you to life. Let it motivate you, make you work harder. Use it, don’t run from it.” Tim Grover

Presence:
“The loudest guy in the room is the one with the most to prove, and no way to prove it. A Cleaner has no need to announce his presence; you’ll know he’s there by the way he carries himself.” Tim Grover

Respect, not friendship: “Kobe rarely goes out with teammates, he’d rather work out or watch game film. And he’d much rather have your respect than your friendship. Michael was the same, so was Bird. They relied on their small inner circles of trusted friends—not teammates—who didn’t need to be entertained or impressed.” Tim Grover

Make your own decisions:
“To Cleaners, trusting others is the same as giving up control, and they usually have a painfully hard time with that. Cleaners have this in common: at some point they learned they could only trust themselves…it forced them to rely on the sheer power of their gut instinct, and they realized that to survive and succeed, they could never take their hands off the wheel.” Tim Grover

“Michael was insistent on handling his own responsibilities. He didn’t wait for a security guy or a driver or a stylist or a ticket manager to take care of things; he took care of things himself. I’m always amazed to see superstars who can’t do anything on their own; they hand over all of their responsibilities to others, and then they’re surprised when they don’t get the results they wanted.” Tim Grover

The truth is simple:
“The truth is simple. It requires no explanation, analysis, rationale, or excuse; it’s just a simple statement that leaves no doubt…But highly successful people rarely get to hear the truth; they’re surrounded by assistants and security and aides and the PHDs who go to tremendous lengths to keep their place in the circle of trust by managing the truth, shoveling polite opinions and puffy compliments, and generally keeping the boss happy.” Tim Grover

Same as Ever – Morgan Housel

Same as Ever by Morgan Housel
Date read: 1/29/24. Recommendation: 8/10.

People are obsessed with trying to predict the future. In Same as Ever, Morgan Housel cautions us against trying to predict specific events and instead focus on predicting people’s behaviors, which have remained the same for thousands of years. We still respond to fear, greed, uncertainty, and social persuasion in the same ways that we always have. If we want to understand a rapidly changing world, it’s far more effective to focus on what stays the same. Each of the 23 short stories in this book offers a different framework to help us understand risks, consider opportunities, and build more meaningful lives. We would all benefit from spending more time reflecting on the wisdom we’ve earned through our past.

Check out my notes below or Amazon for details and reviews.

My Notes:

Focus of the book:
Base predictions on people’s behaviors, not specific events. “Predicting what the world will look like fifty years from now is impossible. But predicting that people will still respond to greed, fear, opportunity, exploitation, risk, uncertainty, tribal affiliations, and social persuasion in the same way is a bet I’d take.” Morgan Housel

In victory, know when to stop:
“An important life skill is getting the goalpost to stop moving. It’s also one of the hardest.” Morgan Housel

Moderation:
“Money buys happiness in the same way drugs bring pleasure: incredible if done right, dangerous if used to mask a weakness, and disastrous when no amount is enough.” Morgan Housel

Challenging assumptions:
“You gotta challenge all assumptions. If you don’t, what is doctrine on day one becomes dogma forever after.” John Boyd

Evaluate probabilities and play to the 51%:
“Most people get that certainty is rare, and the best you can do is make decisions in which the odds are in your favor….But few people actually use probability in the real world, especially when judging others’ success.” Morgan Housel

Uncertainty blinds us:
People claim they want an accurate understanding of the future. But this is a lie. They want certainty. And they will ignore reality to get here. 

“We need to believe we live in a predictable, controllable world, so we turn to authoritative-sounding people who promise to satisfy that need.” Morgan Housel

Patience + scarcity:
“Most great things in life—from love to careers to investing—gain their value from two things: patience and scarcity. Patience to let something grow, and scarcity to admire what it grows into.” Morgan Housel

It’s supposed to be hard:
Pain is a necessary, important part of life. The more you come to accept this, rather than always seeking shortcuts, the better off you’ll be.

Seinfeld on getting asked if he could have outsourced writing to a consulting company like McKinsey to keep the show going: “If you’re efficient, you’re doing it the wrong way. The right way is the hard way. The show was successful because I micromanaged it—every word, every line, every take, every edit, every casting.” 

“If you can get your work life to where you enjoy half of it, that is amazing. Very few people ever achieve that.” Jeff Bezos

Margin of safety:
“The purpose of the margin of safety is to render the forecast unnecessary.” Benjamin Graham

Master of Change – Brad Stulberg

Master of Change by Brad Stulberg
Date read: 1/22/24. Recommendation: 9/10.

The modern self-help twist on Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s Antifragile. Stulberg explores “rugged flexibility,” arming readers with the mindset they need to navigate a rapidly changing world and thrive in, rather than resist, life’s instability. The result is a similar concept to antifragility but packaged in a way that’s more accessible than Taleb’s framing. Stulberg offers readers a system for embracing change and leans on stories from artists, athletes, and scientists to bring his ideas to life.

Check out my notes below or Amazon for details and reviews.

My Notes:

Adaptation:
“In the vast majority of situations, healthy systems do not rigidly resist change; rather, they adapt to it, moving forward with grace and grit.” Brad Stulberg

Allostasis: Stability through change. Term coined by Peter Sterling (neuroscientist) and Jospeh Eyer (biologist).

“Following disorder, living systems crave stability, but they achieve that stability somewhere new.” Brad Stulberg

Rugged flexibility:
Stulberg’s equivalent of Nassim Taleb’s “antifragility.” See Antifragile book notes for references.

Applies non-dual thinking to stability and change: “To be rugged is to be tough, determined, and durable. To be flexible is to consciously respond to altered circumstances or conditions, to adapt and bend easily without breaking.” Brad Stulberg

“This is rugged flexibility, the quality you need to become a master of change, to successfully navigate disorder and chaos and endure over the long haul.” Brad Stulberg

Resisting change:
“Remember, life is change. If you fear change, then, in many ways, you fear life—and chronic fear becomes toxic both in self and in the culture at large.” Brad Stulberg

Reality is your friend:
“Once you accept something as an immutable reality in the present moment, you give yourself to stop wishing it away or trying to manipulate it on your terms. This allows you to direct all of your energy toward acceptance and moving forward.” Brad Stulberg

Dopamine Nation – Anna Lembke

Dopamine Nation by Anna Lembke
Date read: 1/3/24. Recommendation: 8/10.

Dopamine Nation is categorized as a clinical psychology book, and it is certainly that, offering strategies for those struggling with addiction, depression, and anxiety. But it’s equal parts philosophy. Lembke reflects on the modern world where we have constant access to high-reward, high-dopamine stimuli—everything from social media and news to drugs and food. And she offers a refreshing perspective, challenging us to embrace pain and its importance in our lives, rather than numbing ourselves at the first sign of discomfort. As her book notes, our obsession with empathy has run wild and must be paired with accountability if we want to drive lasting change and live more balanced lives.

Check out my notes below or Amazon for details and reviews.

My Notes:

I do whatever I want, whenever I want:
“Over the past three decades, I have seen growing numbers of patients like David and Kevin who appear to have every advantage in life—supportive facilities, quality education, financial stability, good health—yet developing debilitating anxiety, depression, and physical pain. Not only are they not functioning to their potential; they’re barely able to get out of bed in the morning.” Anna Lembke

Pain is necessary:
“Prior to the 1900s, doctors believe some degree of pain was healthy….By contrast, doctors today are expected to eliminate all pain lest they fail their role as compassionate healers. Pain in any form is considered dangerous, not just because it hurts but also because it’s thought to kindle the brain for future pain by leaving a neurological wound that never heals.” Anna Lembke

We spend our entire lives running from pain and even the slightest discomfort, trying to distract ourselves each step of the way. 

“The reason we’re all so miserable may be because we’re working so hard to avoid being miserable.” Anna Lembke

“Pain to treat pain. Anxiety to treat anxiety.” Anna Lembke

“What if, instead of seeking oblivion by escaping from the world, we turn toward it? What if instead of leaving the world behind, we immerse ourselves in it?” Anna Lembke

Assuming responsibility: 
Victim narrative: “Patients who tell stories in which they are frequently the victim, seldom bearing responsibility for bad outcomes, are often unwell and remain unwell. They are too busy blaming others to get down to the business of their own recovery. By contrast, when my patients start telling stories that accurately portray their responsibility, I know they’re getting better.” Anna Lembke

“One of the jobs of good psychotherapy is to help people tell healing stories…We as mental health care providers have become so caught up in the practice of empathy that we’ve lost sight of the fact that empathy without accountability is a shortsighted attempt to relieve suffering.” Anna Lembke

“But if the therapist can help the patient take responsibility if not for the event itself, then for how they react to it in the here and now, that patient is empowered to move forward with their life.” Anna Lembke

The Wright Brothers by David McCullough

The Wright Brothers by David McCullough
Date read: 5/20/23. Recommendation: 9/10.

Another favorite by one of the best biographers—David McCullough. The Wright Brothers tells the fascinating story of an unlikely duo—Wilbur and Orville Wright—who defied the odds with limited resources and connections to become the first to master human-controlled flight. It’s an incredible tale of humble beginnings, resourcefulness, calculated risks, and seeking meaning over influence. While the Wright brothers faced competitors who poured upwards of $100,000 into failed experiments in aviation, all said and done, the Wright brothers spent a little less than $1,000 in their efforts, all self-funded through their bicycle shop in Dayton, Ohio. Great lessons on the advantage held by outsiders—when you don’t have to play by the same rules or face the same level of obligations or pressure that industry insiders might, you operate with a level of freedom and flexibility that drives innovation. Brilliant biography and well worth your time.

Check out my notes below or Amazon for details and reviews.

My Notes:

Beginnings:
“What the two had in common above all was unity of purpose and unyielding determination. They had set themselves on a ‘mission.’” DM

“The Wright family book collection, however, was neither modest nor commonplace. Bishop Wright, a lifelong lover of books, heavily championed the limitless value of reading.” DM

“But it isn’t true to say we had no special advantages…the greatest thing in our favor was growing up in a family where there was always much encouragement to intellectual curiosity.” Orville Wright

Wright Cycle Company:
In the spring of 1893 Wilbur and Orville opened their first small bicycle shop selling and repairing bicycles. By 1895 they were selling about 150 bicycles per year. They soon began making their own bicycles which sold for $65 and the model was called the Van Cleve.

Bicycles were the sensation of the time but were proclaimed morally hazardous. “Because of bicycles, it was said, young people were not spending the time they should with books, and more seriously that suburban and country tours on bicycles were not ‘infrequently accompanied by seductions.’” DM

Even after they became interested in flight, they kept the bicycle shop going so they had a steady source of income to pay for their own experiments. Octave Chaunte tried to talk them out of it and offered to provide financial assistance to the brothers but they were unwilling to accept. 

Sharpened ice skates (15 cents each) during the winter to create additional income at the shop. 

Early inquiries into human flight:
1899 Wilbur wrote to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington requesting documents or books on the subject. The Smithsonian sent a generous supply of pamphlets on aviation. Wilbur and Orville started studying. 

“In the Summer of 1899, in a room above the bicycle shop on West Third Street, the brothers began building their first aircraft, a flying kite made of split bamboo and paper with a wingspan of five feet. It was a biplane with double wings, one over the other…” DM

“On May 13, 1900, Wilbur wrote a letter to Octave Chanute—his first letter to the eminent engineer—asking for advice on a location where he might conduct flying experiments, somewhere without rain or inclement weather and, Wilbur said, where sufficient winds could be counted on, winds, say, of 15 miles per hour. The only such sites he knew of, Chaunte replied, were in California and Florida, but both were ‘deficient in sand hills’ for soft landings.” DM

“In an answer to an inquiry Wilbur sent the United States Weather Bureau in Washington about prevailing winds around the country, they were provided extensive records of monthly wind velocities at more than a hundred Weather Bureau stations, enough for them to take particular interest in a remote spot on the Outer Banks of North Carolina called Kitty Hawk, some seven hundred miles from Dayton….To be certain Kitty Hawk was the right choice, Wilbur wrote to the head of the Weather Bureau station there, who answered reassuringly about steady winds and sand beaches. As could be plainly seen by looking at a map, Kitty Hawk also offered all the isolation one might wish for to carry on experimental work in privacy.” DM

The first full-sized glider they would ship to Kitty Hawk and reassemble cost $15 and had a wingspan of 18 feet. 

They were relentless in their work ethic, never sat still. During times that they were in Dayton working at their bicycle shop during the day, they would work every single night on their scientific investigations into human flight. Built a wind tunnel in the back of the bicycle shop. 

Calculated risks: 
“The man who wishes to keep at the problem long enough to really learn anything positively must not take dangerous risks. Carelessness and overconfidence are usually more dangerous than deliberately accepted risks.” Wilbur Wright

Never flew together for this reason. They knew how dangerous it was to fly. If one was killed, the other would have to be on the ground to carry on the work. 

Competition:
Samuel Langley, eminent astronomer and head of the Smithsonian. One of the most well-respected scientists in the nation. “His efforts in recent years, backed by substantial Smithsonian funding, had resulted in a strange-looking, steam-powered, pilotless ‘aerodrome,’ as he called it, with V-shaped wings in front and back that gave it the look of a monstrous dragonfly. Launched by catapult from the roof of a houseboat on the Potomac River in 1896, the year of Lilienthal’s death, it flew more than half a mile before plunging into the water.” DM

Langley maintained extreme secrecy about his efforts. Cost $70,000 to build an airship called “The Great Aerodome.” $50,000 was public money—Smithsonian resources and grants from the US War Department. Langley, Graham Bell, and other friends contributed $20,000 of their own money. Could only fly in perfectly calm weather. When it came time to launch a public demonstration it was launched 1,000 feet then came crashing into the Potomac River. On his next attempt, its wings crumbled, it flipped backward, and plunged into the river 20 feet from where it was launched on a houseboat. The experiment had covered more than 8 years, was a complete failure, and didn’t advance human flight in the slightest. 

“Neither brother was ever to make critical or belittling comments about Langley. Rather, they expressed respect and gratitude for the part he had played in their efforts. Just knowing that the head of the Smithsonian, the most prominent scientific institution in America, believed in the possibility of human flight was one of the influences that led them to proceed with their work.” DM

Dozens of other engineers, scientists, and thinkers had tried to tackle the problem of controlled flight: Sir George Cayley, Sir Hiram Maxim (machine gun), Alexander Graham Bell, and Thomas Edison. None had succeeded. “Hiram Maxim had reportedly spent $100,000 of his own money on a giant, steam-powered, pilotless flying machine only to see it crash in attempting to take off.” DM

As outsiders, the Wright brothers faced less pressure, had less to lose than some of the aforementioned figures. 

What the Wright brothers learned in their early experiments was that so many of the long-established, supposedly reliable calculations and tables prepared by early authorities in aviation were blatantly wrong and couldn’t be trusted. 

Later expeditions to Kitty Hawk:
Fall of 1902, had a third iteration of their glider. In two months, made nearly a thousand glides and resolved the last major control problem. “All the time and effort given to the wind tunnel tests, the work designing and building their third machine, and the latest modifications made at Kill Devil Hills had proven entirely successful. They knew exactly the importance of what they had accomplished. They knew they had solved the problem of flight and more. They had acquired the knowledge and the skill to fly. They could soar, they could float, they could dive and rise, circle and glide and land, all with assurance. Now they had only to build a motor.” DM

In December of 1903, Wilbur made the first successful powered flight and flew a quarter mile through the air in 59 seconds.

“It had taken four years. They had endured violent storms, accidents, one disappointment after another, public indifference or ridicule, and clouds of demon mosquitoes. To get to and from their remote sand dune testing ground, they had made five round-trips from Dayton (counting Orville’s return home to see about stronger propeller shafts), a total of seven thousand miles by train, all to fly a little more than half a mile. No matter. They had done it.” DM

Resourcefulness + Scrappiness:
“The Langley project had cost nearly $70,000, the greater part of it public money, whereas the brothers’ total expenses for everything from 1900 to 1903, including materials and travel to and from Kitty Hawk, came to a little less than $1,000, a sum paid entirely from the modest profits of their bicycle business.” DM

“It wasn’t luck that made them fly; it was hard work and common sense; they put their whole heart and soul and all their energy into an idea and they had the faith.” John T. Daniels 

“No bird soars in a calm.” Wilbur Wright

“All the money anyone needs is just enough to prevent one from being a burden to others.” Bishop Wright

Reception:
At first, no one believed they had actually flown in their machine or they were completely disinterested—the public, the US press, and the US government. “Few took any interest in the matter or in the two brothers who were to become Dayton’s greatest heroes ever. Even those riding the interurban line (past Huffman Prairie) seem to have paid little or no attention to what could occasionally be seen in passing, or to the brothers themselves as they traveled back and forth from town on the same trolley looking little different from other commuters.” DM

Dayton papers didn’t break the story or report on successful flights, but a local beekeeper, Amos Root, who ran a trade journal, Gleanings in Bee Culture, was the first to report the story and recognize the genius of what they had done. Root sent a copy to the editor of the Scientific American saying it could be reprinted at no cost—they ignored it. 

Transition to Huffman Prairie:
Practice field near Dayton, decided since they had the concept down for their flying machine, they would reduce costs of travel and shipment by staying closer to home to continue to master the art of launching themselves safely into the air, banking, turning a motor-propelled machine, and landing safely. 

The brothers finally generated interest as people began to witness demonstrations of the machine firsthand. Only after this did the Dayton press finally catch on. 

“By the time the experiments ended, the brothers had made 105 ‘starts’ at Huffman Prairie and thought it time now to put their creation, Flyer III on the market.” DM

By the end of their time at Huffman Prairie, they were making controlled flights of 25 miles or more. 

Seek meaning over influence:
When Wilbur was in France, preparing to demonstrate the flying machine, and getting pressure from the reporters to fly before he was ready: “I did not ask you to come here. I shall go out when I’m ready. No, I shall not try to mislead you newspaper men, but if you are not here I shall not wait for you.” DM

After his first successful flight (2 miles, 2 minutes in the air): “Then, very calmly, his face beaming with a smile, he put his hands in his pockets and walked off whistling. That night, while the normally sleepy town of Le Mans celebrated, the hero retired early to his shed.” DM

“That summer Saturday in Le Mans, France, not quite eight years into the new twentieth century, one American. Pioneer had at last presented to the world the miracle he and his brother had created on their own and in less than two minutes demonstrated for all who were present and to an extent no one yet had on anywhere on earth, that a new age had begun.” DM

On Wilbur’s strength of character: “In spite of the sarcastic remarks and the mockery, in spite of the traps set up from everywhere all these years, he has not faltered. He is sure of himself, of his genius, and he kept his secret. He had the desire to participate today to prove to the world he had not lied.” Léon Delagrange

“He went his way always in his own way, never showing off, never ever playing to the crowd. ‘The impatience of a hundred thousand persons would not accelerate the rhythm of his stride.’” DM

The Anthropocene Reviewed – John Greene

The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet by John Greene
Date read: 5/7/23. Recommendation: 8/10.

Huge fan of John Greene’s writing—he’s hilarious, witty, and I wish I could write half as well as he’s able to. In The Anthropocene Reviewed, he reviews different aspects of contemporary humanity, from Halley’s Comet and Diet Dr. Pepper to the Indianapolis 500 and the Internet, on a five-star scale. Each chapter is insightful and entertaining, I loved his perspective on purpose, excess, belonging, and perception.

Check out my notes below or Amazon for details and reviews.

My Notes:

Finding meaning:
“Pay attention to what you pay attention to. That’s pretty much all the info you need.” Amy Krouse Rosenthal

Excess:
“Gatsby is a critique of the American Dream. The only people who end up rich or successful in the novel are the ones who start out that way. Almost everyone else ends up dead or destitute. And it’s a critique of the kind of vapid capitalism that can’t find anything more interesting to do with money than try to make more of it. The book lays bare the carelessness of the entitled rich—the kind of people who buy puppies but won’t take care of dogs, or who purchase vast libraries of books but never read any of them.” John Greene

“Like ice on a hot stove, we must ride on a melting Earth, all the while knowing who is melting it. A species that has only ever found its way to more must now find its way to less.” John Greene

Belonging:
Home is not a place, but a moment: “Home wasn't a set house, or a single town on a map. It was wherever the people who loved you were, whenever you were together. Not a place, but a moment, and then another, building on each other like bricks to create a solid shelter that you take with you for your entire life, wherever you may go.” Sarah Dessen

Evolving: “One of the strange things about adulthood is that you are your current self, but you are also all the selves you used to be, the ones you grew out of but can’t ever quite get rid of.” John Greene

Perception:
“I honestly believe it is better to know nothing than to know what ain’t so.” Josh Billings

“We do not see things as they are, we see them as we are.” Anais Nin

Focus on your work:
Embrace the quiet: “Being busy is a way of being loud.” John Greene

“I’ve often wished—especially when I was younger—that my work was better, that it rose to the level of genius, that I could write well enough to make something worth remembering. But I think that way of imagining art might make individuals too important. Maybe in the end art and life are more like the world’s largest ball of paint. You carefully choose your colors, and then you add your layer as best you can. In time, it gets painted over. The ball gets painted and painted again until there is no visible remnant of your paint. And eventually, maybe nobody knows about it except for you. But that doesn’t mean your layer of paint is irrelevant or a failure. You have permanently, if slightly, changed the larger sphere. You’ve made it more beautiful and more interesting.” John Greene

Showdown: Thurgood Marshall and the Supreme Court Nomination That Changed America – Wil Haygood

Showdown: Thurgood Marshall and the Supreme Court Nomination That Changed America by Wil Haygood
Date read: 5/4/23. Recommendation: 9/10.

The incredible story of one of the great Civil Rights leaders who worked within the law to fight for equal rights by battling discrimination and legal segregation in America’s courtrooms. Haygood is a brilliant writer and biographer, breathing life into the reality of atrocities that Thurgood Marshall faced—both in his nomination to the Supreme Court and subsequent hearings, as well as his decades traveling across courtrooms in the American South. Marshall is an incredible example of how to work within a system that’s built against you to drive lasting change. He was dignified when others tried to humiliate him and always kept himself steady, rising above attacks on his character and fighting for the right and moral side of history. Cannot recommend this book enough, one of my favorite biographies that I’ve ever read.

Check out my notes below or Amazon for details and reviews.

My Notes:

NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund:
“In 1940, Thurgood Marshall—who had joined the NAACP as a lawyer four years earlier after working at a barely-making-it law practice in his native Baltimore—came up with an idea to form a permanent legal arm of the NAACP. It was known as the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, and its mission was clear: to assault discrimination and legal segregation in America’s courtrooms.” Wil Haygood

Landmark court victories:

• Smith v. Allwright: 1944 case that outlawed the all-white Democratic primary in Texas.

• Shelley v. Kraemer: 1948 case that ruled it was illegal to bar minorities from purchasing property even if the homeowner had written it into the clause of the deed.

• Sweatt v. Painter: 1950 case that ordered the University of Texas to admit a black man it had previously barred from its law school.

• Brown v. Board of Education: 1954 case that outlawed the separate-but-equal doctrine that had been the law of the land and ordered the desegregation of public schools.

“There was not another lawyer in America whose constitutional victories could match Thurgood Marshall’s in the arena of equal rights.” Wil Haygood

As an advocate, Marshall won in the Supreme Court on 29 out of 34 occasions. 

Supreme Court nomination:
President Lyndon B. Johnson nominated Marshall as the first black man to sit on the U.S. Supreme Court on June 13, 1967. Marshall had been a federal appeals court judge and was the current solicitor general. LBJ “aimed to emancipate the nation’s legal system by aiming for the very top of it.” Wil Haygood

“Thurgood Marshall had been considered Public Enemy No. 1 in the South because of his court victories upending many of the laws of segregation. With Johnson’s looming nomination of Marshall, it was as if the president were hammering the final nail into the coffin of white supremacy.” Wil Haygood

Nomination hearings:
Nomination hearings in front of of the Senate Judiciary Committee began on July 13th, 1967 in room 2228 of the New Senate Office Building. 

Senators from the South went on the attack…John McClellan, Arkansas Senator, was hellbent on destroying Marshall, since Marshall was responsible for Brown v. Board of Education which embarrassed McClellan’s state. During hearings, McClellan referred to black Americans as an ‘enemy of our security.’ McClellan had privately told his constituents that he would do all he could to stop Marshall from reaching the high court. 

Southern Senators aimed to put Thurgood Marshall “in crosshairs of the civil unrest taking place on American streets and at city halls and on all those college campuses.”

James Eastland, Mississippi Senator and chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, was also committed to doing everything in his power to keep Marshall from taking his seat on the US Supreme Court. He waited until the last minute to tell the White House when the hearings would begin, hoping to limit their preparation time. Eastland had another senator look for links between Marshall and the Communist Party. Eastland had once stood on the floor of the US Senator and thundered that “the Negro race is an inferior race.” He also once said that Mississippians would “protect and maintain white supremacy throughout eternity.” He also said that “If it came to fighting, I’d fight for Mississippi against the United States, even if it meant going out into the street and shooting Negroes.” Eastland was committed to stopping the pursuit of equality. And earlier in his career, he assailed black soldiers serving in WWII as failures in combat. 

By the time the third day of confirmation hearings began, Marshall had been subjected to more hours of questioning than any other nominee in history. Eastland did not provide a timeline of when they might end, attempting to rattle Marshall. 

On the fourth day, Strom Thurmond, the Senator from South Carolina, went on the attack. Thurmond had launched his Senate campaign in response to the Brown decision. Later he helped launched a weeks-long filibuster against the 1964 Civil Rights Act. And at one point in time, he was the presidential candidate for the whites-only Dixiecrat party. “And now in 1967, Strom Thurmond had to endure the 1960s having streamrolled his life and his beloved South.” Thurmond lit into Marshall about the thirteenth amendment, as well as interracial relationships. Later, it was revealed, that when Thurmond was 62 he had carried on an affair with a black woman, Carrie Butler, who worked for his family and was only 16 years old.

Eastland later called up a witness opposed to Marshall. Michael D. Jaffe, counsel to a company known as Liberty Lobby which was formed in the shadow of McCarthyism and was accused of anti-Semitism and a fascination with the teachings of Hitler. Its two biggest supporters were Senator Strom Thurmond and Mississippi Supreme Court Justice Tom Brady. Jaffe claimed Marshall had associations with organizations of subversive nature. 

After day five, Eastland announced he would call no more hearings. He ended them before giving a chance for Marshall’s allies on the committee to speak on his behalf. “In the nation’s history, a Supreme Court nominee had never appeared in person before a committee as long as Thurgood Marshall.” Wil Haygood

August 11—Eastland announced the committee had completed its hearing process and was ready to issue its report on Marshall’s nomination. Now it was up to the full Senate. The majority report (senators favoring Marshall) issued 3.5 pages emphasizing how he had been at the forefront of assisting black citizens in asserting their right to vote and share in constitutional rights, and how he had shown that progress can be achieved within the framework of American democracy and law. The minority report was 6x longer and scathing, ripping Marshall for judicial activism, the subjugation of federal powers, and compromising the sacredness of the Constitution.

On August 30th, 1967, more than a month after the Marshall hearings had ended, the Senate conned to vote on the nomination of Marshall to the Supreme Court. There was just a single black, male senator—Edward Brooke—and a single female senator—Margaret Chase Smith—in the entire Senate. 

The final tally stood at 69-11. Marshall was going to join the U.S. Supreme Court. LBJ had convinced twenty segregationists to refrain from voting so it was closer than it looked. 

“Let me take this opportunity to affirm my deep faith in this Nation and its people, and to pledge that I shall be ever mindful of my obligation to the Constitution and to the goal of equal justice under the law.” Thurgood Marshall

Marshall had been put through an ordeal by committee. Fred P. Graham wrote that “the present procedures serve only as punishment to a future justice by political enemies.” “Marshall was the first nominee to undergo such an extensive grilling face-to-face, and his hearings created a new level of senatorial inquiry. And once those senators smelled blood, it only pushed them deeper and deeper. A year after the Marshall hearing, the Senate blocked Justice Abe Fortas from ascending to the position of chief justice.” Wil Haygood

Confirmation hearings became partisan battles that were televised and played on repeat across news outlets across the world. 

Civil Rights Movement:
In 1964, more than 20,000 citizens had been arrested in the South following protests for racial equality. In 1965, more than 36 churches had been firebombed by segregationists in Mississippi. 

“Charlie Houston, the dean (at Howard University Law School), had studied the plight of the Negro lawyer in America, studied it and gathered statistics, and those statistics were stark and indisputable. He would constantly remind his students of the crisis confronting the Negro lawyer. Houston discovered ‘there are not more than 100 Negro lawyers in the South devoting full-time to practice: 100 Negro layers to care for the rights and interests of 9,000,000 Southern Negroes or approximately one Negro lawyer to every 90,000 Negroes.’” Wil Haygood

“Thurgood Marshall lived in a realistic and gritty world. And he had gone into dangerous southern towns at night. And lived to tell about it. Negroes would tell you Thurgood Marshall was Atticus Finch before Atticus Finch.” Wil Haygood

Brown v. Board of Education:
Fall of 1957, nine black schoolchildren tried to desegregate Little Rock Central High School and were stopped by a mob of angry whites yelling profanities, spitting, and throwing rocks. “Reporters on the scene to cover the story were chased and bloodied by the mobs. This forced President Dwight Eisenhower to go into military mode and dispatch troops to protect the children. The troops had to remain at path school watching over the black children for an entire year. Little Rock was thus seared into the nation’s psyche as mean and bigoted. 

Smith v. Allwright:
Lonnie Smith tried to vote in Houston. He was denied a ballot by the Houston election Judge S.E. Allwright. Marshall met with Smith and filed a complaint on his behalf. The case made its way to the Supreme Court. “Thurgood Marshall had never appeared before the justices of the US Supreme Court of any case approaching this magnitude. And in reality, if he were to reach that hallowed courtroom to take on Texas, he’d be taking on all the states below the Mason-Dixon Line, because they had punishing white primary systems of their own.” Wil Haygood

“Marshall opened by telling the justices what he had been saying all along: that the Texas primary simply undermined Negro voting no matter how state officials argued otherwise.” Wil Haygood

“The Texas attorney general, Gerald Mann, as expected, argued that the earlier ruling supporting Texas did not violate any of the constitutional amendments being debated. The justices, at the conclusion of the arguments, had to ponder a question: Does the constitution embrace ‘private’ discrimination?” Wil Haygood

Landmark 8-1 decision ruled on behalf of Smith and was a profound voting rights victory for the NAACP. The court wrote, “The United States is a constitutional democracy. Its organic law grants to all citizens a right to participate in the choice of elected officials without restriction by any state because of race. This grant to the people of the opportunity for choice is not to be nullified by a state through casting its electoral process in a form which permits a private organization to practice racial discrimination in the election.”

Southern states continued to impose poll taxes, literacy tests, harassment, and physical brutality to deter black Americans from voting. 

30k black votes were registered in 1940. In 1947, three years after the case, there were 100k. “Before 1964, only 22 percent of Negroes were registered to tote throughout the American South. Yes, there was the Smith decision, but fear remained; voting rights activists still fell dead from gunfire.” Wil Haygood

Supreme Court:
“During his twenty-four years on the Supreme Court, Thurgood Marshall remained unerringly true to his principles. His concurring opinions and dissents echoed his beliefs about the First Amendment and equality.” Wil Haygood

“Thurgood Marshall wrote 322 majority opinions while on the high court. They delved from freedom of speech to the death penalty, from issues of segregation and discrimination to housing. There were also 363 dissents, giving evidence of a justice who would not bend when he felt the law was against the aggrieved and dispossessed. No justice had come to the high court with the background he possessed in traveling the land and fighting from courthouse to courthouse and devising national strategies that would alter American law.” Wil Haygood

“His were the eyes that had seen, up close, men and women grasping for freedom. He had seen shack-like structures masquerading as Negro schoolhouses. He had heard the wails of Negro mothers crying for their sons who had been sentenced on suspicious rape charges. He had seen how poverty could scar both Negro and white alike. His were eyes that had seen what very few Ivy League-trained lawyers had seen and he knew it, and he wanted them to know he knew it.” Wil Haygood

The Road to Character – David Brooks

The Road to Character by David Brooks
Date read: 4/28/23. Recommendation: 8/10.

Brooks examines the generational shift from humility to the “Big Me”—where everyone’s now encouraged to see themselves as the center of the universe. As part of the “Big Me,” we’ve become obsessed with resume virtues—wealth, fame, status—things that exist beyond our control and don’t necessarily correspond to living a meaningful life. When in fact, we should be focused on eulogy virtues—kindness, bravery, honesty. But to get here, we must get out of our own heads, stop asking ourselves what we want out of life, and instead ask ourselves what our lives and circumstances want out of us. Brooks cites examples of those throughout history who faced crucible moments and used the struggle against their limitations to develop more enduring virtues.

Check out my notes below or Amazon for details and reviews.

My Notes:

Resume virtues versus eulogy virtues:
Resume virtues: Skills you bring to the job market that contribute to external success.

Eulogy virtues: Exist at the core of your being, whether you are kind, brave, honest, or faithful; what kind of relationships you formed. 

One book that helped him think about these two sets of virtues was Lonely Man of Faith by Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik who observes two accounts of creation in Genesis and argues these represent two opposing sides of our nature, Adam I and Adam II.

“If you are only Adam I, you turn into a shrewd animal, a crafty, self-preserving creature who is adept at playing the game and who turns everything into a game. If that’s all you have, you spend a lot of time cultivating professional skills, but you don’t have a clear idea of the sources of meaning in life, so you don’t know where you should devote your skills, which career path will be highest and best.” DB

“This book is about Adam II. It’s about how some people have cultivated strong character. It’s about one mindset that people through the centuries have adopted to put iron in their core and cultivate a wise heart. I wrote it, to be honest, to save my own soul.” DB

“Good, wise hearts are obtained through lifetimes of diligent effort to dig deeply within and heal lifetimes of scars. You can’t teach it or email it or tweet it. It has to be discovered within the depths of one’s own heart when a person is fairly ready to go looking for it, and not before.” Dave Jolly

Adam II: “Occasionally, even today, you come across certain people who seem to possess an impressive inner cohesion. They are not leading fragmented, scattershot lives. They have achieved inner integration. They are calm, settled, and rooted. They are not blown off course by storms. They don’t crumble in adversity. Their minds are consistent and their hearts are dependable.” DB

“They possess the self-effacing virtues of people who are inclined to be useful but don’t need to prove anything to the world: humility, restraint, reticence, temperance, respect, and soft self-discipline.” DB

“These are the people who have built strong inner character, who have achieved certain depth. In these people, at the end of this struggle, the climb to success has surrendered to deepen the soul.” DB

Rites of Passage:
“The road to character often involves moments of moral crisis, confrontation, and recovery. When they were in crucible moments, they suddenly had a greater ability to see their own nature. The everyday self-deceptions and illusions of self-mastery were shattered.” DB

“Only the one who descends into the underworld rescues the beloved.” Kierkegaard

“Such people don’t come out healed; they come out different. They find a vocation or calling. They commit themselves to some long obedience and dedicate themselves to some desperate lark that gives life purpose.” DB

Resist self-promotion:
When George H.W. Bush was running for president, if a speechwriter put “I” in one of his speeches, he would cross it out. In speeches he didn’t, his mother would call the next day and tell him he was talking too much about himself again. 

Shift from a culture of humility to a culture of “Big Me” where everyone’s encouraged to see themselves as the center of the universe. 

Purpose:
Don’t ask what you want from life, instead ask: “What does life want from me? What are my circumstances calling me to do?” DB

You have been thrown into a specific place with specific problems and needs. “Your job is to figure certain things out: What does this environment need in order to be made whole?” DB

“We don’t create our lives; we are summoned by life.” DB

“The true self is what you have built from your nature, not just what your nature started out with.” DB

Putting lower loves above higher ones:
“If someone tells you something in confidence and then you blab it as good gossip at a dinner party, you are putting your love of popularity above your love of friendship. If you talk more at a meeting than you listen, you may be putting your ardor to outshine above learning and companionship.” DB

“Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made.” Immanuel Kant

“The most important thing is whether you are willing to engage in moral struggle against yourself.” DB

Inner scorecard:
“Adam I achieves success by winning victories over others. But Adam II builds character by winning victories over the weaknesses in himself.” DB

“Self-respect is produced by inner triumph, not external ones.” DB

“The central fallacy of modern life is the belief that accomplishments of the Adam I realm can produce deep satisfaction. That’s false. Adam I’s desires are infinite and always leap out ahead of whatever has just been achieved. Only Adam II can experience deep satisfaction.” DB

“Life is essentially a moral drama, not a hedonistic one.” 

Legacy:
“The message is the person, perfected over lifetimes of effort that was set in motion by yet another wise person now hidden from the recipient by dim mists of time.” DB

“But if you serve work that is intrinsically compelling and focus on just being excellent at that, you will wind up serving yourself and the community obliquely.” DB

Maturity:
“Maturity does not glitter. It is not built on the traits that make people celebrities. A mature person has moved from fragmentation to centeredness, has achieved a state in which the restlessness is over, the confusion about the meaning and purpose of life is calmed.” DB

Flaws:
“We are all stumblers, and the beauty and meaning of life are in the stumbling—in recognizing the stumbling and trying to become more graceful as the years go by.” DB

Outlive: The Science and Art of Longevity – Peter Attia

Outlive: The Science and Art of Longevity by Peter Attia
Date read: 4/23/23. Recommendation: 9/10.

Incredibly useful and detailed book on longevity. Attia emphasizes the importance of focusing not just on lifespan—how long you live—but healthspan—the quality of your years. He details how Medicine 2.0 has missed the boat and treats medical conditions on the wrong end of the timescale after they’ve already taken hold. In Medicine 3.0, the focus is on prevention, and this demands that you take responsibility for your own health. Attia frames up the tactics in Medicine 3.0—exercise, nutrition, sleep, emotional health, and exogenous molecules—and adds scientific rigor, as well as recommendations so you can begin applying them to your own life.

Check out my notes below or Amazon for details and reviews.

My Notes:

Longevity has two components:

1. Lifespan: How long you live

2. Healthspan: The quality of your years

Medicine 3.0:
Nearly all the insurance money flows to treatment rather than prevention: “Medicine’s biggest failing is in attempting to treat all these conditions at the wrong end of the timescale—after they are entrenched—rather than before they take root.” PA

Medicine 3.0 places greater emphasis on prevention rather than treatment, considers the patient a unique individual, focuses on an honest assessment of risk versus reward versus cost, and pays more attention to maintaining healthspan, the quality of life. 

“In Medicine 2.0, you are a passenger on the ship, being carried along somewhat passively. Medicine 3.0 demands much more from you, the patient: You must be well informed, medically literate to a reasonable degree, clear-eyed about your goals, and cognizant of the true nature of risk.” PA

“I never won a fight in the ring; I always won in preparation.” Muhammad Ali

Tactics:
“Changing how we exercise, what we eat, and how we sleep (see Part III) can completely turn the tables in our favor. The bad news is that these things require effort to escape the default modern environment that has conspired against our ancient (and formerly helpful) fat-storing genes, by overfeeding, undermining, and undersleeping us all.” PA

“There is some risk involved in action, there always is. But there is far more risk in failure to act.” Harry S. Truman

“Absorb what’s useful, discard what is useless, and add what is specifically your own.” Bruce Lee

Neurodegenerative diseases:
Exercise is the single most powerful item in our neurodegeneration prevention tool kit. Sleep is also a very powerful tool against Alzheimer’s. Studies have shown regular exercisers live as much as a decade longer than sedentary people. 

Strategy is based on the following principles:

1. What’s good for the heart is good for the brain: vascular health is crucial to brain health.

2. What’s good for the liver (and pancreas) is good for the brain: metabolic health is crucial to brain health.

3. Time is key: Think about prevention and play the very long game.

4. Our most powerful tool for preventing cognitive decline is exercise: lots of it.

Exercise:
Peak aerobic cardiorespiratory fitness (V02 Max) is the most powerful marker for longevity. 

Emotional health:
“Every man is a bridge, spanning the legacy he inherited and the legacy he passes on.” Terrence Real

“Family pathology rolls from generation to generation like a fire in the woods taking down everything in its path until one person, in one generation, has the courage to turn and face the flames. That person brings peace to his ancestors and spares the children that follow.” Terrence Real

“Who cares how well you perform if you’re so utterly miserable?” PA

“Maybe the journey isn’t so much about becoming anything. Maybe it’s about unbecoming everything that isn’t really you, so you can be who you were meant to be in the first place.” Paulo Coelho

The Mamba Mentality – Kobe Bryant

The Mamba Mentality: How I Play by Kobe Bryant
Date read: 4/5/23. Recommendation: 7/10.

Kobe Bryant’s firsthand account of his career, his work ethic, and his commitment to the game of basketball. Beautiful, coffee table book with incredible photography. I found Kobe’s perspective on preparation, playing the long game, and bouncing back from failure to be the most useful sections.

Check out my notes below or Amazon for details and reviews.

My Notes:

Preparation:
“More often than not, by the time I pulled in, Kobe would already be parked in the car next to my designated spot, taking a nap. He would be in the gym well before that, maybe by 6 AM to get his pre-practice workout done before anyone else showed up. That was the trademark of the final 10 years of his career.” Phil Jackson

“If I started my day early, I could train more each day.” Started at 5 AM and went until 7 AM, again from 11-2, and 6-8. By starting earlier he could set himself up for an extra workout each day.

“I never thought about my daily preparation. It wasn’t a matter of whether it was an option or not. It was, if I want to play, this is what I have to do, so I’d just show up and do it. My routine was grueling. It involved early mornings and late nights. It involved stretching, lifting, training, hooping, recovery, and film study. It involved putting in a lot of work and hours.” Kobe

Play the long game:
“I wasn’t scared of missing, looking bad, or being embarrassed. That’s because I always kept the end result, the long game, in my mind. I was always focused on the fact that I had to try something to get it, and once I got it, I’d have another tool in my arsenal. If the price was a lot of work and a few missed shots, I was OK with that.” Kobe 

“The mindset isn’t about seeking a result—it’s more about the process of getting to that result. It’s about the journey and the approach. It’s a way of life. I do think that it’s important, in all endeavors, to have that mentality.” Kobe

Dedication to family:
“At the same time, starting early helped me balance basketball and life. When my kids woke up in the morning, I was there, and they wouldn’t even know I had just finished at the gym. At night, I’d be able to put them to bed, then go work out again during my own time, not theirs.” Kobe

“There’s a fine balance between obsessing about your craft and being there for your family.” Kobe

How you respond is what matters:
“At the end of my first season in the NBA, we had made it to the Semifinals, up against Utah. But in the deciding fifth game, I let fly four airballs, and we lost our chance at the title. Those shots let me know what I needed to work on the most: my strength. That’s all the airballs did for me. In that game, nerves weren’t the problem. I just wasn’t strong enough to get the ball there. My legs were spaghetti; they couldn’t handle that long of a season. How did I respond to that? By getting on an intense weight-training program. By the start of the next season, my legs and arms were stronger and I was ready to get it on. In the immediate aftermath, I was never concerned by how the franchise or fans would react. I knew I would put in the work, which is what I did. In fact, as soon as we landed I went to the Pacific Palisades high school gym and shot all night long. I went back the next day and worked. And I worked and worked and worked. In my mind, it was never a matter of, ‘Oh no, I’ll never get another shot at this.’ I felt that my destiny was already written. I felt—I knew—that my future was undeniable and no one, not a person or play, could derail it.” Kobe

Wild – Cheryl Strayed

Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail by Cheryl Strayed
Date read: 2/25/23. Recommendation: 9/10.

I had high expectations and Cheryl Strayed’s memoir still blew me away. She’s such a wonderful writer. She reflects on her own truth and struggles in a way that gives a voice to an experience that so many other people can relate to. The book details her solo three-month hike on the Pacific Crest Trail and the painstaking miles where she was able to reflect on everything that had left her broken and begin to make herself whole again. It’s a wonderful story of letting go, finding yourself, persevering, and choosing gratitude despite it all.

See my notes below or Amazon for details and reviews.

My Notes:

Adventure:
Solo three-month hike on the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT)

“I’d set out to hike the trail so that I could reflect upon my life to think about everything that had broken me and make myself whole again.” 

“But the truth was, at least so far, I was consumed only with my most immediate and physical suffering.” 

“But hiking the PCT was hard in a different way. In a way that made the other hardest things the tiniest bit less hard.”

“I thought it would help me find my center, to come out here.”

“I had only just begun. I was three weeks into my hike, but everything in me felt altered. I lay in the water as long as I could without breathing, alone in a strange new land, while the actual world all around me hummed on.” 

What mattered was utterly timeless: “It had only to do with how it felt to be in the wild. With what it was like to walk for miles for no reason other than to witness the accumulation of trees and meadows, mountains and deserts, streams and rocks, rivers and grasses, sunrises and sunsets. The experience was powerful and fundamental. It seemed to me that it had always felt like this to be a human in the wild, and as long as the wild existed it would always feel this way.”

Tragedy:
Her mother was diagnosed with cancer and told she had a year to live. But she only lived 49 days after her diagnosis. During that time, each day was an eternity. 

“It was only after her death that I realized who she was: the apparently magical force at the center of our family who’d kept us all invisibly spinning in the powerful orbit around her. Without her, Eddie slowly became a stranger. Leif and Karen and I drifted into our own lives…we were four people floating separately among the flotsam of our grief.”

Fear:
“Fear, to a great extent, is born of a story we tell ourselves…Every time I heard a sound of unknown origin or felt something horrible cohering in my imagination, I pushed it away. I simply did not let myself become afraid. Fear begets fear. Power begets power. I willed myself to beget power. And it wasn’t long before I actually wasn’t afraid.”

Doubt:
“I staggered north toward Kennedy Meadows, furious with myself for having come up with this inane idea. Elsewhere, people were having barbecues and days of ease, lounging by lakes and taking naps….I was going to quit. Quit, quit, quit, I chanted to myself as I moaned and hiked and rested (ten, five, ten, five). I was going to get to Kennedy Meadows, retrieve my resupply box, eat every candy bar I’d packed into it, and then hitch a ride to whatever town the driver who picked me up was going to.” 

Letting go:
“Perhaps the impulse to purchase the PCT guidebook months before had been a primal grab for a cure, for the thread of my life that had been severed. I could feel it unspooling behind me—the old thread I’d lost, the new one I was spinning…”

The void: the place where things are born, where they begin. Black holes absorb energy and then release something new and alive. 

“It was all unknown to me then, as I sat on that white bench on the day I finished my hike. Everything except the fact that I didn’t have to know. That it was enough to trust that what I’d done was true.”

“How wild it was, to be let be.”

Rediscovering yourself:
“Someone was in here. It was me. I was here. I felt it in a way I hadn’t in ages: the me inside of me, occupying my spot in the fathomless Milky Way.”

Perseverance:
“So much of being able to hike the PCT depended upon mind control: the stout decision to move forward, regardless. I covered my wounds with duct tape and 2nd Skin, then I put on my socks and boots and hobbled over to the campground’s spigot to fill up my two bottles with sixty-four ounces of water, which had to last me for fifteen searing miles across Hat Creek Rim.”

“Miles weren’t things that blazed dully past. They were long, intimate struggles of weeds and clumps of dirt, blades of grass and flowers that bent in the wind, trees that lumbered and screeched….The PCT had taught me what a mile was. I was humble before each and every one.”

Gratitude:
“Thank you. Not just for the long walk, but for everything I could feel finally gathered up inside of me; for everything the trail had taught me and everything I couldn’t yet know, though I felt it somehow already contained within me.” 

The Bully Pulpit – Doris Kearns Goodwin

The Bully Pulpit by Doris Kearns Goodwin
Date read: 2/10/23. Recommendation: 8/10.

The story of a remarkable friendship between Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft, the way it built up each man, and eventually tore them both down. Goodwill details their upbringing, the events that shaped their lives, and how they came to navigate their political careers. She also discusses the backdrop of the Progressive era where a new vision for the relationship between the government and the people under Roosevelt’s leadership started to set in. I read this mainly for context on Roosevelt so my notes reflect a narrow perspective. But the entire book is captivating and worthy of its Pulitzer Prize.

See my notes below or Amazon for details and reviews.

My Notes:

Reform:
End of Roosevelt’s tenure, mood of reform swept the country, creating a new kind of presidency. Anti-trust suits had been won and legislation passed to regulate railroads, strengthen labor rights, curb political corruption, end corporate campaign contributions, impose limits on the working day, protect consumers from unsafe foods and drugs, and conserve vast swaths of natural resources for the American people.

“Roosevelt would focus the charge of a national movement to apply an ethical framework, through government action, to the untrammeled growth of modern America.” DKG

Square Deal had awakened the country to the need for government action to allay problems caused by industrialization. 

Friendship between Taft and Roosevelt:
Lifelong, mutually beneficial friendship. No man Roosevelt trusted more to carry out his legacy of active moral leadership and progressive reform. 

Initial foray into politics:
When he began inquiring about the local Republican organization, friends and family warned him that district politics were low and the world of saloon-keepers and horse-car conductors. Rough and brutal men. Started attending monthly meetings. Grew close with Joe Murray, thickset, red-haired Irish boss. Roosevelt later credited him with launching his political career. 

Murray determined that the incumbent Republican assemblyman for the Twenty-first District could not hold his seat in the fall elections in 1881, having been linked to corruption, surprised his compatriots by nominating the 23-year-old Roosevelt. TR was elected as the youngest member of the New York State Assembly. Less than two decades later he would become the youngest president in the history of the United States. 

“His three terms in the New York State Assembly had provided Roosevelt with considerable reason for pride and satisfaction in his accomplishments. He had led the fight against Judge Westbrook and had been instrumental in the passage of both the cigar bill and civil service reform…” DKG

“The assembly had proved a great school for Roosevelt. He had learned to cooperate with colleagues far removed from his patrician background…” DKG

“He fought with gusto against fraud and corruption, delivering speeches studded with bold and original turns of phrase.” DKG

Tragedy:
After Roosevelt’s mother and wife passed away on the same day, he was in a dazed, stunned state. Then he decided (as he learned from his father’s death), that frantic activity was the only way to keep sorrow at bay. But he was a changed man, there was a sadness about his face that he never had before.

Systematically suppressed his wife’s memory, failed to even recognize Alice (his first wife and widow) in his autobiography.

Returning to Albany: Upon his return, he immersed himself in long hours of work and daily sessions. The camaraderie of his fellow legislators helped mitigate his misery. In the weeks that followed he led a torrent of dramatic investigations and eventually nine reform bills were reported to the floor. 

Civil Service Commissioner:
“For sixty years, politicians in both parties had been complicit in a spoils system where officials (postal carriers, typists, stenographers, and clerks) were appointed, promoted, or fired according to their politics rather than their merit.” DKG

From the start, Roosevelt understood that public opinion was the best way to hold party leaders in the cabinet and in the Congress accountable. 

In order to change the average citizen’s attitude toward the spot system and current way of business, he had to instill his own outrage into the public…to popularize the reformist cause and initiate change from the bottom up.

Within his first few weeks, he initiated an investigation into the New York Customs House where he found that clerks were leaking examination questions to favored party candidates for a fee. Issued a scathing report demanding the dismissal and prosecution of guilty clerks. This early action served as notice that civil service law was going to be enforced without fear or favor. 

Leveraged a network of progressive journalists and editors to point out infractions of the law in their localities.

Found that Indianapolis Postmaster, William Wallace, had made a number of irregular appointments that violated civil service standards. Exposed this in the newspaper and it chastened Wallace to change. Within a couple of years his administration was deemed a model of fairness and justice. 

“Roosevelt seemed to feel that everything ought to be done before sundown.” President Harrison, dared not remove Roosevelt despite the feathers he ruffled because he had the influential newspapers supporting him and the public behind his cause of violations of the civil service law. 

“He isn’t afraid of the newspapers, he isn’t afraid of losing his place, and he is always ready for a fight. He keeps civil-service reform before the good people and as the case often is, his aggressiveness is a great factor in a good cause.” The Boston Evening News

When Grover Cleveland was elected asked Roosevelt to stay at his post for another year or two despite not being in the same political party. Theodore got along better with Cleveland than he had with Harrison. Cleveland trusted his even hand.

New York Police Commissioner:
Showmanship: As he approached his new headquarters at 300 Mulberry Street in the heart of Little Italy, he energetically greeted the reported as he sprinted up the stairs, and signaled for everyone to follow as he asked where the offices were and what they should do first. 

He was appointed president of the four-man board and drove the other board members crazy. 

Two sides of his role as police commissioner: 1) daily work of managing the police department, 2) the opportunity to use his position, which encompassed membership on the health board, to make the city a better place to live and work for those whom the conditions of life and labor were hardest.

Corruption: Found new police recruits were forced to pay Tammany a fixed fee for their appointments. The fee was well beyond the means of most, but officers understood they would make the money back with plenty to spare over time. Superintendent Tom Bynes had amassed a fortune of $350k, while his chief inspector Alec Williams could not explain the unusual size of his bank account when forced to testify. 

At his first press conference, Roosevelt announced that appointments and promotions would be based on merit alone moving forward. The police force had heard something similar before, but soon felt the weight of Roosevelt’s pledge. Within three weeks he forced Superintendent Bynes and Alec Williams to resign. He would spare no one in his campaign to root out corruption. 

Roosevelt accompanied reporters on a series of unannounced inspections between midnight and sunrise to determine whether officers were doing their jobs. If he found an officer patrolling his beat and doing a satisfactory job, he would pat him on the back. If he found someone sleeping or slacking off, he would summon them to appear before him the next morning. 

Predawn missions attracted press attention across the country. Roosevelt found them to be great fun but they meant he would go up to forty hours without sleep at a time. 

Sunday Law: passed by state legislature four decades earlier to satisfy rural constituents. No one took it seriously, but it warped into a massive vehicle of police and political blackmail and extortion. Saloons could stay open on Sundays as long as they made monthly payments to police and politicians. Roosevelt enforced the law but pissed off the public who later led a giant protest of some 150,000 people in NYC. Roosevelt attended and the crowd ended up cheering his good humor and the way he poked fun at himself. As November 1895 elections approached, Roosevelt stood his ground. His unpopular stance ushered in a democratic wave of votes, Republican bosses were livid at Roosevelt, blaming him for his uncompromising policy. 

1896 presidential contest between McKinley and Brian gave Roosevelt a path out and a way to earn the good favor of the Republican bosses once more. Traveled through the state and country to stump for the Republican nominee. Lent his energetic voice to McKinley’s campaign—represented his best hope for regaining the confidence of the Republican bosses. Gave all his time, energy, and ability to the work of the campaign. McKinley’s victory helped him get appointed as assistant secretary of the Navy, providing a graceful exit from his post as police commissioner. 

Time as police commissioner had deepened and broadened his outlook on social and economic issues. 

Assistant Secretary of the Navy:
McKinley appointed him as Assistant to John Davis Long because he thought Roosevelt was too eager for war.

As tension with Spain escalated in Cuba, Roosevelt did everything he could to prepare the U.S. Navy for war. Ordered the purchase of guns, ammunition, supplies, created war plans, scheduled additional gunnery drills, stocked distant supply stations with coal. 

In January 1898, McKinley agreed to ration the battleship USS Maine in Havana Harbor as “an act of friendly courtesy” to the Cuban people. Resisted mounting pressure for intervention. Then on February 15th, the Maine exploded killing 262 Americans. The cause of the explosion was never determined with certainty, but the blame was affixed to the Spaniards. 

Lieutenant colonel:
The country moved towards war with Spain in 1898, Roosevelt could not pass up the opportunity to go to Cuba and test himself on the field of battle.

Acted as lieutenant colonel under his friend Leonard Wood. 

“The press found the story of the so-called Rough Riders irresistible from the start—a volunteer regiment in which cowboys, miners, and hunters served on an equal footing with Ivy League graduates, Somerset Club members, polo players, tennis champions, and prominent yachtsmen.” DKG

“Up and up they went in the face of death, men dropping from the ranks at every step. The Rough Riders acted like veterans. It was an inspiring sight and an awful one…Roosevelt sat erect on his horse, holding his sword and shouting for his men to follow him until they gained the summit at last.” 

Spanish surrendered thirteen days later, by the middle of August, four months after the war began. Roosevelt and his Rough Riders were on their way to a triumphal homecoming. 

Governor of New York:
Inaugurated as governor of New York on January 2, 1899 in Albany. 

Relentless work ethic: He was unlike any governor New York had known. Arrived in the office well before the usual hour of 9am, sorting through hundreds of letters that arrived each morning. At 10am started his official day, spending an hour with assemblymen and senators, followed by rapid-fire meetings with political delegations, members of his administration, and individual petitioners. Returned home somewhere around 5-7pm. Evening hours were set apart for his literary work, socializing, reading, and spending time with his family. 

Vice President:
Roosevelt was horrified at the thought of spending four years as VP. “His friends were in despair, his enemies triumphed. At last they had him where they wanted him.” Jacob Riis

Put Your Ass Where Your Heart Wants to Be – Steven Pressfield

Put Your Ass Where Your Heart Wants to Be – by Steven Pressfield
Date read: 2/7/23. Recommendation: 8/10.

Similar to The War of Art, Pressfield continues his tried and true method of packing concise inspiration into a quick read. The main message of the book is about shifting your creative center of gravity from the superficial and fearful ego to the deep and fearless self. This requires committing for the long haul. Must read for any entrepreneur or artist trying to create something from nothing.

See my notes below or Amazon for details and reviews.

My Notes:

Show up:
“When I sit down to write in the morning, I literally have no expectations for myself or for the day’s work. My only goal is to put in three or four hours with my fingers punching the keys. I don’t judge myself on quality. I don’t hold myself accountable for quantity. The only questions I ask are, Did I show up? Did I try my best?” SP

“Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it now.” Goethe

“Here’s my frame of mind as I sit down to work: This is the day. There is no other day. This is the day. In other words, I release every thought that smacks of, ‘Maybe we can do this some other time.’ There is no other time.” SP

“Putting our ass where our heart wants to be is the equivalent of Alexander charging into the breach at the Granicus River or at the Issus or Gaugamela. We too are risking it all. We too hold nothing back. We too have hurled ourselves headlong into the unknown.” SP

Location matters:
You must leave the place where you live and move to the hub of the creative world where your dreams are most likely to come true. There’s no substitute for being in the heart of the action. Ernest Hemingway moved to Paris. Bob Dylan moved to Greenwich Village. 

Commitment:
“The positive face of commitment is self-empowerment. The very act of putting our ass where our heart wants to be makes a profound impression, not just on those we wish to work with or be mentored by, but on ourselves.” SP

“In myth and legend, when the hero commits to an intention by taking bold action, he enacts a Cosmic Overthrow. He ‘crosses the threshold.’ Like Luke Skywalker heading with Obi Wan Kenobi for Mos Eisley spaceport or Dorothy being swept away from Kansas by a cyclone, the hero moves from the Ordinary World to the Extraordinary World. She has gone from the Known to the Unknown.” SP

“The universe responds to the hero or heroine who takes action and commits. It responds positively. It comes to the hero’s aid.” SP

Perseverance:
“For writers and artists, the ability to self-reinforce is more important than talent.” SP

“Resistance is always strongest at the finish.” SP

“Killer instinct is not negative when we use it to finish off a book, a screenplay, or any creative project that is fighting us and resisting us to the bitter end. Steel yourself and put that sucker out of its misery.” SP

Visualization:
“What fascinates me about the character of Alexander the Great is that he seemed to see the future with such clarity and such intensity as to make it virtually impossible that it would not come true—and that he would be the one to make it so. That’s you and me at the inception of any creative project. The book / screenplay / nonprofit / start-up already exists in the Other World. Your job and mine is to bring it forth in this one.” SP

Yes to Life – Viktor Frankl

Yes to Life – by Viktor Frankl
Date read: 2/1/23. Recommendation: 8/10.

Based on a series of lectures Frankl gave after his liberation from Nazi concentration camps. It’s a great companion book to Man’s Search for Meaning. Frankl explores the three ways to find meaning and purpose in life—through action, love, and suffering.

See my notes below or Amazon for details and reviews.

My Notes:

3 ways to find meaning and purpose in life:

1. Action: Doing, creating, working (whether it’s art or a labor of love), something that outlasts us. Bringing something into being. 

2. Love: Experiencing something—appreciating nature or works of art—or loving people. The door to happiness always opens outward. 

3. Suffering: How a person adapts and reacts to unavoidable limits on their life possibilities like facing death or enduring concentration camps. This opens itself to a person when finding value in 1 and 2 are closed to them.

“If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am not for others, what am I? And if not now, when?” Rabbi Hillel

Each of us has our own purpose in life, our own places where we find meaning, and serving others only elevates this. 

Materialism is an anti-pattern. Mindlessly consuming and always focusing on more things leads to a meaningless life. 

Love:
“It is not only through our action that we can give life meaning—insofar as we can answer life’s specific questions responsibly—we can fulfill the demands of existence not only as active agents but also as loving human beings: in our loving dedication to the beautiful, the great, the good.” VF

Consider when you attend a concert of an artist you love and they play your favorite song and it sends chills down your spine. That moment is meaningful. And it’s born of a deep appreciation.

Suffering:
“How we deal with difficulties truly shows who we are, and that, too, can enable us to live meaningfully.” VF

“What do athletes do but create difficulties for themselves so that they can grow through overcoming them? Of course, it is not advisable to create difficulties for oneself; in general; suffering as a result of misfortune is only meaningful if this misfortune has come about through fate, and is thus unavoidable and inescapable.” VF

“So, fate is part of our lives and so is suffering; therefore, if life has meaning, suffering also has meaning. Consequently, suffering, as long as it is necessary and unavoidable, also holds the possibility of being meaningful.” VF

“It is not a question of either achievement or endurance—rather, in some cases, endurance itself is the greatest achievement.” VF

Perspective:
“Our perspective on life’s events—what we make of them—matters as much or more than what actually befalls us. ‘Fate’ is what happens to us beyond our control. But we each are responsible for how we relate to those events.” Daniel Goleman

“Life is not something, it is the opportunity for something.” Hebbel

“The individual, and only that individual, determines whether their suffering is meaningful or not.” VF

Adaptability:
“In the course of life, human beings must be prepared to change the direction of this fulfillment of meaning, often abruptly, according to the particular challenges of the hour.” VF

Life is motion: “For we have already pointed out that meaning of life can only be a specific one, specific both in relation to each individual person and in relation to each individual hour: the question that life asks us changes from both person to person and from situation to situation.” VF

Frankl’s manuscript:
“Frankl held these insights on the singular importance of a sense of meaning even before he underwent the horrors of camp life, though his years as a prisoner gave him even deeper conviction. When he was arrested and deported in 1941, he had sewn into the lining of his overcoat the manuscript of a book in which he argued for this view. He had hoped to publish that book one day, though he had to give up the coat—and the unpublished book—on his first day as a prisoner. And his desire to one day publish his views, along with his yearning to see his loved ones again, gave him a personal purpose that helped keep him afloat.” Daniel Goleman

Frankl formulated his initial insights and theory on the human orientation towards meaning in a rough manuscript of his eventual book The Doctor and the Soul. This is the same manuscript he brought with him after his deportation, hoping that he would be able to publish it still. When he reached the concentration camp, he was forced to give up his coat with the manuscript sewn into the lining. 

His experience in the camps further refined his ideas: “It turned out, in fact, that those camp inmates who still recognized or at least hoped for a meaning in life were the most likely to find the strength to continue living, or finally to survive. Last, but not least, that was also true of himself: what kept him alive was only the hope of seeing at least some of his loved ones again and bringing the completed draft of his book to publication.” VF

Decoded – Jay-Z

Decoded – by Jay-Z
Date read: 1/25/23. Recommendation: 10/10.

Jay-Z details his own story and deconstructs the lyrics of the most important songs in his career. I couldn’t put this book down—Jay-Z’s rise to become a self-made billionaire is one of the most inspiring stories you will come across. It’s crazy smart and packs a punch. There are great lessons in fundamentals, depth, truth, flow, and motion that are worth reflecting on and instilling in your own life and work.

See my notes below or Amazon for details and reviews.

My Notes:

Origins:
Nine years old, summer of 1978, saw a circle of kids on his way home from playing Little League with his cousin and he moved through the crowd towards the middle, “It felt like gravity pulling me into that swirl of kids, no bullshit, like a planet pulled into orbit by a star…His name was Slate and he was a kid I used to see around the neighborhood, an older kid who barely made an impression. In the circle, though, he was transformed, like the church ladies touched by the spirit, and everyone was mesmerized. He was rhyming, throwing out couplet after couplet like he was in a trance, for a crazy long time—thirty minutes straight off the top of his head, never losing the beat, riding the handclaps…I was dazzled. That’s some cool shit was the first thing I thought. Then: I could do that.” Jay-Z

Natural talent: Started writing rhymes in his spiral notebook that same night. The paper was unlined and he filled every space on every page, writing vertically, horizontally, crowding words together as best he could, scratching out others.

Finding your voice: Jay connected with an older kid and the best rapper in Marcy, Jaz-O. The two would practice their rhymes and record on an old tape recorder with a makeshift microphone attached. “I saw it as an opening, a way to re-create myself and reimagine my world. After I recorded a rhyme, it gave me an unbelievable rush to play it back, to hear that voice.” Jay-Z

Life experiences give you credibility: “I wasn’t even in high school yet and I’d discovered my voice. But I still needed a story to tell.” Jay-Z

Jay wasn’t sure he could get rich from rap, but he knew it would become much bigger than it was before it went away and he leaned into that.

“Manager? That’s a promotion, not a dream.” Jay-Z

Flow:
“From the beginning, it was easy, a constant flow. For days, I filled page after page. Then I’d bang a beat out on the table, my bedroom window, whatever had a flat surface, and practice from the time I woke in the morning until I went to sleep.” Jay-Z

“Everywhere I went I’d write. If I was crossing a street with my friends and a rhyme came to me, I’d break out my binder, spread it on a mailbox or lamppost and write the rhyme before I crossed the street. I didn’t care if my friends left me at the light, I had to get it out.” Jay-Z

“I was good at battling and I practiced it like a sport. I’d spend free time reading the dictionary, building my vocabulary for battles.”

Loved rhyming for the sake of rhyming and the challenge of structuring rhymes in the most effective way possible—moving around couplets and triplets, stacking double entendres, and speed rapping.

Fundamentals:
Jay-Z and his early mentor Jaz-O would go back and forth to each other’s houses and write rhymes for hours. They’d lock themselves in a room with pen and paper. They would test new flows and focus on improving their speed, delivery, and composition.

Putting in the work: “It’s true that I’m able to sometimes come up with songs in a matter of minutes after hearing a track, but that’s a skill that I’ve honed over hundreds of hours of practice and work since I was nine. My earliest mentors in rap taught me that making music is work, whether it was Jaz locking himself in a room working on different flows or Big Daddy Kane taking the time to meticulously put together a stage show. There’s unquestionably magic involved in great music, songwriting, and performances—like those nights when a star athlete is in the zone and can’t miss. But there’s also work. Without the work, the magic won’t come.” Jay-Z

“A tour requires stamina, willpower, and the ability to self-motivate, to hype yourself into game mode night after night….When it comes to signing up new talent, that’s what I’m looking for—not just someone who has skill, but someone built for this life. Someone who has the work ethic, the drive.”

First exposure to the record industry:
When Jay-O got a record deal with EMI in the UK, Jay went along and soaked up all that he could in the recording sessions and meetings.

Producers at EMI convinced Jaz-O to record a pop song with a ukulele on the hook, “Hawaiian Sophie” which tanked. EMI stopped returning his phone calls and instead started courting Jay behind his back. Jay was sick to his stomach and thought the business lacked any sense of honor and integrity. So he buried his rap dreams and went back to hustling.

Hustling:
Got into selling drugs because he was already risking his life by living in the projects, he might as well get paid for it. A friend introduced him to hustling (neither smoked nor used their own supply) and communicated that it required vision and hustle.

“In the mirror, all I saw was a hustler—a hustler who wrote rhymes on corner-store paper bags and memorized them in hotel rooms far away from home—but still, first a hustler. It’s who I’d been since I was sixteen years old on my own in Trenton, New Jersey. I couldn’t even think about wanting to be something else; I wouldn’t let myself visualize another life. But I wrote because I couldn’t stop. It was a release, a mental exercise, a way of keeping sane.” Jay-Z

Find your deep, dark place and create from there:
Jay was interested in the interior of a young kid’s head, his psychology, and bringing that to life through his lyrics. Everything he wrote he wanted to be rooted in the truth of an experience “To tell the story of the kid with the gun without telling the story of why he has it is to tell a kind of lie. To tell the story of the pain without telling the story of the rewards—the money, the girls, the excitement—is a different kind of evasion.” Jay-Z

“I lost people I loved, was betrayed by people I trusted, felt the breeze of bullets flying by my head. I saw crack addiction destroy families—it almost destroyed mine—but I sold it too…But no matter what, it is the place where I learned not just who I was, but who we were, who all of us are.” Jay-Z

Embracing contradiction: “For any image or symbol or creative act to mean something, it has to touch something deeper, connect to something true. I know that the spirit of the struggle and insurgency was woven into the lives of the people I grew up with in Bed-Stuy, even if in sometimes fucked up and corrupted ways….But to have contradictions—especially when you’re fighting for your life—is human, and to wear the Che (Guevara) shirt and the platinum and diamonds together is honest. In the end I wore it because I meant it.” Jay-Z

“The words are witty and blind, abstract and linear, sober and fucked up. And when we decode that torrent of words—by which I mean really listen to them with our minds and hearts open—we can understand their world better. And ours, too. It’s the same world.” Jay-Z

Entrepreneurial mindset:
“You have to make sure the match runs according to your style and rhythm and not get caught up in someone else’s gameplay. You have to be willing to suffer and to make someone else suffer, because only one of you can win.” Jay-Z

A great product and the hustle to move it are the ultimate advantage.

“Success could only mean self-sufficiency, being a boss, not a dependent.”

“I’m also lucky never to have needed the approval of the gatekeepers in the industry because from the start we came into the game as entrepreneurs. That gave me the freedom to just be myself, which is the secret to any long-term success, but that’s hard to see when you’re young and desperate to get put on.” Jay-Z ^ the opposite of this was Jaz-O recording “Hawaiian Sophie” because he trusted producers that got Will Smith airplay even though it didn’t resonate with him.

The depth of hip-hop:
It’s dense with multiple meanings and unresolved layers you might not understand until you’ve listened to it multiple times through. Those layers of meaning help get at complicated truths in a way that straightforward storytelling might not.

“Every hustler knows the value of a feint. It keeps you one step ahead of whoever’s listening in, which is also a great thing about the art of hip-hop. And it makes it all the more gratifying to the listener when they finally catch up.” Jay-Z

Rap is built to handle contradictions: “It doesn’t force you to pretend to be only one thing or another, to be a saint or sinner. It recognizes that you can be true to yourself and still have unexpected dimensions or opposing ideas…The real bullshit is when you act like you don’t have contradictions inside you, that you’re so dull and unimaginative that your mind never changes or wanders into strange, unexpected places.” Jay-Z

The curse of outrage:
“It’s hard to beat the entertainment value of people who deliberately misunderstand the world, people dying to be insulted, running around looking for a bullet to get in front of.” Jay-Z

Life is motion:
“I’ve always believed in motion and action, in following connections wherever they take me, and in not getting entrenched. My life has been more poetry than prose, more about unpredictable leaps and links than simple steady movement, or worse, stagnation. It’s allowed me to stay open to the next thing without feeling held back by a preconceived notion of what I’m supposed to be doing next.” Jay-Z

The truth is always relevant:
“When it seems like I’m bragging or threatening or whatever, what I’m actually trying to do is embody a certain spirit, give voice to a certain emotion. I’m giving the listener a way to articulate that emotion in their own lives, however it applies. Even when I do a song that feels like a complete autobiography, like ‘December 4th,’ I’m still trying to speak to something that everyone can find themselves in.” Jay-Z

“My songs are my stories, but they take on their own life in the minds of people listening. The connection that creates is sometimes overwhelming.” Jay-Z

Let My People Go Surfing – Yvon Chouinard

Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman – by Yvon Chouinard
Date read: 1/10/23. Recommendation: 10/10.

A wonderful autobiography that details Chouinard’s early days as a climber and the origins of Patagonia. Most of the content in the book was originally intended to act as a philosophical manual for employees of Patagonia. But Chouinard makes this captivating for any reader through stories that explore his own life lessons, the trials of building an enduring company, and the trap of short-sighted decisions. The book contains powerful insights on simplicity, disrupting yourself, communicating with customers, seeking inspiration from unlikely sources, and the lifelong search for your guiding principle.

See my notes below or Amazon for details and reviews.

My Notes:

Chouinard Equipment:
Origins: “In 1957 I went to a junkyard and bought a used coal-fired forge, a 138-pound anvil, and some tongs and hammers and started teaching myself blacksmithing. I wanted to make my own climbing hardware, since we were starting to climb the big walls in Yosemite on multiday ascents that required hundreds of piton placements.” 

At the time all climbing gear was European and the pitons used were soft iron—meant to be hammered in once and left in position (and if you tried to take these pitons out and reuse them, they would often break). The prevailing European attitude was to conquer the mountain and leave all gear in place to make it easier for the next person to reach the summit. American climbers modeled themselves after transcendental writers like Emerson, Thoreau, and Muir, and believed in leaving no trace. 

Chouinard made his first pitons from an old chrome-molybdenum steel blade. They were stiffer and stronger, which made them easier to drive into cracks in Yosemite, and they could be taken out and reused. 

“I made these Lost Arrow pitons for myself and the few friends I climbed with; then friends of friends wanted some. I could forge only two of my chrome-molybdenum steel pitons in an hour, and I started selling them for $1.50 each. You could buy European pitons for twenty cents, but you had to have my new gear if you wanted to do the state-of-the-art climbs that we were doing.” 

In 1964, Chouinard put out his first catalog—“a one-page mimeographed list of items and prices, with a blunt disclaimer on the bottom saying not to expect fast delivery during the months of May to November.” 

As demand grew, “We redesigned and improved just about every climbing tool, making each one stronger, lighter, simpler, and more functional.” 

Quality as a top priority: With climbing tools, it is a matter of life and death, and they were often the heaviest users of their own products. 

Despite the volume of sales doubling year over year, Chouinard Equipment showed only about a 1 percent profit at the end of the year because they were constantly coming up with new designs. By 1970 they were the largest supplier of climbing hardware in the U.S. 

Simplicity:
“In anything at all, perfection is finally attained not when there is no longer anything to add, but when there is no longer anything to take away…” Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

“Good design is as little design as possible.” Dieter Rams

“An illustrator becomes an artist when he or she can convey the same emotion with fewer brushstrokes.”

“I believe the way toward mastery of any endeavor is to work toward simplicity; replace complex technology with knowledge. The more you know, the less you need.”

Disrupt yourself:
By the 1970s, the popularity of climbing had skyrocketed. Particularly on well-known routes in primary climbing areas like El Dorado Canyon near Boulder, the Shawangunks in New York, and Yosemite Valley. On these routes, the repeating hammering of hard steel pitons during placement and removal in the same cracks was beginning to severely disfigure the rock. “After an ascent of the Nose route on El Capitan, which had been pristine a few summers earlier, I came home disgusted with the degradation I had seen. Frost and I decided we would phase out of the piton business. This was the first big environmental step we were to take over the year. Pitons were the mainstay of our business, but we were destroying the very rocks we loved.”

Chouinard started looking into aluminum chocks that could be wedged by hand rather than hammered in and out, designed his own versions called Stoppers and Hexentrics, and piloted them in small quantities until they appeared in the Chouinard Equipment catalog in 1972. “The catalog opened with ‘A word…,’ an editorial from the owners on the environmental hazards of pitons and a fourteen-page essay on clean climbing and how to use chocks by Sierra climber Doug Robinson. 

“Within a few months of the catalog’s mailing, the piton business had atrophied; chocks sold faster than they could be made. In the tin buildings of Chouinard Equipment, the steady pounding rhythm of the drop hammer gave way to the high-pitched, searing whine of the multiple drill jig.” 

Underwear: Wearing quick-drying insulation layers (e.g. pile jackets) over cotton underwear defeated the purpose of outer shells. In 1980 they tested making underwear out of polypropylene, a synthetic fiber that absorbs no water. It was originally intended to manufacture industrial commodities like marine ropes which float. Then it started being used in the lining of disposable diapers for its wicking ability to keep babies dry by carrying moisture away from the skin and transferring it to more absorbent outer layers in the diaper. “Using the capabilities of this new underwear as the basis of a system, we became the first company to reach the outdoor community, through essays in our catalog, the concept of layering. This approach involves wearing an inner layer against the skin for moisture transport, a middle layer of pile for insulation, and then an outer shell layer for wind and moisture protection.” 

But polypropylene had a very low melting temperature. Customers who went to commercial laundromats (much hotter dryers than home) would melt their underwear. When Chouinard was at 1984 sporting goods show in Chicago watching a demonstration of polyester football jerseys being cleaned of grass stains. He realized that the material in combination with the etched jersey worked to wick away moisture. Polyester also had a much higher melting temperature. They then introduced their Capilene polyester underwear. Sales soared.

Know your shit: “Some people think we’re a successful company because we’re willing to take risks, but I’d say that’s only partly true. What they don’t realize is that we do our homework. A few years back when we switched midstream from polypropylene to Capilene for our underwear fabric, we had done our fabric development, we had done our testing in the fabric lab. We made tops and bottoms with half the garment Capilene and half polypropylene and extensively tested them in the field. We knew the market, and we were absolutely confident that it was the right thing to do.” 

Other companies started introducing rip-offs and had to scramble to keep up. They repeated the same move in the early 1980s when they realized how bland all outdoor products were (tan, forest green, gray). So they drenched the Patagonia line in color (cobalt, teal, French red, mango, sea foam)

By disrupting themselves, they set the tone for the entire market. Whereas if they had focused on competitors instead, they would have been locked in a reactive state rather than forging ahead with bold decisions and new ideas. 

Switching to organic cotton: “After several trips to the San Joaquin Valley, where we could smell the selenium ponds and see the lunar landscape of cotton fields, we asked a critical question: How could we continue to make products that laid waste to the earth in this way? In the fall of 1994, we made the decision to take our cotton sportswear 100 percent organic by 1996. We had eighteen months to make the switch for sixty-six products, and less than a year to line up the fabric.” 

Seek inspiration from unlikely places:
Chouinard’s first idea for clothing: “In the late sixties, after crag climbing in the Peak District in England, I stopped by an old Lancashire mill that contained the last machine left in the world that still made a tough, superheavy corduroy cloth…Back then, before denim, workmen’s pants used to be made of corduroy because its tufted wales protected the woven backing from abrasion and cuts. I thought this durable cloth would be great for climbing. Ordering up some fabric, I had some knickers and double-seated shorts made. They sold well to our climbing friends, so I ordered some more.”

Rugby shirts: In the late sixties, men didn’t wear bright clothes. Active sportswear was often a gray sweatshirt and pants. On a winter climbing trip to Scotland in 1970, Chouinard bought a regulation rugby shirt to wear, thinking it would be good for climbing since it was built to withstand scrums in rugby and had a collar to keep hardware slings from cutting into his neck. The basic color was blue with two red and one yellow center stripe across the chest. When he returned home his friends started asking about it so he ordered some from Umbro and sold out immediately. They couldn’t keep them in stock. 

Pile sweaters becoming an outdoor staple: “At a time when the entire mountaineering community relied on the traditional, moisture-absorbing layers of cotton, wool, and down, we looked elsewhere for inspiration—and protection. We decided that a staple of North Atlantic fisherman, the synthetic pile sweater, would make an ideal mountain sweater because it insulated well without absorbing moisture…We sewed a few seaters and field-tested them in alpine conditions. The polyester fabric was astonishingly warm, particularly when used with a shell. It insulated well but also dried in minutes, and it reduced the number of layers a climber had to wear.” 

Entrepreneurship:
“If you want to understand the entrepreneur, study the juvenile delinquent. The delinquent is saying with his actions, ‘This sucks. I’m going to do my own thing.’”

“A master in the art of living draws no sharp distinction between his work and his play; his labor and his leisure; his mind and his body; his education and his recreation. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence through whatever he is doing, and leaves others to determine whether he is working or playing. To himself, he always appears to be doing both.” L.P. Jacks

Generalist:
“I’ve always thought of myself as an 80 percenter. I like to throw myself passionately into a sport or activity until I reach about an 80 percent proficiency level. To go beyond that requires an obsession and degree of specialization that doesn’t appeal to me. Once I reach that 80 percent level I like to go off and do something totally different; that probably explains the diversity of the Patagonia product line—and why our versatile, multifaceted clothes are the most successful.” 

Search for guiding principle:
During a period of extreme growth when scale was shaking the company, Chouinard sought advice from Dr. Michael Kami who had run strategic planning for IBM and had turned Harley-Davidson around. 

“Before he could help us, he said, he wanted to know why we were in business. I told him the history of the company and how I considered myself a craftsman who had just happened to grow a successful business…We told him about our tithing program, how we had given away a million dollars just in the past year to more than two hundred organizations, and that our bottom-line reason for staying in business was to make money we could give away. Dr. Kami thought for a while and then said, ‘I think that’s bullshit. If you’re really serious about giving money away, you’d sell the company for a hundred million or so, keep a couple million for yourselves, and put the rest in a foundation. That way you could invest the principal and give away six or eight million dollars every year…So maybe you’re kidding yourself about why you’re in business.’” 

Stick with what you know: “The sooner a company tries to be what it is not, the sooner it tries to ‘have it all,’ and the sooner it will die.” 

As a recession hit the company had to reset, they were growing at an unsustainable pace. They redefined their values and mission statement. And while managers solved for the sales and cash-flow issues, Chouinard led weeklong employee seminars on the company’s revitalized philosophy. The goal was to teach every employee their business and environmental ethics and values. 

Teaching the classes to his employees on Patagonia’s philosophies finally gave Chouinard his answer to Dr. Kami’s question. “I knew, after thirty-five years, why I was in business. True, I wanted to give money to environmental causes. But even more, I wanted to create in Patagonia a model other businesses could look to in their own searches for environmental stewardship and sustainability, just as our pitons and ice axes were models for other equipment manufacturers…I realized how much Patagonia as a business was driven by its high-quality standards and classic design principles. The products we made, each feature of every shirt, jacket, or pair of pants, had to be necessary.” 

“The history of Patagonia from the crisis of 1991-92 to the present day doesn’t make for such interesting reading, fortunately…The story is really about how we are trying to live up to our mission statement: ‘Make the best product, cause no unnecessary harm, and use business to inspire and implement solutions to the environmental crisis.’”

“We never wanted to be a big company. We want to be the best company, and it’s easier to try to be the best small company than the best big company.”

Make the best product:
“Having high-quality, useful products anchors our business in the real world and allows us to expand our mission. Because we have a history of making the best climbing tools in the world, tools that your life is dependent on, we are not satisfied making second-best clothing.” 

Product design principles: Functional, multifunctional, durable, repairable, simple. “As individual consumers, the single best thing we can do for the planet is to keep our stuff in use longer.” 

Non-obvious application of Occam’s Razor and simplification to establish fewer points of failure: “The best-performing firms make a narrow range of products very well. The best firms’ products also use up to 50 percent fewer parts than those made by their less successful rivals. Fewer parts means a faster, simpler (and usually cheaper) manufacturing process. Fewer parts means less to go wrong: quality comes built in.”

“When I’m working on a problem, I never think about beauty. I think only how to solve the problem. But when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong.” Richard Buckminster Fuller

Communicating with customers:
“Since the publication of the 1972 Chouinard Equipment catalog that contained the ‘Clean Climbing’ essay, we have seen that the primary purpose of our catalogs is to serve as a vehicle to communicate with our customers—whether it is by trying to change climbing philosophy, by rallying them to register and vote for the environment…or just by relating stories.” 

The ‘Clean Climbing’ essay not only encouraged climbers to climb clean but was also the first piece ever written about how to use the new chocks. “As a result, Chouinard Equipment’s piton business dried up, and its chock business exploded, nearly overnight. To show its impact, far beyond a business tool, that catalog was reviewed as a mountaineering book in the American Alpine Journal.”

“Just as Patagonia makes products for a deeper, less distracted experience of the world and its wild places, our image has to convey refuge from, and offer an alternative to, a virtual world of fast-moving, mind-skimming (and numbing) pictures and sound.”