Hello there,
Life is like walking into a theatre mid-way through a movie and having to make sense of it. You have no idea what the movie is about. There is no poster or trailer. You walk in and do as the rest. Sit. Stare. Watch.
The movie falls under no specific genre.
It is a rollercoaster of emotions. But unlike real movies that allow you to step outside yourself and experience another person’s emotions, you are inside yourself. You have no control. Producers through the actors call the shots.
Majority of the audience never seem to leave their chairs. Ever. Even though auditioning is a choice.
Some do. Mysteriously appearing on the screen. The front-rowers more so with the audition tickets. The backbenchers only so with a subconscious switch.
How much you end up watching versus how much you end up acting versus how much you end up producing, is dependent on how well you prepare, do, and build up from your two minutes audition(s).
Here we go!!
Priming
Our subconscious mind picks up cues from our environment that we don’t even recognize and then modifies our behaviour in ways that we don’t even notice. This effect is called priming, and it happens to us all day and every day without us even knowing it.
The environment? Remember the movie theatre. What would the environment have us do? Sit. Stare. Watch. —> Mimetic theory.
The outliers’ consciously prime while sited on their chairs. They construct rationality, that is linear, picture themselves in scenes, and imagine the two-minute audition over and over again. Some even leave their seats and go practice at the back.
But the audition just so happens to be non-linear. Plans are nothing.
But planning is everything.
The narrative rationality, the story the aspiring actors tell themselves is valuable. It is through building those imaginary castles (only feasible thing in a theatre) that real castles are built.
Some ways you can get primed up for the audition:
- Learn every day. Read to Apply Skill > Read to Store Info.
- Store insights for later reference.
- Do unpaid work for yourself for a long time to use as leverage to negotiate where you get paid to do work for others.
- Start your day with the hardest problems.
- Use open-world opportunities to create salience.
What did I miss? —> Hit reply.
Questions I like to think of: If someone wanted to invest a million dollars in a by-product of you, what stage would they find you in?
Idea —> MVP —> Product-Market Fit —> Scale Up
Would it be an “I’ve been thinking about starting” and it could work or an “I got this”, “been doing this for a while” and it could work?
How primed up would you be in utilizing that money?
My Book Notes
Rating: 10/10.
Intense. Quake book. Unusual ideas.
Read in doses. Reflect. Discuss in a reading circle. Read various excerpts on the web. Re-read. Ideas sex. Revisit after a while. Adopt principles. Learn to be a Fat Tony.
Access Part 1 notes —> here.
I review:
- The triad.
- Mediocristan vs Extremistan.
- The Barbell Strategy.
- Via Negativa.
- The Lindy Effect.
- Iatrogenics.
- Optionality.
- The Green Lumber Fallacy.
Best Stuff I Read
We are obsessed with optionality. Not sure what to do with your life? Most people will tell you to get a degree. Not quite sure what to do with this degree? Go to grad school. Still not quite sure? Get a consulting role at a big firm so you can decide what kind of job you enjoy. And so on and so forth. We fall prey to the optionality fallacy. As Erik Torenberg puts it, it can be “like spending your whole life filling up the gas tank without ever driving.”
Career Strategy (through the Risk Lens) Thread
I think the biggest career mistake young people make is they’re afraid to look dumb, so they follow safe paths that cap their downside, not realizing that they also cap their upside. And said paths are often tournament-style competitions, + perhaps not as safe as they think.
What I’m Watching
Devils. Another suggestion by one of you. MR thanks for pointing me to this dark financial thriller. So far loved this:
“The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist” a line borrowed from French Poet Charles Baudelaire.
There are many ways to think about this
- In the post-modernist world, sin has evolved from the Devil’s doing to a simple construct of human nature.
- It is a self-serving statement to warn the atheist agnostic of their fallibility.
- It is the atheist agnostic explaining away the devil’s non-existence and/or impotency.
- It’s an existential dilemma that is a byproduct of that which we do not see.
Or is in fact true, that it’s the devil’s genius plan along. I mean think about it, by putting his existence in doubt, he would be leading many people to doubt God. Because light cannot exist without darkness.
Can light really exist without darkness?
The Devils own version, I mean the series here, is that his greatest trick rather is “flattering us so that we don’t see the devil is in us.” ?
Feel free to shoot me an email anytime with comments, critiques, and open-ended questions.
Till next Saturday, take care.
Happy weekend,
Solomon Muigai.