These are fantastic! I'll add two that I have learned from wiser people, and that have paid out again and again in my life.<p>1. It's better to target an interesting constellation than one specific star. If you're pushing yourself reasonably hard, you're working close to the limits of your ability, and so there's some chance you will fail. If you go all out to hit an ambitious goal and don't succeed, you're likely to feel burnout [1]. This is much less likely if you make moves in the direction of an interesting area using a cluster of subgoals instead. This diversifies your risk, plus it's easier to adjust as you move in that direction and learn more. (For people in ML there's some clear parallels with the gradient descent process)<p>2. A twenty minute walk in the park with no music or media makes all kinds of useful stuff naturally fall out of your brain, and you get some light exercise and sunlight / vitamin D at the same time - which also helps improve your mood and flush out anxiety etc.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.stavros.io/posts/comment-causes-burnout/" rel="nofollow">https://www.stavros.io/posts/comment-causes-burnout/</a>
> There’s no good reason to believe that someone extremely attractive would be a great conversationalist, or that someone extremely intelligent would be emotionally intelligent, etcetera.<p>I actually disagree. At the extremes, sure. The top athlete is unlikely to be the top scholar or conversationalist. But I believe health, beauty, EQ and IQ are all correlated. These traits all likely have some shared genetic components. And a great, healthy childhood will augment all these traits to some extent.<p>Also, beautiful people are less likely to experience social isolation or estrangement, which would otherwise hurt EQ and health in general.<p>From another angle, experiences that leave emotional scars will often have physical manifestations, and vice versa.<p>That said, we may subconsciously assume a higher correlation than exists between these traits, so directionally the author may be correct.<p>None of this is fair or desirable, by the way.
I like this one:<p>> Listening Is in Your Interest, Even If You’re Totally Selfish<p>Decades of touchy-feely woo woo about the power of empathy has convinced people that empathy is a magic hack that makes you feel totally fine about people no matter what heinous things they do. If you empathize with someone, if you "understand," then you'll realize why they behave the way they do, and you'll realize it's all okay.<p>Naturally that makes people wary of empathizing with people they believe are behaving in a destructive way, such as their political enemies, sexual predators, etc. If you empathize with someone too effectively, you might lose your motivation to oppose them.<p>That's flat-out wrong, and it makes people <i>less</i> effective at promoting their own values in the world.<p>Sure, you might learn to feel sorry for a sexual predator or realize that an opposing political view has some internal logic or even a kernel of truth, but that isn't going to turn you into a defender of predatory or destructive behavior. Empathy for a flat-earther isn't going to convince that the earth is flat, either.<p>Know yourself. Know your enemy. Know everybody in between. It makes you safer and more powerful in the world, and it's only dangerous in a good way.
Remember What Used to Work, Then Do It Again - this one really resonated with me. Recently I've taken up meditation with an app, and a recurring theme of it is to "Just begin again" - in context, meaning begin again, when you mind wanders. But I've found that the idea is very applicable to almost every faced of life. For example, I wish to start working out, but my willpower is low and I tend to miss some days. By just beginning again, without judgement, without guild, I'm getting back to the problem and working on it again. Sounds like this is the same idea. Remember what used to work, then do it again. Just begin again.
> Minor Barriers Aren’t Minor<p>This reminds me of Torvald's talk at Google about git, where he emphasizes how important it is to be able to change branches <i>fast</i>, reasoning that it will determine how git will be used in the future. There is a tremendous difference between five seconds and `instant` in our decision making. Since then I observed this behaviour in myself in countless daily routines.
> Listening Is in Your Interest, Even If You’re Totally Selfish<p>To me this seems an obvious and important but surprisingly uncommon idea. I can't stop trying to explain this to others: if you don't really do your best to understand the other person you are wasting your own time. And you don't have to agree to them, just understand. Even if the other person is your enemy (especially if they are!), precise understanding of what and why do they think and feel is in your best interest.
I think I can unironically offer Dwight's advice:<p>'Don't be an idiot; changed my life'<p>It sounds like surface level humor, but it is a surprisingly good advice.
Listening is essential for winning arguments - or you can't counter their arguments.<p>Listening enables you to "win" a negotiation, by discovering what the other party values, that you might be able to give them. It's predicated on the reality of negotiation, that it's with another <i>person</i> with free-will and autonomy, who will only give you what you want if it makes sense from their perspective. So helps to know what theirs is.<p>Communication cannot occur without listening. And not just by the "recipient": you need to determine if communication has been successful, or if error correction is required. Words mean different things to different people, in different contexts. The better you understand the other party, the better chance you have of communication. A preliminaries can be helpful to align contexts (get "on the same page"), and then have purpose/concerns understood.
Don’t define yourself in terms of your work, as you have no “self” once it stops.<p>Remember, one works to get the resources to do what you want to do. It has to be useful for this, and ideally interesting enough to go back to tomorrow.<p>Don’t be an asshole.
The first duty of any citizen is to mistrust his government,
and to be critical of their long term goals.<p>Never let people discourage you from thinking,
because ignorance spreads like a disease.<p>The saying, that one should not mistake stupidity for malignity, matters only little to the stupid, but a lot to the malign.<p>All stupid people at the top are either not actually stupid, or string puppets.<p>Political correctness is, by definition, not correct.<p>Participating in collective behaviour, without hesitation, is frivolous. Absolutely most things most people do have some sort of hidden catch. Just because everyone does it, doesn't mean it's smart to join them.<p>Never let fear, or those who spread it, guide your decisions.
> When Choosing a Life Path, Think About What Contexts It’ll Place You In<p>Author is clearly a genius because he can imagine in advance "all the contexts" a particular lifepath will put him in.