When we become expert in something, our tastes grow more esoteric and complex.
We overlook just how large a role we all play – and by ‘we’ I mean society – in determining who makes it and who doesn’t.
You need to have the ability to gracefully navigate the world.
Our intuitions, as humans, aren’t always very good. Changes that happen really suddenly, on the strength of the most minor of input, can be deeply confusing.
It is quite possible for people who have never met us and who have spent only twenty minutes thinking about us to come to a better understanding of who we are than people who have known us for years.
If people disobey, don’t ask what is wrong with them, ask what’s wrong with their leaders.
Performance ought to improve with experience, and pressure is an obstacle that the diligent can overcome.
Acquaintances represent a source of social power, and the more acquaintances you have the more powerful you are.
Humans socialize in the largest groups of all primates because we are the only animals with brains large enough to handle the complexities of that social arrangement.
Sometimes constraints actually create success. Not being able to swim made me run. And running taught me the discipline I needed as a writer.
I’m convinced that ideas and behaviors and new products move through a population very much like a disease does.
Success is not a function of individual talent. It’s the steady accumulation of advantages. It’s bound up in so many other broader circumstantial, environmental, historical, and cultural factors.
There are moments, particularly in times of stress, when haste does not make waste, when our snap judgments and first impressions can offer a much better means of making sense of the world.
Incompetence is certainty in the absence of expertise. Overconfidence is certainty in the presence of expertise.
I should point out that I have a picture of Asbel Kiprop as the screensaver on my phone. Is that embarrassing?
If you’re in business it’s both a promise and a warning. It says that sometimes little things can cause some little guy to have an overnight success.
It takes ten thousand hours to truly master anything. Time spent leads to experience; experience leads to proficiency; and the more proficient you are the more valuable you’ll be.
It’s just strange to think that so much of our enjoyment from sports comes from the elevation of arbitrary differences.
Visionaries are limited by their visions.
That was it! The whole Redwood City philosophy was based on a willingness to try harder than anyone else.