16 - Prove it
I’ve got a whole bunch of stuff to sort through for Singapore before I post about it - look forward to some stories of the best chicken I’ve ever had, racist taxi drivers and bookstore explorations!
Here’s the post :)
Can you do it? Prove it. Fail.
For some reason over the years, every so often I would hit upon some pithy phrase that I got really attached to. I hit upon them in various ways, often to try and summarise some way that I wanted to live, or just because it really affected me.
Here are some of them!
-
Don’t forget to be a child: I watched the TED talk by Ken Robinson (Do Schools Kill Creativity?), and then read his book ‘The Element’ which essentially gave me this one. I had a long period in school of not knowing what I wanted to do, and the introspection led me to try and remember who I was as a child, in my most natural element. That helped a lot, and it’s something I bring with me all the time - trying to keep that vestige of fun and innocence from my childhood wherever I go.
-
Be a man - King, Warrior, Magician, Lover: This was from the blog The Art of Manliness. It sounds like a silly blog, but back in the day there were not many blogs about positive masculinity - and this was one that I stumbled upon before it looked as flashy as it does today. As a uni student looking for frameworks to think about the world, this breakdown of the archetypes of masculinity was a fascinating new way to try and understand what kinds of things I needed to work on as a person. There’s also a great set of videos on YouTube about this as it relates to film!
-
Create, don’t consume: This is a slightly more recent one based on the amount of content I was consuming - and how I needed to speed it up to get through everything I wanted. I realised that I was consuming a lot more than I wanted, whereas creation is a much more…noble? difficult? way to use leisure time, and I wanted to lean into that. It was changing from a passive mode of interaction to an active one…which also includes gaming ;D #loopholes
The latest one I have is the title: ‘Can you do it? Prove it. Fail.’
As you’ve read in other newsletter’s of mine, I have a tendency to think about things too much, and live in my head. If I came upon a problem, I’d conjure up the thing I think works best, and then put the whole thing to bed as if I’d solved it! Classic armchair strategist. Reminds me of Mycroft Holmes - comfortably sitting in his armchair while Sherlock goes out to do all the investigative work!
The other thing is to combat my heavy Imposter Syndrome - I always feel like people are crediting me or think about what I’ve done better than I think about myself. I just want to be able to live up to their expectations and prove that I can actually do what I say I can do.
Anyway, breaking this down - proving that you can do something in real life makes things a lot…realer. It’s something you can point to and say ‘hey I did that’, not just coming up with a plan that you haven’t tested in the real world. I’ve been thinking about it in the context of education as well - the fact that going to university is becoming less relevant than proving what you can actually do. Engineering is great for this because you literally have to do a Final Year Project / Thesis before you graduate, showing that you know what you’ve done. I guess it’s harder in the Law and Commerce spheres…unless you have some competition you’ve won or events you’ve helped to organise.
I’ve been reading a bunch about this. Understanding whether someone’s advice is believable or whether you should adopt it comes from a post I read on the blog Commoncog, based on Ray Dalio’s book Principles. Essentially, it posits that a believable person is someone who has 1) three relevant success in the subject matter and 2) has useful breakdowns and explanations of their approach (and can defend it). I have enjoyed the further breakdown that Cedric from Commoncog did here regarding the hierarchy of practical evidence - different levels of proving you actually know what you’re talking about.
Failing at it is another thing, and relates to the above - you learn a LOT from failure, and it makes you more believable as a person if you’re able to iron out why a certain thing has happened, and how you solved it. This is why the metric of three successes is important, coupled with being able to defend your approach. If you have experienced the ups and downs of your approach, then you can speak to it in a lot more detail.
This phrase used to just be ‘Can you do it? Prove it’. I added this ‘Fail.‘ to the phrase, because it helped to set up what I expect to happen when I try something. It combats the fear of failure that stops me from starting anything at all, because the standard I have to beat is failing at it. Anything successful is just a bonus!
And thus, you can see - this newsletter is part of that. I’ve wanted to be a writer, to tell stories, and to find a way to talk about things I find interesting. I want to prove that I can actually write well, in a somewhat interesting way that makes you want to continue reading it, and explain ideas like I said I wanted to.
It’s the start of proving that I can do more and more with my life - hopefully it will continue to compound!
Do you have mantras for your life? How did you come up with them?
Chat soon :)
✔️ Real Life Recommendations
-
The Wandering Earth by Liu Cixin - this short story collection by Liu Cixin is another fascinating short story collection. The titular story has been adapted into a big China movie (which I haven’t watched yet), and is one of my favourite stories because of the vision related to Earth Engines that could move the entire world. The ‘Sun of China’ does something he’s really good at - looking at lives and stories over long periods of time, showing vignettes of a farm boy become a space sail cleaner. Another I loved was ‘Mountain’ - the story of a ‘Bubble World’, where electrical-based lifeforms discovered how to escape from their world of solid rock.
-
The Mill House - found this cute li’l bar recently that does an excellent Happy Hour. On Tuesday’s they also do a nice $12 chicken bucket…which wasn’t as big as I thought, but still nice. Gin and Tonics are where it’s AT - they have a great selection!
🚌 Adventures on the Information Super-Highway
-
Encrypted phone companies run by drug traffickers - a fascinating story about a company that was building encrypted phones for drug traffickers, and the underbelly of what these companies were up to.
-
OpenAI plays Hide and Seek - a cool YouTube channel that I found recently that is excellent at summarising complex papers. This one in particular is about how OpenAI learnt how to play hide and seek, but found ways to break the game!
-
The story of Theranos - an interesting breakdown of how stories and personality play a role in getting massive valuations for tech companies. Elizabeth Holmes was a very strong personality, but that hid a lot of fraudulent behaviour in the back. I think I also have linked the book ‘Bad Blood’ previously which I also recommend reading!