Fire & Motion 41
Fleeting Quote
Constraints give your life shape.
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In quietness are all things answered.
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Forget trying to decide what your life’s destiny is. That’s too grand. Instead, just figure out what you should do in the next 2 years.
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在巴黎，我們擁有美麗的存在，卻沒有完全的生活。
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「你沒有意識到自己在做什麼。」「沒有意識到是什麼意思？」「就是說，你做了很棒的事情，可是你在做的時候，卻沒有在想這件事。」Out-of-League
🏅 When It Comes to Tariffs, China is Different
🏅 The End of Roadside Attractions
🏅 Facebook is Dead; Long Live Meta
Reading
📄 Doing what you think, not what you thought
We just make decisions about what to work on next as we go, looking forward, rather than making decisions as we went, looking backwards. Why work from what seemed like a good idea before? Instead, work from appears to be a good idea now. You have more information now — why not use it?
Another reminder of not looking backward (which I used to do before), but instead planning from what I have and what I know NOW.The man of action serenely regards ruin as the most likely possible outcome, mitigates it where he can, and leaps anyway. He rejects the comfortable half-existence of drifting with the indeterminate human tide and manifests his bold vision into the world.
There is a surplus wealth endowed in the universe to those with the virtue to win it. This is not just resources won in competition, but more importantly also the random providence that falls on you simply for thriving in novel ways. The general availability of this providence is due to the difficulty and incompleteness of the project of life. If you are going to have some faith, have faith in this: the universe finds ways to appreciate novel exploration.
"the random providence that falls on you simply for thriving in novel ways" has stuck with me since I encountered this article a few years ago. A brilliant yet a humble way to motivate myself to always execute in a novel way, and not falling on the same mistake.Tyler Cowen has a wonderful saying, ‘context is that which is scarce’, and you could say it’s the foundational insight of this model. Going onsite to your customers – the startup guru Steve Blank calls this “getting out of the building” – means you capture the tacit knowledge of how they work, not just the flattened ‘list of requirements’ model that enterprise software typically relies on. The company believed this to a hilarious degree: it was routine to get a call from someone and have to book a first-thing-next-morning flight to somewhere extremely random; “get on a plane first, ask questions later” was the cultural bias. This resulted in out of control travel spend for a long time — many of us ended up getting United 1K or similar — but it also meant an intense decade-long learning cycle which eventually paid off.
Why is data integration so hard? The data is often in different formats that aren’t easily analyzed by computers – PDFs, notebooks, Excel files (my god, so many Excel files) and so on. But often what really gets in the way is organizational politics: a team, or group, controls a key data source, the reason for their existence is that they are the gatekeepers to that data source, and they typically justify their existence in a corporation by being the gatekeepers of that data source (and, often, providing analyses of that data).
The spirit of going through layers of abstraction to make hands dirty. Guarding information simply with an intention of avoiding being worthless (inflated ego).📄 Everyone’s the hero of their own story
Note that at no point do you have to win in order to be the hero of your story. Being a victim is an easy way to stay the hero, especially if you view the game as rigged against you. Maybe things aren’t going so great, but you’re not at fault: You’ve been placed in an impossible position by vast forces that conspire against you — the landed Boomers, the globalist elite, the patriarchy. In a tragic story, the hero can lose, and they are all the more laudable for their suffering.
But if you do want to persuade, you have to offer people an alternative narrative. A new heroic story they can inhabit. With some emotional intelligence, you can make someone feel as if you’re not a villain mocking them, but rather, a sympathetic helper who can bring them new information. After all, many heroic plots involve the hero breaking free from a false allegiance, with the help of an unlikely sidekick who alerts them to some deception.
And I can further extend my principle of "everyone wants to be heard" with "in their own narrative or story that positions them as a central, suffering, heroic figure".But the fact is, almost anyone would rather, at any given moment, float about in the Carribbean, or have sex, or eat some delicious food, than work on hard problems. The rule about doing what you love assumes a certain length of time. It doesn't mean, do what will make you happiest this second, but what will make you happiest over some longer period, like a week or a month.
To be happy I think you have to be doing something you not only enjoy, but admire. You have to be able to say, at the end, wow, that's pretty cool. This doesn't mean you have to make something. If you learn how to hang glide, or to speak a foreign language fluently, that will be enough to make you say, for a while at least, wow, that's pretty cool. What there has to be is a test.
"Always produce" is also a heuristic for finding the work you love. If you subject yourself to that constraint, it will automatically push you away from things you think you're supposed to work on, toward things you actually like. "Always produce" will discover your life's work the way water, with the aid of gravity, finds the hole in your roof.
I think what I'm trying to do with those longer (and longer) traveling, is to be able to say to myself "he had a good time".Watching
📹 How to Identify Quality in Clothing
📹 Warren Buffett on One Last Day with Charlie Munger
📹 Our designer built an operating system with Cursor
🎥 白日夢冒險王
🎥 Conclave
🎥 Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy
🎥 Megane
🎥 F1
🎥 少女與戰車劇場版
🎥 Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning
Outside Interest
✏️ Your Lost Suitcase Is Probably in Alabama
📹 Ichiro Suzuki is inducted into the Hall of Fame
But I knew if I stuck to my beliefs about preparation, I could overcome the doubts even my own. [...] Being responsible for yourself means answering to yourself. When you go home at night and wonder why you didn't get a hit or you didn't make a catch, the honest answer is not a great pitcher beat you or a tough sand was in your eyes. It's because there was something you could have done better.
Dreams are not always realistic, but goals can be possible if you think deeply about how to reach them.
📝 A letter from Aug 14, 2024
Future Letter 終究是服務當下的，重點未必是未來的自己收到了什麼，而是寫信當下的梳理。只希望每一封信都是一個 snapshot，是能讓一年後的自己讀著信並說：噢，原來一年前的自己是這樣想的、是長成這款的。
在美國的這段期間，覺醫師走了。很突然，真的很突然，一年後的你讀信時應該忘了當時的感覺吧，但你確實是震驚的。覺醫師是貴人，現在生活的樣子、對健康的態度 ...... ，覺醫師對這些有著無比影響，甚至可說是推動這一切的人。但他走了，而你還在努力著。「世界上所有的事情發生就是發生了，情緒都是人自己加上去的」。是啊！但還是很難過，身旁的人不多，對你重要的人更少，而就在這一段時間，你身旁少了一位很重要的人。
📝 A letter from Aug 25, 2024
當初在加拿大的森林漫步中，記下了對你最重要的五個特質：真誠、自由、多元、說到做到、心懷感激。若要現在重新定義的話，大抵沒有太大差別，但你會詳述成這個樣子：對自己誠實、對他人真誠、擁有多元身份且徜徉於各式群體裡（web of deserved trust）、prioritize to taking action、走一條更務實的路、擁有更深沉的智識、心懷感激依然重要，對身旁的 simple joy 感到欣喜。
最後是兩句簡短提醒，期許讀信時內心依然能擁有波瀾、依然能知了其中深意：
人生沒有如果。
願你熟知此刻，謹記所有。
📝 A letter from Aug 27, 2024
一年前的你依然在高雄總圖，現在是晚上九點。此刻的圖書館，也許是在台灣能找到最安靜的時刻了，有舒服的溫度、非常少的人類、寬敞的空間、有書，而最重要的是眼前的一面窗，外頭無光而擁有令人安心的黑。去清邁前要先去一趟台北，方才把所有的 logistic 都敲好了（剩下一個晚餐沒約）。抽屜裡有張機票時，其實做什麼事情都些許急迫了起來。專注在最重要的事。
再隔一年讀到時，依然能回想起當初寫信的感覺：一切旅程的開頭，出發了！📝 A letter from Sep 8, 2024
信件的最後，記錄下昨晚與凡軒在高雄百樂聖代的聊天。好開心喔！凡軒此刻的狀態，正如你當初從溫哥華回台後，是一股自信、「聖人」、正能量充滿的狀態，對於自己所做有著非凡確信。能見到好朋友如此，自己真的打從內心感到喜悅：）凡軒提到自己現在相信的是「命定」人生了，是積極向度的「一切都被註定好了」，因此要盡人事並聽天命。
昨天跟他提到了「與前同事們沒有來往」一事，但從凡軒的角度理解，卻給了你莫大的安慰：「過去所發生的小錯，都是為了避免未來的大錯」。意思是生命的用心教導讓你稍稍跌足，但也因此使你在未來更能站好腳跟、腳踏實地。對於過往關係的虧欠與罪惡你也該釋懷了，為的是讓你在年紀更長時能好好待人。
被信件一點醒，果真能憶起當初一起吃「舶來品」巧克力聖代的場景（笑。溫哥華經驗過去三年了，影響力早已降低了，真要說「清邁的開頭」對此刻的你才是最重要的。不知道凡軒此刻會怎麼看待當初的南美洲行？第二段的安慰，竟也安慰了此刻撰文的自己。還是不得「走入人際」「走進人群」的要領，截至近期甚至有點心灰意冷，但被凡軒的話拍了肩，或許在某個向度上還是有「開竅」的可能吧。只是如此地相信、努力著。喜欢我的作品吗？别忘了给予支持与赞赏，让我知道在创作的路上有你陪伴，一起延续这份热忱！