Today, during morning coffee, as we were talking, Amy mentioned that she had already heard “Dust in the Wind” by Kansas, which is in heavy rotation on our Amy’s Faves playlist. Just a drop of water in an endless sea All we do Crumbles to the ground, though we refuse to see ...
“The human obsession with purpose is merely a distraction from the absurdity of existence.” … Nikolai Gogol (unverified) Let’s start with existentialism . For a long time, I’ve believed that you create your meaning during your existence on this planet. You get one life, and when it’s over, it’s over. I’ve never embraced the idea of a legacy, as I care more about what I do while I’m alive than what people say about me after I’m dead. And, I’ve always been deeply intrinsically motivated by learning, so the extrinsic rewards of life, while nice, aren’t a core motivation for me. ...
Since releasing my newest book The Entrepreneur’s Weekly Nietzsche: A Book for Disruptors I’ve been continually getting the questions “Why Philosophy and Entrepreneurship?” and “Why Nietzsche?” Dave and I cover this right off the bat in the book, so I thought I’d toss up an excerpt that addresses the question with part of my own origin story with Dave. It follows. Nietzsche? For entrepreneurs? It was the end of January 1988, about nine months since we had embarked on turning Brad’s solo consulting shop, Feld Technologies, into a real business. We were fraternity brothers and close friends and opened our first office directly across the street from our fraternity chapter house in Cambridge. We planned to use smart yet inexpensive software developers to build business application software. We employed half a dozen programmers, most of whom were undergraduates from our fraternity working part-time. We didn’t have any financing except for Brad’s credit card and the $10 with which we had purchased our common stock. ...
Ryan Holiday’s newest book, Stillness Is The Key, came out at the beginning of October. I ended up with two copies and thought I’d read it over the weekend after they showed up at my house. The weekend slipped by and I didn’t pick it up until mid-day on Thanksgiving. It was pouring rain in San Diego all day so it was a perfect laying on the couch reading afternoon. I just finished and, once again, Ryan delivered with this book. ...
The following post is the one I was referring to when I wrote The Moment You Realize You Aren’t Comfortable With What You Wrote . After I wrote it, I searched around for the quote but came across links to a speech by Ben Shapiro titled “Truth Is A Microagression” along with a bunch of commentary about Shapiro suggesting “Facts don’t care about your feelings” and counterarguments that “Facts do care about your feelings.” ...
I heard a great phrase from Jenna Walker at Artifact Uprising yesterday. We had a Blackstone Entrepreneurs Network Colorado meeting with her and her partner and in the middle of the discussion about their business Jenna used the phrase “digital paralysis” to describe one of the things she thinks is driving the incredible engagement of their customers. Her example was photography. Artifact Uprising came out of her original experience with photography, the dramatic shift to digital photography on iPhones and picture storage on Dropbox and Instagram, and the massive overwhelming feeling of having zillions of digital photos. In Jenna’s case, it’s caused a slow down of her photo taking (digital paralysis) because she’s overwhelmed with the massive numbers of photos she now has, doesn’t really have the energy to deal with them, and resists taking more because they’ll just end up along with the other zillions in Dropbox. ...
As we roll into the weekend, and I start another digital sabbath, I’ve got the question “what really matters about being human” rolling through my mind. I spent the afternoon at the Silicon Flatirons conference SciFi and Entrepreneurship – Is Resistance Futile? I thought it was phenomenal and remarkably thought provoking. I came back to my office to find Dane and Eugene playing TitanFall on my 75″ screen. In a few minutes I’m heading out to dinner with my parents, Amy, and John Underkoffler of Oblong who was in town for the conference. The juxtaposition of another intense week rolling into the weekend and a day off the grid intrigues me. ...
I’m glad it’s 2014. Last year was a difficult one for me as I hit a wall of depression that completely surprised me. I was over it by mid year and, while the second half of the year was better, I still struggled with figuring a bunch of stuff out about what I cared about as I turned 48 years old. I stopped doing a few things last year. I stopped traveling for business. I stopped working on Saturdays . ...
One of my favorite books of all times is Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance . I read it every few years and recommend that every entrepreneur read it early in their journey. While a plethora of entrepreneurship books have come out recently, including the ones I’ve written in the Startup Revolution series , there hasn’t yet been the equivalent of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance for entrepreneurship. ...
The title of this post “Work diligently, work intelligently, work patiently and persistently” is a powerful line from S.N. Goenka that is part of magnificent blog post by Ben Casnocha titled Reflections and Impressions from a 10-Day Meditation Course . On July 18th, Ben wrote a post titled Something I Think I Could Fail At: 10 Day Silent Meditation Program , promptly went to Northern California Vipassana Meditation Center , and went off the grid for ten days. He resurfaced today. His post about his experience is awesome – go read it now. ...