Invent and Wander: Part 2
One word: Self-Reliance
“I basically spent summer working alongside him on a ranch. He was the most resourceful man. He did all this own veterinarian work. He would even make his own needles: pound the wire with an oxyacetylene torch, drill a little hole in it, sharpen it, and make a needle that he could suture up the cattle with. Some of the cattle even survived. He was remarkable man and a huge part of all of our lives. My grandfather was like a second set of parents for me.”
—One theme in the above paragraph—Self-Reliance; and the other thing: ‘failure is part of life when you tinker’ and it okay it there are some losses due to that.
We Are What We Choose
Differences between gifts and choices:
Cleverness is a gift; kindness is a choice—You can seduce yourself with your gifts if you’re not careful, and if you do, it’ll probably be to the detriment of your choices.
“Your smarts will come in handy because you will travel in a land of marvels. We humans—plodding (slow-moving and unexciting) as we are—will astonish ourselves.”
In the end, its all about taking pride in your choices rather than taking pride in your gifts.
When Bezos told his “brilliant boss” that he wanted to start a company “selling books on the internet”. He took Bezos on a long walk and said, “that sounds like a really good idea, but it would be an ever better idea for someone who didn’t already have a good job.”
That’s it, isn’t it?
When you are 80 (lucky if you get to live that long), what do you want to be your story? Regret-full that you should have done “that”; or, I should have said hi to “that girl”; or, you busted your balls in a 9to5 job, hating every moment of it or really do something that you are born to do?
I will always choose the uncomfortable answers—I’ll do whatever I want to do, I’ll go say ‘hi’ to the girl I want to say ‘hi’ to, I’ll take risk and go find something that I would love to do and wouldn’t mind spending every waking hour trying to best it.
Because, every time you say ‘no’ to the thing you would have loved you’re giving yourself a reason to be haunted by it.
Tomorrow, in a very real sense, your life—the life you author from scratch on your life—begins:
How will you use your gifts? What choices will you make?
Will inertia be your guide, or will you follow your passions?
Will you follow dogma, or will you be original?
Will you choose a life of ease, or a life of service and adventure?
Will you wilt under criticism, or will you follow your convictions?
Will you bluff it out when you’re wrong, or will you apologise?
Will you guard your heart against rejection, or will you act when you fall in love?
Will you play it safe, or will you be a little swashbuckling?
When it’s tough, will you give up, or will you be relentless?
When you be cynic, or will you be a builder?
Will you be clever at the expense of others, or will you be kind?
When you are eighty years old and, in a quiet moment of reflection, narrating for only yourself the most personal version of your life story, the telling that will be most compact and meaningful will be the series of choices you have made.
In end, we are our choices, Build yourself a great story.
Resourcefulness
“The whole point of moving things forward is that you run into problems, failures, things, that don’t work. You need to back up and try again. Each one of those times when you have a setback, you get back up and try again.”
“You are using resourcefulness; you’re using self-reliance; you’re trying to invent your way out of a box.”
“Resourcefulness is trying new things, figuring things out.”—Don’t just sit there; do something about what your objective is—Even if you fail, you’ll move forward.
I would rather fail a thousand times than never trying something again.—James Dyson, he failed 5126 times before he could come up with a marketable vacuum—When you’re failing ask yourself—“Did I try 5126 times?” Your answer—most probably always be “no”.
Why I went from a Hedge Fund to Selling Books
The decision to start an Internet company— “It was one of those decisions that I made with my heart and not my head, not wanting to pass up a great opportunity. When I’m eighty, I want to have minimised the number of regrets that I have in my life, and most of the regrets are acts of omission, things we didn’t try, the path untravelled. Those are the things that haunt us.”
This is how I’ve lived my life: I went to Manipal because I didn’t want to have a regret that I didn’t go when I had the chance, I dated someone because I liked her and if I hadn’t “dated” her, I would have regretted it, even after break-up I don’t have a regret that I dated her. Now, I’m all-in finance because, I wouldn’t do anything else—and I’m not changing it no matter what happens.
All about “Internal report-card Vs. External report-card” life.
Live your life like this song is playing in the background: Concerto No. 4 in F minor, Op. 8, RV 297, “L’inverno” (winter): I. Allegro non molto. (Link)
Be the “P-R-O-P-H-E-T” of your life, don’t let your environment dictate your future.
The Idea for Prime
“Most of the inventing we do at Amazon goes like this: somebody has an idea, other people improve the idea, other people come up with objections for why it can never work, and then we solve the objections.”
Idea—Iterate—If it works—Good—If it doesn’t—Iterate—Rinse and Repeat.
“When the finance team modelled that idea, the results were horrifying—And it’s okay. When you’re building something new you have to have instinct. All good decisions have to made that way.”
Thinking Three Years Out
“When I have a good quarterly conference call with Wall Street, people will stop me and say, “Congratulations on your quarter,” and I say, “Thank you” but, what I am really thinking is that quarter was baked three years ago.”
Trust
The way you earn trust, the way you develop a reputation is by doing hard things well over and over and over.
It’s really that simple. It’s also that complicated. It’s not easy to do hard things well, but that’s how you earn trust. And trust, of course, is an overloaded word. It means so many different things. It’s integrity, but it’s also competence. It’s doing what you said you were going to do—and delivering.
Conclusion
You’ll often find people saying that, ‘if they live their life well, they’ll get moksha’, i.e., release free from the cycle of birth and death by the law of karma.
I think, a person should work on what they want to work on, although it’s not often possible and it’s a luxury if you get to do that but, I still if you want it hard enough you can do anything you want with your life.
It comes down to just one question: How bad you want it?
When you read the writings of Bezos you’ll this theme—Do what you love, there’s no other way to create magic. If you’re doing something just for the money or ‘job security’ you are replaceable.
Every name that you know of or you read about are the people who did what they loved (Reminder: It’s not loving what they did but, rather opposite). People who do what they love, live longer because they “tap dance to work” but, if you don’t love what you do you’ll not give your 100 percent and thus your karma will always be unfulfilled. How do you expect moksha out of something you don’t like doing?
So, the above principles of Relentlessness, Self-Reliance, Regret Minimisation, Resourcefulness—All these word points to one thing—Do what you love, no matter how hard it might be and don’t even think about giving up. Because, if you do, you won’t forgive yourself.
Thanks for reading, Love ya!