🎧 04:44 - 06:29 (01:44)

David Senra explaining the difference between independent and conventional thinking.

David Senra: Do you want to do the kind work where you can only win by thinking differently from everyone else? Independent mindedness seems to be more a matter of nature than nurture, which means if you pick the wrong type of work, you're going to be unhappy. If you're naturally independent minded, you're going to find it frustrating to be a middle manager. And if you're naturally conventional minded, you're going to be sailing into a headwind if you try to do original research. One difficulty here is that people are often mistaken about where they fall on the spectrum from conventional to independent-minded. Conventional-minded people don't like to think of themselves as conventional-minded. It genuinely feels to them as if they make up their own about everything. It's just a coincidence that their beliefs are identical to their peers. And the independent minded, meanwhile, are often unaware how different their ideas are from conventional ones, at least till they state them publicly. Can you make yourself more independent minded? I think so. It matters a lot who you surround yourself with. If you surround yourself with independent-minded people, hearing other people say surprising things will encourage you to, and to think of more. The independent-minded find it uncomfortable to be surrounded by conventional-minded people. A place where the independent and conventional-minded are thrown together is in successful startups. The founders and early employees are almost always independent-minded. Otherwise, the startup wouldn't be successful. But conventional-minded people greatly outnumber independent-minded ones. So as the company grows, the original spirit of independent-mindedness is inevitably diluted. This causes all kinds of problems, besides the obvious one, that the company starts to suck.

🎧 07:59 - 08:09 (00:10)

David Senra: There are intellectual fashions too, and you definitely don't want to participate in those because unfashionable ideas are disproportionately likely

🎧 10:46 - 12:20 (01:33)

David Senra: One thing I know is that if you want to do great things you'll have to work very hard I wasn't sure of that as a kid was there perhaps I thought about this way and you might have as well when I was younger it's like everybody told me it's like don't work hard work uh don't work harder work smarter and then what you realize is when you studying people that reach the top of their profession, and if you want to be excellent in what you do and really do great work, that you do both. They all do both. They work hard and smart. And so Paul's kind of going back to his inner monologue that he was having as a kid. He's like, was there perhaps some way to evade hard work through sheer brilliance? Now I know the answer to that question. There isn't. In fact, Paul has this great quote where he's responding on Twitter. He's responding back to Patrick Collison, the founder of Stripe, saying, hey, know, Stripe is really hard to build. It took a lot of intensity and we had to work very hard. And he said something like, hey, you know, maybe better founders. You're able to build something great without working hard, but we couldn't figure out a way to do that. And Paul's response was, that's an empty set. If Patrick and John Collison had to work both smart and hard, you're going to have to too. And so I feel that's where he's, that's very much his perspective in this essay. The reason famous adults seem to do things effortlessly was years of practice. They made it look easy because they were practicing in private. I mean, you talk about this all the time. There are three ingredients in great work, Natural ability, practice, and effort. This is really special to me because I feel in the last like six months, maybe 12 months, I feel like you and I have been talking about practice just over and over and over again. I've become obsessed with the idea. You can do pretty well with just two, but to do the best work, you need all three. Bill Gates, for example, was among

🎧 18:42 - 19:52 (01:09)

David Senra: When I was working at ViaWeb, that was his startup that he sold to I was driven by the fear of failure. So I want to pause right there. This is something that was fantastic. Jimmy Iovine, there's a great documentary on HBO called The Defiant Ones. And Jimmy Iovine's had a very interesting career, record producer, founder, winds up selling the company he co-owned with Dr. Dre to Apple for billions and billions dollars. But there's, at the very beginning of this Dr. Dre song called All in a Day's Work, there's a clip of Jimmy Iovine talking about how he utilized fear as a tool. And this is what he said. Fear is a powerful thing. I mean, it's got a lot of firepower. If you can figure out a way to wrestle that fear to push you from behind rather than to stand in front of you, that's very powerful. I always felt I had to work harder than the next guy just to do as well as the next guy. And to do better than the next guy, I just had to kill it. And you know, to a certain extent, that's still with me in how I work. You know, I just go in. And so the idea that fear is a powerful force if you can actually use it as a tool instead of a hinderance, something that GMIV repeats over and over again in a lot of different contexts. When I was working on ViaWeb, I was driven by fear of failure.

🎧 22:48 - 23:21 (00:33)

David Senra: This may be my favorite sentence in the entire... I can't like scream or jump up and down like I normally do. But this is just... I love this. A deep interest in a topic makes people work harder than any amount of discipline can. So imagine if you could find a deep, like, you feel compelled, you have to do this, a deep interest in a topic, and then you combine that with world-class discipline. A deep interest in a topic makes people work harder than any amount of discipline can. Some people figure out what to do as children and just do it, like Mozart. That's a crazy life story.

🎧 24:27 - 25:15 (00:48)

“The most interesting people are the most interested.”

David Senra: It's like how many people truly get to do, like how many, first of all, how many people find work they truly love and then work themselves in a way, in a position to actually do work they love. And he's like, it's hundreds of thousands out of billions. This is so difficult. The best test of whether it's worthwhile to work on something is whether you find it interesting. That may sound like a dangerously subjective measure, but it's probably the most accurate one you're going to get. You're the one working on the stuff. Who is it? This kind of ran over his point here, right? Who's in a better position than you to judge whether it's important and what's a better predictor of its importance than whether it's interesting? So one line I say over and over again that I try to use as a guide, not only for myself, but also who to spend time with, is the most interesting people are the most interested. So this idea is like, who knows better than you? What's a better predictor of its importance

🎧 42:25 - 42:02 (00:23)

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🎧 04:44 - 06:29 (01:44)

David Senra explaining the difference between independent and conventional thinking.

David Senra: Do you want to do the kind work where you can only win by thinking differently from everyone else? Independent mindedness seems to be more a matter of nature than nurture, which means if you pick the wrong type of work, you're going to be unhappy. If you're naturally independent minded, you're going to find it frustrating to be a middle manager. And if you're naturally conventional minded, you're going to be sailing into a headwind if you try to do original research. One difficulty here is that people are often mistaken about where they fall on the spectrum from conventional to independent-minded. Conventional-minded people don't like to think of themselves as conventional-minded. It genuinely feels to them as if they make up their own about everything. It's just a coincidence that their beliefs are identical to their peers. And the independent minded, meanwhile, are often unaware how different their ideas are from conventional ones, at least till they state them publicly. Can you make yourself more independent minded? I think so. It matters a lot who you surround yourself with. If you surround yourself with independent-minded people, hearing other people say surprising things will encourage you to, and to think of more. The independent-minded find it uncomfortable to be surrounded by conventional-minded people. A place where the independent and conventional-minded are thrown together is in successful startups. The founders and early employees are almost always independent-minded. Otherwise, the startup wouldn't be successful. But conventional-minded people greatly outnumber independent-minded ones. So as the company grows, the original spirit of independent-mindedness is inevitably diluted. This causes all kinds of problems, besides the obvious one, that the company starts to suck.

🎧 07:59 - 08:09 (00:10)

David Senra: There are intellectual fashions too, and you definitely don't want to participate in those because unfashionable ideas are disproportionately likely

🎧 10:46 - 12:20 (01:33)

David Senra: One thing I know is that if you want to do great things you'll have to work very hard I wasn't sure of that as a kid was there perhaps I thought about this way and you might have as well when I was younger it's like everybody told me it's like don't work hard work uh don't work harder work smarter and then what you realize is when you studying people that reach the top of their profession, and if you want to be excellent in what you do and really do great work, that you do both. They all do both. They work hard and smart. And so Paul's kind of going back to his inner monologue that he was having as a kid. He's like, was there perhaps some way to evade hard work through sheer brilliance? Now I know the answer to that question. There isn't. In fact, Paul has this great quote where he's responding on Twitter. He's responding back to Patrick Collison, the founder of Stripe, saying, hey, you Stripe is really hard to build. It took a lot of intensity and we had to work very hard. And he said something like, hey, you know, maybe better founders. You're able to build something great without working hard, but we couldn't figure out a way to do that. And Paul's response was, that's an empty set. If Patrick and John Collison had to work both smart and hard, you're going to have to too. And so I feel that's where he's, that's very much his perspective in this essay. The reason famous adults seem to do things effortlessly was years of practice. They made it look easy because they were practicing in private. I mean, you talk about this all the time. There are three ingredients in great work, Natural ability, practice, and effort. This is really special to me because I feel in the last like six months, maybe 12 months, I feel like you and I have been talking about practice just over and over and over again. I've become obsessed with the idea. You can do pretty well with just two, but to do the best work, you need all three. Bill Gates, for example, was among

🎧 18:42 - 19:52 (01:09)

David Senra: When I was working at ViaWeb, that was his startup that he sold to I was driven by the fear of failure. So I want to pause right there. This is something that was fantastic. Jimmy Iovine, there's a great documentary on HBO called The Defiant Ones. And Jimmy Iovine's had a very interesting career, record producer, founder, winds up selling the company he co-owned with Dr. Dre to Apple for billions and billions dollars. But there's, at the very beginning of this Dr. Dre song called All in a Day's Work, there's a clip of Jimmy Iovine talking about how he utilized fear as a tool. And this is what he said. Fear is a powerful thing. I mean, it's got a lot of firepower. If you can figure out a way to wrestle that fear to push you from behind rather than to stand in front of you, that's very powerful. I always felt I had to work harder than the next guy just to do as well as the next guy. And to do better than the next guy, I just had to kill it. And you know, to a certain extent, that's still with me in how I work. You know, I just go in. And so the idea that fear is a powerful force if you can actually use it as a tool instead of a hinderance, something that GMIV repeats over and over again in a lot of different contexts. When I was working on ViaWeb, I was driven by fear of failure.

🎧 22:48 - 23:21 (00:33)

David Senra: This may be my favorite sentence in the entire... I can't like scream or jump up and down like I normally do. But this is just... I love this. A deep interest in a topic makes people work harder than any amount of discipline can. So imagine if you could find a deep, like, you feel compelled, you have to do this, a deep interest in a topic, and then you combine that with world-class discipline. A deep interest in a topic makes people work harder than any amount of discipline can. Some people figure out what to do as children and just do it, like Mozart. That's a crazy life story.

🎧 24:27 - 25:15 (00:48)

“The most interesting people are the most interested.”

David Senra: It's like how many people truly get to do, like how many, first of all, how many people find work they truly love and then work themselves in a way, in a position to actually do work they love. And he's like, it's hundreds of thousands out of billions. This is so difficult. The best test of whether it's worthwhile to work on something is whether you find it interesting. That may sound like a dangerously subjective measure, but it's probably the most accurate one you're going to get. You're the one working on the stuff. Who is it? This kind of ran over his point here, right? Who's in a better position than you to judge whether it's important and what's a better predictor of its importance than whether it's interesting? So one line I say over and over again that I try to use as a guide, not only for myself, but also who to spend time with, is the most interesting people are the most interested. So this idea is like, who knows better than you? What's a better predictor of its importance

🎧 42:25 - 42:02 (00:23)

Created with Snipd | Highlight & Take Notes from Podcasts