Systematize Success #9 - Zoom, Luck, Life & Death
Zoom, Luck, Life & Death
Hi Friends,
Happy Monday!
Best reads of the week:
Four causes for ‘Zoom fatigue’ and their solutions (7min)
Excessive amounts of close-up eye contact is highly intense.
Seeing yourself during video chats constantly in real-time is fatiguing.
Video chats dramatically reduce our usual mobility.
The cognitive load is much higher in video chats.
Codus Operandi (2min)
The amount of serendipity that will occur in your life, your Luck Surface Area, is directly proportional to the degree to which you do something you're passionate about combined with the total number of people to whom this is effectively communicated.
The reason is that when people become aware of your expertise, some percentage of them will take action to capture that value, but quite often it will be in a you would never have predicted. Maybe they'll want to hire you, or partner with you, or invest in you, or who knows what. But in whatever way it happens, it will be serendipitous.
Steve Jobs Stanford Commencement Speech 2005 (14min)
Your work is gonna fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work.
And the only way to do great work is to love what you do.
If you haven't found it yet, keep looking and don't settle.
As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it, and like any great relationship it just gets better and better as the years roll on.
So keep looking; don't settle.
[...]
When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like "if you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right".
It made an impression on me, and since then for the past 33 years I've looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: if today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today.
And whenever the answer has been no for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.
Remembering that we will all be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life, because almost everything - all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important.
Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose.
You are already naked: there is no reason not to follow your heart.
[...]
Death is very likely the single best invention of life.
[...]
Your time is limited so don't waste it living someone else's life.
Thanks for reading, and make this week a meaningful one,
V