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Ambition & Hard Work

“I think that follow your dreams and follow your passion that was great advice in the 1970s when the number one most desired job for children was astronaut astronauts were fighter pilots PhD mathematicians combined and today do you know what the number one job that kids want to be is content creator no it's it's a it's it's a YouTuber and then the next one is professional gamer yes uh and like I think it's really dangerous to tell people follow your dreams when their dreams are so bad.” (Palmer Luckey)

“They keep saying you know we kids should follow their dreams I do want to let you guys know that I dug into this I asked myself when did we start telling people this when do we start telling people follow your dreams you could do anything it's actually a product of the early 1970s if you look back in Google Scholar and you look at the timelines for when books started to use phrases like follow your dreams especially in relation to the youth it was in the early 1970s and you know I think what it's become a kind of a weird feel good hippie thing it's basically telling kids go deeply into debt to do the thing that will never make you money or matter at all um and and this is good advice and but but more importantly do you guys know what the number one dream was for kids in 1971. can anyone guess I know what it is it it's astronaut we had just gone to the moon and so that's a great dream I mean these guys were like fighter pilots PhD mathematicians Supermen who were also really good looking and well spoken I mean that they picked them so that they were you know they the ultimate American hero ideal for a kid to see that and say that's what I want to be okay tell the kids to follow their dreams but do you know what the number one job that kids most want today is it's a mix of those yeah it's social media influencer next is professional gamer next is YouTuber and the problem is when you you can't tell kids to follow their dreams or their dreams suck and so it it it's it's just the truth and so I you know I I would I would say if you're going to encourage kids to follow their dreams we need to inspire them in them dreams that are more impactful to them more impactful the country and most importantly ones that they can practically achieve with the skill set that they have or skill sets they can develop you know it doesn't have to be what you're good at today it has to be what you can become good at and uh you you become good at something that's going to be good for good for your country rather than just good for your pocketbook that's the lesson of the modern American tech industry I think.” (Palmer Luckey)

Driven, Larry H. Miller biography

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From Colleen Konetzke at Ironspring

  • Dissatisfaction in our relationship with work and our capitalist system sure does create a lot of great art. (Again, would it be better if the strife weren't there in the first place? Absolutely, but I'll take and enjoy the fruits it gives us if we do have it.) If you haven't already heard it, listen to Liars by Gregory Alan Isakov. In the song, the narrator talks about giving up things he loves out of necessity and practicality as he gets older. The song is relatable for a lot of people because it describes the feeling of mindlessly compromising your aspirations out of necessity as you grow up. You dreamed big as a child but life's realities burdened you down with practical concerns instead. You convince yourself you’re “sort of happy most of the time,” making a liar out of you. I interpret the second phase of the song to be a rebellion coming from the part of you that still dreams but has been suppressed. I didn't like the song until I saw it performed live and it changed everything. It was tremendous. It drones on for a bit then builds and builds - listen and watch and hold on until the end.
  • I've been asked, "Do you live to work and work to live?" and my response is…neither? Do I have to pick a camp? Do we have to make this that black and white? When everything today is polarized, do we have to polarize work too? Apparently we do.
  • A phrase I continually come back to is a lyric from one of my all-time favorite songs, The Maze by Manchester Orchestra. The line is: "there is nothing I've got when I die that I keep." Maybe not original to the song but that's where I heard it. Give it a listen too - the first couple of verses are from the perspective of the lead singer's newborn daughter, then the last couple are his perspective singing to her. It's incredibly beautiful and Gospel-like. In the Catholic tradition, on Ash Wednesday we receive ashes on our forehead and the ash distributor says "remember you are dust and to dust you shall return." Nothing like talking about mortality when talking about our relationship with work??
  • Venture to me so far (again, I'm only ~2.5 years in) has felt just like a bunch of empire building that amounts to I'm not sure what. Build your network, build your brand, build your following, build your online presence, build your portfolio, build your track record, build all these little empires to get into the best deals and be successful. I'm running around placing a sand brick on each of 6-7 sandcastles every day, but the castles and the sand city they make up take years to build. All this running around yet your portfolio won't be written on your gravestone. When I've considered leaving the industry I fall prey to sunk cost bias - all these little empires I've started building, the first couple layers on each sand castle on the beach that are my network and reputation and deal history, would be lost. I've written about this and hope to share some form of this concept publicly in the next year.
  • The noise I made reading that quote from that HBR post was inhuman as I've never felt so seen (or called out). I left an EPO years ago (consulting firm) although I am not sure venture is much different. I have seen the system at those firms prey upon insecure overachievers firsthand. A very close friend of mine was forced by the firm to take a mental health leave a couple years back. I sat across from her over some smoothies at Whole Foods as she told me how she sits down at her computer first thing in the morning, doesn't work out, forgets to eat, her hair was falling out, and that she checks the locks 5 times every night before going to bed and couldn't stop doing that (showing OCD tendencies) and that this all go so bad her parents intervened. But two minutes later, it's "yeah, I'm not sure yet whether I want to stay for this next big promotion." I was losing my mind, like RUN. No actual autonomy. 18 months later she's still there and I'm trying to get her to break up with the abusive boyfriend that is the firm. I see this system perpetuate in venture too, although it looks a little different and has less systemic structure than large professional services firms. But it's definitely still there
  • What I continue to wrestle with is that I have strong hobbies and communities (cycling, triathlon) outside of work that I religiously make time for. When I talk to other peer investors that don't have these and always seem to be working more than I do, they seem drained, but I come away feeling like I'm not doing enough at work and shouldn't make so much time for my hobbies. I can't win. I think - actually, I know - that cycling has made me a better venture capitalist. I have written about this as well. The Alan Rickman quote you come back to a lot about getting out and bouncing around/running into people with different perspectives and ideas and seeing different things resonates with me greatly. I have been working on reclaiming the responsibility of how I judge my own life (after all, we are not the final judges). I can do my best work when I have fulfilling hobbies outside of work.
  • Comedian Tom Fell's videos sum up current attitudes towards work well. The sports reference one kills me: "your job is to go clickety clack on a keyboard."