Brainfoodie

▍Mindware: A Theory of Learnable Intelligence

Sat, 25 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT

David Perkins frames intelligence as upgradable software: neural intelligence is genetic hardware, experiential intelligence is domain knowledge, and reflective intelligence (mindware) is the metacognitive toolkit that orchestrates them. Installing good mindware and filtering out “cognitive malware” creates a virtuous cycle of better reasoning and decisions.

Mindware: Neural architecture as hardware; mental strategies as software that can be installed, updated, or uninstalled.
Mind Gardening: Intentionally cultivating good cognitive inputs (“seeds”) while weeding out toxic ideas.

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▍Why Is Everyone so Boring?

Thu, 23 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Real people are more often lively, passionate, opinionated, and provocative, and they express more disagreements.

I see roughly three typical public stances: boring, lively, or outraged. Either you act boring, so the bandits will ignore you, you act lively, and invite bandit attacks, or you act outraged, and play a bandit yourself.

It takes unusual art, allies, and energy, in a word “eliteness”, to survive while choosing lively.

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▍Do not ask your children to strive

Wed, 22 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Do not ask your children

to strive for extraordinary lives.

Such striving may seem admirable,

but it is the way of foolishness.

Help them instead to find the wonder

and the marvel of an ordinary life.

Show them the joy of tasting

tomatoes, apples and pears.

Show them how to cry

when pets and people die.

Show them the infinite pleasure

in the touch of a hand.

And make the ordinary come alive for them.

The extraordinary will take care of itself.

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▍The Innovator’s DNA

Tue, 21 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Top executives do not feel personally responsible for coming up with strategic innovations. Rather, they feel responsible for facilitating the innovation process.

They don’t delegate creative work. They do it themselves.

Imagine that you have an identical twin, endowed with the same brains and natural talents that you have. You’re both given one week to come up with a creative new business-venture idea. During that week, you come up with ideas alone in your room. In contrast, your twin:

talks with 10 people-including an engineer, a musician, a stay-at-home dad, and a designer-about the venture
visits three innovative start-ups to observe what they do
samples five “new to the market” products
shows a prototype he’s built to five people
asks the questions “What if I tried this?” and “Why do you do that?” at least 10 times each day during these networking, observing, and experimenting activities.

Who do you bet will come up with the more innovative (and doable) idea?

1. ⭐️ 聯想 (Associating) - 探索互不相干的新事物

Associating, the ability to connect seemingly unrelated questions, problems, or ideas from different fields, is center to the innovator’s DNA / is the backbone structure of DNA’s double helix; four patterns of action (questioning, observing, experimenting, and networking) wind around this backbone.

Associating is like a mental muscle that can grow stronger by practice. The more frequently people attempted to understand, categorize, and store new knowledge, the more easily their brains could naturally and consistently make and recombine associations.

The brain doesn’t store information like a dictionary, where you can find the word “theater” under the letter “T.” Instead, it associates the word “theater” with any number of experiences from our lives. Some of these are logical (“West End” or “intermission”), while others may be less obvious (perhaps “anxiety,” from a botched performance in high school). The more diverse our experience and knowledge, the more connections the brain can make. Fresh inputs trigger new associations; for some, these lead to novel ideas. As Steve Jobs has frequently observed, “Creativity is connecting things.”

Pierre Omidyar - eBay
1. He failed to buy shares in a hot tech company’s IPO, fueling a desire to build fairer, more efficient markets
2. His fiancée wanted a hard-to-find mint tin candy box
3. Local classified ads were terrible at matching niche buyers with sellers
Steve Jobs - Apple
1. Calligraphy (鑽研書法)
2. Meditation in an Indian ashram (印度教僧院打坐)
3. Mercedes-Benz craftsmanship (研究賓士汽車工藝)

2. 提問/質疑 (Questioning)

“The important and difficult job is never to find the right answer, but to find the right question.” — Peter Drucker

“My learning process has always been about disagreeing with what I’m being told and taking the opposite position, and pushing others to really justify themselves.” — Pierre Omidyar

Question the unquestionable.

The innovative thinkers have the capacity to hold two diametrically opposing ideas in their heads. Without panicking or simply settling for one alternative or the other, they’re able to produce a synthesis that is superior to either opposing idea.

Asking “Why” and “Why not” can help turbocharge the other discovery skills. Ask questions that both impose and eliminate constraints; this will help you see a problem or opportunity from a different angle.

3. 觀察 (Observing)

Discovery-driven executives produce uncommon business ideas by scrutinizing ¹ common phenomena, particularly the behavior of potential customers. They pay attention to small details.

Often the surprises that lead to new business ideas come from watching other people work and live their normal lives.

Genchi Genbutsu, Toyota’s core philosophy that translates to “go and see for yourself.” The best practice is to go and see the location or process where the problem exists in order to solve that problem more quickly and efficiently.

To sharpen your own observational skills, watch how certain customers experience a product or service in their natural environment. Spend an entire day carefully observing the “jobs” that customers are trying to get done. Try not to make judgments about what you see: Simply pretend you’re a fly on the wall, and observe as neutrally as possible. Scott Cook advises Intuit’s observers to ask, “What’s different than you expected?” Follow Richard Branson’s example and get in the habit of note taking wherever you go. Or follow Jeff Bezos’s: “I take pictures of really bad innovations.”

4. 實驗 (Experimenting)

Like scientists, innovative entrepreneurs actively try out new ideas by creating prototypes and launching pilots. The world is their laboratory.

One of the most powerful experiments innovators can engage in is living and working overseas. Our research revealed that the more countries a person has lived in, the more likely he or she is to leverage that experience to deliver innovative products, processes, or businesses.

To strengthen experimentation, consciously approach work and life with a hypothesis-testing mind-set. Attend seminars or executive education courses on topics outside your area of expertise; take apart a product or process that interests you; read books that purport ² to identify emerging trends.

5. 交流 (Networking)

Devoting time and energy to finding and testing ideas through a network of diverse individuals gives innovators a radically different perspective. Unlike most executives who network to access resources, to sell themselves or their companies, or to boost their careers, innovative entrepreneurs go out of their way to meet people with different kinds of ideas to extend their own knowledge domains. To this end, they make a conscious effort to meet people from other walks of life.

Why do innovators question, observe, experiment, and network more than typical executives? As we examined what motivates them, we discovered two common themes:

They actively desire to change the status quo
they regularly take risks to make that change happen

Throughout our research, we were struck by the consistency of language that innovators use to describe their motives.

Jeff Bezos wants to “make history,”
Steve Jobs to “put a ding in the universe,”
Skype cofounder Niklas Zennström to “be disruptive, but in the cause of making the world a better place.”

In short, these innovators rely on their courage to innovate, steering clear of a common cognitive bias called the status quo bias. They show an unflinching willingness to take risks, to transform ideas into powerful impact.

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▍Who Moved My Cheese?

Mon, 20 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Old beliefs do not lead you to new cheese.

食古不化的想法，並不會讓你找到新乳酪。

The quicker you let go of old cheese, the sooner you find new cheese.

你越早放棄舊乳酪，就會越快找到新乳酪。

What you are afraid of is never as bad as what you imagine. The fear you let build up in your mind is worse than the situation that actually exists.

Sometimes fear can be good. When you are afraid things are going to get worse if you don’t do something, it can prompt you into action. But it is not good when you are afraid that it keeps you from doing anything.

Being in the uncomfortable zone is much better than staying in the cheese-less situation. It is safer to search in the maze than to remain in a cheese-less situation.

Better late than never.

⭐️ The fastest way to change is to laugh at your own folly.

記得，跟著乳酪移動！

Movement in new direction helps find new cheese.

If you do not change, you can become extinct.

Life moves on and so should we.

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▍Everybody, Somebody, Anybody and Nobody

Fri, 17 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT

A team had four members called Everybody, Somebody, Anybody, and Nobody.

There was an important job to be done.

Everybody was sure that Somebody would do it.

Anybody could have done it, but Nobody did it.

Somebody got angry about that because it was Everybody’s job.

Everybody thought Anybody could do it.

Nobody realized that it’s Everybody’s job.

Everybody wouldn’t do it.

It ended up that Everybody blamed Somebody when Nobody did what Anybody could have done.

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▍Slow Dance

Fri, 17 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Have you ever watched kids on a merry-go-round?

Or listened to the rain slapping on the ground?

Ever followed a butterfly’s erratic flight?

Or gazed at the sun into the fading night?

You better slow down.

Don’t dance so fast.

Time is short.

The music won’t last.

Do you run through each day on the fly?

When you ask: “How are you?” do you hear the reply?

When the day is done, do you lie in your bed, with the next hundred chores running through your head?

You’d better slow down.

Don’t dance so fast.

Time is short.

The music won’t last.

Ever told your child, we’ll do it tomorrow?

And in your haste, not see his sorrow?

Ever lost touch, let a good friendship die, cause you never had time to call and say “Hi”?

You’d better slow down.

Don’t dance so fast.

Time is short.

The music won’t last.

When you run so fast to get somewhere, you miss half the fun of getting there.

When you worry and hurry through your day, it is like an unopened gift thrown away.

Life is not a race.

Do take it slower.

Hear the music before the song is over.

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▍Things That Aren’t Doing the Thing

Fri, 17 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Preparing to do the thing isn’t doing the thing.

Scheduling time to do the thing isn’t doing the thing.

Making a to-do list for the thing isn’t doing the thing.

Telling people you’re going to do the thing isn’t doing the thing.

Messaging friends who may or may not be doing the thing isn’t doing the thing.

Writing a banger tweet about how you’re going to do the thing isn’t doing the thing.

Hating on yourself for not doing the thing isn’t doing the thing. Hating on other people who have done the thing isn’t doing the thing. Hating on the obstacles in the way of doing the thing isn’t doing the thing.

Fantasizing about all of the adoration you’ll receive once you do the thing isn’t doing the thing.

Reading about how to do the thing isn’t doing the thing. Reading about how other people did the thing isn’t doing the thing. Reading this essay isn’t doing the thing.

The only thing that is doing the thing is doing the thing.

“The most effective way to do it, is to do it.” — Amelia Earhart

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▍How to Live an Asymmetric Life

Thu, 16 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT

1. Do hard things

Understand that life-improving changes almost always get “worse first” before they get better.

Everything you want is on the other side of worse first.

2. Do your thing

Choose Your Suffering: There is no completely safe, struggle-free path in life. Since you are going to face challenges either way, choose a path that is worth suffering for.

“Life is suffering, so pick something worth suffering for.”

3. Do it for decades

If you stay excited about one specific pursuit for a decade or longer, there is no obstacle that won’t eventually yield to your accumulated growth.

4. Write your story

Ignore the “How” Initially: Do not let the logistics or fear of how you will achieve a dream kill the dream itself. Draft a bold vision of your life five years from now, put blinders on to align your daily actions, and let the execution fall into place.

The “How” is the killer of all great dreams.

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▍The Two Wolves

Wed, 15 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT

An old man took his grandson for a walk through the woods. When they sat down by a creek, he turned to the boy.

“A fight is going on inside me,” he said. “A terrible fight between two wolves.”

The boy sat down beside him and listened.

“One is a dark wolf — envy, anger, greed, fear, hate, guilt, regret, arrogance, anxiety, self-pity, false pride, jealousy, rage, pain.”

He paused.

“The other is a light wolf — love, peace, kindness, joy, hope, gratitude, trust, humility, compassion, empathy, serenity, generosity, optimism.”

The boy looked at the water, asked:

“Which wolf will win?”

The old man put his hand on the boy’s chest, right over his heart.

“The one you feed.”

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▍Blackstone’s Byron Wien Discusses Lessons Learned in His First 80 Years

Tue, 14 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Take the time to give those who work for you a pat on the back when they do good work. Most people are so focused on the next challenge that they fail to thank the people who support them. It is important to do this. It motivates and inspires people and encourages them to perform at a higher level.

⭐️ When meeting someone new, try to find out what formative experience occurred in their lives before they were seventeen. It is my belief that some important event in everyone’s youth has an influence on everything that occurs afterwards.

Most people don’t become comfortable with who they are until they’re in their 40’s. By that time they can underplay their achievements and become a nicer, more likable person. Try to get to that point as soon as you can.

Read all the time. Don’t just do it because you’re curious about something, read actively.

If you want to be successful and live a long, stimulating life, keep yourself at risk intellectually all the time.

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▍Jason Fried: Your Only Competition Is Your Costs

Sat, 04 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Make stuff for yourself. There’s probably other people out there like you who want what you want and make it available to sell.

If you want to find great colors, look at a bird. Don’t look at a book. Look at a leaf. Look at the ocean. Go to a tide pool and just look at the colors.

10% of our profits go to our employees every year… Those bonuses are real cash. No options, no RSUs, no stock, no like any of that BS.

Would I want to do this again? If the answer is yes, then it was successful.

There’s something very cool about things that have just evolved on their own that are not influenced by other things. I try to think of us as the Galápagos (加拉巴哥群島).

Be Galápagos-like: evolve independently, focus on craft, authenticity, and what doesn’t change.

David Senra: Look at the Rolex design in 1960s.

Jason Fried: Oh, yeah.

David Senra: Basically perfect, has everything I need, nothing I don’t.

Jason Fried: Yeah.

David Senra: Look at the updated version, whatever, 2010.

Jason Fried: Yeah.

David Senra: Look at all the other stuff they added.

Jason Fried: Right.

David Senra: Why are you drawn to the first?

Jason Fried: Well, I’m drawn to the first… By the way, I don’t think the new one is bad. So, it’s just that what attracts me is the purity of the first one, because that is the purest form of the idea. And I love ideas and insights. Someone had an insight to design a watch that looked like that. And then from there, everyone based their designs off of that initial thing.

Jason Fried: That gets me going. For example, you take a Rolex Cosmograph Daytona today, and you look back at the first one in 1963. To me, the one in 1963, not just because it’s older, it’s better, in my opinion, aesthetically. Because it’s the purest form of the concept, of the idea. Everything else from there has been layered on because they need to sell more, they need to come up with a new version, a new model, and this is what happens. They couldn’t still sell that first version. That’s not the way the world works. You have to keep making new stuff, right?

[…]

Jason Fried: They didn’t just add stuff to add stuff. They added stuff that literally did improve things, not just to sell new models. You could see the material changes. Meanwhile, a lot of things like watches and stuff, it’s just like, new dial colors and new stuff just to kind of sell more.

David Senra: That’s a great point. You’re adding to it, but you’re not making it better.

He champions purity: the earliest, purest execution of an idea often wins.

I don’t believe in long-term planning. I believe in being around for the long term. I think the best way to do that is day by day, not quarter by quarter or year by year. Just figure out today and tomorrow. I’ve always been mystified by people who think they can figure out the next three years today, but they’re afraid of figuring out tomorrow.

David Senra: Explain how you plan day by day.

Jason Fried: There is no plan. I mean, like, we have a direction. So, the way I think about this, and this is, again, another weird metaphor perhaps, but I think of our business and maybe me even like I’m a squirrel 🐿️.

Jason Fried: So, you watch a squirrel run across a field. What does it do? It knows where it wants to go, roughly, and it runs, and it scurries, and it stops, and it looks around, and then it scurries some more, and it stops, and it looks around, and it scurries some more. It doesn’t need to get exactly where it wants to go. It knows roughly where it wants to go, and it clearly doesn’t know how exactly it’s going to get there, but it knows where it’s headed, and then it course-corrects. That’s how I do it.

We typically think about six weeks in advance…. Six weeks is the most we’re willing to think ahead. And then day to day, like the six weeks is like where the squirrel is headed.

David Senra: Is the time important to you? If I could tell you, “Okay, you can make the same exact amount of money that you made in 27 years, but you made it in 15, and you’re done,” you’d take the 27?

Jason Fried: Right. I would take the 27.

David Senra: Because…

Jason Fried: The money is a side effect of all of this.

David Senra: I know.

Jason Fried: So, all the money does, like Patrick, who you interviewed, O’Shaughnessy, right?

David Senra: Yeah.

Jason Fried: I love what he said about work. It’s I think something like, “I work so I could work more,” or something like that, right?

David Senra: “The reward for good work is more work.”

Jason Fried: There you go.

David Senra: It’s to keep going.

⚖️ Enough is enough

David Senra: When I think of you, I think one of your maxims that you repeat the most, is that idea. I hear you say, “So what?” all the time.

Jason Fried: Yeah, so what?

David Senra: Explain more about that.

Jason Fried: Well, you’d have to ask a question, and I would be like, “So what? I don’t know.”

David Senra: It’s like…

Jason Fried: Like, why grow? For example, we’re definitely leaving money on the table. I’m sure of it. We don’t optimize our pricing. I’m not testing pricing, not constantly. We’re not A/B testing constantly. I’m certain there’s some formula that we’re not following that could lead to more growth, more revenue, more whatever, more whatever, and my answer is “So what?”

Jason Fried: I’m very comfortable with where we are. We’ve got a great business, high margins, very predictable. We make new stuff all the time. We enjoy ourselves. We have a great time. Like, I don’t want to f*** that up.

Jason Fried: I think people f*** it up all the time. You get to the right size, and for whatever reason, you can’t be content there. And you push a little bit too much, too hard, and you lost what was great about what you were doing. And so, this whole thing about there’s money on the table, and maybe there is, and maybe there isn’t, maybe there’s a way to optimize, maybe there isn’t. It doesn’t interest me, so it’s “so what” to that. I don’t really care.

Jason Fried: There’s this two sides of business, basically. There’s the envelope, and there’s the letter. The envelope is the outside, the shell, the business, the vehicle that holds the letter, and the letter is the product.

David Senra: You just used the word thin shell to describe the envelope. Why do you want a thin shell?

Jason Fried: I want it to be a thin shell.

David Senra: What does that mean?

Jason Fried: Well, I would say this, the more massive an object, the more energy it takes to change its direction, right? This is just like, this is getting back to basic physics. When I think of this stuff, and sometimes these metaphors don’t perfectly line up, but in my head, I think of a thick business. It’s hard to change, it’s heavy, it’s massive. There’s too much distance between it and the customers and it and the product. There’s space, right? If you just imagine something very thick, this is the thing that matters, and you’ve got to go through all this and compress all this down to get to the thing that matters.

Jason Fried: I don’t like that. I think the thing that matters should be big, and the rest of it should be as thin as possible, and so that’s what we’ve tried to build at 37signals. It’s a very thin business with a thick set of products that are good and solid and real and generate real profits and are real businesses, and then the rest of it is just enough to hold it all together. That’s my vision for business.

Jason Fried: And it’s mainly just to show people that you don’t have to go big. It doesn’t have to be a big, thick, heavy, busy company. It can be very thin and then focus on the product and get to a place where you can find out people like you, get to this place where enough is enough, and then maintain.

The envelope should be as thin as possible so the product remains central.

Thin envelope = agility, fewer layers, and more optionality. No VC, small team, direct customer contact. Build durable, focused products instead of financial shells.

Focus on the letter.

Stay in the game

What I can’t control is how much it costs me to run my business, how much I sell my product for. And as long as I make more than I spend, I get to stay in business.

Another way to think about this for me, I always go back to these sort of weird metaphors, is, there’s the hockey stick (曲棍球曲線), chart, right? That is unappealing to me. I like more of a metaphor where it’s more like a rocket into orbit. You’ve got to get off the ground, and you’ve got to break free of gravity. But then there’s a point where you actually just want to sit in orbit and sort of maintain. You want to be within a certain range and fluctuate a little bit up, a little bit down, but be in this comfortable place where you’re just orbiting. You’re not breaking a force anymore. You’re not pushing super hard. You’re maintaining and maintaining a level of quality, maintaining a level of enjoyment, and just orbiting now. And I think that that’s a really wonderful place for businesses to be. But I wouldn’t encourage you to trying to get to orbit in year two. You’ve got to be on the ride up to break free of all the forces that are holding you back. But then you should also find a place where you can settle in an orbit, versus people who I think are just busy constantly trying to grow, grow, grow, and get as big as they possibly can, and I always say, “Why?” I’m like, so what if you’re massive and you’re twice as massive? So what? Why? Why? What’s that all about? And they may have an answer for you. I don’t know what the answer would be, other than just growing for growth’s sake. But I’m a big fan of getting somewhere and then holding.

創業如發射火箭，起飛時你需要巨大能量才能脫離地心引力；一旦進入軌道，目標不再是加速，而是「留在軌道上」。

I don’t want to run a very tight margin business where I can’t make mistakes. I believe in cushy margins. So we can screw up and it won’t matter that much.

David Senra: For a business, time carries most of the weight, as another maxim. I got that from Munger because, when you read “Poor Charlie’s Almanack,” his thing is that you should master… There’s only a handful of big ideas in all these different disciplines, so, you know, biology, physics, economics.

David Senra: He’s like, “And if you just master the big ideas,” he says, “those few handful of big ideas carry most of the freight.”

David Senra: And I was like, “Oh, so time carries most of the weight. You just have to survive, which goes back to your blubber, having a margin of safety.

Jason Fried: Blubber (cushioning profits) and small units.

Jason Fried: That’s a big part of it, too. So, with Basecamp, for example, nobody can pay us more than $299 a month.

Jason Fried: It doesn’t matter how many users you have. So, you could be a big enterprise, and $299 a month is the most you can possibly pay. Now, many of our competitors will be, like, “Hey, you want to pay us 50 grand a month? You got 2000 seats, we’ll take it.” I don’t want their money, because what I want is a static group of customers.

Jason Fried: If you think about static, like an old TV, like the dots, they’re all equal-sized. You should be able to pick out 10 random customers and lose. I don’t want to lose customers, but if you could pick out 10 random customers and lose them, I think you have a good business.

Jason Fried: What you don’t want are a bunch of outlier companies that you cannot afford to lose. You don’t want customers that you cannot afford to lose. And so, by equalizing our pricing and not letting anyone pay us more than anybody else, we create a bunch of small units, which are individual customers, and if you take one out, it’s not like Jenga (疊疊樂), where the whole thing’s going to fall. It doesn’t matter in a sense, because everyone’s essentially equal, no matter how big you are.

Jason Fried: And then we can develop software for the customer base as a whole, and not for a handful of customers that pay us a lot more than everybody else. The enterprise game, is getting as many seats as you can, and landing these whales, and I just don’t find that interesting. I also don’t find it durable. Durability is about a lot of small things. And if someone wants to chip away at some of those, it doesn’t matter because there’s a lot more left. That’s kind of what we were aiming for with durability.

Fried structures revenue as many equal small units - no whales paying vastly more. That avoids dependence on any single customer and makes the company durable.

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▍What I Talk About When I Talk About Running

Thu, 02 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.

The most important thing we learn at school is the fact that the most important things can’t be learned at school.

我們在學校學到最重要的事情，就是「最重要的事情是在學校學不到的」。

I’m the kind of person who likes to be by himself. To put a finer point on it, I’m the type of person who doesn’t find it painful to be alone. I find spending an hour or two every day running alone, not speaking to anyone, as well as four or five hours alone at my desk, to be neither difficult nor boring. I’ve had this tendency ever since I was young, when, given a choice, I much preferred reading books on my own or concentrating on listening to music over being with someone else. I could always think of things to do by myself.

For me, running is both exercise and a metaphor. Running day after day, piling up the races, bit by bit I raise the bar, and by clearing each level I elevate myself. At least that’s why I’ve put in the effort day after day: to raise my own level. I’m no great runner, by any means. I’m at an ordinary — or perhaps more like mediocre — level. But that’s not the point. The point is whether or not I improved over yesterday. In long-distance running the only opponent you have to beat is yourself, the way you used to be.

Sometimes I run fast when I feel like it, but if I increase the pace I shorten the amount of time I run, the point being to let the exhilaration I feel at the end of each run carry over to the next day. This is the same sort of tack I find necessary when writing a novel. I stop every day right at the point where I feel I can write more. Do that, and the next day’s work goes surprisingly smoothly. I think Ernest Hemingway did something like that. To keep on going, you have to keep up the rhythm. This is the important thing for long-term projects. Once you set the pace, the rest will follow. The problem is getting the flywheel to spin at a set speed-and to get to that point takes as much concentration and effort as you can manage.

If you’re going to while away the years, it’s far better to live them with clear goals and fully alive than in a fog, and I believe running helps you do that. Exerting yourself to the fullest within your individual limits: that’s the essence of running, and a metaphor for life—and for me, for writing as well. ¹

Of course it was painful, and there were times when, emotionally, I just wanted to chuck it all. But pain seems to be a precondition for this kind of sport. If pain weren’t involved, who in the world would ever go to the trouble of taking part in sports like the triathlon or the marathon, which demand such an investment of time and energy? It’s precisely because of the pain, precisely because we want to overcome that pain, that we can get the feeling, through this process, of really being alive—or at least a partial sense of it. Your quality of experience is based not on standards such as time or ranking, but on finally awakening to an awareness of the fluidity within action itself.

I have only a few reasons to keep on running, and a truckload of them to quit. All I can do is keep those few reasons nicely polished.

因為繼續跑的理由很少，停跑的理由則有一卡車那麼多，我們能做的，只有把那「很少的理由」勤快而週到地繼續磨亮。

I’ve always done whatever I felt like doing in life. People may try to stop me, and convince me I’m wrong, but I won’t change.

不管別人怎麼說，我都認為自己的感受才是正確的；無論別人怎麼看，我絕不打亂自己的節奏。

All I do is keep on running in my own cozy, homemade void, my own nostalgic silence. And this is a pretty wonderful thing. No matter what anybody else says.

When I’m running I don’t have to talk to anybody and don’t have to listen to anybody. This is a part of my day I can’t do without.

I just run. I run in void. Or maybe I should put it the other way: I run in order to acquire a void.

Somerset Maugham once wrote that in each shave lies a philosophy. I couldn’t agree more. No matter how mundane some action might appear, keep at it long enough and it becomes contemplative, even meditative act.

英國作家毛姆曾寫道：「每次刮鬍子都蘊含著一種哲學。」我深表認同。無論一個動作看起來多麼平凡、無聊，只要持續夠久，它就會變成一種深沉的、近乎冥想般的行為。

Being active every day makes it easier to hear that inner voice.

You really need to prioritize in life, figuring out in what order you should divide up your time and energy. If you don’t get that sort of system set by a certain age, you’ll lack focus and your life will be out of balance.

What’s most important is what you can’t see but can feel in your heart. To be able to grasp something of value, sometimes you have to perform seemingly inefficient acts. But even activities that appear fruitless don’t necessarily end up so. That’s the feeling I have, as someone who’s felt this, who’s experienced it.

最重要的東西是那些看不見、卻能在心裡感覺到的東西。為了能抓住有價值的東西，有時候你必須去做那些看似沒有效率的事情。但即使表面上看起來徒勞無功，也不一定真的是白費力氣。這是作為一個感受過、體驗過的人，我所擁有的體會。

“Running and reading are the keys of life.” — Will Smith ↩

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▍The Dash

Tue, 30 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

I read of a man who stood to speak

at the funeral of a friend.

He referred to the dates on the tombstone

from the beginning…to the end.

He noted that first came the date of birth

and spoke the following date with tears,

but he said what mattered most of all

was the dash between those years.

For that dash represents all the time

that they spent alive on earth.

And now only those who loved them

know what that little line is worth.

For it matters not, how much we own,

the cars…the house…the cash.

What matters is how we live and love

and how we spend our dash.

So, think about this long and hard.

Are there things you’d like to change?

For you never know how much time is left

that can still be rearranged.

If we could just slow down enough

to consider what’s true and real

and always try to understand

?the way other people feel.

And be less quick to anger

and show appreciation more

and love the people in our lives

like we’ve never loved before.

If we treat each other with respect

and more often wear a smile,

remembering that this special dash

might only last a little while.

?So, when your eulogy is being read,

with your life’s actions to rehash…

would you be proud of the things they say

about how you spent YOUR dash?

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▍The Most Overlooked Trait of Investing Success

Sun, 28 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The most overlooked trait of investing success is communicating to your clients the softer and emotional side of investing. A knowledge of market history. An acceptance of volatility as a normal part of investing. That you can be wrong on half your investments and still do well over time.

Becoming a better doctor means spending more time managing patients rather than managing patients’ illnesses. […] Just as in medicine, making good decisions is not the same thing as convincing your clients to make good decisions.

We talk about investment management firms, but we don’t really talk about investor management firms. For anyone who’s in the portfolio management business, managing your investors is at least as important as managing your investments. There is a reason why value stocks tend to outperform over the long run … the whole reason they work in the long run is because they fail in the short run.

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▍Be curious, not judgmental

Sat, 27 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

You know Rupert, guys have underestimated me my entire life. And for years I never understood why. It used to really bother me. But then one day, I was driving my little boy to school and I saw this quote by Walt Whitman, it was painted on the wall there. It said, “Be curious, not judgmental.” I like that.

So I get back in my car and I’m driving to work. And all of a sudden it hits me. All them fellas that used to belittle me… not a single one of them were curious. You know, they thought they had everything all figured out, and so they judged everything, and they judged everyone. And I realized that their underestimating me… who I was had nothing to do with it. Cause if they were curious, they would have asked questions. You know? Questions like, “Have you played a lot of darts, Ted?”

Which I would have answered: “Yes, sir. Every Sunday afternoon at a sports bar with my father from age 10 until I was 16, when he passed away.”

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▍瓦基：AI 第二大腦，工作的目的，人跟人的連結，你要拿 AI 省下來的時間做什麼？

Wed, 24 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

AI 任務矩陣

瓦基為了避免陷入 AI 的「討好陷阱」，設計了一套對話的二維矩陣框架。這能幫助我們在對話前，先釐清自己的出發點（意圖），進而擺出正確的對話姿態。

兩個軸度

X 軸（資訊來源）：區分為「內在」（個人感受、觀點、情緒）與「外在」（職場知識、客觀資料、收集來的資訊）。
Y 軸（預期目標）：區分為追求「結果」（具體產出，如文章、企劃案、簡報）與享受「過程」（內在對話、挖掘、反思體驗）。

四個象限

內在＋過程（傾聽者、心理陪伴）
- 情境：情緒低潮、需要被理解、分析內心焦慮、或是進行卡片盒筆記的內在反思。
- 對話姿態：在這個象限，你需要 AI 站在你這邊，甚至容許它的討好與偏見。你希望它提供情感支持、陪伴與拍拍，出發點是梳理與安頓自己的內心。
外在＋結果（嚴格顧問、紅隊演練、批判性黑臉）
- 情境：做商業決策、規劃行銷策略、分析客觀數據、製作對外說服的簡報。
- 對話姿態：這時必須極力避免 AI 的討好偏見。你的出發點是得到精準、客觀且禁得起考驗的產出。你應該要求 AI 扮演「嚴格的黑臉顧問」或「反方立場」，大力挑出你邏輯的盲點與漏洞。
內在＋結果（個人寫作教練）
- 情境：把個人的獨特觀點、讀書心得，轉化為一篇可以公開發表的文章。
- 對話姿態：出發點是將混亂的內在思緒結構化。對話時應將 AI 定位為「編輯」或「導師」，引導自己把獨特的人性觀點漂亮地表達出來，而不是讓 AI 替你無中生有。
外在＋過程（共學夥伴、蘇格拉底式引導者）
- 情境：學習一門全新的硬核知識、理解複雜的職場法規。
- 對話姿態：不急著要答案，而是享受理解的過程。此時出發點是知識的內化，你可以讓 AI 扮演引導者，用問答的方式陪你釐清盲點。

自己是最大的瓶頸（The Human Bottleneck）

在沒有 AI 之前，人們常會因為「我不會排版」、「我不知道怎麼分類」、「我沒時間整理資料」而卡在原地。但現在有了強大的大語言模型，技術與執行上的摩擦力已經被降到趨近於零，只要透過對話，專案進度就能被直接展開並推進。這意味著：所有的瓶頸（Bottleneck）最終都回歸到人類自己身上 — 那就是「你的認知能力」與「你知不知道自己要什麼」

工作的目的：從「追求生產力」轉向「追求幸福」

翻轉盲目追求產出的焦慮：訪談中提到，人們過去常常陷入對生產力的盲目追求與焦慮中。但在 AI 時代，我們應該將焦點從純粹的「生產力」，轉向追求內心的「幸福」。
以快樂驅動自我實現：工作與優化流程的本質，演變為思考「如何讓快樂的事情，協助我們達成自我實現」。

拿 AI 釋放出來的時間做什麼？經營「人與人的連結」

當 AI 幫我們縮短了寫作、分類、排版與處理庶務（雜事）的時間後，人類平白多出了許多時間與心智頻寬。這些被工具「省下來」的資源，不該拿來塞入更多工作，而是該投資在最珍貴的地方：

深化最不可取代的「人的關係」：在 AI 密集的年代，「人的關係」反而變得無比重要。無論是工作夥伴（如瓦基與妹妹）、朋友，還是生命中最重要的家人，人與人之間的真摯情感是 AI 無法重現的。
利用工具創造生命中的「餘裕」：善用 AI（例如用語音輸入降低寫作摩擦力）可以大幅省下力氣。

你是誰？你想要什麼？

當 AI 解決了所有底層的執行阻礙，人類省下了大量的時間，就必須面對最核心的哲學問題：

Remember who you are and what you want.

記住你是誰，以及你想要什麼。

AI 是一對翅膀，它沒有主體意識，端看你要把它裝在身體哪個部位？要飛去哪裡？工具永遠只是手段，如果沒有清晰的自我認知與目標，再強大的工具也只是在幫你 _ 加速 _ 迷失而已。

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▍Empty Your Cup

Tue, 23 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

A long time ago, there was a wise Zen master. People from distant places would come to seek his guidance, hoping to learn the path to enlightenment.

One day, a scholar arrived, eager for advice. “I wish to learn about Zen,” he told the master.

However, the scholar couldn’t stop talking about his own thoughts and knowledge. He kept interrupting the master, sharing his own ideas and not paying attention to what the master had to say. The master remained calm and suggested they have tea.

The master began pouring tea into the scholar’s cup. As the cup filled, the master continued pouring, causing the tea to spill onto the table, the floor, and finally onto the scholar’s clothing. Shocked, the scholar exclaimed, “Stop! The cup is overflowing! It can’t hold any more.”

The master smiled and said, “Just like this cup, you are filled with your own thoughts. There’s no room for anything new. Come back when your cup is empty.”

“Empty your cup so that it may be filled; become devoid to gain totality.” — Bruce Lee

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▍How to Make Wealth

Tue, 23 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Startups are high-intensity engines designed to compress a standard forty-year career into a few years of focused work. This compression is achieved through the dual mechanism of measurement (isolating individual contribution in small, elite teams) and leverage (using technology to scale solutions infinitely). True wealth is not money, but rather the utility and value people want; because wealth is not a fixed pie, it can be created from scratch. To capture this wealth, founders must solve hard technical problems that create natural barriers to entry, validate their ideas through immediate user adoption, and operate in societies where the rule of law protects private wealth accumulation.

The Conservation of Pain: To acquire 1 million in value, you must endure 1 million worth of pain. A startup simply lets you purchase this “pain” in bulk, compressing 40 years of low-intensity corporate tedium into 4 years of extreme stress.

Money is not wealth. Wealth is not the same thing as money. Wealth is whatever people want. Money is just the intermediate stage—just a shorthand—for whatever people want. You can have wealth without having money.

Someone graduating from college thinks, and is told, that he needs to get a job, as if the important thing were becoming a member of an institution. A more direct way to put it would be: you need to start doing something people want. You don’t need to join a company to do that. All a company is is a group of people working together to do something people want. It’s doing something people want that matters, not joining the group.

To get rich you need to get yourself in a situation with two things, measurement and leverage. You need to be in a position where your performance can be measured, or there is no way to get paid more by doing more. And you have to have leverage, in the sense that the decisions you make have a big effect.

If you’re in a job that feels safe, you are not going to get rich, because if there is no danger; there is almost certainly no leverage.

You don’t have to become a CEO or a movie star to be in a situation with measurement and leverage. All you need to do is be part of a small group working on a hard problem. Smallness = Measurement. If you can’t measure the value of the work done by individual employees, you can get close. You can measure the value of the work done by small groups.

Use difficulty as a guide not just in selecting the overall aim of your company, but also at decision points along the way.

If there were two features we could add to our software, both equally valuable in proportion to their difficulty, we’d always take the harder one. Not just because it was more valuable, but because it was harder.

We delighted in forcing bigger, slower competitors to follow us over difficult ground. I can remember times when we were just exhausted after wrestling all day with some horrible technical problem. And I’d be delighted, because something that was hard for us would be impossible for our competitors.

If you can develop technology that’s simply too hard for competitors to duplicate, you don’t need to rely on other defenses (like patents).

Start by picking a hard problem, and then at every decision point, take the harder choice.

A startup is like a mosquito. A bear can absorb a hit and a crab is armored against one, but a mosquito is designed for one thing: to score. No energy is wasted on defense. The defense of mosquitos, as a species, is that there are a lot of them, but this is little consolation to the individual mosquito. Startups, like mosquitos, tend to be an all-or-nothing proposition. And you don’t generally know which of the two you’re going to get till the last minute.

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▍Maybe You’re Already There

Tue, 23 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Nearing the end of a long journey, a young Buddhist comes to the banks of a deep, wide river. He doesn’t know how to cross it and begins to ponder the challenge.

After several hours, he sees a Zen master on the other side of the river and calls out to him:

“Oh wise one, can you tell me how to cross this river and get to the other side?”

The Zen master thinks for a few moments and then replies:

“My son, you are on the other side.”

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▍Ten Years, Twenty Years

Tue, 23 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

A martial arts student approaches his teacher and asks, “How long will it take me to master this craft?”

The teacher replies, “10 years.”

The student, looking impatient, responds, “I want to master it faster than that. I will work harder than anyone else. I will push myself to practice for many hours every single day. I won’t rest until I become a master. How long will it take then?”

The teacher considers this new information, smiles, and answers, “20 years.”

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▍The Cut Crystal Glass

Tue, 23 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

A Zen master received a beautiful glass cup from a former student. He loved it, used it daily, and showed it to visitors. he would hold the cup in his hand and remind himself, “This cup is already broken.”

One day, a visitor knocked the cup from its shelf. It fell to the ground and broke into pieces. While others gasped, the master stayed calm. Smiling, he said, “Ah, yes, let’s begin,” picked up a broom, and started to sweep up the pieces.

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▍The Empty Boat

Tue, 23 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

A monk goes out on a boat in a small lake to meditate. After a few hours of uninterrupted silence, he suddenly feels the jarring impact of another boat bumping into his. While he does not open his eyes, he feels the irritation and anger building within him. “Why would someone do that? Can’t they see me here? How dare they disturb my meditation?” He opens his eyes, ready to shout at the person in the other boat, only to realize that it is empty. It had come untied from the dock and was floating in the middle of the lake. In that moment, his anger and frustration disappears. After all, you cannot be angry at an empty boat.

The Empty Boat Mindset is the reminder that most of these collisions you experience in life are with an empty boat. There is no negative intent. There is no desire to harm. They are simply the random collisions of objects floating along on the lake of life.

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▍The Unaccepted Gift

Tue, 23 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

一個年輕修行者在寺院裡每天誦經、打掃、煮茶，日子過得很平靜。

但是，他心中有一塊石頭，怎樣也搬不開。

他太在意別人的話了。一句無心的嘲諷，能讓他反覆咀嚼三天；一個冷淡的眼神，能讓他在夜裡輾轉難眠。他覺得自己像一片葉子，誰都能來吹一口氣，讓他東倒西歪。

有天，他終於忍不住了。走進老師的禪房，恭敬地行禮後，開口問道：

「老師，如果有人送我一份禮物，但我拒絕接受 — 那份禮物最後屬於誰？」

老師正在沏茶，手中的動作沒有停。

「這很簡單，」老師將茶壺放下，「如果你拒絕接受禮物，它還是留在送禮者手中。」

修行者點了點頭，若有所思。

過了一會兒，他又問：

「那麼……如果有人對我說出一句傷人的話，而我選擇不接受它。那個侮辱，又屬於誰呢？」

「一樣，」老師說，「留在說出它的人那裡。」

修行者愣住那。

他忽然明白，那些話語之所以能刺痛他、讓他受傷，不是因為它們本身有多鋒利，而是因為他每次都伸手接下它們。

侮辱也好，批評也罷，本質上都是一種「給予」。如果我們選擇不收下，它就不會屬於你。困住我們的，從來不是別人的言語，而是我們選擇「接下」的那一刻。

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▍How to Do What You Love

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Finding and doing work you love is an exceptionally difficult but essential pursuit for achieving happiness and greatness. Most people are derailed in childhood by the false conditioning that work is inherently painful, and later by the twin sirens of prestige and money. True career satisfaction requires finding work that satisfies both an upper bound (preferring it to unproductive leisure over a long horizon) and a lower bound (admiring the output and passing the “wow” test of respected peers). To navigate this, individuals must choose between the slow, adaptive organic route or the risky, bifurcated two-job route, using the active constraint of “always producing” as a gravity-like heuristic to discover their genuine interests.

The rule about doing what you love assumes a certain length of time. It doesn’t mean, do what will make you happiest this second, but what will make you happiest over some longer period, like a week or a month.

As a lower bound, you have to like your work more than any unproductive pleasure. You have to like what you do enough that the concept of “spare time” seems mistaken. Which is not to say you have to spend all your time working. You can only work so much before you get tired and start to screw up. Then you want to do something else — even something mindless. But you don’t regard this time as the prize and the time you spend working as the pain you endure to earn it.

To be happy I think you have to be doing something you not only enjoy, but admire. You have to be able to say, at the end, wow, that’s pretty cool. This doesn’t mean you have to make something. If you learn how to hang glide, or to speak a foreign language fluently, that will be enough to make you say, for a while at least, wow, that’s pretty cool.

Try to do things that would make your friends say wow.

What you should not do, I think, is worry about the opinion of anyone beyond your friends. You shouldn’t worry about prestige. Prestige is the opinion of the rest of the world. […] Prestige is like a powerful magnet that warps even your beliefs about what you enjoy. It causes you to work not on what you like, but what you’d like to like.

If you want to make ambitious people waste their time on errands, the way to do it is to bait the hook with prestige. That’s the recipe for getting people to give talks, write forewords, serve on committees, be department heads, and so on. It might be a good rule simply to avoid any prestigious task. If it didn’t suck, they wouldn’t have had to make it prestigious.

Similarly, if you admire two kinds of work equally, but one is more prestigious, you should probably choose the other. Your opinions about what’s admirable are always going to be slightly influenced by prestige, so if the two seem equal to you, you probably have more genuine admiration for the less prestigious one.

The test of whether people love what they do is whether they’d do it even if they weren’t paid for it.

The kids think their parents are “materialistic.” Not necessarily. All parents tend to be more conservative for their kids than they would for themselves, simply because, as parents, they share risks more than rewards. If your eight year old son decides to climb a tall tree, or your teenage daughter decides to date the local bad boy, you won’t get a share in the excitement, but if your son falls, or your daughter gets pregnant, you’ll have to deal with the consequences.

Most people are doomed in childhood by accepting the axiom that work = pain. Those who escape this are nearly all lured onto the rocks by prestige or money.

Although doing great work takes less discipline than people think — because the way to do great work is to find something you like so much that you don’t have to force yourself to do it — finding work you love does usually require discipline.

Try to do a good job at whatever you’re doing, even if you don’t like it. Then at least you’ll know you’re not using dissatisfaction as an excuse for being lazy. Perhaps more importantly, you’ll get into the habit of doing things well.

Figuring out what you like to work on doesn’t mean you get to work on it. That’s a separate question. And if you’re ambitious you have to keep them separate: you have to make a conscious effort to keep your ideas about what you want from being contaminated by what seems possible. It’s painful to keep them apart, because it’s painful to observe the gap between them. So most people pre-emptively lower their expectations. For example, if you asked random people on the street if they’d like to be able to draw like Leonardo, you’d find most would say something like “Oh, I can’t draw.” This is more a statement of intention than fact; it means, I’m not going to try. Because the fact is, if you took a random person off the street and somehow got them to work as hard as they possibly could at drawing for the next twenty years, they’d get surprisingly far. But it would require a great moral effort; it would mean staring failure in the eye every day for years. And so to protect themselves people say “I can’t.”

Finding work you love is very difficult. Most people fail. Even if you succeed, it’s rare to be free to work on what you want till your thirties or forties. But if you have the destination in sight you’ll be more likely to arrive at it. If you know you can love work, you’re in the home stretch, and if you know what work you love, you’re practically there.

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▍The Chinese Farmer

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

塞翁失馬，焉知非福。

Once upon a time, there was an old Chinese farmer whose only horse ran away. That evening, his neighbors gathered at his door, full of pity. “What terrible luck,” they said. “We’re so sorry—losing your horse is truly unfortunate.”

The farmer simply replied, “Maybe.”

The next morning, the runaway horse returned—this time leading seven wild horses behind it. By dusk, the neighbors were back again, buzzing with excitement. “How wonderful!” they exclaimed. “What an incredible stroke of luck! Now you have eight horses!”

The farmer only nodded and said, “Maybe.”

On the following day, the farmer’s son attempted to tame one of the wild horses. The horse bucked violently, throwing him to the ground and breaking his leg. The neighbors rushed over once more, shaking their heads. “Oh no, how awful,” they said.

The farmer answered, “Maybe.”

The very next day, imperial conscription officers arrived to draft young men into the army. Seeing the son’s broken leg, they deemed him unfit for service and passed him by. By evening, the neighbors returned, relieved and delighted. “What great news!” they said. “Your son is safe!”

And once again, the farmer said, “Maybe.”

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▍The Donkey & The Tiger

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

One day, a Donkey and a Tiger got into an argument over the color of the grass. “The grass is blue,” said the Donkey. “That’s ridiculous,” replied the Tiger. “The grass is clearly green.” When the argument grew more and more intense, they decided to find the Lion, King of the Jungle, to settle the debate. When they approached the Lion, the Donkey exclaimed, “Your Highness, isn’t it true that the grass is blue?” “Yes,” the Lion calmly answered, “The grass is blue.” Not yet satisfied, the Donkey continued, “The Tiger disagrees and argues with me. You must punish him.” The Lion nodded, “I will. The Tiger will be punished with a year of silence.” The Donkey walked off into the jungle, celebrating his victory. Before the Tiger turned to leave, he looked up at the Lion. “Your Highness, why have you punished me? After all, you must see the grass is clearly green.” The Lion nodded, “Yes, of course the grass is green.” “Then why am I being punished?” asked the Tiger. “Because someone as wise as you should never waste time proving anything to a fool.”

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▍The Father, The Son, and The Donkey

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

= 父子騎驢

A father and his son are going to the market with their donkey. A stranger sees them and says:

“How silly—you have a donkey but neither of you rides it!”

So the father puts the boy on the donkey and they move on.

Soon, another person shakes her head:

“What an rude child—letting his old father walk while he rides!”

Worried, the father takes the boy’s place on the donkey.

A few miles later, a third traveler throws up his hands:

“What a mean father—making a small boy walk while you ride!”

The father pulls the boy up to sit behind him. Now both ride.

They don’t go far before a fourth voice calls out:

“How can you be so cruel to the poor donkey, carrying two people under this hot sun!”

Wanting to make everyone happy, the father and son get off. They cut a pole, tie the donkey’s feet to it, and carry the animal between them. Everyone they pass laughs at the silly sight.

As they cross a bridge, the donkey gets scared by all the noise. It kicks free, falls into the river, and drowns.

The moral: If you try to please everyone, you end up pleasing no one—and you might lose your donkey too.

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▍The Mexican Fisherman

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

A successful American businessman was on vacation in a small Mexican coastal village when he saw a fisherman docking his small boat. Inside the boat were a few large, fresh fish.

The businessman complimented the fisherman on the quality of his fish and asked how long it took him to catch them.

“Only a little while,” the fisherman replied.

The businessman then asked why he didn’t stay out longer and catch more fish.

The fisherman said, “I have enough to support my family’s needs.”

“But what do you do with the rest of your time?” the businessman asked.

The fisherman smiled and said, “I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, take a siesta with my wife, and in the evenings, I go to the village, drink wine, and play guitar with my friends. I have a full and happy life.”

The businessman scoffed. “I have an MBA from Harvard, and I can help you. You should spend more time fishing and buy a bigger boat. With the extra money, you could buy several boats, then a whole fleet. Instead of selling to a middleman, you could sell directly to the processor. Eventually, you could open your own cannery and control production, distribution, and sales. You’d leave this small village and move to Mexico City, then LA, and eventually New York, where you’d run your expanding business.”

The fisherman asked, “How long would this take?”

“Fifteen to twenty years,” the businessman replied.

“And then what?” the fisherman asked.

The businessman smiled and said, “Then you could retire! You’d move to a small coastal village, sleep late, fish a little, play with your kids, take siestas with your wife, and spend your evenings drinking wine and playing guitar with your friends.”

The fisherman just smiled and walked away.

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▍The Monk & The Minister

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Two childhood friends set out on separate paths in life. One chose the quiet simplicity of a monk’s life, content with little and devoted to spiritual practice. The other pursued ambition, rising to become a wealthy minister in the king’s court, surrounded by luxury and power.

Years later, as they catch up, the minister looked at his old friend with genuine sympathy, he said, “If you learned to serve the king, you wouldn’t have to live on rice and beans.”

The monk smiled and replied, “If you learned to live on rice and beans, you wouldn’t have to serve the king.”

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▍The Two Watchmakers

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The Parable of the Two Watchmakers was introduced by Nobel laureate Herbert A. Simon to explain why hierarchical, modular systems evolve and survive better than tightly coupled ones. It illustrates how complex structures are built far more efficiently when broken into stable sub-assemblies.

The Story

There are two master watchmakers: Tempus and Hora.

Both make extremely intricate watches, each containing 1,000 individual parts.
A phone rings often while they are working, forcing them to stop frequently.

Tempus’ method (non-modular design):

He assembles the watch piece by piece.
If interrupted, the half-assembled watch falls apart.
He must start over from scratch every time.

Hora’s method (modular design):

He builds subassemblies of 10 parts first.
Then he combines 10 of these to create larger assemblies, and so on.
If interrupted, only a small module is affected — the rest stays intact.

Result: Hora produces watches much faster and with far less wasted work, even though he and Tempus are equally skilled.

Key Insights

Complex systems are far more robust and evolvable when built out of smaller, stable, reusable components.
Modularity is the key to building and sustaining complexity.
Stable subsystems make complex structures more resilient.
Interruptions (or disturbances, failures, shocks) punish non-modular systems but have minimal impact on modular, hierarchical ones.
Systems that can “hold together” when disturbed will outcompete those that fall apart.

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▍The Longevity Project

Wed, 17 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The book is based on a 20-year study started in 1921 by psychologist Lewis Terman, which followed about 1,500 gifted children throughout their entire lives. Friedman and Martin spent decades analyzing who lived longest and why.

The Biggest Findings

Conscientiousness beats almost everything else

The strongest predictor of longevity wasn’t optimism, diet fads, or supplements.

People who were:

Responsible
Organized
Persistent
Dependable
Careful

tended to live the longest.

Takeaway: Longevity is often the result of thousands of good decisions compounded over decades.

The “happy-go-lucky” people didn’t live longest

One of the most surprising findings was that highly cheerful and optimistic children often died younger than their more prudent peers.

Why? Because excessive optimism can encourage:

Risk-taking
Smoking
Drinking
Ignoring dangers
Overconfidence

Moderate realism outperformed blind positivity.

Takeaway: Optimism is useful. Carelessness disguised as optimism is not.

Meaningful work is good for you

The study found little evidence that hard work itself shortens life.

Many people who worked diligently and remained engaged in their careers actually lived longer. Purpose and productivity appeared protective.

Takeaway: Retirement isn’t automatically healthy. Having a reason to get up in the morning matters.

Relationships matter, but not in the way people think

The common advice “just get married” was too simplistic.

Married men generally lived longer.
Strong social connections mattered more than marital status alone.
For women, marriage only helped when it was a genuinely good relationship.

Takeaway: Relationship quality matters more than relationship labels.

People embedded in communities, friendships, and social networks tended to live longer.

The health benefits often attributed to religion appeared to come largely from social involvement rather than religious belief itself.

Takeaway: Isolation is hazardous. Connection is protective.

Activity matters more than exercise programs

The long-lived participants weren’t necessarily marathoners.

What mattered was staying active and engaged throughout life:

Walking
Working
Gardening
Maintaining hobbies
Participating in the world

Consistent activity beat occasional fitness enthusiasm.

Takeaway: Movement as a lifestyle is more important than chasing fitness trends.

Some worrying is healthy

The data did not support the idea that all stress or worry is harmful.

People who were appropriately cautious often:

Planned ahead
Avoided risks
Followed through on responsibilities

This improved long-term outcomes.

Takeaway: Productive concern can be healthier than carefree neglect.

The Core Message

“The path to longevity is not found in chasing health—it emerges from living a purposeful, conscientious life.”

Long life is less about finding the perfect health protocol and more about building a life structure that naturally produces healthy behaviors.

Live responsibly. Build meaningful relationships. Stay engaged in useful work. Keep moving. Make good decisions consistently over decades.

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▍Our Achilles Heel

Sat, 13 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

I was reminded of this recently after speaking with a young man who is navigating the college admissions process. He had been accepted to several very good universities, but not his first choice, which happens to accept fewer than 6% of applicants.

In an attempt to alleviate some of his angst, I asked him a simple question:

“How many high schools do you think there are in the United States?”

He guessed 12,000.

The actual number is closer to 25,000.

I then asked him how many valedictorians there are in the U.S.

He understood the point. Roughly one valedictorian at each high school, so 25,000 in total.

Considering that the Ivy League enrolls approximately 15,000 freshmen each year, in theory, 40% of all valedictorians don’t have a spot. Once you account for international students, even fewer do.

Yet every year, students and parents across the country are devastated by rejection letters from elite universities.

Viewed purely through the lens of probability, many of humanity’s greatest achievements look irrational.

No rational calculation alone would have inspired those leaps.

Something else was required.

But what?

Passion.

[…]

Many of humanity’s greatest achievements began with someone willing to pursue a dream despite the odds.

If you love learning, study hard. Chase your dream school. Take the APs and advanced classes. But if the acceptance letter never comes, your efforts will not have been in vain. The education you gain and continue building throughout your life will matter far more than the name at the top of your diploma.

If you pour countless hours into a sport you love, but never earn a scholarship, it won’t have been a waste. You will have experienced victory and defeat, learned what it means to be a good teammate, and chased a dream.

Your favorite team may never win a championship, but the memories of rooting for them will last a lifetime.

And if an investment you believed in fails, you will have learned a lesson every successful investor eventually does: even the best are wrong much of the time.

The key is understanding why you’re doing something.

If you’re chasing a dream because you genuinely love the pursuit, the odds matter less.

If you’re doing it solely for status, recognition, or some promised outcome, disappointment is almost inevitable.

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▍Getting Started with AI: Good Enough Prompting

Fri, 12 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Working with AI is a dialogue, not an order.

「一個指令一個動作」的內容產生器 → 需要耐心教導的「學徒」。

Example: Doctors using GPT-4 for diagnoses performed no better than those without it—and both did worse than GPT-4 alone. Why? They treated the AI like a search engine, asking narrow, factual questions instead of giving it full context and leveraging its ability to synthesize complex information.

As a New York Times article on the paper reported: “they were treating [the AI] like a search engine for directed questions: ‘Is cirrhosis a risk factor for cancer? What are possible diagnoses for eye pain?’ It was only a fraction of the doctors who realized they could literally copy-paste in the entire case history into the chatbot and just ask it to give a comprehensive answer to the entire question.” […] There are many stumbling blocks: people treat AI like Google, asking it factual questions. But AI is not Google, and do not provide consistent, or even reliable, answers.

AIs are inconsistent and weird, and often have different results across different models. For example, they are sensitive to small changes in spacing or formatting; they get more accurate when you tell them to “read the question again;” they seem to respond better to politeness (but don’t overdo it); and they may get lazier in December, perhaps because they have picked up on the concept of winter break. Add to all of this the fact that getting good results out of AI without a lot of formal training is likely growing easier as larger models are less sensitive to changes in prompting technique than older AIs, and new techniques allow the AI to improve your prompt for you.

Prompt engineering isn’t the place to start. Instead, the key is spending 10 hours using AI on tasks you care about. This hands-on experience helps you naturally develop the intuition needed to prompt effectively.

You can learn details of prompt engineering and the basics of how LLMs work, of course, but for most people, that is not a required starting place. You just need to use AI enough to get a feel for what you can use it for in your area of expertise. The most important thing to do is to get 10 or so hours of use with an advanced AI system. And to do that you just need to be a good-enough prompter to overcome the barriers that hold many AI users back.

The single most useful thing you can do to understand AI is to use AI. There are lots of reasons people may decide to give up on using an AI quickly, from early hallucinations (the AI isn’t good enough) to existential discomfort (the AI is too good), but many of those initial reactions are tempered over time. Your goal is simple: spend 10 hours using AI on tasks that actually matter to you. After that, you’ll have a natural sense of how AI fits into your work and life. You’ll develop an intuition for effective prompting, and you’ll better understand AI’s potential.

Start by using it in areas of your expertise, where you are able to quickly figure out the shape of the jagged frontier of its ability. Because you are expert, you will be able to quickly assess where the AI is wrong or right. You do need to be prepared for it to give you plausible but wrong answers, but don’t let the risk of these hallucinations scare you off initially. Though hallucinations may be inevitable, you will learn where they are a big deal, and where they are not, over time. You can reduce the rate of hallucinations somewhat by giving the AI the ability to be wrong, for example, writing: if you’re unsure or necessary information, say “I don’t have enough information to answer this” can make a big difference.

I mean literally treat AI just like an infinitely patient new coworker who forgets ¹ everything you tell them each new conversation. Two parts of this are analogous to working with humans (being new on the job and being a coworker) and two of them are very alien (forgetting everything and being infinitely patient). We should start with where AIs are closest to humans, because that is the key to good-enough prompting. As it is a coworker, you want to work with it, not just give it orders, and you also want to learn out what it is good or bad at.

Instead of treating AI as an intern or new grad hire, treat it like an infinitely patient coworker who:

Is highly capable but needs specific guidance.
Forgets everything at the end of each conversation.
Never gets annoyed and tired of iterating.

This introduces something new in intellectual life, abundance. You don’t need to ask for one email, ask for three in different tones to inspire you. You don’t need to ask for one way to complete a sentence, ask for 15 options and see if that unlocks your writing. Don’t ask for 5 ideas, ask for 30.

Your job becomes one of pushing for variation (“give me ideas that are 80% weirder”), recombination (“combine ideas 12 and 16”) and expansion (“more ideas like number 12”), before selecting one you like.

Give it whatever information you have lying around: entire documents, instruction manuals, or even previous conversations are often helpful, just remember to pay attention to the AI’s memory, its context window. ↩

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▍How Will You Measure Your Life?

Thu, 11 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

“In your life, there are going to be constant demands for your time and attention. How are you going to decide which of those demands gets resources? The trap many people fall into is to allocate their time to whoever screams loudest, and their talent to whatever offers them the fastest reward. That’s a dangerous way to build a strategy.” — Clayton M. Christensen, How Will You Measure Your Life?

“Intimate, loving, and enduring relationships with our family and close friends will be among the sources of the deepest joy in our lives.” — Clayton M. Christensen, How Will You Measure Your Life?

“The only metrics that will truly matter to my life are the individuals whom I have been able to help, one by one, to become better people.” — Clayton M. Christensen, How Will You Measure Your Life?: A thought-provoking approach to measuring life’s success

100% 堅守原則，要比 98% 來得容易。 #NEWSLETTER

「就這麼一次，下不為例」是讓你在短期利益下破壞原則的陷阱。在當下看起來風險很小、成本很低，但長期來看，這樣的思考方式會逐漸侵蝕一個人的核心價值與信念。
我們經常低估一次「偏離核心價值」的影響，覺得偶爾「妥協」一下沒什麼，但事實上，許多人的失敗就是從這樣的小妥協開始的。
一旦破壞了自己的原則，就很難再堅守。相對地，如果不越界，個人道德界線的力量將非常強大。
「一失足成千古恨」：一次讓步，會導致第二次、第三次的讓步變得更容易，你就會不停為每一次讓步找藉口。
堅守 100% 的原則，比每次都跟自己討價還價來得簡單與安全。只有完全不給自己破例的機會，才能真正守住原則。
Each time you follow through on a commitment to yourself, you deposit into your self-respect account; each time you break one, you make a withdrawal.

在生活與職涯發展中，我們往往一方面依循審慎規劃的策略前進，另一方面也不得不面對突如其來的機會。沒有哪一種策略較好或較差，關鍵在於是否能根據自己的目標與價值做出合適的選擇。唯有走出去、實際嘗試，才能發現什麼樣的工作最符合你的才能與興趣。可預期的機會能讓我們詳細擬定計劃，屬於「審慎策略（Deliberate Strategy）」；而當遇到無法預期的問題與機會時，則需靈活應對、持續修正，屬於「應急策略（Emergent Strategy）」。兩者並行，是職涯探索中不可或缺的歷程。

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▍Use Data to Build Better Schools

Wed, 10 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

PISA’s strength doesn’t lie in telling you what you should do, but in telling you what everyone else is doing.

Rethink educational testing: Modern economies do not care what you can memorize; they reward what you can actually do with your knowledge in unpredictable, changing environments.

Excellence requires equity: The best-performing nations do not sort or segregate students early on. They operate under the absolute belief that every single child can succeed, shifting focus from “standardization” to “personalized learning.”

Value teachers over small classes: High-performing systems systematically invest in higher teacher pay, professional collaboration, and continuous career pathways rather than strictly forcing tiny class sizes at the expense of teacher quality.

Distribute resources equitably: Systemic educational success (like Finland’s) is achieved by intentionally sending the strongest school principals and the most talented teachers into the toughest, most socioeconomically disadvantaged classrooms.

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▍How to Remember Everything You Read

Fri, 05 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

When it comes to remembering and applying information, it’s less about how much goes in, and more about how much stays in.

Two Stages of Reading

Most people spend too much time in stage 1, and often neglect stage 2.

Consumption (taking in information)
Digestion (processing and retaining it)

The PACER Framework/Categorization

Match the information you read to its proper type and digestion technique.

P — Procedural (The “How-to”): Information on executing tasks (e.g., coding, languages).

Digestion strategy: Practice and apply it in real life as early as possible.
A — Analogous (The Connections): Information related to something you already know.

Digestion strategy: Critique the analogy by determining exactly how the two concepts are similar, how they differ, and where the comparison breaks down.
C — Conceptual (The “What”): Facts, theories, and principles.

Digestion strategy: Map the information non-linearly (like a mind map) to mirror how an expert connects ideas together.
E — Evidence (The Concrete Proof): Specific statistics, cases, or dates that support a concept.

Digestion strategy: Store the data immediately, then rehearse it later by utilizing it in explanations or practice essays.
R — Reference (The Nitty-Gritty): Small details that don’t alter your conceptual understanding (e.g., constants, formulas).

Digestion strategy: Store it in a second brain or a flashcard app (like Anki) and rehearse via spaced repetition.

Tips

Not all information is equal. Trying to remember everything you read should not be the goal in the first place. The goal is to memorize everything you need to remember.
You cannot retain information just by reading faster or binge-watching tutorials. Over-consuming information without taking the time to digest it will lead to forgetting up to 90% of what was read. For every piece of information you consume, you must allocate time to process it.
Rereading text over and over while you consume it ruins learning efficiency. Instead, categorize it dynamically and trust your targeted digestion processes to lock it into your long-term memory.

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▍The 4-Hour Workweek

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Income Autopilot

Not for people who want to run businesses, but for those who want to own businesses and spend no time on them.

“Set it, and forget it!” — Ron Popeil, founder of RONCO
If you own a service business, this section will help you convert expertise into a downloadable or shippable good (product) to escape the limits of a per-hour-based model.
If starting from scratch, ignore service businesses for now, as constant customer contact makes absence difficult. Products require much less maintenance and will get you to your TMI faster.
The “Muse” Business Model
- Muses will provide the time and financial freedom to realize your dreamlines in record time, after which one can (and often does) start additional companies to change the world or sell.
- Our goal is simple: To create an automated vehicle for generating cash flow with low maintenance time. That’s it.
  
  “The factory of the future will have only two employees, a man and a dog. The man will be there to feed the dog. The dog will be there to keep the man from touching the equipment.” — Warren G. Bennis, University of Southern California Professor of Business Administration
  - Can a business be used to change the world, like The Body Shop or Patagonia? Yes, but that isn’t our goal here.
  - Can a business be used to cash out through an IPO or sale? Yes, but that isn’t our goal either.
- With these two currencies, all other things are possible. Without them, nothing is possible.
  1. Cash Flow
  2. Time
- Remove yourself from from the equation:
  - MBA = Management By Absence
  - The Remote-Control CEO
Steps
1. Pick an Affordably Reachable Niche Market
  - Creating demand is hard. Filling demand is much easier. Don’t create a product, then seek someone to sell it to. Find a market—define your customers—then find or develop a product for them.
  - It is said that if everyone is your customer, then no one is your customer.
2. Brainstorm (Do Not Invest In) Products
  - ⭐️ Criteria
    1. The Main Benefit Should Be Encapsulated in One Sentence.
    2. It Should Cost the Customer $50–$ 200.
      - There are three main benefits to creating a premium, high-end image and charging more than the competition:
        
        Higher pricing means that we can sell fewer units—and thus manage fewer customers—and fulfill our dreamlines. It’s faster.
        
        Higher pricing attracts lower-maintenance customers (better credit, fewer complaints/questions, fewer returns, etc.). It’s less headache. This is HUGE.
        
        Higher pricing also creates higher profit margins. It’s safer.
      - I personally aim for an 8–10x markup, which means a $100 product can’t cost me more than$ 10–$12.50.
    3. It Should Take No More Than 3 to 4 Weeks to Manufacture.
    4. It Should Be Fully Explainable in a Good Online FAQ.
  - Understanding these criteria, a question remains: How does one obtain a good muse product that satisfies them?
    - Option 1: Resell a Product
    - Option 2: License a Product
    - Option 3: Create a Product
3. Micro-Test Your Products
  - Micro-testing involves using inexpensive advertisements to test consumer response to a product prior to manufacturing / before purchasing inventory.
  - To get an accurate indicator of commercial viability, don’t ask people if they would buy—ask them to buy.

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▍心理學觀點的「幸運關鍵」

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Key Moments

[05:11] The Core Quality: When asking successful figures—including his father—about their secret, the universal answer was persistence (鍥而不捨).
[07:08] Discovering Self-Efficacy: Moving past mere persistence, Liu introduces psychologist Albert Bandura’s concept of Self-Efficacy (自我效能感)—the fundamental belief in one’s own capability to execute the actions required to manage future situations.
[09:49] The Big Survey Findings: Liu shares data from his own survey of over 7,000 respondents. He reveals that self-efficacy is the number one psychological factor correlated with both a strong “sense of luck” and overall life satisfaction.
[11:13] The Lucky Zone: He explains that the intersection where professional ability meets psychological confidence creates the “Lucky Zone”—the state where you are fully prepared to seize opportunities when they arise.
[13:33] The 4-Step SOP for Learning: Using a highly successful friend as an example, Liu outlines a practical 4-step framework used to systematically build ability and confidence:
1. Observe & Study: Read and gather background information.
2. Imitate and mirror standard-setting models.
3. Deconstruct: Analyze what works and what doesn’t.
4. Innovate: Reorganize and create your own unique framework.

Key Takeaways

Luck is a Subjective Experience: Luck isn’t purely random chance; like happiness, it is a psychological state heavily influenced by how you perceive your circumstances.
Self-Efficacy Drives Persistence: Persistence is crucial, but it requires a deeper engine. You cannot sustain persistence unless you genuinely believe your efforts have the power to change the outcome.
Control Equals Luck: Survey data shows that people who believe they have agency over their own destiny are the exact same people who rate themselves as being the most “lucky.”
Actionable Confidence Can Be Built: True confidence isn’t empty positive thinking. It is generated systematically by building a solid foundation of background knowledge, analyzing expert strategies, and carving out room to create your own solutions.

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▍Collection: Kobe Bryant

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

https://youtu.be/VSceuiPBpxY

Kobe establishes his uncompromising stance right out of the gate. His pitch to potential teammates was simple:

If you want first place, come play with me; if you want second place, go somewhere else.
Early in his development, he watched legends like Magic Johnson and Michael Jordan, wondering if he could ever reach their level. By committing fully to mastering basketball, the entire world became a library of information because he always knew exactly what he was looking for to improve his craft.
Kobe openly evaluates his own athletic traits. He notes that while he was highly athletic, his vertical jump was around 40 inches (not 46), his hands were large but not massive, and his natural quickness was good but not world-shattering.
To perform at his peak, Kobe developed a strict emotional separation technique. He compares his pre-game mental shift to the movie Gladiator, where Maximus Decimus Meridius picks up and smells the dirt before battle.
He views his on-court persona like an actor stepping into a role. Once he enters that mental “cage,” he becomes a completely different entity and demands total isolation from outside distractions.
When reflecting on hitting five consecutive airballs early in his career, his advice is to shed vanity. He notes that feeling embarrassed stems from thinking you are more important than you actually are.

Get over yourself, you are not that important.
Instead of getting emotional, he analyzed the failure mechanically. Coming from a 35-game high school season to the relentless, back-to-back grind of an 82-game NBA schedule, his legs lacked the endurance. Every shot was perfectly online but short. His solution was purely structural: adapt his weight training program so his legs would last through the postseason.
The Goat Mountain: Kobe actively reached out to historical legends—including Magic Johnson, Michael Jordan, Larry Bird, Hakeem Olajuwon, Jerry West, Oscar Robertson, and Bill Russell—to absorb their obsessive attention to detail. He notes that Jordan, in particular, became a trusted big brother figure to him.
He acknowledges that choosing to be one of the greatest means personal relationships and family time inevitably suffer. True friends and family understand this obsession, but everything in between is lost. He avoided taking casual vacations just to hang out because he never wanted to retire wondering if he could have given more.

When I retire, I didn’t want to have to say: “I wish I would have done more.”
⭐️ When evaluating business opportunities, Kobe filters them through four strict criteria:
1. Do I thoroughly understand the business mechanics?
2. Is it a business where I can provide tangible help or value?
3. What are the structural barriers to entry?
4. Do the entrepreneurs possess a sustainable, obsessive culture?
In his post-retirement media studio, his role shifted from executing every detail to challenging his team of creatives to self-assess. He deliberately seeks out projects where his team admits, “I don’t know if I can do that,” because lean, uncomfortable curiosity pushes people to unimaginable levels.

https://youtu.be/4h2p08AfaQ8

If I had the power to turn back time, I would never use it. Because then every moment that you go through means absolutely nothing. It loses its flavor. It loses its beauty.

The most important thing in life is how your career moves and touches those around you, and how it carries forward to the next generation. That’s what makes true greatness.

https://youtu.be/Ju5kyQJyGBY

On Dreams & Fearlessness & Purpose

Go after your dreams. I never compromised that. I never allowed anybody to tell me what I was capable of accomplishing. I never let anybody tell me that I can’t do—I went after it.

When you have a dream, the one thing you have to watch out for, are those out there who try to crush your dream. You cannot allow that to happen. That is your biggest challenge, but I challenge you to have your dream, go after it with all you have, and be legendary in your own right.

Don’t let anybody tell you that you can’t do something. The only person that can stop you from accomplishing something is yourself.

The way we approach the game, the same way we approach life. You do the right thing, you make the right play. In life it’s the same thing—what you feel right in your heart is the right thing to do. It seems so simple, but sometimes the simplest things are the hardest things to do.

The greatest fear you face is yourself, because we all have dreams, and it’s very scary sometimes to accept the dream you have. It’s scarier to say, ‘Ok, I want that.’ Because you’re afraid that if you put your heart and soul into it, and you fail. Then how are you going to feel about yourself? So being fearless means putting yourself out there, and going for it, no matter what, go for it—not for anybody else, but for yourself.

When you find that thing that you love, then life makes sense. You wake up in the morning and life makes sense. You have to figure out what is the thing that you really want to do. Like waking up in the morning and say, ‘I’m excited to do this.’ When you find out what you love to do, you wake up every morning with a sense of purpose. If you had that feeling, then you’re truly doing that God has put you on this Earth to do. If you love what you do, and it’s making you happy, all the hard work and perseverance will pay off.

On Small, Consistent Daily Improvements (The Mamba Mentality)

Doubt is such a strange thing. There’ll be times where you succeed, there are times that you fail. Wasting your time doubting whether you’re going to be successful or not is pointless. You just put one foot in front of the other, you control what you can control, and then you see what the outcome is. If you win, it’s great, you’re going to wake up the next day and do the journey over again. If you lose, it sucks, you still have to wake up the next day and do the journey all over again anyway.

The confidence comes from preparation. When the game is on the line, I’m not asking myself to do something I haven’t done thousands of times before. In those moments, if I look ice-cold or not nervous, it’s because I’ve done it thousands of times before. So it’s just one more time.

The key factor for me wasn’t whether or not I was ready, it’s the fact that if i wasn’t ready, I was determined to figure out how to get ready. And ultimately, even I was ready, I still need to improve anyway. So the work is not going to stop.

⭐️ My philosophy was a very simple one: I made a promise to myself that I was going to work that hard every single day. So that when I do retire, I have no regrets. And that was the most important thing for me is to leave no stone unturned. Get better every single day. If I live that way, then overtime, I’d have some that was beautiful. You know if you lived your life to just get better every single day, and do that for 20 years, what do you have?

⭐️ The most important thing is that you become the best version of yourself. That is the key. Get better every single day. Are you better today than you were yesterday? If the answer is yes, then you’re on the right track. That’s Mamba Mentality—get better every single day.

⭐️ At the end of every day, you look at yourself in the mirror and ask your self, ‘Did I get better today?’ If the answer is yes, and you do that for 5 years, 10 years, 15 years. How much better are you going to be? ‘Are you getting better every single day?’, that’s the question. And it’s just taking small steps. You don’t try to get it all done in one day, in one week, in one year. It’s the process of getting better every day, and doing that for a period of years, that then creates the masterpiece.

That is my message. Don’t look at what I did, but look at how I did it. The ‘how.’ Then you can really transfer that over to any profession and any discipline. That’s Mamba Mentality.

On All-In & Excellence

If you want to accomplish something or do something that a lot of people think is difficult to accomplish, you have to put all your eggs in one basket and there’s no compromise.

If you want to play at an excellent level, if you want to do something excellent, you have to be excellent all the time. It’s a way of life. It’s not just, ‘I show up on Monday and be excellent.’ I don’t work that way. You get to be excellent across the board. That’s how you build habits. When excellence becomes a habit, that’s just who you are.

I don’t negotiate with myself. I told myself at 13 that I want to be one of the greatest who have ever played. That’s the deal I made. I shook hands with myself. That is the deal, that is the contract, that is non-negotiable.

If you’re going to do something, do it with the best of your ability. No matter what it is, if you gonna do it, do it with the best of your ability.

On Legacy & Greatness

The most important thing I think for players that come after me is to understand that these things are possible. Because you don’t want to ever limit your imagination. How in the world can we inspire people if we’re continuing to give them what they believe is possible? You’re not really inspiring. So I think that is the most important thing that I want the next generation of athletes to take from that.

I think the definition of greatness is to inspire the people next to you. It’s how you can inspire a person, then in turn, inspire another person that inspires another person. That’s how you create something that lasts forever. And I think that’s our challenge as people, is to figure out how our story can impact others and motivate them in a way to create their own greatness.

If there’s something I can leave for the next generation, it’s to have that constant curiosity about the game. You have to continue to ask questions, and try to understand why things happen. Because when you understand why things happen, then you understand how to make things happen.

On Resilience

What I’ve learned is to always keep going. Always. No matter what happens, the storm eventually ends, and when the storm does end, you want to make sure that you’re ready.

Rest at the end, not in the middle. And that’s something I always live by. I’m not going to rest, and I’m going to keep on pushing now. There are a lot of answers that I don’t have, even questions that I don’t have, but I’m just going to keep going.

To me, being mentally tough means you can take your mind to some place else, and concentrate on that other thing, to the point where the thing that was bothering you is no longer a focus. You don’t feel it anymore.

The only way that you can get better is by pushing yourself beyond what you believe you’re capable of doing.

On the Competitive Edge & Dominance

It’s a competition. My mission is to destroy you. When I play against somebody and we line up, you’re guarding me, my whole purpose was to get you to reconsider your life’s choice to play basketball.

I’m there to just absolutely demoralize and dominate the person that I’m playing against, the team I’m playing against. That was my mentality going into every single game, it’s just to absolutely obliterate this guy.

The message is always to go out there and dominate. There’s no let-up. Once the game starts, or once the practice begins, you’re in that mode. Everything is a Game Seven. When you approach every practice, every game with that kind of mentality, you know it bleeds into the rest of the guys.

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▍Build a Tower, Build a Team

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Design truly is a contact sport. It demands that we bring all of our senses to the task and that we apply the very best our thinking, our feeling, and our doing to the challenge we have at hand. Prototypes are an essential part of the design.

[00:16] The Marshmallow Challenge: Introduction to the game where teams of four must build the tallest freestanding structure using 20 sticks of spaghetti, tape, string, and a marshmallow on top.
[01:04] The “Uh-Oh” vs “Ta-Da” Moments: Wujec maps out how most adult teams spend all their time planning a single structure, only for it to collapse under the weight of the marshmallow at the very last second.
[01:51] Business Students vs Kindergarteners: Explains why business graduates perform the worst (jockeying for power, searching for one single plan) while kindergarteners perform among the best.
[04:05] The Admin Advantage: Demonstrates how adding an executive administrator dramatically boosts a team’s performance by adding facilitation and process management skills. Teams excel when someone focuses on managing the collaboration process rather than just executing the task.

Prototyping is crucial: Kindergarteners succeed because they don’t just plan; they start with the marshmallow and build, then continually refine and iterate on their prototypes. This gives themselves constant, instant feedback on what works.
Identify your hidden assumptions: Every project has its own “marshmallow”—a hidden assumption or late-stage factor that can cause the entire plan to buckle if not tested early on.
Design is a contact sport: To turn an “uh-oh” moment into a success story, teams must actively bring their senses, iterative thinking, and doing to the challenge at hand.

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▍How to Remember Your Life

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The Digital Photography Paradox [04:12]: Discusses how having thousands of unorganized photos sitting on a smartphone often means we never actually look at them or properly process the memories.
The Photo-Taking Trade-Off [04:43]: Shares psychological research showing that taking a picture causes the brain to focus tightly on visual data while cutting off other sensory memories like smell, sound, and emotional vibes.
Delete ruthlessly: The secret to a functional memory library isn’t taking more photos; it’s deleting the vast majority of them. Keep only the ones that spark a genuine emotional or chemical reaction in your brain.
Put the camera away: When going on trips or in places that you really want to remember, put the camera away and try to document the experience with your brain only. Let your brain record the non-visual sensory details—the smells, the sounds, and the overall vibe.
“Bake” your files (for photographers) [05:38]: Relying entirely on complex catalog software like Adobe Lightroom for long-term storage is risky. Edit your raw images, but quickly export them as high-quality JPEGs with embedded geodata and metadata so they are lightweight, stable, and easily readable by native photo apps.
Actively explore your past [12:11]: A curated library exists so you can actually use it. Use downtime—like moments you would normally spend scrolling social media—to review and delete pictures across your devices. Periodically zoom out to view your life in macro chunks (like year-by-year grids) to spark nostalgia, relive forgotten days, and gain perspective on how temporary your current day-to-day stresses really are.

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▍Sleep Is Your Superpower

Tue, 26 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

I could tell you about sleep loss and your cardiovascular system, and that all it takes is one hour. Because there is a global experiment performed on 1.6 billion people across 70 countries twice a year, and it’s called daylight saving time. ¹ Now, in the spring, when we lose one hour of sleep, we see a subsequent 24-percent increase in heart attacks that following day. In the autumn, when we gain an hour of sleep, we see a 21-percent reduction in heart attacks. Isn’t that incredible? And you see exactly the same profile for car crashes, road traffic accidents, even suicide rates.

The first is regularity. Go to bed at the same time, wake up at the same time, no matter whether it’s the weekday or the weekend. Regularity is king, and it will anchor your sleep and improve the quantity and the quality of that sleep. The second is keep it cool. Your body needs to drop its core temperature by about two to three degrees Fahrenheit to initiate sleep and then to stay asleep, and it’s the reason you will always find it easier to fall asleep in a room that’s too cold than too hot. So aim for a bedroom temperature of around 65 degrees, or about 18 degrees Celsius. That’s going to be optimal for the sleep of most people. And then finally, in taking a step back, then, what is the mission-critical statement here? Well, I think it may be this: sleep, unfortunately, is not an optional lifestyle luxury. Sleep is a nonnegotiable biological necessity. It is your life-support system, and it is Mother Nature’s best effort yet at immortality. And the decimation of sleep throughout industrialized nations is having a catastrophic impact on our health, our wellness, even the safety and the education of our children. It’s a silent sleep loss epidemic, and it’s fast becoming one of the greatest public health challenges that we face in the 21st century.

So if you are staying in bed awake for too long, you should get out of bed and go to a different room and do something different. The reason is because your brain will very quickly associate your bedroom with the place of wakefulness, and you need to break that association. So only return to bed when you are sleepy, and that way you will relearn the association that you once had, which is your bed is the place of sleep. So the analogy would be, you’d never sit at the dinner table, waiting to get hungry, so why would you lie in bed, waiting to get sleepy?

Daylight Saving Time = DST (日光節約時間) or Summer Time (夏令時間) is the practice of setting the clock forward by one hour during the warmer months in order to extend evening daylight. Typically, clocks are set forward in the spring and set back in the fall. This practice aims to make better use of daylight during the longer days of summer, potentially saving energy and encouraging outdoor leisure activities in the evening. ↩

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▍Being Boring

Mon, 25 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

‘May you live in interesting times.’ —Chinese curse

If you ask me ‘What’s new?’, I have nothing to say

Except that the garden is growing.

I had a slight cold but it’s better today.

I’m content with the way things are going.

Yes, he is the same as he usually is,

Still eating and sleeping and snoring.

I get on with my work. He gets on with his.

I know this is all very boring.

There was drama enough in my turbulent past:

Tears and passion - I’ve used up a tankful.

No news is good news, and long may it last.

If nothing much happens, I’m thankful.

A happier cabbage you never did see,

My vegetable spirits are soaring.

If you’re after excitement, steer well clear of me.

I want to go on being boring.

I don’t go to parties. Well, what are they for,

If you don’t need to find a new lover?

You drink and you listen and drink a bit more

And you take the next day to recover.

Someone to stay home with was all my desire

And, now that I’ve found a safe mooring,

I’ve just one ambition in life: I aspire

To go on and on being boring.

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▍Stress & The Glass of Water

Mon, 25 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Students: 8 ounces? 12 ounces? 16 ounces?

Professor: The absolute weight of the glass doesn’t matter. It depends on how long I hold onto it.

If I hold it for a minute, nothing happens. If I hold it for an hour, my arm will begin to ache. If I hold it all day long, my arm will feel numb and paralyzed.

Well, the weight of the glass hasn’t changed, but the longer I hold onto it, the heavier it becomes.

The students lean in, and the professor continues with the deeper lesson:

The stresses and the worries of life are like this glass of water.

If you think about them for a little while, there’s no problem. Think about it for a little bit longer, it begins to hurt. If you think about them all day long, you’ll feel paralyzed, incapable of doing anything.

Always remember: Put the glass down.

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▍The Orange

Mon, 25 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

At lunchtime I bought a huge orange—

The size of it made us all laugh.

I peeled it and shared it with Robert and Dave—

They got quarters and I had a half.

And that orange, it made me so happy,

As ordinary things often do

Just lately. The shopping. A walk in the park.

This is peace and contentment. It’s new.

The rest of the day was quite easy.

I did all the jobs on my list

And enjoyed them and had some time over.

I love you. I’m glad I exist.

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▍Where Is Home?

Mon, 25 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

[2:51]

For more and more of us, home has really less to do with a piece of soil, but a piece of soul. If somebody suddenly asks me, ‘Where’s your home?’ I think about my sweetheart or my closest friends or the songs that travel with me wherever I happen to be.

[7:50]

Home is just not the place where you happen to be born, it is the place where you become yourself.

[13:31]

But movement, ultimately, only has a meaning if you have a home to go back to. And home, in the end, is of course not just the place where you sleep. It’s the place where you stand.

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▍Becoming the Ocean

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

It is said that before entering the sea,

a river trembles with fear.

She looks back at the path she has traveled,

from the peaks of the mountains, the long winding road crossing forests and villages.

And in front of her, she sees an ocean so vast, that to enter there seems nothing more than to disappear forever.

But there is no other way.

The river can not go back.

Nobody can go back.

To go back is impossible in existence.

The river needs to take the risk of entering the ocean because only then will fear disappear because that’s where the river will know it’s not about disappearing into the ocean, but of becoming the ocean.

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▍別只看「沒有」，向你的困境借東西

Thu, 14 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

如果你想要跟別人不一樣，就要懂的跟「沒有」借東西。去問你的產品沒有什麼？你的服務沒有什麼？你的行銷沒有什麼？你的記者會沒有什麼？這樣，你就可以做出跟別人不一樣的東西。

你不會因為擁有誰，就變得完整。你也不會因為沒有誰，就變得不完整。你本來就是完整的。

「沒有」不是一份限制，「沒有」是一份禮物。

如果你什麼都沒有，那你應該去想，你該怎麼去創造？你把焦點放在創造，不要放在沒有」。

一個掉到糞坑裡面，又一直抱怨糞坑很臭的人，是走不出糞坑的。

記者、攝影師、企業家、工程師、物理學家，下班後就變成超人、蜘蛛人、蝙蝠俠、鋼鐵人、綠巨人。這五個人的故事帶給我們最大的啟示是什麼？超人的偉大事業都是從下班後開始的！

困住我們的從來不是我們沒有什麼，而是我們如何看待「沒有」。

當你繼承的是果園，可以擁有滿滿的果實；當你繼承的是荒原，你將擁有把荒地變成果實的「能力」。

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▍如何找回夢寐以求的「好生活」？

Thu, 14 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

[4:33] 大娘眼中所見的，不是外在世界的匱乏，而是自己美麗而豐盛的內心世界。她不跟環境討價還價，也不與過去斤斤計較，總是將抱怨轉化為感恩。她努力讓自己成為繁花盛開的原因，剪紙的時候總是把別人放在心中，想著要如何發揮自己的能力，讓自己成為一個美好的環境，好讓有一天，當別人經過她身邊時，也能帶走一段風景。原來，這就是我們夢寐以求的「好生活」。

[7:33] 但我們當孩子的很奇怪，總是要離家千里之外，才聽得見家裡的聲音。

[18:21] 在我心中，家，就是一棵樹，它會開花，不是因為春天，而是因為相愛的人在身邊。每一次相聚，只是為了讓我們記得：ㄍ人間最美好的時節，不需要等待四季的安排。回家，你就會看見，你是春天，你是一切繁花盛開的原因。

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▍This Page Is Designed to Last: a Manifesto for Preserving Content on the Web

Sat, 09 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Prefer one page over several — several pages are hard to maintain. You can lose track of which pages link to what, and it also leads to some system of page templates to reduce redundancy. How many pages can one person really maintain? Having one file, probably just an index.html, is simple and unforgettable. Make use of that infinite vertical scroll.

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▍The Cookie Thief

Sun, 03 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

A woman was waiting at an airport one night, with several long hours before her flight. She hunted for a book in the airport shops, bought a bag of cookies and found a place to drop.

She was engrossed in her book but happened to see, that the man sitting beside her, as bold as could be…grabbed a cookie or two from the bag in between, which she tried to ignore to avoid a scene.

So she munched the cookies and watched the clock, as the gutsy cookie thief diminished her stock. She was getting more irritated as the minutes ticked by, thinking, “If I wasn’t so nice, I would blacken his eye.”

With each cookie she took, he took one too, when only one was left, she wondered what he would do. With a smile on his face, and a nervous laugh, he took the last cookie and broke it in half.

He offered her half, as he ate the other, she snatched it from him and thought… oooh, brother. This guy has some nerve and he’s also rude, why he didn’t even show any gratitude!

She had never known when she had been so galled, and sighed with relief when her flight was called. She gathered her belongings and headed to the gate, refusing to look back at the thieving ingrate.

She boarded the plane, and sank in her seat, then she sought her book, which was almost complete. As she reached in her baggage, she gasped with surprise, there was her bag of cookies, in front of her eyes.

If mine are here, she moaned in despair, the others were his, and he tried to share. Too late to apologize, she realized with grief, that she was the rude one, the ingrate, the thief.

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▍What I Know for Sure

Sun, 03 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

What I know for sure is that pleasure is energy reciprocated: What you put out comes back. Your base level of pleasure is determined by how you view your whole life.

What I know for sure is that reading opens you up. It exposes you and gives you access to anything your mind can hold. What I love most about reading: It gives you the ability to reach higher ground. And keep climbing.

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▍Collection: Eliud Kipchoge

Wed, 29 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

https://run.outsideonline.com/training/training-plans/marathon/eliud-kipchoge-marathon-workout-training-principles/

Kipchoge starts at 5:45 A.M. every day, and goes to bed by 9 P.M.. During the day, he’ll nap for an hour. Despite the many demands on his time, he’s very, very good at doing nothing.

When it comes to long runs, he doesn’t ask for a specific pace but an effort that’s controlled yet challenging, the pace naturally increasing each week as fitness builds.

On each (long) run, the pace should get progressively faster, or at worst stay the same.

Twice a week, Kipchoge does a 60-minute strength and mobility session with just yoga mats and resistance bands. The focus is on the posterior chain — glutes, hamstrings, and core. Exercises include glute abductions, bridges, planks, and single-leg deadlifts, followed by balance and proprioception 本體感覺 work, then gentle stretching. He doesn’t lift weights. The goal is purely injury prevention.

Kipchoge drinks three liters of water each day. His meals are simple: homemade bread, local fruits and vegetables, lots of Kenyan tea, some meat, and a generous daily helping of favorite food—ugali, a dense maize-flour porridge. When it comes to supplements, Kipchoge told me he takes none.

Source: NN Running Team

Kipchoge logged every detail in a notebook. He began the practice in 2003 and now has 18 logs stored at his home to reflect on at the end of each season.

I document the time, the kilometers, the massage, the exercises, the shoes I’m using, the feeling about those shoes, everything.

After each marathon, Kipchoge takes three to four weeks completely off before beginning a three-to-four-week preparatory phase, during which he alternates an hour of strength exercises and step aerobics one day with an hour of easy running the next.

Kipchoge’s marathon-training blocks have been as long as seven months and as short as three months, but typically they last around 16 weeks.

https://balancethegrind.co/daily-routines/eliud-kipchoge-daily-routine/

Kipchoge doesn’t take any supplements. “I’m not having any problems with my body, so I don’t need to supplement,” he told Runner’s World. “Growing older you don’t recover as fast, but all-in-all I’m doing well.”

https://www.bbc.com/sport/athletics/52354320

I don’t have extra money to actually make my mind go haywire. I am a human being and I stay as a human being. Money stays away. I’m not working with money; money is in the bank. I want to live a simple life.

“He has never missed a session. Not one,” says Sang. It’s an incredible statement given the two have worked together for nearly 20 years. That consistency is arguably Kipchoge’s most remarkable quality. Marathon running is a notoriously tough sport.

Kipchoge’s “moon-landing” moment in becoming the first person to run a marathon distance in under two hours is not a world record because, among other things, he used pacemakers who swapped in and out during the event. On the treatment table the day after running 1:59 in Vienna, Kipchoge said to the physiologist Peter Nduhiu: “Now, the next thing. Make it official.”

If it was any other guy to break the two-hour record, there would have been a carnival. But what did Eliud do? He came back to camp, had a cup of tea with the team and just started again. People were mad - they asked how can he do that? Who does that? But Eliud is quiet - that is it. You will not disrupt his schedule. He will not allow you to.

The most important thing to me is inspiration, not fame. It is not about becoming famous but diffusing that inspiration to every human being. My happiness is meeting people and they say to me: ‘No human is limited.’ That makes me so happy.

https://www.irishexaminer.com/sport/othersport/arid-40732662.html

In Vienna, October 12, 2019. Earlier that day, Kipchoge had become the first man ever to run a sub-two-hour marathon, clocking 1:59:40, a time that didn’t count as an official world record due to the use of rotating pacemakers and Kipchoge being handed his drinks from a bike (rather than picking them off a table).

The INEOS 1:59 Challenge, bankrolled by British billionaire Jim Ratcliffe, gathered many of the world’s best to help pace Kipchoge to a mark many had deemed impossible. But then he did it, holding an absurd pace of 4:33 per mile or 2:50 per kilometre before sprinting, exulted, into the arms of his wife, Grace, and his coach, Patrick Sang, for an achievement that would echo in eternity.

Later that night, organisers held a no-expense-spared party for those who’d been part of the project.

Kipchoge was there, handing out trophies to the 41 men who’d paced him, and he then made a speech to thank those who’d worked so hard behind the scenes. Alcohol flowed through the room in torrents, and most athletes present ended up out on the town until late night turned to early morning.

Kipchoge? He didn’t touch a drop of alcohol (he never drinks) and once his speech was made, the man responsible for the entire celebration quietly exited the room, going back to his hotel for an early night.

He has a thing about celebrating, Kipchoge. Sees it as something sinister, something dangerous, a self-indulgent act that might derail his mindset, make him think, somewhere in his subconscious, that he has arrived, the inference being he has nowhere left to go.

He’ll punch the air at the finish, alright, but try to get him into an open-top car or to attend a huge welcome-home party and you’ll get a polite but firm rejection.

On Sunday, August 8, the last day of the Tokyo Olympic Games, Kipchoge once again eviscerated the world’s best marathoners to retain his Olympic title, dropping an almighty hammer 19 miles into the race and coming home a whopping 80 seconds clear of his closest rival.

The race was held in Sapporo, more than 800km from Tokyo, but tradition dictates that the men’s marathon medals are handed out at the Olympic closing ceremony. Kipchoge and his fellow medallists, along with their coaches, were flown to Tokyo that afternoon, then made to wait for a few hours at the airport before being driven to the stadium.

Cramped in a dull room with hours to kill, the Olympic medallists did what most would do: they opened their phones, logged into wifi, and started scrolling through the river of goodwill messages.

All except one. Kipchoge placed his phone in front of him and never touched it, sitting there — for hours — in contented silence.

Bashir Abdi, the bronze medallist from Belgium, recalls the story in laughing disbelief, adding a line, only half-joking, that those in the sport have said many times about Kipchoge.

“He is not human.”

He’s a straightforward guy: quiet, humble, with a monastic way of life that was likely cultivated through his family’s farming background, a childhood spent transporting milk on his bike to sell at the local market.

He knows what it’s like to have nothing, or close to it, but now that he has everything, little has changed. For the vast majority of the year he lives a spartan life, his approach bringing to mind a line that Marcus O’Sullivan, Ireland’s three-time world indoor 1,500m champion, once told me: “You never put things in front of you that let you think you’ve arrived. Always have that level of deprivation, so you know there’s more to be done.”

Even now, having summited the sport’s highest peaks an incomparable, unfathomable 18 years apart, Kipchoge still lives the same way.

Source: NN Running Team

Today, Kipchoge will do eight 1,600m repetitions in 4:40 with two minutes recovery, which he mostly walks, followed by eight 400m repetitions in 63-64 seconds with 30-50 seconds recovery. This is only his “third or fourth” workout since returning to training, having taken almost a month completely off following his latest Olympic gold.

Nonetheless, his class quickly tells.

Kipchoge leads the first rep, establishing the rhythm for the others, then sits in the pack through the rest of the session. When he’s hurting, his face contorts into a half-smile, half-grimace, and only in the last few reps does it emerge.

Even a half-fit Kipchoge can match the others, athletes who are already race-fit for major marathons. About 40 athletes start the session, but only four remain after 10 miles of hard running around the undulating dirt track, which is 380m long. After a few tired laps to cool down, Kipchoge returns to the camp next door, where he’ll eat, sleep, and relax in the gardens, chatting with training partners, until 4pm. His second run of the day is an easy 10k, which starts at a crawl (5:30 per kilometre) and finishes at a still sedate pace (4:20 per kilometre).

The runners then sit around for tea — Kenyan chai made with milk and a hefty dose of sugar — before having dinner together at 7pm.

“By 9pm, I’m in bed,” says Kipchoge, whose alarm will sound at 5:45am the next morning to start the whole process again.

Kipchoge does three hard workouts a week: 15–16km worth of track repetitions on Tuesdays, a long run of 30 or 40km on Thursdays, and a 50-minute fartlek session on Saturdays, alternating three minutes of hard running with one minute of jogging.

What made me stay (at the top) for a long time is self-discipline. I try to say no to anything which is not beneficial.

The humble lifestyle, the guy-next-door modesty, the everyday visibility — it’s clear Kipchoge believes this is the most powerful way to send a message to youth: that they, like him, can start with nothing, achieve everything, and remain the same person at the end of it.

“Rejecting that flashy life is giving me more time to concentrate and be the person I need to be,” he says. “I want (life) to be simple and work as hard as I can rather than living at a high level, driving flashy cars or airplanes. I think that can make you come down as far as performance.”

What makes him happiest of all?

“It’s the inspiration,” he says. “I go around and see kids chanting and wanting to be the way I am, making their countries beautiful, respecting people in the world.”

If you’ve been using a tiny gym for all your success, then the day you become successful and go to a huge gym, I don’t think you’ll be better. Small habits are what make me successful. I’m sticking to where I started and I’m confident I’ll end my career here.

https://www.trailrunnermag.com/training/trail-tips-training/kipchoge-training-takeaways/

Most of Kipchoge’s training is very easy.

It seems that 4 of Kipchoge’s training days are purely easy, consisting of 3 x 18 mile doubles (as 12 miles in AM and 6 miles in PM) plus 1 x 2 hours at easy effort (maybe 16-18 miles). Add onto that 2 x 6 mile easy doubles on his workout days. That puts him around 84 miles that are almost purely easy, and I am guessing firmly in Zone 1. There are probably some miles of warm-up and cool-down for workouts on top of that, also very easy. Let’s estimate 100 easy miles in a week around 130 miles.

That would indicate that 77% is in Zone 1 or just a bit higher! Perhaps that approximation is wrong and some of those miles are in lower Zone 2, or maybe there is more steady running on some of those recovery runs than is reflected in the article. But still, that’s a lot of easy running.

Kipchoge runs controlled workouts, with disciplined intensity control.

I try not to run 100 percent. I perform 80 percent on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday and then at 50 percent Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday.

Those 80% days are workout days. The 50% days are the easy run days. Then he shows up on race day with 100% of his capabilities.

Kipchoge does quality long runs most weeks.

He implements long, progressive runs that start easy and end moderately hard.

He has an alternating weekly schedule for long run. One week will be 19 miles, the next 25 miles, over hilly terrain.

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▍The Best Way to Use AI for Learning

Tue, 28 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Alan argues that the true value of AI in education lies not in increasing the volume of information consumed, but in increasing the complexity of the knowledge a learner can master.

By using AI as an “intelligence amplifier”—specifically through high-fidelity PDF parsing, large context windows, and spatial organization on digital whiteboards—learners can bypass the “shallow” popular summaries of a field and engage directly with dense primary sources (e.g., PhD-level textbooks).

In an AI-saturated world, efficiency gains should be reinvested into harder material, not more material.

Surprising or Counter-Intuitive Points

Summaries are Bad for Math: While summaries provide a “compass” for humanities, they are often useless for mathematics, where understanding is derived from the process of proof and definition rather than the conclusion.
AI Prevents Thinking Outsourcing: Counter-intuitively, using AI to provide “hints” during difficult problems keeps a learner persistent and motivated, whereas struggling in isolation often leads to giving up (the ultimate failure of thinking).
The Primary Source Imperative: AI makes it easier to avoid “middleman” summaries and misinformation by lowering the barrier to entry for dense, authoritative academic texts.

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▍Serendipity Finds You

Mon, 27 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

It’s better to think in terms of “allowing” serendipity rather than “seeking” it or “creating” it. Opportunity is all around us, but we have beliefs and habits that block it. The two biggest blocks to serendipity seem to be ego-fear and “other plans”.

The whole notion that plans are something that we should “stick to” makes them distracting enough that I prefer to call them “ideas” or “rough sketches” instead. Personally, I try to avoid having plans for my life, but I have many ideas.

Planning is a Constraint: Buchheit suggests that having a rigid plan can actually be a liability because it closes you off to unexpected opportunities that don’t fit the plan. A hyper-efficient, strictly planned life minimizes the “errors” and “randomness” that actually lead to breakthroughs. Serendipity requires “productive inefficiency.” Sometimes our best decisions are the ones that don’t make any sense at all.

Serendipity is “Found”: The title “Serendipity Finds You” flips the script—it suggests that you don’t need to hunt for luck; you simply need to make yourself findable.

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▍The Swing

Sun, 26 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

How do you like to go

up in a swing,

Up in the air so blue?

Oh, I do think it the pleasantest thing

Ever a child can do!

Up in the air and over the wall,

Till I can see so wide,

Rivers and trees and cattle and all

Over the countryside—

Till I look down on the garden green,

Down on the roof so brown—

Up in the air I go flying again,

Up in the air and down!

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▍C.S. Lewis’s Advice to a Young Writer

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Turn off the radio.
Read all the good books you can, and avoid nearly all magazines.
Always write (and read) with the ear, not the eye. You should hear every sentence you write as if it was being read aloud or spoken. If it does not sound nice, try again.
Write about what really interests you, whether it is real things or imaginary things, and nothing else. (Notice this means that if you are interested only in writing you will never be a writer, because you will have nothing to write about.)
Take great pains to be clear. Remember that though you start by knowing what you mean, the reader doesn’t, and a single ill-chosen word may lead him to a total misunderstanding. In a story it is terribly easy just to forget that you have not told the reader something that he needs to know—the whole picture is so clear in your own mind that you forget that it isn’t the same in his.
When you give up a bit of work, don’t (unless it is hopelessly bad) throw it away. Put it in a drawer. It may come in useful later. Much of my best work, or what I think my best, is the rewriting of things begun and abandoned years earlier.
Don’t use a typewriter. The noise will destroy your sense of rhythm, which still needs years of training.
Be sure you know the meaning (or meanings) of every word you use.

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▍We Don’t Get a Lot of Things to Really Care About

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

They’re not real; you get that, right? None of it is real. The critics aren’t real. The customers aren’t real. Because this isn’t real. You aren’t real.

Derek, why do you care about these people? They don’t care about you, none of them. They don’t even know you, because you haven’t shown them.

Every day you wake up, and there’ll be less of you. You live your life for them, and they don’t even see you. You don’t even see yourself.

We don’t get a lot of things to really care about.

In this scene of the 2021 movie Pig, the main character, Rob (played by Nicolas Cage), confronts Chef Field (Derek), who runs an upscale, modern restaurant.

Rob enters the restaurant asking for his truffled pig [00:01].
After some confusion, Chef Field recognizes Rob, noting he’s been “off the scene” for many years [00:37]. The chef reveals he once worked for Rob as a prep cook but was fired for overcooking pasta [01:04].
Rob asks again about his pig, explaining that it was stolen [01:27], [01:41].
Chef Field tries to dismiss him, talking about his successful business, his investors, and the “concept” of his restaurant, which involves deconstructing local ingredients [01:48], [02:38].
Rob challenges him, asking if this is the kind of cooking he truly likes [03:09]. He reminds Derek of his old dream to open a traditional English pub [03:21].
Rob then deconstructs the chef’s entire restaurant concept, telling him, “None of it is real” [04:05]. He insists that the critics and customers aren’t real because the restaurant itself isn’t an authentic expression of the chef [04:17].
He tells Derek he is living for people who don’t even see him, and as a result, he doesn’t even see himself [04:25], [04:43].
Rob concludes with the observation, “We don’t get a lot of things to really care about” [04:53], before asking one last time, “Who has my pig?” [05:34].

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▍How to Triple Your Memory by Using This Trick

Mon, 20 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

This TEDx talk by Ricardo Lieuw On explores the “art of learning” and demonstrates a powerful visualization technique to significantly improve memory.

Key Moments

[00:15] - The Initial Test: A traditional memory test where the audience struggles to memorize 10 words through repetition.
[03:32] - The Speaker’s Journey: Ricardo shares his personal struggle with traditional schooling and how he learned to love learning by experimenting with different methods.
[06:12] - The Memory Trick: A guided visualization exercise using “bizarre images” and body parts to anchor information.
[09:48] - The Result: The audience successfully recalls the last 10 U.S. Presidents in order using the visualization technique.
[13:46] - The Three Steps: Ricardo breaks down the process of learning into three phases: Check, Experience, and Experiment.

Key Takeaways

Visualization Over Repetition: Rote memorization is often ineffective. Creating vivid, bizarre, and even silly mental images makes information much easier to retain.
The “Body Files” Method: Linking new information to a familiar physical sequence (like parts of your body) provides a reliable structure for recall.
The Skill of Experimentation: Learning how to learn is more important than the subject itself. By experimenting with different methods, you can improve at any skill.
⭐️ The Process of Improvement:
1. Check: Become aware of your current (often inefficient) habits.
2. Experience: Stay open to trying new, unconventional methods.
3. Experiment: Take what you’ve learned and apply it to real-life situations, such as remembering names or new languages.
Growth Mindset: No one is “too old” or “not cut out” for learning; it is simply a matter of finding the right method through continuous experimentation.

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▍The Little Prince

Wed, 15 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

All grown-ups were once children, but only few of them remember it.

每個人都是從小孩長大成人的，然而多數的大人卻不記得這件事。

“People where you live,” the little prince said, “grow five thousand roses in one garden… yet they don’t find what they’re looking for.”

“They don’t find it,” I answered.

“And yet what they’re looking for could be found in a single rose, or a little water.”

“Of course,” I answered.

And the little prince added, “But eyes are blind. You have to look with the heart.”

All men have stars, but they are not the same things for different people. For some, who are travelers, the stars are guides. For others they are no more than little lights in the sky. For others, who are scholars, they are problems. But all these stars are silent. You-You alone will have stars as no one else has them. In one of the stars I shall be living. In one of them I shall be laughing. And so it will be as if all the stars will be laughing when you look at the sky at night. You, only you, will have stars that can laugh! […] It will be as if, in place of the stars, I had given you a great number of little bells that knew how to laugh.

“What makes the desert beautiful,” said the little prince, “is that somewhere it hides a well (水井)?”

“Where are the people?” resumed the little prince at last. “It’s a little lonely in the desert…” “It is lonely when you’re among people, too,” said the snake.

Chapter 21

“I’m looking for friends. What does tamed (馴養) mean?”

“It’s something that’s been too often neglected. It means, to create ties.”

“To create ties?”

“That’s right,” the fox said. “For me you’re only a little boy just like a hundred thousand other little boys. And I have no need of you. And you have no need of me, either. For you I’m only a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But if you tame me, we’ll need each other. You’ll be the only boy in the world for me. I’ll be the only fox in the world for you.”

“I’m beginning to understand,” the little prince said. “There’s a flower. I think she’s tamed me.”

“Possibly.” the fox said. “On Earth, one sees all kinds of things.”

“Oh, this isn’t on Earth,” the little prince said.

The fox seemed quite intrigued. “On another planet?”

“Yes.”

“Are there hunters on that planet?”

“No.”

“Now that’s interesting. And chickens?”

“No.”

“Nothing’s perfect,” sighed the fox.

But he returned to his idea. “My life is monotonous. I hunt chickens; people hunt me. All chickens are just alike, and all men are just alike. So I’m rather bored. But if you tame me, my life will be filled with sunshine. I’ll know the sound of footsteps that will be different from all the rest. Other footsteps send me back underground. Yours will call me out of my burrow like music. And then, look! You see the wheat fields over there? I don’t eat bread. For me wheal is of no use whatever. Wheat fields say nothing to me. Which is sad. But you have hair the color of gold. So it will be wonderful, once you’ve tamed me! The wheat, which is golden, will remind me of you. And I’ll love the sound of the wind in the wheat.”

The fox fell silent and stared at the little prince for a long while. “Please tame me!” he said.

“I’d like to,” the little prince replied, “but I haven’t much time. I have friends to find and so many things to learn.”

“The only things you learn are the things you tame,” said the fox. “People haven’t time to learn anything. They buy things ready-made in stores. But since there are no stores where you can buy friends, people no longer have friends. If you want a friend, tame me!”

“What do I have to do?” asked the little prince.

“You have to be very patient,” the fox answered. “First you’ll sit down a little ways away from me, over there, in the grass. I’ll watch you out of the corner of my eye, and you won’t say anything. Language is the source of misunderstandings. But day by day, you’ll be able to sit a little closer.”

The next day the little prince returned.

“It would have been better to return at the same time,” the fox said. “For instance, if you come at four in the afternoon, I’ll begin to be happy by three. The closer it gets to four, the happier I’ll feel. By four I’ll be all excited and worried; I’ll discover what it costs to be happy! But if you come at any old time, I’ll never know when I should prepare my heart.” There must be rites (儀式).”

“What’s a rite?” asked the little prince.

“That’s another thing that’s been too often neglected,” said the fox. “It’s the fact that one day is different from the other days, one hour from the other hours. My hunters, for example, have a rite. They dance with the village girls on Thursdays.

“So Thursday’s a wonderful day: I can take a stroll all the way to the vineyards. If the hunters danced whenever they chose, the days would all be just alike, and I’d have no holiday at all.”

That was how the little prince tamed the fox. And when the time to leave was near:

“Ah!” the fox said. “I shall weep.”

“It’s your own fault,” the little prince said. “I never wanted to do you any harm, but you insisted that I tame you.”

“Yes, of course,” the fox said.

“But you’re going to weep!” said the little prince. “Yes, of course,” the fox said.

“Then you get nothing out of it?”

“I get something,” the fox said, “because of the color of the wheat.” Then he added, “Go look at the roses again. You’ll understand that yours is the only rose in all the world. Then come back to say good-bye, and I’ll make you the gift of a secret.”

The little prince went to look at the roses again.

“You’re not at all like my rose. You’re nothing at all yet,” he told them. “No one has tamed you and you haven’t tamed anyone. You’re the way my fox was. He was just a fox like a hundred thousand others. But I’ve made him my friend, and now he’s the only fox in all the world.”

And the roses were humbled.

“You are lovely, but you’re empty,” he went on. “One couldn’t die for you. Of course, an ordinary passerby would think my rose looked just like you. But my rose, all on her own, is more important than all of you together, since she’s the one I’ve watered. Since she’s the one I put under glass. Since she’s the one I sheltered behind a screen. Since she’s the one for whom I killed the caterpillars (except the two or three for butterflies). Since she’s the one I listened to when she complained, or when she boasted, or even sometimes when she said nothing at all. Since she’s my rose.”

And he went back to the fox.

“Good-bye,” he said.

“Good-bye,” said the fox. “Here is my secret. It’s quite simple: One sees clearly only with the heart. Anything essential is invisible to the eyes.” ¹ ²

“Anything essential is invisible to the eyes,” the little prince repeated, in order to remember.

“It’s the time you spent on your rose that makes your rose so important.”

“It’s the time I spent on my rose…” the little prince repeated, in order to remember.

“People have forgotten this truth,” the fox said. “But you mustn’t forget it. You become responsible forever for what you’ve tamed. You’re responsible for your rose.”

“The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched - they must be felt with the heart.” — Helen Keller ↩
“Why do we close our eyes when we pray, cry, kiss, or dream? Because the most beautiful things in life are not seen but felt by the heart.” — Denzel Washington ↩

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▍How Do Rocket Scientists Learn?

Mon, 13 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

NASA Goddard’s Knowledge Management (KM) approach rejects the idea that institutional wisdom can be stored in digital libraries or databases. Instead, they emphasize the transfer of tacit knowledge—experiential know-how that cannot be captured in manuals. By institutionalizing “Pause and Learn” sessions and narrative-driven Case Studies, NASA transforms project milestones and failures into stories that build critical thinking and capture both the “why” and “what” behind decisions. This human-centric, social approach prioritizes psychological safety, storytelling, and deliberate reflection over technical systems.

Main Ideas

Tacit vs Explicit Knowledge: Distinguishing between what can be written down (manuals) and what is lived (experience).
The Social Nature of Knowledge: Knowledge is not a commodity to be stored; it is a process that happens between people.
The Case Study Method: Using narrative-driven accounts of past missions to teach decision-making and critical thinking.
Pause and Learn (PaL): Moving beyond “Post-Mortems” to conduct reflective sessions during the lifecycle of a project.
Culture over Technology: Systems are useless if the organizational culture does not encourage the sharing of failures and insights.

Actionable Takeaways

Implement “Pause and Learn” (PaL): Schedule brief reflection sessions at key milestones during a project, rather than waiting for the end.
Adopt Storytelling: When documenting a project, include a narrative component that explains the hurdles and the reasoning behind “pivots.”
Shift KM Budgeting: Invest more in facilitating expert-to-novice conversations and peer-review sessions than in expensive database software.
Ask “What should we have known?”: During reviews, ask what information was available but ignored, rather than just what information was missing.

Mental Models

Polanyi’s Paradox: The idea that “we know more than we can tell”—highlighting the difficulty of capturing tacit knowledge.
The After-Action Review (AAR): A structured review process for analyzing what happened, why it happened, and how it can be done better.
Double-Loop Learning: Not just fixing a problem, but questioning the underlying policies and goals that allowed the problem to occur.

Surprising or Counter-Intuitive Points

NASA Dislikes Databases: One might expect the world’s most advanced technical agency to rely on “Big Data” for KM, but they find human storytelling far more effective for high-level learning.
Failure as an Asset: In the NASA model, a well-documented failure is often more valuable for the organization’s future than a quiet success.
Learning is “Slow”: Goddard’s methods (Case Studies and PaLs) require taking expensive engineering time away from “work” to “talk,” which counter-intuitively speeds up the overall mission success rate.

Connections

Medical Residency: Like rocket science, medicine uses “Morbidity and Mortality” (M&M) conferences to turn errors into collective learning.
Software Engineering: The concept of “Blameless Post-mortems” in DevOps mirrors Goddard’s “Pause and Learn” philosophy.
Ancient Oral Traditions: NASA’s use of storytelling brings high-tech engineering back to the most fundamental human way of passing down survival information.

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▍How to Achieve Your Most Ambitious Goals

Thu, 09 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

[01:18] Achieving ambitious goals is more about the approach to problem-solving and decision-making, rather than innate talent.

Marginal adjustments, or small improvements in daily routines/processes, can lead to significant results over time.

[16:47] Breaking down large goals into smaller, manageable chunks of tasks makes them less daunting and easier to achieve.

Consistency and persistence in making small, positive decisions (to start) are crucial for success.

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▍Why Six Hours of Sleep Is as Bad as None at All

Thu, 09 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The article examines a pivotal study from the University of Pennsylvania and Washington State University that challenges the common belief that six hours of sleep is “enough.”

Researchers tracked participants over two weeks, limiting them to four, six, or eight hours of sleep, and compared them to a group deprived of sleep for two full days.

They found that individuals sleeping six hours per night exhibit the same mental deficits as those who have been awake for two days straight.

Most importantly, the study reveals a dangerous “self-perception gap”: participants getting six hours didn’t feel sleep-deprived even as their performance plummeted. The brain loses the ability to monitor its own impairment.

Adaptation is an Illusion: We think we “adjust” to less sleep, but in reality, we only lose our ability to notice our own decline. The belief that six hours of sleep is sufficient for high performance is a scientifically proven fallacy.
Performance vs Feeling: There is a decoupling between how tired we feel and how well we actually function. Feeling “fine” is not a reliable metric for productivity or safety.
The Tipping Point: Performance doesn’t just dip and level off; it continues to degrade linearly as the sleep debt increases.

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▍The Self-Help Trap: What 20+ Years of “Optimizing” Has Taught Me

Tue, 17 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

To continually improve yourself, you must continually locate the ways you are broken. A focus on improving the self usually first requires finding problems with the self. ¹ ²

Misdirected self-help turns you into a self-obsessed masturbatory ouroboros (SOMO)

You can spend your whole life preparing for, instead of playing, the game of life. But why would anyone, including yours truly, succumb to this? Subconsciously, it spares you from the messiest but most rewarding game of all: human interaction.

The goal is to build and improve my relationships. The sooner you get on the real field with real players, the sooner you can get to playing soccer and engaging with life.

There is no perfect escape from suffering. It doesn’t exist. But there is a way to find your long-sought unclenching, and it lies in cultivating your skill of acceptance as much as that of improvement.

For our purposes, the meat, the whole point of the hamburger, is that middle layer: relationships. That is the center of life. The heartbeat. As luck would have it, when you improve the heartbeat, it also feeds everything else.

This is why it’s so important to approach self-improvement from a place of abundance rather than a place of scarcity. ↩
“I am enough, but I want more.” ➞ “I am enough, and I want more.” ↩

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▍White Collar Goes Blue

Tue, 17 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

“The Industrial Revolution was about the mechanization of muscle. This revolution is about the mechanization of the mind.” — Anu Atluru

“Average is over.” — Anu Atluru

“The ‘junior’ role is being automated out of existence, creating a massive vacuum in the talent pipeline.” — Anu Atluru

“We are moving from an era of specialization to an era of orchestration.” — Anu Atluru

The traditional corporate ladder—where one learns the ropes through entry-level “grunt work”—is collapsing because AI can now perform those foundational tasks faster and cheaper. This disruption forces a transition from a world of “employment” to a world of “orchestration.” Degrees are becoming “lagging indicators” of ability, while the “leading indicator” is the ability to solve complex problems by orchestrating various AI tools.
Wealth and career security are moving away from “hours worked” and toward “judgment applied” through technological leverage.
When the cost of production drops to zero, the value of selection (taste, curation, and strategic direction) becomes the primary differentiator.
⭐️ Develop “Orchestration” Skills: Instead of trying to be the best writer or coder, focus on being the best director of writers and coders (curator).
Build a “Proof of Work” Portfolio: Since credentials are losing value, maintain a public-facing record of projects you have directed or built.
The Barbell Strategy: Success will be found at the extremes—either being a high-level generalist who orchestrates systems or a hyper-niche specialist in a field AI cannot touch.
Education as a Vulnerability: The more “standardized” an education is (like law or accounting), the more vulnerable the role is to AI, because AI thrives on standardized rules.
Productivity is a Trap: Being the most “productive” worker (the one who clears the most tickets) is a losing strategy because AI will always be more productive. Value is now found in what you choose to produce, not how much.
To what extent is your current job value based on “knowing things” (vulnerable) versus “taking responsibility for outcomes” (safe)?

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▍The “Tell Them” Theory

Wed, 11 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

I’m convinced a Tell Them Theory would make the world a better place.

Think the waiter was friendly?

Tell them.

Your friend looked good today?

Tell them.

Someone’s work inspired you?

Tell them.

The world is loud with criticism and quiet with appreciation. Be the exception. It could make someone’s day.

Unlike many things in life, appreciation has an expiry date. The best time to offer appreciation is now. And I don’t mean the generic kind. Not “you’re amazing” or “I appreciate you.” I mean the specific kind. Tell them:

“Your presence calms me when everything feels chaotic.”
“You make people feel safe to be themselves.”
“The way you handled that situation taught me something valuable.”
“Your consistency inspires me. You show up even when it’s inconvenient, and that says a lot about your character and heart.”

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▍For Want of a Nail

Sat, 28 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

For want of a nail the shoe was lost.

少了釘子，失了蹄鐵。

For want of a shoe the horse was lost.

少了蹄鐵，失了戰馬。

For want of a horse the rider was lost.

少了戰馬，失了騎士。

For want of a rider the message was lost.

少了騎士，失了情報。

For want of a message the battle was lost.

少了情報，失了勝仗。

For want of a battle the kingdom was lost.

少了勝仗，失了王國。

And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.

這全因少了個馬蹄釘。

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▍A Psalm of Life

Fri, 20 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Tell me not, in mournful numbers,

Life is but an empty dream!

For the soul is dead that slumbers,

And things are not what they seem.

Life is real! Life is earnest!

And the grave is not its goal;

Dust thou art, to dust returnest,

Was not spoken of the soul.

Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,

Is our destined end or way;

But to act, that each to-morrow

Find us farther than to-day.

Art is long, and Time is fleeting,

And our hearts, though stout and brave,

Still, like muffled drums, are beating

Funeral marches to the grave.

In the world’s broad field of battle,

In the bivouac of Life,

Be not like dumb, driven cattle!

Be a hero in the strife!

Trust no Future, howe’er pleasant!

Let the dead Past bury its dead!

Act,— act in the living Present!

Heart within, and God o’erhead!

Lives of great men all remind us

We can make our lives sublime,

And, departing, leave behind us

Footprints on the sands of time;

Footprints, that perhaps another,

Sailing o’er life’s solemn main,

A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,

Seeing, shall take heart again.

Let us, then, be up and doing,

With a heart for any fate;

Still achieving, still pursuing,

Learn to labor and to wait.

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▍零與無限大

Mon, 16 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

從小，我不曾想要做什麼高階職位的工作，只想做一個快樂的工人 — 每天釣魚、聽音樂、畫圖及聊天。少年時代，我的理想就是穿上一條工作褲，口袋放一本詩集。

我是這樣看我自己的 — 我是一個收藏小提琴的人。

圓滿的人生要有三百六十度，工作只是其中九十度，剩下的二百七十度，要用你的興趣、家人與社會責任來填滿。

人若是一張白紙，你要在上面畫什麼圖都可以，但人生如果被畫上格子，就只能寫字了。

上市也沒什麼好處，只是錢比較多而已，麻煩的事情也會比較多；就像娶多一些老婆，孩子生那麼多也麻煩，還是一個比較好。

有錢的要讓沒錢的佔便宜，大股東要讓小股東佔便宜，有能力者要讓無能力者佔便宜。

人賺錢的目的是為了追求幸福和福祉；賺錢本身並不是終點。

賺錢容易花錢難，錢要用了才是錢。

人一定要思考，到底我們追求的是什麼？你的幸福，要如何定義？

如果你人生的目的只是追求錢，那你整天盯著「銀行簿仔」就好了。

經營企業是手段，追求幸福才是目的。

做世界第一大廠，沒什麼意義；要就做世界第一好命的廠，才有意義。

我們有個很壞的觀念，以為只要經濟成長就是好的，其實經濟沒有成長不一定是壞事。

最理想的政府，就是「管越少越好、做越少越好」；政府存在的目的，就是主持正義，以及照顧人民。

我最大的資產，就是我可以在任何時候去菜市場賣魚。我並不怕歸零。經營事業真正要害怕的，是沒把最壞的情況先想清楚。當你有這個打算時，整個人都會「勇」起來。

企業沒有永遠這回事。永遠存在的，將是我的博物館和醫院。這兩個存在就好了，剩下的都沒關係。

好的老闆，只需要做「目標管理」，看結果就好，其餘細節和過程就放手讓員工自己發揮，不必做「手段管理」。如果我今天告訴你怎麼做，明天你又會來問我，這樣我就得一直幫你處理事情，你的才能也永遠無法發揮。

我才不是老闆呢，真正的老闆是買我們東西的客戶。

將來如果我走了，不要為我造墓，辦一場音樂會就夠了。

大多數早晨，我都在海裡，如果天氣不好，我就在溪裡。我很喜歡破曉時分四下無人的大自然，那是個極美的時刻 — 自然的天空，海面的光影變化 — 真的是美。

人一但到了大自然裡，處理事情的心境就會不一樣。你會覺得自己平常在忙碌的，都是非常渺小的事情。但若每天待在辦公室，就會覺得自己是全世界。

魚比人更聰明，驕傲的人不會知道自然有多偉大。

唯有接受自然的偉大，人才能學會「謙卑」。人類只是大自然的一部分，受其支配，絕不能有「我是整個世界」這種驕傲的念頭。

在大自然裡，思緒會變得超脫，格局也會提升；不然，每天只會困在瑣碎的小事裡，難以自拔。

許多煩惱，其實只要退一步來看，就會發現根本沒有爭執的必要。當你能真正體會自然的偉大，心境也會隨之放鬆，即使面對死亡，也能坦然以對。

釣魚哲學

兩個餌，只釣一條魚就好。當你釣起一條魚時，另一個餌會自然掉落水底，吸引更多魚靠近。若一次釣兩條魚，反而會讓那個地方變得空蕩，最後魚也活不下去。這說明，對人要留餘地；在生意上，也要留些利益給別人，關係才能長久。
要讓每個人都能釣到魚，也就是建立互利互惠的共生關係。如果只有你釣到魚，別人都釣不到，那也不會快樂。大家都釣得到魚，才是最快樂的結果。

零與無限大

我從小就習慣用宏觀的角度思考事情。

我對讀書沒什麼興趣，數學也普通，直到數學課看到「躺下來的 8」— 代表無限大的符號 — 才讓我感到興奮。

從少年時代開始，遇到事情我總會先想：「如果把它放大，會變成什麼樣子？」再用那個放大的結果來思考現在。

我也不怕歸零。

很多人以為我沒失敗過，其實不然。

只是我跑得比別人快，所以表面上看起來沒失敗。¹

其實，失敗的旁邊總有寶藏。

如果真的救不了，讓它歸零也沒什麼不好，這樣再出發反而更快。

有時候是禍還是福，端看心態。

與其悲觀，不如樂觀地歸零。

觀念很重要，只要換個角度想，困境也能成為轉機。

對我來說，事業很重要，更重要的卻是我的休閒時間。

我在家裡就是忙著拉琴、畫畫、讀書。光是這三樣，我的時間就不夠用了。

總之在生活裡，我不喜歡被人吵，我喜歡獨處時靜靜的思考。

如果一個人只是被工作綁住，忙到都沒有閒，一輩子的打拚，就非常沒有價值了。

這麼多年來，事業只是我人生三百六十度中的九十度而已，另外九十度是釣魚、與大自然相處，九十度是藝術，我對社會與環境的關懷，也是九十度。

這，就是我的三百六十度人生。

抽屜理論

整理抽屜時，如果只是挑出幾樣沒用的東西丟掉，通常只能清出兩成空間。但如果換個做法，把抽屜全部倒空，再只放回真正需要的，最後留下的往往也只有兩成。

這就是「抽屜理論」：徹底歸零、全部清空，只有經過這樣的篩選，才能回到原點，讓真正重要的東西自然浮現。

老鼠理論

我們看到家裡有老鼠，通常第一個反應就是用毒藥毒死牠，再來就是用抓的，捕鼠夾啊、老鼠籠啊，統統搬出來用。

我們看到家裡有老鼠，通常第一反應就是用毒藥、捕鼠夾、老鼠籠等各種手段想盡辦法消滅牠們。但老鼠很聰明，吃藥只有第一次，抓也只會上當一次。到最後，有人甚至不惜放火燒屋，只為了把老鼠趕走。

「老鼠理論」帶來兩個啟示：

第一，你要理解自然的原理 — 蓋房子就要容許一、兩隻老鼠的存在。善與惡、好與壞，本來就共存於社會，不可能完全純淨。我的集團有數萬人，也不是每個人都完美，但我選擇不去盯著壞的人，也很少嚴厲處分，因為好的人自然會影響壞的人。所以，要學會容忍一些不完美的存在。

第二，老鼠的數量取決於你給牠多少食物。家裡老鼠多，不要只怪牠們，要反思自己是不是天天餵牠、隨意丟棄剩食。只要把食物收好，老鼠自然會一隻隻離開，因為沒東西吃了，牠們只好出去覓食。

賊不是自己愛做賊，是被環境逼出來的。

我常說，黑面琵鷺不會飛到台北，而是選擇曾文溪下游，因為那裡有牠們需要的食物，這就是生態的道理。同樣地，生活中若發生不好的事，與其怪罪他人，不如反思是不是自己讓它有機可乘。

在公司裡，員工離職，問題多半出在待遇或環境；員工做壞事，也要檢討制度設計是否有漏洞。當我們願意從自身和環境找原因，才能真正解決問題。

先利己，再利他

你們要了解，我這十幾年來在公司所做的一切，其實是為了我自己的快樂去做的。

一般人認為，我給員工股票是為了讓他們快樂，但事實上是給的人比較快樂喔！因為當我把錢給你，你會永遠認為許先生是好人，大家看到你就會說：「許桑，你做人有夠好！」

因此，也不要因為這樣，就認為我賺很多錢分給別人是「善意」。我賺的錢也不想分給別人呀！我是為了我的快樂，才在公司設立員工認股、分配盈餘種種制度，完全和「善」沒有關係。所以，我不是單純為了利他，是先利已才利他啦！

實在說，沒有人可以善良到把自己辛苦賺來的錢拿去給別人花，這是不可能的。可是，我從沒錢的時代把錢當做命，一路走來，會覺得其實錢只是讓自己活得幸福的一個手段。

若在很早期，有人要拿我的錢，我一定跟他搏性命。到後來，我發現若給你一些錢，可以換得我的快樂，也是不錯的事情。

錢，不一定要留給後代

我們通常會想到留一些錢給子孫，怎麼不會想說：「我們不要留錢，我們留一些大自然、好的文化傳統給下一代？」

我們要留給子孫的，不是錢，而是留給子孫自然的平衡。

我常講，一個人生活所需的錢其實不多，但如果開始比較「爸爸給你兩千萬，給我五百萬」，問題就來了。大家只盯著分配，其他都不管，無法協調時，甚至會為了財產反目成仇，找爸爸算帳，爸爸不在就找媽媽，完全忘了父母辛苦養育的恩情，只因為財產分配而變質。

所以現在很多家庭，父親過世後，必須先談妥財產分配，棺木才能下葬。我見過台南某知名企業家也是如此，棺木拖了很久才入土為安。

我有個朋友有三個兒子，辛苦一輩子買了三間房子，自己一間，大兒子和二兒子各一間，唯獨小兒子沒有。於是他退休後還在做工。有人問他：「為什麼還這麼辛苦？」他說：「如果不買一間給小的，我死不瞑目，小兒子會怨我一輩子。」我跟他說：「這很簡單，把另外兩間房子賣掉，大家都沒房子，不就沒事了？」這麼簡單的事他卻做不到。你看，人有時候比動物還傻。

飲水思源

事實上，我們能夠成功賺錢，自己的能力只是其中一部分，還需要許多看不見的條件和他人的配合。²

在原始環境中生活的人，反而會思考身邊的事物；而我們身處物質便利的現代，電話一拿就通、水龍頭一轉就有水，想要什麼幾乎都能馬上得到，卻常常忘了反思：「我們究竟是怎麼成功的？」

社會本來就不是理所當然地有路可走、有水可用。這些便利，大家都習以為常，甚至以為全靠自己厲害，才會只想著把錢留給自己的後代。

很多事情都是轉機

我常說，跌倒時，不要急著爬起來，先看看地上有沒有寶貝可以撿。多數人只會自怨自艾，覺得自己運氣不好，卻忽略了身邊的機會。

其實，人生難免遇到困難，但經歷一段時間後，往往能從中獲得寶貴的經驗。這不是要你樂於失敗，而是當有機會學習時，別錯過。

領導者是夢的推銷者和幸福環境的塑造者

我用人的第一個秘訣：讓員工好做事

不是「教你怎樣把事情做好」，而是「創造一個讓你把事情做好的環境」。

奇美很難得的一點，是沒有忘記做事業是追求家庭幸福的手段、沒有忘記每個人追求生活品質和幸福生活這個目的。我們追求的不只是錢，我們不是要拚第一，是要拚第一幸福。

我的企業不是很大，但我們有一個特色：「不是為了工作而工作，而是為了快樂、為了幸福。」這個目標，到現在我們都沒有忘記。

我用人的第二個秘訣：讓員工的待遇比別人好

重視人本，高薪養人。

無能的經營者只會靠減薪、壓低工資來控制成本。

真正優秀的經營者，會先從降低原料成本、提升售價著手，這些都無法改善時，才考慮工資。

我用人的第三個秘訣：讓員工的未來有保障

自 1973 年起，我就推行員工認股分紅制度：股票直接送給員工，期間所有配股和分紅的利益都歸員工所有。等到退休時，只需歸還本金，利息我也不收。短期看似吃虧，但長遠來看，大家成為「命運共同體」，公司賺錢，員工也能共享成果。

台灣已經到了「第三塊麵包」的時代

什麼是十九世紀思想家馬克思（Karl Marx）的「三塊麵包論」？

第一塊麵包象徵生命，基本需求，不吃會死。
第二塊麵包帶來快樂，讓人品嚐到幸福與飽足。
第三塊麵包如同毒藥，已經很飽的人再吃只會撐破肚皮，擁有太多反而害了自己，因此必須及時分享出去。

經濟發展也是如此。

第一階段：追求經濟成長，滿足基本需求。
第二階段：追求經濟成長的品質，提升生活品質。
第三階段：追求經濟成長的意義，追求文化與精神層面的滿足。

台灣如今已經相當富有，消費能力甚至不輸中東王儲。當我們能夠盡情唱歌、旅遊、欣賞大自然，代表基本的溫飽早已無虞。這個時代，錢更應該投入在文化上，因為文化在人類生活中扮演著舉足輕重的角色。

回想我做囡仔的年代，台灣國民所得不到一百美金，如今已突破兩萬美金，成為全球相當富裕的國家。然而，雖然我們東西買得多，文化素養卻未見同步提升。反觀歐洲，甚至俄國，雖然經濟困難，音樂會卻場場爆滿，百姓即使粗茶淡飯，也願意為文化買單。

所以，台灣在經濟發展之後，下一步就是「拼文化」。

我經營企業的原則

1. 尊重生態

先了解自然，再去做加減。

以美國亞利桑那州北部的森林為例，當地原本只有約四千隻鹿。美國老羅斯福（Theodore Roosevelt）總統認為鹿數量稀少是因為狼群的緣故，於是下令大量捕殺狼群，導致狼的數量急劇下降。失去天敵後，鹿群數量暴增，一度超過十萬隻。然而，這種失衡很快引發災難：鹿過多，草和樹葉被吃光，甚至連樹皮也被啃食，樹木枯死，生態系統遭到破壞。最終，鹿的食物來源枯竭，數量反而銳減至八千隻，比保護前還要少。

羅斯福因誤判生態平衡而導致鹿群災難，提醒我們在干預自然之前，必須非常謹慎。

日本殖民時期第四任總督兒玉源太郎的副手、本身是留德醫生的後藤新平 ³，則在擔任台灣民政長官期間，提出「台人治台」的理念。後藤新平發現，即使在無政府狀態下，台灣人依然能夠自我運作良好。這就是以「生態學（Ecology）」思維為出發點的治理實踐。

秉持「生物學原則」，後藤新平還推動了「臨時臺灣舊慣調查」，深入了解在地風俗民情，並尊重本地傳統，作為施政與改革的基礎。

2. 嘴與鼻子理論：我有沒有辦法比別人少虧一點？

做三年生意，通常兩年會虧損，一年才大賺。如果別人三年都在虧（「土土土」），而我只虧一年（「土」），那我就贏了。

別人虧一百，我只虧五十，就還能活下來。

如果別人要撐過三天的困難，而我只需撐兩天就能熬過去，那就算勝出了。

我常說這是「嘴與鼻子理論」：水淹到嘴巴，還能呼吸；但淹到鼻子，就沒救了。關鍵在於，當別人快撐不住時，你能否讓自己只到嘴巴的程度，這就是我們要思考的生存之道。

3. 現場主義

主管應該坐鎮前線指揮，不該隨意離開。

就像戰爭時，指揮官必須親自到現場，因為只有親眼所見，才能發現地圖上看不到的山巒與海岸，做出最精準的判斷。

每週我都會到現場聽取第一線的聲音，其他的會議我一律不管，我就是這樣充分授權、下放權力、鬆綁限制的人。

我也常跟奇美的人說，若我的看法與你的主管不同，以你的主管為準。因為他才是現場負責的人。

別因為這條街上有狗在吠，就不敢挑東西進去叫賣

日本劍道有句話：「我讓你削我的皮，但我要砍你的肉；讓你砍我的肉，但我要斷你的骨。」

從一開始我就明白，做生意難免會受傷，重點是能否承受小傷，換取對方更大的損失。若只想自己毫髮無傷、卻要讓別人吃虧，這是不切實際的。說到底，就是怕失敗、愛面子。

製品 vs 商品

一般來說，產品能上市，往往是研究室認為各方面都很完美才推出。

但這只是「製品」，不是「商品」。真正能被市場接受的，才叫商品。

很多人沒注意到：市場不一定接受最好的東西，這就造成製品和商品之間的距離。

技術人員做出的產品，追求專業上的完美：無瑕疵、不會故障，但往往沒站在消費者立場，只想做到最好。這樣生產出來的東西叫製品。

商品則是從市場角度出發，消費者要的是物美價廉，心裡想：「我用三年就想換了，為什麼要保固一輩子？」好的經營者會針對這種需求生產，這才是真正的商品。

會做生意的人，不做老虎讓人怕，要做傻豬讓人殺

日本人認為，「愚、鈍、根」是領導者的重要特質。「愚」是看起來憨厚，「鈍」則是不鋒利、不敏感，頭腦太聰明反而不適合領導。「根」代表韌性，能持續做一件事而不輕易放棄，不會喜新厭舊。

台灣俗語說：「會做生意的人，不做老虎讓人怕，要做傻豬讓人殺。」意思是，表現得憨厚，反而能贏得機會。你若傻傻出價，別人會覺得：「好啦，讓他賺一點。」本來能賺一百，讓你賺五十，這五十就是對未來的投資，為將來賺二百鋪路。

抓住一次機會，對生意而言，就是抓住未來。

奇美可說是一個「無文字的社會」

我是個很懶惰的人，可能全世界沒幾個比我更懶。我最怕聽冗長報告，常常跟同事説：「拜託一下，報告短一點。」奇美的公司文化就是少寫報告，能口頭三五分鐘講完最好。寫報告既費時又容易留下把柄，還讓我這個看的人頭痛不已。

我除了訂婚時寫過幾句話給太太，一生幾乎不寫字。我也沒有看公文的習慣，連〈公司法〉、公司章程都沒仔細讀過。

當然，奇美不是完全不用文字。像環保、國際 ISO 標準這些該做的事，我們都很認真；公司也早早電腦化，資訊透明、競爭力相關的文書都做得很好，年輕人用電腦溝通也很有效率。

但我們極力減少不必要的文書作業。我不要手段管理，不需要浪費時間寫書面報告，只要一句重點：「上個月虧損多少錢？」

人一生的時間實在很有限，拿來做事比較實在。別人問奇美怎麼能一個人做那麼多事？我說：因為不用寫報告，大家都能專心做事。

我欣賞莊子的無為而治，所以要「消滅管理」

人本來就很不喜歡被管。

管理這件事，真的越少越好。過度管理不僅成本高，還會拖慢整體效率。

想像一下，如果你太太去菜市場買菜前，必須先寫預算、回來還要詳細報告怎麼買、在哪裡買，這樣的生活誰受得了？最後只會讓人受不了，要跟你離婚。

人最舒服的狀態，就是天高皇帝遠。沒人管時，感覺最好！

所以管理的最高境界，就是讓人感覺不到管理的存在。

別把孩子「考」到笨

人的一生中，少年時期極其寶貴，怎麼能浪費在考試和背誦那些無用的知識上？

我念高中時就決定不再帶書包回家，實在想不通為什麼讀書要拚成那樣。不留級就好，這才是最有經濟效益的選擇。畢業證書大家都一樣，沒有人會在意你第幾名，頂多只問你是哪間學校畢業的。

從時間分配來看，考六十分就好了，代表你基礎都懂，邊際效益最高；考八十分也很好，因為你知道不足之處該怎麼補強。但如果追求一百分，就得準備到一百二十分。最聰明的人只考六十分，這樣才有更多時間去做自己喜歡的事，睡覺、玩耍都好；考八十分的，還勉強有自己的時間；最可憐的是考一百分，整個人都賠進去了。⁴

寫實主義

對我而言，藝術是自然的產物，是讓人看了、聽了都會感到美好的東西。以美術為例，最初就是為了把大自然的景象保存下來，讓人在家裡也能欣賞到雪景、山海的美，因此需要圖畫。美術的本質，就是描繪出能引發美感的景象。

十九世紀以前，畫家創作不僅為了自我欣賞，更希望與他人分享，讓觀者也能感受到畫中的情感。美有其普遍性，大家對美多少有共鳴，也有溝通的橋樑。重點是畫出來要讓人看得懂，而不是只表現自我，所以那時稱為藝術「者」，而非藝術家。

我雖然不是什麼大演奏家，但拉小提琴能讓人微笑，這就是藝術 — 讓人能感受到美好的藝術，是生活的一部分。

俄國大文豪托爾斯泰（Leo Tolstoy）在其著作《藝術論》（What Is Art?）中曾寫道：

藝術不是形而上學家所說的某種神祕「美」或「上帝」觀念的顯現；

Art is not, as the metaphysicians say, the manifestation of some mysterious idea of beauty or God;

也不是美學心理學家認為的人類釋放過剩精力的遊戲；

it is not, as the aesthetical physiologists say, a game in which man lets off his excess of stored-up energy;

它不是單純以外在形式表達情感，

it is not the expression of man’s emotions by external signs;

不是製造令人愉悅的物品，

it is not the production of pleasing objects;

更不是快樂本身。

and, above all, it is not pleasure;

藝術是一種使人彼此聯結的方式，使人共享同樣的情感，

but it is a means of union among men, joining them together in the same feelings,

並且對個人生命與人類邁向幸福與進步而言，都是不可或缺的。

and indispensable for the life and progress toward well-being of individuals and of humanity.

當全世界都在炒作抽象派的時候，我反而去買古典寫實。

「有名」跟「好的」是兩回事。

有時候，是因為它的歷史價值讓人感動。

我的博物館只有一個精神：為大眾而存在。音樂要讓大眾聽得懂，美術收藏也要讓大家看得懂。

身後事，自然事

這篇 2003 年完成的《身後事，自然事》，正體現了許文龍「與大自然和諧共存」的核心信念。

「身後事」是華人社會的大事，為適合現代社會與環保的需要，政府與相關團體討論後訂立了《殯葬管理條例》。然而，社會上對殯葬風俗的改革也有一些看法與聲音，以下是我的淺見，敬請大家指教。

我對家中長輩的殯葬事宜，因兄弟姊妹繁多，只有十分之一的主張權利。但對個人的身後事，則堅持以環保、回歸自然、不干擾他人日常生活為準，不造墓、不做像、不發通知、反對舉行任何儀式。到時候，勞煩大家將這有形之軀燒一燒，無論是撒在山上做樹或草的肥料，回歸大自然，或是撒在海裡讓魚子魚孫吃，做為經常在安平港外釣不少魚的回報，我都會覺得是正常與合理的選擇。至於孩子是否要紀念我，如果高興在家擺張相片，我就很滿足了；如果要辦個音樂會，至親好友大家來唱好聽或快樂的歌，我是沒有意見。

由身後事，我想起另一件有關人和自然共存的例子。今年初太平洋周邊地區遭受 SARS 的侵襲，由於對 SARS 這種新病毒的超強感染力與毒性不了解，人類社會引起巨大的恐慌，目前疫情即將告一段落，但專家認為 SARS 病毒將永遠與人類共同存在，秋天可能再度反撲。

疫情過後，我們是不是能改變社會上普遍存在著的、對自然界力量的漠視與輕視？

人類常自詡是世界的主宰，但是把時間拉長到地球的四十六億年歷史，我們會發覺到，有許多生物以能適應當時環境而興起，也有許多生物因不能適應環境而滅絕。地球上各種生物不斷進行著物種興亡史，各種生物出現與存在的時間動輒以億或百萬年計算，以此標準來看，現代人類存在才約二十萬年，顯現人類存在的時間短暫。常有人強調「人定勝天」，但是如九二一地震瞬間釋放出可怕的能量，歷年來侵襲台灣的颱風更是暴風挾帶著暴雨威脅著人類，這種巨大的自然力量，以任何科學方式在廣大空間上皆無法消除其威力，顯得人類的力量其實很渺小。

深思過去人類對自然環境的破壞與干擾，特別是十八世紀工業革命後對化石燃料（煤、原油等）的耗用，在短短兩百多年，耗用掉幾憶年來從「太陽能」所轉換而成的大半能源，加速了地球的溫室效應。更由於不斷的擴展生活空間，不當的開發山坡地、超限利用山地，不當開拓公路，森林不能涵養水分與運滞雨水對地表的沖刷，結果加速土石流的發生頻率與災害強度。回到今天的主題「身後事」，華人的特有風水觀、在世子孫替先人營造華麗墓園風俗，更造成死人與活人爭地的情況，使原本狹小的活動空間更加狹小，不得不往郊區與山坡地發展，加速對自然的干擾與破壞。

因此個人認為，人的基本構造和行為與動物無異，只不過人有時尚講「人道」。人是大自然的一分子，必須以「順天者昌、逆天者亡」的態度，善待大自然、利用大自然、與大自然共存。留下一個適宜的環境給下一代，是我們最重要的工作與態度。

《三十六計》的最後一計「走為上策」：不行了，就要跑。企業該倒的時候，就要讓它倒 — 當體質不再適合了，就要跑。而且要跑得比別人快，不要等到火燒屁股了才跑。 ↩
照他的說法：「阿丟卡好運」（就運氣比較好） ↩
後藤新平被譽為繼劉銘傳之後，推動台灣現代化最具影響力的重要人物。 ↩
如果你的孩子考進全校前一百名，反而更應該擔心 — 因為這可能代表他花太多時間在考試，犧牲了興趣、創造力和快樂。分數不是一切，人生還有更多值得探索和發展的面向。 ↩

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▍台灣 AI 大未來

Sat, 14 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

AI 不會取代人類，但懂得善用 AI 的人，將取代不懂運用 AI 的人。

未來世代，軟實力將比硬實力更關鍵。唯有提升軟實力，才能避免淪為「大腦外包」（Brain Outsourcing）的空殼，成為能夠主動駕馭 AI 的主人。

身處 AI 時代，國家、企業、個人都面臨「1 : 99」的分化挑戰，也就是「強者越強，弱者越弱」的馬太效應（The Matthew Effect）。正如英國文豪 Charles Dickens 在《雙城記》（A Tale of Two Cities）中的開卷語：

這是最好的時代，也是最壞的時代。

It was the worst of times. It was the best of times.

AI 帶來挑戰，也帶來無限機會。

AI 時代寬度與深度哪個更重要？π 是無限尾數，寬度比深度更關鍵。唯有拓展知識寬度，才能發現興趣所在；掌握各領域的基本常識，才能利用 AI 解決問題。

例如，若請 AI 譜曲，沒有音樂基礎就難以指揮或鑑賞成果。因此，最起碼要懂一點各領域，才能判斷 AI 的產出好壞。

寬度不代表膚淺，能力夠強時，π 的兩隻腳可以無限寬、無限長。

這聽起來或許難以達成，但有了 AI，只要理解一點點，就能跳過漫長的學徒階段，直接到達 80 分水準。既然如此，何不多涉獵一些、多學習一些呢？

AI 賦予我們新能力，所以我們不應局限自己，而要樂於擁抱上下游工作所需的知識，讓 AI 幫助我們站得更穩、看得更遠。

「如何問一個好問題？」是我問過 AI 最好的問題。

與 AI 互動時，提問不只是詢問，更是「雙向溝通」。

你可以用教導（Coach）、訓練（Train）、指導（Guide）、引導（Instruct）等方式與 AI 互動，各自強調不同層次的影響。只要善用高水準的提問方式，就能讓 AI 產出媲美專家的內容。

AI 的價值取決於人是否「多用點心」與它溝通 — 就像人際關係，投入越多心力，回饋也越豐富。

引導式提問的技巧

禮貌提問：如同日常生活，禮貌是獲得回應的基礎。AI 會根據你的語氣與用字，從資料庫中選擇最合適的回覆。若夾帶髒字，AI 也會傾向回應粗俗內容；以專業、禮貌的口吻發問，才能得到理想答案。這是因為大型語言模型的運作原理是「文字接龍」¹— 根據你提供的語境，預測最可能的回應內容，因此每個細節都會影響 AI 的答案。
英文發問：多數大型語言模型的訓練資料以英文為主，若用英文提問，往往能獲得更精確的回覆。
提供背景與情境：引導式提問的精髓在於交代人、事、時、地、物，讓 AI 理解完整脈絡，才能產出更有價值的答案。²

Next-Token Prediction (NTP) ↩
訓練資料的「質量」很重要：Garbage in, garbage out. ↩

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▍小熊維尼的正念筆記

Thu, 12 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

當你洗臉時，專注於雙手的動作，感受水的濕潤與溫暖、肥皂的氣味與滑順，以及毛巾貼在臉上的柔軟觸感。

當你刷牙時，覺察手與手腕的移動，感受刷毛在牙齦上的摩擦，品嚐牙膏的味道，並留意它淡淡的氣味。

當你穿衣服時，感受手臂與雙腿的伸展，體會布料貼近皮膚的觸感，以及映入眼簾的衣服顏色。

當你整理臥室時，覺察抬起與放下寢具時的重量與質地，感受拉開窗簾時的觸感與聲音，並留意窗外呈現的景象。

當你準備並享用早餐時，留意自己在廚房中的步伐，感受食物的香氣與滋味，注意握住餐具的方式，以及咀嚼與吞嚥的每一個動作。

當你清潔廚房時，感受水與海綿的觸感，聞見清潔劑的氣味，聆聽盤子與餐具碰撞的聲音，並覺察自己開關冰箱與櫥櫃時的動作。

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▍At Dawn

Fri, 06 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

At dawn, when you have trouble getting out of bed, tell yourself: “I have to go to work—as a human being. What do I have to complain of, if I’m going to do what I was born for— the things I was brought into the world to do? Or is this what I was created for? To huddle under the blankets and stay warm?

—But it’s nicer here…

So you were born to feel “nice”? Instead of doing things and experiencing them? Don’t you see the plants, the birds, the ants and spiders and bees going about their individual tasks, putting the world in order, as best they can? And you’re not willing to do your job as a human being? Why aren’t you running to do what your nature demands?

—But we have to sleep sometime…

Agreed. But nature set a limit on that—as it did on eating and drinking. And you’re over the limit. You’ve had more than enough of that. But not of working. There you’re still below your quota.

You don’t love yourself enough. Or you’d love your nature too, and what it demands of you. People who love what they do wear themselves down doing it, they even forget to wash or eat. Do you have less respect for your own nature than the engraver does for engraving, the dancer for the dance, the miser for money or the social climber for status? When they’re really possessed by what they do, they’d rather stop eating and sleeping than give up practicing their arts.

Is helping others less valuable to you? Not worth your effort?

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▍Our Deepest Fear

Fri, 06 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.

Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.

It is our light not our darkness that most frightens us.

We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous?

Actually, who are you not to be?

You are a child of God.

Your playing small does not serve the world.

There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you.

We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us.

It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone.

And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.

As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.

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▍The Man in the Arena

Fri, 06 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

An excerpt from Theodore Roosevelt’s speech “Citizenship in a Republic” on April 23, 1910, in Paris, France:

The poorest way to face life is to face it with a sneer. There are many men who feel a kind of twisted pride in cynicism; there are many who confine themselves to criticism of the way others do what they themselves dare not even attempt. There is no more unhealthy being, no man less worthy of respect, than he who either really holds, or feigns to hold, an attitude of sneering disbelief toward all that is great and lofty, whether in achievement or in that noble effort which, even if it fails, comes second to achievement. A cynical habit of thought and speech, a readiness to criticise work which the critic himself never tries to perform, an intellectual aloofness which will not accept contact with life’s realities—all these are marks, not as the possessor would fain think, of superiority, but of weakness. They mark the men unfit to bear their part manfully in the stern strife of living, who seek, in the affectation of contempt for the achievements of others, to hide from others and from themselves their own weakness. The role is easy; there is none easier, save only the role of the man who sneers alike at both criticism and performance.

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, and comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.

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▍Here’s to the Crazy Ones / Think Different

Fri, 30 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Here’s to the crazy ones.

The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers.

The round pegs in the square holes.

The ones who see things differently.

They’re not fond of rules.

And they have no respect for the status quo.

You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them.

About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them.

Because they change things.

They push the human race forward.

And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius.

Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.

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▍Collection: Andy Li-An Ho

Tue, 27 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

https://youtu.be/_DQCsHwiLrg

體態是生活型態的倒影。

你不需要減重，你只需要增肌。增肌就是減脂。把 over-fat 的問題，看成是 under-muscle 的問題。

https://youtu.be/Vr-INxCYZRk

低強度運動產生正面情緒；中強度運動產生混合情緒；高強度運動產生負面情緒，但結束後會產生極正面情緒。

八字訣：「中軸穩定（穩固核心），四肢發力。」

⭐️ 輕鬆練、佛系訓練：不要「跨出」舒適圈（提高肌肉橫截面積和神經徵招力），而是「擴大」舒適圈（降低神經抑制力）。

終身訓練，但不需要終身破紀錄。

如何鍛鍊核心肌群？以完整的「全身性動作（Compound / Full-Body Movements）」¹ 為訓練主軸，再搭配少量針對性的專項動作為輔助、補強。

https://youtu.be/5NayFFHy7F8

「最大肌力（One Rep Max）」是非常重要的健身/重訓課表！

「橫膈膜」是全身上下最需要被訓練的一條肌肉；呼吸練習是肌力訓練裡最重要的一環。

最好的訓練方法，是你前陣子沒在用的那套。

肌力訓練＝穩定換得力量＋放鬆換得速度

深蹲（Squat）、硬舉（Deadlift）、臥推（Bench Press）、肩推（Overhead Press） ↩

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▍The Science & Use of Cold Exposure for Health & Performance

Thu, 08 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Start slow (warmer then colder)—as cold shock (冷休克) is possible; just as with lifting weights or other forms of exercise.

The water temperature should be uncomfortably cold yet safe to stay in for a few minutes. The colder the stimulus (water immersion, shower, etc.), the shorter amount of time you need to expose yourself to the cold.

The “Counting Walls” Approach

The Concept of Walls
- “Walls” are the mental barriers or resistance you feel (e.g., “Get me out of here”).
- They are caused by adrenaline pulses. Overcoming them triggers the adaptive response.
Top-Down Control (Resilience & Grit)
- Staying in the cold despite the urge to exit exerts ‘top-down control’ from the prefrontal cortex over reflexive brain centers.
- This builds resilience and grit.
The Method
- Challenge yourself by counting walls.
- Set a goal of “walls” to traverse (e.g., 3–5 walls) per session.
Progression Levels
- Level 1: Stay completely still.
  - Keeps a thermal layer around your body (insulation).
- Level 2: Move your limbs.
  - Breaks the thermal layer; makes it feel much colder.

The Søeberg Principle

Based on deliberate cold researcher Dr. Susanna Søeberg, the principle is: To enhance the metabolic effects of cold, force your body to reheat on its own. (a.k.a “End With Cold”).

Shivering is the key component.

If you want to use deliberate cold exposure to increase metabolism, you should get to the point where you shiver in the cold exposure or immediately after.
Method: Natural Reheating
- Let your body reheat naturally by drying yourself out in the air for about 1–3 minutes.
- Avoid:
  - Toweling off.
  - Standing under a warm shower.
  - Huddling or crossing your arms while in the cold or after getting out.

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▍Pale Blue Dot

Thu, 25 Dec 2025 00:00:00 GMT

From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of any particular interest. But for us, it’s different. Consider again that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar”, every “supreme leader”, every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there—on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.

再來看一眼這個小點。就在這裡。這就是家。這就是我們。在這個小點上，每一個你愛的人，每一個你認識的人，每一個你聽說過的人，每一個人，無論是誰，都在此度過一生。我們所有的快樂和掙扎，數以千萬自傲的宗教信仰、思想體系觀念意識，以及經濟學原理教義，每一個獵人或征服者，每一位勇士或懦夫，每一個文明的締造者或摧毀者，每一位君王或農夫，每一對陷入愛河的年輕伴侶，每一位為人父母者，所有充滿希望的小孩、發明家或探險者，每一位靈魂導師，每一個腐敗的政客，每一個所謂的「超級巨星」，每一個所謂的「至高領袖」，每一位我們人類史上的聖人或罪人…我們的一切一切，全部都存在於這樣一粒懸浮在一束陽光中的塵埃上。

地球，只是浩瀚宇宙競技場上一個小小的舞台。想想那些帝王將相揚起的腥風血雨，只為在榮耀和勝利中，短暫享受主宰著一個小點上一小部分的滋味。想想有些永無止境的殘暴，竟然就發生在這個小點上某個角落裡的一群人、與幾乎分不出任何區別的同樣這一個小點上的另一個角落的另一群人之間。他們之間的誤解能有多頻繁，他們之間想滅掉對方的願望能有多迫切，他們之間互相的仇恨能有多熾烈。

我們的裝腔作勢與妄自尊大，我們以為自己在宇宙中享有特權的幻想，都被這顆發著微弱藍光的小點所挑戰。我們的這顆星球，是一粒孤孤單單的微塵，被包裹在宇宙浩瀚的黑暗中。在我們有限的認知里，在這一片浩瀚之中，沒有任何跡象表明救助會從別處而來幫助我們救贖自己。

目前為止，地球是我們唯一所知有生命居住的世界。沒有其他地方 — 至少是在不遠的未來裡，可供我們這一物種移民。我們能夠造訪，但尚不能常駐。不管你喜歡還是不喜歡，目前為止只有地球是我們的立足之地。

有人說，天文學是一門令人謙卑的、同時也是塑造性情的學問。也許沒有什麼能比從遙遠太空拍攝到的我們微小世界的這張照片，更能展示人類的自負有多愚蠢。對我而言，這也是在提醒我們的責任所在：更和善地對待彼此，並維護和珍惜這顆暗藍色的小點 — 這個我們目前所知唯一的家園。

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▍How to Stay Focused and Beat Distraction

Sat, 13 Dec 2025 00:00:00 GMT

The only reason you become an actor, it’s said, is because you can’t do anything else. In many ways, this idea applies to book writing as well. For most authors, writing won’t be profitable—it’s not a good idea if your main goal is to make lots of money. Similarly, starting a company often follows this pattern. If you think a startup is your path to wealth, you’re likely just bad at math. Creative pursuits, whether writing or entrepreneurship, must come from a deeper place. You have to want the thing to exist so strongly that you’re willing to “birth” it into the world.

This purpose-driven approach is essential. If you’re starting a company, do it because you want a specific product to exist—one that you personally want to use. The same applies to writing a book: write because you’re seeking an answer to a question, not because of what you already know. The most compelling writing often comes from curiosity rather than expertise. In other words, don’t write because you have all the answers; write because you want to discover them.

For me, the process of writing is always a journey. I never have the answer in advance; instead, I write to uncover something new. Often, I’m motivated by dissatisfaction with the existing answers—I find them uninteresting or insufficient. Publishing a book is deeply tied to this drive, this “brain desire” to explore and create something meaningful.

However, writing too early can be a dangerous trap. Premature writing often leads to frustration and discouragement. If you start before you’ve grasped the bigger picture, you’re likely to throw out much of your work. I’ve experienced this firsthand—there have been times when I thought the writing was going in one direction, only to find myself at a dead end. It simply didn’t work. Instead, I’ve found it far more productive to focus on gathering research and assembling the pieces first. By doing this, you can begin to shape something novel, something that offers value and genuinely contributes to the conversation.

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▍The Game Changers

Sat, 13 Dec 2025 00:00:00 GMT

How to Eat Like A Game Changer?

Egg Substitutes
- Eggs in recipes can be replaced with mashed banana, unsweetened applesauce, silken tofu, chickpea flour.¹
- Both flax seeds and chia seeds can also be blended with water to create the consistency of raw egg white.
- For baking, the liquid in a can of chickpeas ² is called aquafaba and is an excellent egg substitute.
  - Aquafaba 是煮熟鷹嘴豆所產生的液體（常來自罐頭鷹嘴豆），能模擬蛋白的「打發」特性，用來取代打發蛋白製作海綿口感或穩定泡沫（如蛋白霜、馬卡龍、鬆餅等）。
  - The equivalent of one egg is about 3 tablespoons of aquafaba:
    - 2 tablespoons are about the same as one egg white.
    - 1 tablespoon is around the same as one egg yolk.
Milk Substitutes
- Almond, soy and coconut are the most commonly found plant milks.

This works particularly well for omelettes and eggless scrambles! ↩
= Kichererbsen (DE) = 鷹嘴豆 ↩

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▍Understand and Apply the Psychology of Money to Gain Greater Happiness

Thu, 11 Dec 2025 00:00:00 GMT

24:29

“Money absolutely can buy happiness. It’s often though an indirect path. […] A big fancy house? Maybe. But what really makes you happy is hosting friends and family there. A nice vacation? Sure. But it’s the memories you form with your loved ones that matter. So you can’t say money doesn’t make people happy—it does[, just not in the way you might think].” — Morgan Housel

26:38

“I think a good formula for a pretty good life at the simplest level is independence plus purpose. You need to have a purpose that is bigger than yourself. […] You need to have the independence to make sure you can do it on your own terms rather than chasing somebody else’s goal. That’s the highest level of psychological well-being, independence and purpose.” — Morgan Housel

27:17

“Using money as a tool can make you happier. Spending money can make you happier. But it’s not the thing that makes you happier. It’s just a tool to do other things and acquire other things that actually make you happy.” — Morgan Housel

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▍Hunter S. Thompson’s Letter on Finding Life Purpose

Mon, 08 Dec 2025 00:00:00 GMT

April 22, 1958 57 Perry Street New York City

Dear Hume,

You ask advice: ah, what a very human and very dangerous thing to do! For to give advice to a man who asks what to do with his life implies something very close to egomania. To presume to point a man to the right and ultimate goal— to point with a trembling finger in the RIGHT direction is something only a fool would take upon himself.

I am not a fool, but I respect your sincerity in asking my advice. I ask you though, in listening to what I say, to remember that all advice can only be a product of the man who gives it. What is truth to one may be disaster to another. I do not see life through your eyes, nor you through mine. If I were to attempt to give you specific advice, it would be too much like the blind leading the blind.

“To be, or not to be: that is the question: Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles … ” (Shakespeare)

And indeed, that IS the question: whether to float with the tide, or to swim for a goal. It is a choice we must all make consciously or unconsciously at one time in our lives. So few people understand this! Think of any decision you’ve ever made which had a bearing on your future: I may be wrong, but I don’t see how it could have been anything but a choice however indirect— between the two things I’ve mentioned: the floating or the swimming.

But why not float if you have no goal? That is another question. It is unquestionably better to enjoy the floating than to swim in uncertainty. So how does a man find a goal? Not a castle in the stars, but a real and tangible thing. How can a man be sure he’s not after the “big rock candy mountain,” the enticing sugar-candy goal that has little taste and no substance?

The answer—and, in a sense, the tragedy of life— is that we seek to understand the goal and not the man. We set up a goal which demands of us certain things: and we do these things. We adjust to the demands of a concept which CANNOT be valid. When you were young, let us say that you wanted to be a fireman. I feel reasonably safe in saying that you no longer want to be a fireman. Why? Because your perspective has changed. It’s not the fireman who has changed, but you. Every man is the sum total of his reactions to experience. As your experiences differ and multiply, you become a different man, and hence your perspective changes. This goes on and on. Every reaction is a learning process; every significant experience alters your perspective.

So it would seem foolish, would it not, to adjust our lives to the demands of a goal we see from a different angle every day? How could we ever hope to accomplish anything other than galloping neurosis?

The answer, then, must not deal with goals at all, or not with tangible goals, anyway. It would take reams of paper to develop this subject to fulfillment. God only knows how many books have been written on “the meaning of man” and that sort of thing, and god only knows how many people have pondered the subject. (I use the term “god only knows” purely as an expression.) There’s very little sense in my trying to give it up to you in the proverbial nutshell, because I’m the first to admit my absolute lack of qualifications for reducing the meaning of life to one or two paragraphs.

I’m going to steer clear of the word “existentialism,” but you might keep it in mind as a key of sorts. You might also try something called Being and Nothingness by Jean-Paul Sartre, and another little thing called Existentialism: From Dostoyevsky to Sartre. These are merely suggestions. If you’re genuinely satisfied with what you are and what you’re doing, then give those books a wide berth. (Let sleeping dogs lie.) But back to the answer. As I said, to put our faith in tangible goals would seem to be, at best, unwise. So we do not strive to be firemen, we do not strive to be bankers, nor policemen, nor doctors. WE STRIVE TO BE OURSELVES.

But don’t misunderstand me. I don’t mean that we can’t BE firemen, bankers, or doctors— but that we must make the goal conform to the individual, rather than make the individual conform to the goal. In every man, heredity and environment have combined to produce a creature of certain abilities and desires— including a deeply ingrained need to function in such a way that his life will be MEANINGFUL. A man has to BE something; he has to matter.

As I see it then, the formula runs something like this: a man must choose a path which will let his ABILITIES function at maximum efficiency toward the gratification of his DESIRES. In doing this, he is fulfilling a need (giving himself identity by functioning in a set pattern toward a set goal), he avoids frustrating his potential (choosing a path which puts no limit on his self-development), and he avoids the terror of seeing his goal wilt or lose its charm as he draws closer to it (rather than bending himself to meet the demands of that which he seeks, he has bent his goal to conform to his own abilities and desires).

In short, he has not dedicated his life to reaching a pre-defined goal, but he has rather chosen a way of life he KNOWS he will enjoy. The goal is absolutely secondary: it is the functioning toward the goal which is important. And it seems almost ridiculous to say that a man MUST function in a pattern of his own choosing; for to let another man define your own goals is to give up one of the most meaningful aspects of life—the definitive act of will which makes a man an individual.

Let’s assume that you think you have a choice of eight paths to follow (all pre-defined paths, of course). And let’s assume that you can’t see any real purpose in any of the eight. THEN— and here is the essence of all I’ve said— you MUST FIND A NINTH PATH.

Naturally, it isn’t as easy as it sounds. You’ve lived a relatively narrow life, a vertical rather than a horizontal existence. So it isn’t any too difficult to understand why you seem to feel the way you do. But a man who procrastinates in his CHOOSING will inevitably have his choice made for him by circumstance.

So if you now number yourself among the disenchanted, then you have no choice but to accept things as they are, or to seriously seek something else. But beware of looking for goals: look for a way of life. Decide how you want to live and then see what you can do to make a living WITHIN that way of life. But you say, “I don’t know where to look; I don’t know what to look for.”

And there’s the crux. Is it worth giving up what I have to look for something better? I don’t know—is it? Who can make that decision but you? But even by DECIDING TO LOOK, you go a long way toward making the choice.

If I don’t call this to a halt, I’m going to find myself writing a book. I hope it’s not as confusing as it looks at first glance. Keep in mind, of course, that this is MY WAY of looking at things. I happen to think that it’s pretty generally applicable, but you may not. Each of us has to create our own credo—this merely happens to be mine.

If any part of it doesn’t seem to make sense, by all means call it to my attention. I’m not trying to send you out “on the road” in search of Valhalla, but merely pointing out that it is not necessary to accept the choices handed down to you by life as you know it. There is more to it than that—no one HAS to do something he doesn’t want to do for the rest of his life. But then again, if that’s what you wind up doing, by all means convince yourself that you HAD to do it. You’ll have lots of company.

And that’s it for now. Until I hear from you again, I remain,

your friend, Hunter

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▍Jeff Bezos’ Letter to Amazon Shareholders 1997

Mon, 08 Dec 2025 00:00:00 GMT

Outsized returns often come from betting against conventional wisdom, and conventional wisdom is usually right. Given a 10 percent change of a 100 times payoff, you should take that bet every time. But you’re still going to be wrong nine times out of ten.

We all know that if you swing for the fences, you’re going to strike out a lot, but you’re also going to hit some home runs. The difference between baseball and business, however, is that baseball has a truncated outcome distribution. When you swing, no matter how well you connect with the ball, the most runs you can get is four. In business, every once in a while, when you step up to the plate, you can score 1,000 runs. This long-tailed distribution of returns is why it’s important to be bold. Big winners pay for so many experiments.

Some decisions are consequential and irreversible or nearly irreversible — one-way doors — and these decisions must be made methodically, carefully, slowly, with great deliberation and consultation. If you walk through and don’t like what you see on the other side, you can’t get back to where you were before. We can call these Type 1 decisions. But most decisions aren’t like that — they are changeable, reversible — they’re two-way doors. If you’ve made a suboptimal Type 2 decision, you don’t have to live with the consequences for that long. You can reopen the door and go back through. Type 2 decisions can and should be made quickly by high judgment individuals or small groups. As organizations get larger, there seems to be a tendency to use the heavy-weight Type 1 decision-making process on most decisions, including many Type 2 decisions. The end result of this is slowness, unthoughtful risk aversion, failure to experiment sufficiently, and consequently diminished invention.

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▍自然農

Tue, 02 Dec 2025 00:00:00 GMT

真正的蔬菜不綠

一般人都有一種先入為主的迷思觀念，認為蔬菜是對身體有益的食物：「蔬菜要越綠越好」、「顏色不夠綠代表沒有營養」，深信顏色濃郁的蔬菜（如菠菜、茼蒿、青江菜等）是健康的根源。如果從食物中攝取不足，許多人還會額外補充蔬/果菜汁。然而，大家都認為很健康的深綠色蔬菜，其實包含了會產生「致癌物質」的成分…

以佛系栽培的「自然農法」¹ 來看，肥料也是導致蔬菜長蟲或生病的原因。無論是化學肥料或是有機肥料，只要是人為添加的肥料，都會破壞自然哲理。仔細觀察自然界，花/草/樹本身不需要任何肥料就能成長；森林裡的果實不必靠任何人的幫忙便能結實纍纍。這個過程在人類出現以前，便已不斷地重複，大自然就是在這樣的過程中進行調和並保持平衡。

人們所施用「氮肥」裡所含的「氮素」，被蔬菜吸收後，會導致菜葉顏色變深，並轉變為「硝酸鹽（氮）」（為「氮素」在最高程度氧化後的終極產物）。「硝酸鹽（氮）」在人體內會與肉類/魚類蛋白質的「亞硝酸」結合，轉化為具有致癌性的「亞硝胺」。因此必須避免將「硝酸鹽（氮）」殘留量高的蔬菜與肉類/魚類一起烹飪食用。另外，也要記住絕對不要生吃深綠色的蔬菜，要煮熟以後再吃，可以有效去除殘留的「硝酸鹽（氮）」。

挑選蔬菜的訣竅

淺綠色

蔬菜的綠色來自肥料裡所含的「氮素」。含氮素越高的肥料，蔬菜的綠色就會越深。至於不使用肥料的自然栽培蔬菜，則會呈現比較淡的淺綠色。
煮熟後顏色會變鮮艷

「自然栽培」的蔬菜顏色會比「常規栽培」來得淡，但煮熟後情況反而會顛倒過來。這種理論雖然還只是假設，但蔬菜表面被「角質層」蓋著，可以阻止細菌入侵，也能防止病蟲害的侵襲。如果是加了肥料而速成長大的蔬菜，這層角質會變薄，或者根本沒有。自然栽培的蔬菜剛好相反，角質層既厚又結實。不過這種角質層會溶於水，因此煮熟後相當於幫自然栽培蔬菜脫了一層皮，顏色自然會比沒有煮之前鮮豔許多。
外觀均勻對稱
沉甸甸有重量感
紋理細緻、表面光滑

日本 Natural Harmony (自然栽培蔬果物流公司)

Related concepts: (1) 再生式農業 (Regenerative Agriculture) (2) 生態農業 (Agroecology) ↩

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▍A Stroke of Genius: Striving for Greatness in All You Do

Mon, 01 Dec 2025 00:00:00 GMT

If you are to do important work then you must work on the right problem at the right time and in the right way. Without any one of the three, you may do good work but you will almost certainly miss real greatness. […] The first person to produce definitive results generally gets all the credit. Those who come in second are soon forgotten. Thus working on the problem at the right time is essential. […] Hard work is a trait that most great scientists have. Edison said that genius was 99% perspiration and 1% inspiration. Newton said that if others would work as hard as he did then they would get similar results. Hard work is necessary but it is not sufficient. Most people do not work as hard as they easily could. However, many who do work hard — work on the wrong problem, at the wrong time, in the wrong way, and have very little to show for it.

People are always claiming that success is a matter of luck, but as Pasteur pointed out, “Luck favors the prepared mind.” […] Many times a discussion with a person who has just done something important will produce a description of how they were led, almost step by step, to the result. It is usually based on things they had done, or intensely thought about, years ago. You succeed because you have prepared yourself with the necessary background long ago, without, of course, knowing then that it would prove to be a necessary step to success.

Some people work with their doors open in clear view of those who pass by, while others carefully protect themselves from interruptions. Those with the door open get less work done each day, but those with their door closed tend not know what to work on, nor are they apt to hear the clues to the missing piece to one of their “list” problems. I cannot prove that the open door produces the open mind, or the other way around. I only can observe the correlation. I suspect that each reinforces the other, that an open door will more likely lead you and important problems than will a closed door.

Personal Traits: Energetic (coupled with emotional commitment), Courage (Without courage you are unlikely to attack important problems with any persistence, and hence not likely to do important things. Courage brings self-confidence, an essential feature of doing difficult things.), the ability to tolerate ambiguity (If you believe too much then you are not likely to find the essentially new view that transforms a field, and if you doubt too much you will not be able to do much at all. It is a fine balance between believing what you learn and at the same time doubting things.)

The particular vision you have is less important than just having one - there are many paths to success. Therefore, it is wise to have a vision of what you may become, of where you want to go, as well as how to get there. No vision, not much chance of doing great work; with a vision you have a good chance.

Too many scientists think that this is beneath them, that the world is waiting for their great results. In truth, the other researchers are busy with their own work. You must present your results so that they will stop their own work and listen to you. Presentation comes in three forms: published papers, prepared talks, and impromptu situations. You must master all three forms.

Lots of good work has been lost because of poor presentation only to be rediscovered later by others. There is a real danger that you will not get credit for what you have done. I know of all too many times when the discoverer could not be bothered to present things clearly, and hence his or her work was of no importance to society.

It is in the struggle and not the success that the real gain appears. In striving to do great things, you change yourself into a better person, so they claim. The actual success is of less importance.

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▍越工作越自由

Fri, 28 Nov 2025 00:00:00 GMT

Work 不等於 Job，工作不等於職業

在自由的工作中會有最好的飯碗，但最好的飯碗中難有自由的工作。

自由是工作心態，不是工作型態。

沒有愛的工作，只是職業。

Work/工作：為達成某種結果和目的而「主動」花費的心思、付出的體力。
Job/職業：為了賺錢所從事的「被動」規律性活動，俗稱「飯碗」。

工作最重要的意義，就是提升人生的「探索值」

探索，是前往未知，而不是前往已知。

害怕探索，是人生最大的損失。

不要為了薪水而工作，而是為了挖掘自身能力、為了在「拼圖大學」就讀，並從拼圖大學畢業。

還沒有工作之前，我也不太知道自己是誰，因為工作才慢慢知道，原來我是這樣的能力組成，就像那隻腳，慢慢知道自己原來是腳，可以穿過沙漠，可以穿過冰原，可以去任何自己想去的地方。

我的工作目的，是要登陸月球。[…] 我希望在工作上，我能踩著只有自己才有的印記，證明自己曾經來過這個世界的足跡。

自我認知三角形
- 縱軸：時間；橫軸：自我認知的廣度
- 理想狀態：正三角形（越扁越好）
工作範圍三角形
- 縱軸：時間；橫軸：工作範圍的廣度
- 理想狀態：倒三角形（越扁越好）

三大錯誤路標

完美

很多人覺得，唯有一開始先想清楚，之後才不會浪費時間。我一再強調，「想清楚」就是最浪費時間的方式。
興趣

興趣應該是自由的，沒有任何利益、名氣的干擾，是一個很寬廣的世界。如果把它兌換金錢，開始變成盈利的服務，等於是把原本寬廣的世界，又拉回到一條很窄的老路。如果你的工作和興趣都在窄巷穿梭，就難以成就一個大的夢想。
金錢

人生真正重要的事，往往無法量化，像愛、自由、良善、品味、快樂，這些無法測量的事情才是真正構築你的人生意義所在，而不是金錢或任何可以測量的數字。因此，如果想得到滿足，並感到意義，我們的工作也必須建築在那樣的事情上。因為我們大部分的生命時光都在工作，因此，當用可量化的目標去追求不可量化的人生意義，會感到空虛也是理所當然。

自信，只能從面對並且克服「不擅長」的事裡獲得。當一個人從無到有、從 0 到 100 的過程中獲得成就感，那才是真正的自信。

不要太在意他人的批評，但也不要太眷戀別人的掌聲。因為批評會讓你想要逃跑，掌聲會讓你想要靠近，兩者都會讓你容易因他人而偏離了自我航道，忘了探索才是真正的工作目的。

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▍The Psychology of Future Self

Wed, 19 Nov 2025 00:00:00 GMT

The End of History’Illusion

The study by psychologists Daniel Gilbert and Timothy Wilson have shown that people consistently mispredict their future emotional states. They underestimate how much they will change in the future, despite knowing how much they have changed over time.

Human beings are works in progress that mistakenly think they’re finished.

We somehow imagine that the person we are right now is the person we’ll be for the rest of time. (Hint: This is not the case!)

The person you are right now is as transient, as fleeting, and as temporary as all the people you’ve ever been.

The only constant in life is change.

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▍44 Harsh Truths About Human Nature

Tue, 18 Nov 2025 00:00:00 GMT