⫹⫺ Obsessive Genius

Mar 21, 2022

Hello my friends,

When passion, curiosity and creativity combine; magic happens.

Paul Graham’s essay, The Bus Ticket Theory of Genius, joins the dots:

Obsessive interest in something that seems pointless often produces extraordinary work.
The recipe for genius can be summed up as: having a disinterested obsession with something that matters.
It's more promising if you're creating something, rather than just consuming something someone else creates.
An obsessive interest is both a proxy for ability and a substitute for determination.
An interesting idea that is also alarming: it may be that to do great work, you also have to waste a lot of time.
Interest is much more unevenly distributed than ability.

Read the full text in ‘People’ ↓

A warm welcome to new subscribers and a heartfelt thanks to those who have been around for a while.

I truly appreciate your trust.

Product

Dieter Rams designed one of Gillette’s most successful razors. Best known for his iconic Braun designs, The Sensor was a standalone masterpiece.
Ty Haney is back and venturing into the metaverse. Her ‘Try Your Best’ platform aims to reward brand loyalists for their insights.
Learning from mistakes is easy, but what can we learn from the successes? Bessemer Venture Partners reveal the formula for their investments into Shopify, Pinterest and Fiverr among others.

From the introduction → The Bus Ticket Theory of Genius.
A postmortem of ‘The Great Resignation’ suggests creatives are choosing fulfillment over perceived success. And according to a survey, 80% of those who changed jobs say it was the right decision.
The original version of the Netflix Culture deck is as relevant as ever. The return to work is an opportunity for organizations to reboot their approach.

Learning to learn is the ultimate meta-skill and The Feynman Technique explains what it means to “know”. The steps are as follows:
1. Pretend to teach a concept you want to learn about to a student in the sixth grade.
2. Identify gaps in your explanation. Go back to the source material to better understand it.
3. Organize and simplify.
4. Transmit (optional).
The power of leverage is identifying the right work rather than the amount of work you do. A breakdown of seven leveraged creators.
How to make friends, build a community and a meaningful life. Warren Buffett said that his measure of success comes down to one question: “Do the people you care about love you back?”

For efficiency, I do the lion’s share of my reading on a Kindle but I wanted to add these two to my nondigital library.

If you have read either, or both, please send me your notes.

If you find this CMMN WLTH useful please share it with your most curious friends & colleagues ↓

🎙 CMMWLTH Podcasts of 2022 curated by the community.