- in our culture it’s healthy to switch jobs every two years, ideally to something the opposite of what you’ve been doing
- there’s an organization - the National Association of Campus Activities - that pays $1000 to $5000 per gig at universities
- to keep learning we need to be surprised. Read books about subjects you know nothing about. Move to a place very unlike home, so that you’ll be surprised every day.
- rich guy said that decades of pursuing more only made him miserable and he would rather have stopped at $30 million then switch to planting trees and writing poetry.
I saw 10million quoted recently, and that sounds about right. 300k is a super safe withdrawal rate for that much money and you have a pretty comfortable life at that income level most places.
This is Derek Sivers of CD Baby, right? I think he is unusually high-agency in a way I could not imagine myself being. Definitely not one of those people who I look at and say "I could have done that. Why didn't I?"
For instance, I could simply never see myself voluntary relinquishing American citizenship: https://sive.rs/xus
Getting booted out, yes. But giving it up, no chance.
Given that his behaviour is so far from what I would do, I think there are too few shared fundamentals for me to mimic him. So I think I'm not going to do the things he did.
To paraphrase what I recently said to someone I haven't seen in 25 years: one of the greatest gifts that ageing has given me is increased self awareness.
There’s a huge gap and missing inspirational book sentence between “doing music and nothing else”, the proceeds of which bought a house, and selling a tech company for tens of millions.
The real cliffhanger was the part where he almost fell into successful serial entrepreneurial pursuits, but a book purchased as a joke warned him he’d better not.
(it's a quick read but essentially he suggests having a sort of minimalist CRM for people you know. Or, as our parents might say: "have a rolodex")
I took this advice to heart and did the following:
- exported all of my LinkedIn connections (about 800 at the time)
- start tagging each one in www.pinboard.in with the "linkedin" tag
- I would add other tags e.g. role_sre, nyc, <companyname>, awesome etc
- I wrote a script to do 30 a day
- Create a custom bookmark that would auto insert the "linkedin" and "role_" tags when I "pinned" a user profile page to save me some typing
- Spent the next couple months tagging each of my connections
I basically had that list for a few months and then one day at work, my manager asks "Do you know any good recruiters in NYC?". A couple clicks in pinboard and I had a list of great NYC recruiters.
I recommended one, they got hired and I got the $10K referral fee.
I then write a custom firefox extension that would highlight in green anyone who was already in my "database". That way if I was looking at the People tag of a company I worked at, it was trivial to see who I should add.
"While rock climbing, someone says the instructor used to be her physics teacher. The British man is surprised, so she explains that in their culture, it’s healthy to switch jobs every two years, ideally to something the opposite of what you’ve been doing."
They motivate you to see an angle you just haven't thought about.
I had the issue that I stoped feeling confident going on holiday without proper insurance in a time when i was traveling with my DSLR (worht 3-5k) but i wasn't 'rich' enough ot just replace it if something would break or steal.
There is a sentence: "A ship is not build to stay in the harbor".
I accepted more risk due to this and stoped overthinking certain risks. I'm not here to just sit at home and watch television and if i go out and try something, its fine to risk things
The four sentences:
- in our culture it’s healthy to switch jobs every two years, ideally to something the opposite of what you’ve been doing
- there’s an organization - the National Association of Campus Activities - that pays $1000 to $5000 per gig at universities
- to keep learning we need to be surprised. Read books about subjects you know nothing about. Move to a place very unlike home, so that you’ll be surprised every day.
- rich guy said that decades of pursuing more only made him miserable and he would rather have stopped at $30 million then switch to planting trees and writing poetry.
You hear that everyone? Just stop after $30 mil and you will be happier.
I saw 10million quoted recently, and that sounds about right. 300k is a super safe withdrawal rate for that much money and you have a pretty comfortable life at that income level most places.
300k does not buy you an apartment in a city and does not buy you a house in countryside mind some bumfuck nowehere in Italy.
Withdrawal rate. They were talking about per year.
This is Derek Sivers of CD Baby, right? I think he is unusually high-agency in a way I could not imagine myself being. Definitely not one of those people who I look at and say "I could have done that. Why didn't I?"
For instance, I could simply never see myself voluntary relinquishing American citizenship: https://sive.rs/xus
Getting booted out, yes. But giving it up, no chance.
Given that his behaviour is so far from what I would do, I think there are too few shared fundamentals for me to mimic him. So I think I'm not going to do the things he did.
To paraphrase what I recently said to someone I haven't seen in 25 years: one of the greatest gifts that ageing has given me is increased self awareness.
You can mimic him in the sense of being true to oneself.
This whole article is just one big humblebrag.
There’s a huge gap and missing inspirational book sentence between “doing music and nothing else”, the proceeds of which bought a house, and selling a tech company for tens of millions.
The real cliffhanger was the part where he almost fell into successful serial entrepreneurial pursuits, but a book purchased as a joke warned him he’d better not.
Derek has a great post about "having a database": https://sive.rs/dbt
(it's a quick read but essentially he suggests having a sort of minimalist CRM for people you know. Or, as our parents might say: "have a rolodex")
I took this advice to heart and did the following:
- exported all of my LinkedIn connections (about 800 at the time)
- start tagging each one in www.pinboard.in with the "linkedin" tag
- I would add other tags e.g. role_sre, nyc, <companyname>, awesome etc
- I wrote a script to do 30 a day
- Create a custom bookmark that would auto insert the "linkedin" and "role_" tags when I "pinned" a user profile page to save me some typing
- Spent the next couple months tagging each of my connections
I basically had that list for a few months and then one day at work, my manager asks "Do you know any good recruiters in NYC?". A couple clicks in pinboard and I had a list of great NYC recruiters.
I recommended one, they got hired and I got the $10K referral fee.
I then write a custom firefox extension that would highlight in green anyone who was already in my "database". That way if I was looking at the People tag of a company I worked at, it was trivial to see who I should add.
Hmm I don't see the sentences.
These are in every paragraph of his examples:
"While rock climbing, someone says the instructor used to be her physics teacher. The British man is surprised, so she explains that in their culture, it’s healthy to switch jobs every two years, ideally to something the opposite of what you’ve been doing."
Me neither, and it was the first thing I looked for. Instead I saw: "No ads. No hype. Just quiet wisdom". Okay then
He is just crazy
Just dont be poor
More like timing.
White guy coming out of college in the late 80s/90s and wanting to get into tech was a rarely opportune hand.
As soon as I read "just redo your career every 2 years" I knew exactly what time period he was 22 during.
Either way a lot of people had similar backgrounds and didn't achieve anything like what he did.
Yep he is crazy and a cautionary tale
Seems a bit hyperbolic.
Small things can have big impacts.
They motivate you to see an angle you just haven't thought about.
I had the issue that I stoped feeling confident going on holiday without proper insurance in a time when i was traveling with my DSLR (worht 3-5k) but i wasn't 'rich' enough ot just replace it if something would break or steal.
There is a sentence: "A ship is not build to stay in the harbor".
I accepted more risk due to this and stoped overthinking certain risks. I'm not here to just sit at home and watch television and if i go out and try something, its fine to risk things
I was disappointed that he couldn't find anything life-changing in a book of fiction.