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Are You Serious?
“The professional has learned, however, that too much love can be a bad thing. Too much love can make him choke. The seeming detachment of the professional, the cold-blooded character to his demeanor, is a compensating device to keep him from loving the game so much that he freezes in action.”
Visakan Veerasamy • Are You Serious?
When I say serious I
don’t
mean solemn and tedious.
I mean something closer to ‘dynamic persistence’, and a sense of humor is often critical to that. It’s hard to persist for a long time if you ‘take yourself too seriously’. You become rigid, stiff, the opposite of dynamic, and eventually you bang up against something that breaks you one way or ano... See more
don’t
mean solemn and tedious.
I mean something closer to ‘dynamic persistence’, and a sense of humor is often critical to that. It’s hard to persist for a long time if you ‘take yourself too seriously’. You become rigid, stiff, the opposite of dynamic, and eventually you bang up against something that breaks you one way or ano... See more
Visakan Veerasamy • Are You Serious?
There’s also a great anecdote from Nobel-winning physicist Richard Feynman, where he talks about how physics used to delight him when he used to play with it, but then it started to disgust him when he got burdened by this idea that he was obligated to advance the future of science. That he was supposed to be doing “important” work.
Visakan Veerasamy • Are You Serious?
“The world has the habit of making room for the man whose words and actions show that he knows where he is going.” – Napoleon Hill
Visakan Veerasamy • Are You Serious?
So the point is to take the work seriously but you don’t take yourself too seriously. There’s a riff about this in Stephen Pressfield’s War of Art, where he talks about how amateurs are too precious with their work: “The professional has learned, however, that too much love can be a bad thing. Too much love can make him choke. The seeming detachmen
... See moreVisakan Veerasamy • Are You Serious?
One of the stupidest things I’ve repeatedly seen smart people do – I call this Advanced Stupid – is that they get so fixated on trying to optimize something complicated, that they forget to optimize for survival, and then they get knocked out of the game. Like having a startup trying to do something complicatedly clever, and then running out of mon
... See moreVisakan Veerasamy • Are You Serious?
If we want to build great scenes that produce great work, we need serious people to be honest with themselves and each other. I am committed to spending the rest of my life trying to be a beacon for serious players to find and connect with each other.
Visakan Veerasamy • Are You Serious?
There’s also a great anecdote from Nobel-winning physicist Richard Feynman, where he talks about how physics used to delight him when he used to play with it, but then it started to disgust him when he got burdened by this idea that he was obligated to advance the future of science. That he was supposed to be doing “important” work.
Visakan Veerasamy • Are You Serious?
I could go on and on – Gertrude Stein was serious, Erasmus was serious, Mandela was serious… I have a list of hundreds of people throughout history who’ve inspired me with their focus and their devotion – that’s part of how I know that I’m serious about understanding who’s serious, how to be serious, etc. This is a talking point I keep returning to
... See more