Understanding how the media actually works is critical. Because editors depend on ignorance and media illiteracy to ply their trade. The fact that many readers expect fact checking, editorial oversight, and ethics actually makes it easier for the media to be lazy.
We all have goals: We want to matter. We want to be important. We want to have freedom and power to pursue our creative work. We want respect from our peers and recognition for our accomplishments. Not out of vanity or selfishness, but of an earnest desire to fulfill our personal potential.
I don't play videogames and generally think that online activism is a giant waste of time.
Writing the perfect paper is a lot like a military operation. It takes discipline, foresight, research, strategy, and, if done right, ends in total victory.
We only have so much energy for our work, for our relationships, for ourselves. A smart person understands this and guards it carefully. Meanwhile, idiots focus on marginal productivity hacks and gains while they leak out energy each passing day.
Even people who despise ego and aspire to humility, who plan to be humble once they are successful, are worried that actually enacting those beliefs would sentence them to a life of obscurity or weakness or failure.
Perfectionism rarely begets perfection, or satisfaction - only disappointment.
The problem with a lot of marketing advice is that the examples they use are not exactly typical. It's hard for businesses, particularly smaller businesses, to relate to the bold innovations of companies like Apple or Tesla.
Everyone needs to start doing interviews over email. Whether you're a journalist or a spokesperson speaking to the media, you're better off communicating questions, statements, or inquiries via email.
Growth hacking is the future of marketing. It has to be.
Being criticized in the media is a good problem to have - most of the time. It means you're doing something that is at least interesting or cool or crazy enough to be noticed. It might not always feel good, but it's usually better than the alternative of obscurity.
If you ask most smart or successful people where they learned their craft, they will not talk to you about their time in school. It's always a mentor, a particularly transformative job, or a period of experimentation or trial and error.
Leveraging community intelligence and making connections is a key component to being a growth hacker.
Virality is not an accident. It is engineered. And that's why growth hackers beat traditional marketers.
The essential idea of Stoicism in my interpretation is, you don't control the world around you, you control how you respond. At 19, that's very empowering.