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🏴 On creativity, failure and surprise. Ten Bullets.

🏴 On creativity, failure and surprise. Ten Bullets.

For The Obsessed

Zach Pogrob
December 31, 2023

To the obsessed,

Here are your weekly Ten Bullets. Ten lessons to help you build companies, make art, and find your obsession.

1. On obsession:

Obsession might not be healthy, but neither is life without it.

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2. On what to create:

The goal is to make things you can't stop reading, watching, listening to. You have to be obsessed with your work, before someone else is. Everything you create should feel too good to be true.

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3. On how to make content:

Never take a course on 'content creation' or being a 'creator.' These will only set you back.

The only way to win on social media is to give the world something new. This something can't be taught- if it could- someone would be doing it, and then it wouldn't work for you.

You have to look at everything besides content- and specifically, at yourself. How do you wrap a 'content package' around the things you already do, and can't stop doing? How do you share your obsession in a vehicle that feels natural, and that compounds?

The only thing to teach is that it’s unteachable. It has to come after years output, iteration, and introspection. Your unique tendencies, experience, and interests, align into an obvious opportunity.

Right now, billions of people are scrolling to the next video, waiting for something to stop them, excite them, and inspire them.

Go give them something new.

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4. On surprise:

“George Gilder has a one liner- that all creativity is surprise. All innovation is surprise. And the way you create value is you create useful surprise- you bring useful surprise into the world. If it wasn’t a surprise, it wouldn’t be innovation.”

— David Perell, How I Write Podcast with Sahil Bloom

Great podcast. I also enjoyed this ‘Thielism’ Sahil shared:

“The goal is for everyone to agree with you later.” — Peter Thiel

5. On failure:

“You really need to fail to fall out of the limelight long enough to produce something really strong again.”

— Chuck Palahniuk (Author of Fight Club), Joe Rogan Experience

6. On creativity:

“i really want everyone to realize how insanely invigorating being creative is at any scale. draw in a notebook no one sees. write poems in your notes app. sing in your shower. make playlists for your friends. it doesn’t matter what you do or how it looks—it matters that you start.”

— @isabelunraveled

7. On pain:

“No matter how difficult or hard the race gets- you won’t even remember how hard it is, but you’ll always remember what your result was. So whatever’s going on in the race, f*cking disregard and go as hard as you can. You definitely aren’t going to die from running. So just f*cking kill it.”

— Ken Rideout marathon advice to Casey Neistat and Hunter Weiss, video via Hunter Weiss

8. On doing what no one else can do:

“The most value comes from doing something no one else can do, or no one else has thought of, in a way that is hard for other people to copy. If you try to be just like everyone else, and do just what they’re doing, you will maybe do ok but certainly not great.”

— Sam Altman

9. On love:

“Love what you have before life teaches you to love what you lost.”

— Mark Manson

10. On what to create:

so you want to be a writer?

if it doesn’t come bursting out of you
in spite of everything,
don’t do it.
unless it comes unasked out of your
heart and your mind and your mouth
and your gut,
don’t do it.
if you have to sit for hours
staring at your computer screen
or hunched over your
typewriter
searching for words,
don’t do it.
if you’re doing it for money or
fame,
don’t do it.
if you’re doing it because you want
women in your bed,
don’t do it.
if you have to sit there and
rewrite it again and again,
don’t do it.
if it’s hard work just thinking about doing it,
don’t do it.
if you’re trying to write like somebody
else,
forget about it.

if you have to wait for it to roar out of
you,
then wait patiently.
if it never does roar out of you,
do something else.

if you first have to read it to your wife
or your girlfriend or your boyfriend
or your parents or to anybody at all,
you’re not ready.

don’t be like so many writers,
don’t be like so many thousands of
people who call themselves writers,
don’t be dull and boring and
pretentious, don’t be consumed with self-
love.
the libraries of the world have
yawned themselves to
sleep
over your kind.
don’t add to that.
don’t do it.
unless it comes out of
your soul like a rocket,
unless being still would
drive you to madness or
suicide or murder,
don’t do it.
unless the sun inside you is
burning your gut,
don’t do it.

when it is truly time,
and if you have been chosen,
it will do it by
itself and it will keep on doing it
until you die or it dies in you.

there is no other way.

and there never was.

Charles Bukowski

New Obsessioncore Wallpapers:

PS. Shoutout to everyone who entered their Obsession Arc before the end of this year.

Obsession Arc: A spiritual reset/entrance to obsession- marked by an extreme change in appearance. For men- a buzzcut. For women- a buzzcut, or short hair, or dyed hair, or undyed hair.

Drastically changing your hair is one of the best ways to reinvent yourself.

Every time you look in the mirror, you see a new person. It resets your self-image. It resets your life.

And, it lets your obsessed self take control.