🏴 On the curse of genius, outliers, and being misunderstood. Ten Bullets.

To the obsessed,

Here are your weekly Ten Bullets.

Ten ideas to help you build companies, make art, and fuel your obsession.

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From me:

1. On content:

In 2024, this is the only ‘content strategy’ that matters. Everything is oversaturated except the truth.

There is something for you to say- that only you can say- that others need to hear.

Once you start sharing that- you’re irreplaceable. You change people’s lives. And you become a true one of one.

PS- New YT video below.

2. On the waves of obsession:

Obsession comes in waves. Always has. Always will. A few waves will likely shape your entire career. Learn to recognize when you're in one- and ride it as long as you can. Be willing to let your flesh rip away with the heat and intensity of a mission that feels like life or death. Because it is. Obsession is rare and worth chasing. There is no feeling like it- when the universes collapses on a mission that you uniquely are meant to do.

[Share on Twitter]

3. On Mr. Beast’s bedroom:

One day I will make a coffee table book of insane obsessioncore bedroom setups like this.

From The Obsessed:

4. On child geniuses, and the curse of obsession:

“A third characteristic of gifted children is that their interests often seem near-obsessive. They have what is sometimes called ‘a rage to master.’ Jesse is five. When he was one and crawling, his father Richard tells me, he would do anything to avoid having his nappy changed. ‘We found that the only way we could keep him still was to give him things to take apart and put back together again. We had a yellow torch with a built-in bulb, and he would take the battery out, put it back in, and test whether it worked. If he’d put the battery in the wrong way round, he’d persevere until he got it right.”

“Gifted children often experience what psychologists call ‘asynchronous development’: exceptional abilities in some areas may be associated with, or come at the cost of other aspects of maturity. ‘The parts of the brain that control the learning of words, patterns and numbers develop extremely quickly in these children’ says Andrea Anguera of Potential Plus. “But the frontal lobe, which controls the regulation of emotions, doesn’t develop as fast.”

“People with exceptionally high intelligence very often have 'over-excitabilities' or 'super-sensibilities', such as a heightened awareness of one of the five senses, experiencing extremely intense emotions or having very high levels of energy. Among these individuals, the incidence of depression, anxiety and adhd is higher than in the average population.”

— The Curse of Genius (The Economist), Maggie Fergusson (h/t Rob Henderson)

5. On outliers:

“We cannot get anything out of life. There is no outside where we could take this thing to. There is no little pocket situated outside of life’ to which you could take ‘life’s provisions and squirrel them away.’ Spending your days trying to get experiences ‘under your belt’, in an effort to maximise your collection of experiences, or to feel more confident about the future supply of similar experiences, means placing yourself in a position from which you can never enjoy them fully, because there’s a different agenda at play.”

— You Can’t Hoard Life — Oliver Burkeman

6. On burnout:

7. On obsession:

“Figure out what you’re good at without trying, then try.”

— @isabelunraveled

8. On being misunderstood:

“Don't worry about people stealing your idea. If it's any good, everyone will dismiss it.”

“You have to be- at some point in your life- willing to be misunderstood. You escape into the future- and envision something that people don’t see yet. And if I believe it enough, other people might see it.”

— Brian Chesky, Founder of AirBnb

9. On advice to young founders:

"Make something you yourself want. Turn off the filter that it has to be a startup idea initially, or you'll lop off the outliers. When you've thought of something, start building, and get a version 1 in front of your friends as soon as you can.

— Paul Graham​ 

10. On commitment:

“The less I try, the better I perform

Probably because the less I try, the less I think

And the less I think, the more intuition takes over

And the more intuition takes over, the more I can tap into effortless flow

All of my greatest accomplishments have come from having a whatever mindset toward my goals.”

— Noah Ryan

There’s a thin line here. But often, overthinking around an obsession will kill the natural flow/intuition that comes with it.​

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