A couple weeks ago I went by myself for a hike through an old lava tunnel cave. I needed a flashlight because it was pitch black. I found a small nook in the wall about a mile in that I could wedge myself in to. I sat down, turned off my light, and let myself feel the enveloping darkness for a long time. I cried. The only sounds were of small droplets of cold water hitting the floor and my body. I let myself settle in to the sensation of being buried alone under the rock where liquid fire once reigned. I felt at peace. When I finally emerged from the cold tunnel a thrill ran through me as warm air gushed over my skin and the distant sun found me once again. I sat and fed the birds that visited me in the remote wilderness while I listened to the gentle whirl of wind in the trees.
jondlm
> A writer needs readers. An entrepreneur needs customers. An athlete needs competition. A lover needs someone free to reject him. Any worthy pursuit needs a mat.
Nah. I judge myself by how I progressed from yesterday, not by whether what I am or what I built is useful to others.
Is keeping a diary pointless if you're not planning to make it a memoir?
Is staying healthy pointless if you aren't using that health to compete with others?
It's hilarious to me that the author calls the cave "grinding", when to my eyes the "grindset" guys are the ones always trying to very visibly compete with others about wealth/status/women.
I've never heard of some guy trying to build the best Rimworld colony (in what is probably a very cave-like setting, no less) try to portray it as grinding.
ang_cire
Reminds me of a couple things: Nils van der Poel (Olympic speed skater record holder) and his How to Skate a 10k [0]:
> It is not the one who suffers the most during preseason who prospers when the
winter comes, but he who gets the most aerobically fit.
and Tyler Cowen on Nervous Nellies [1]:
> Yes. Because ultimately the nervous Nellies, they're not philosophically sophisticated, they're overindulging in their own neuroticism when you get right down to it. So it's not like there's some brute 'let's be a builder' view and then in contrast there's some deeper wisdom that the real philosophers pursue. It's: you be a builder or you're a nervous Nelly. Take your pick. I say be a builder.
and the classic Teddy Roosevelt speech [2]:
> It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.
The Cave is fine, but at some point you need to test the thing you're in there for. At some point, refusing to test an untested belief is just protecting a fantasy.
The only thing worse than 100% inhabiting your own cave is trying to fit into someone else's. I had a conversation this weekend with someone in an emerging startup that I initially wanted to join but increasingly didn't as I realized I had gone from starring cast to somewhere between entourage and sub 1% equity NPC. And at that point, startups are horrible bets when you have any sort of sure thing IMO.
But it was instructive to watch him neg, criticize, and dismiss all of my own ideas that weren't in service of his vision thing, occasionally pivoting to deflecting any criticism of the potential for his own vision to succeed. This week I pitched my vision to my current employer. They loved it. Case closed. Ideas are cheap, it's executions that deliver value. And I have a superb record on that.
Conclusion: if you poke your head up for feedback now and then, there's nothing with spending most of your time in the cave to avoid the samsara of influencers, rage bait, and social media algorithms. Anyone telling you otherwise is 'sus.
LogicFailsMe
There is a real tension. On the one hand, you need to grind to develop the horse power needed. Without the horse power, it's just not possible. On the other hand, your ideas need to meet reality for things to get steered and stay grounded. I started a business in 2022 and constantly got the advice to first sell, then build. It's a bit of a chicken and egg problem. You can't sell something that's not good enough, but you don't know if there is demand without selling. This is an awkward balance, at least at the beginning. I tried full throttle to sell but the product just wasn't there. Was it a waste of time? Partially, sales can get time consuming. But some of it I'm glad I did because it provided some real field insight that provides that bit of steering that's needed to guide all the building.
edg5000
Posts like this remind me of a story:
A young Thomas Carlyle was attending church with his mother. Upon returning home, after a lengthy sermon by the minister, Thomas turned to his mother and exclaimed, “If I were the minister, I would simply say: good people, you know what to do, now go and do it!”
His mother replied, “Aye Thomas, but would you tell them how?”
tacitusarc
> A lover needs someone free to reject him
As G. K. Chesterton said,
> Marriage is a duel to the death, which no man of honour should decline.
The idea is that unexecuted ideas can actually become addictive. You keep telling yourself, "boy, that thing is going to be amazing whenever I get around to making it!"
And the more you tell yourself this, the more you become petrified that it won't be great, making you even less likely to actually work on it.
virgil_disgr4ce
Tangent inspired by the first half of the article: wasting time on the Internet, in front of screens being akin to Plato's Cave is a useful framing device I wish I could internalize. Two or three decades ago getting acquainted with the nascent web felt like escaping the cave to a brand new world, just to now feel discovered we have been trapped into a worse one, and now wishing to escape back to the real world. You know, the one that actually matters.
sph
> Better to be pinned in public with courage than to train endlessly in private like a coward. Ship that product
Funny, I didn't read this as career advice, but social advice. Like, get off the apps, get off the couch, go sit at a bar alone, ask someone to hang out.
comments (10)
jondlm
Nah. I judge myself by how I progressed from yesterday, not by whether what I am or what I built is useful to others.
Is keeping a diary pointless if you're not planning to make it a memoir?
Is staying healthy pointless if you aren't using that health to compete with others?
It's hilarious to me that the author calls the cave "grinding", when to my eyes the "grindset" guys are the ones always trying to very visibly compete with others about wealth/status/women.
I've never heard of some guy trying to build the best Rimworld colony (in what is probably a very cave-like setting, no less) try to portray it as grinding.
ang_cire
> It is not the one who suffers the most during preseason who prospers when the winter comes, but he who gets the most aerobically fit.
and Tyler Cowen on Nervous Nellies [1]:
> Yes. Because ultimately the nervous Nellies, they're not philosophically sophisticated, they're overindulging in their own neuroticism when you get right down to it. So it's not like there's some brute 'let's be a builder' view and then in contrast there's some deeper wisdom that the real philosophers pursue. It's: you be a builder or you're a nervous Nelly. Take your pick. I say be a builder.
and the classic Teddy Roosevelt speech [2]:
> It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.
The Cave is fine, but at some point you need to test the thing you're in there for. At some point, refusing to test an untested belief is just protecting a fantasy.
[0] https://www.howtoskate.se/
[1] https://x.com/JosephNWalker/status/1452772819792642054
[2] https://www.worldfuturefund.org/Documents/maninarena.htm
jcalx
But it was instructive to watch him neg, criticize, and dismiss all of my own ideas that weren't in service of his vision thing, occasionally pivoting to deflecting any criticism of the potential for his own vision to succeed. This week I pitched my vision to my current employer. They loved it. Case closed. Ideas are cheap, it's executions that deliver value. And I have a superb record on that.
Conclusion: if you poke your head up for feedback now and then, there's nothing with spending most of your time in the cave to avoid the samsara of influencers, rage bait, and social media algorithms. Anyone telling you otherwise is 'sus.
LogicFailsMe
edg5000
A young Thomas Carlyle was attending church with his mother. Upon returning home, after a lengthy sermon by the minister, Thomas turned to his mother and exclaimed, “If I were the minister, I would simply say: good people, you know what to do, now go and do it!”
His mother replied, “Aye Thomas, but would you tell them how?”
tacitusarc
As G. K. Chesterton said,
> Marriage is a duel to the death, which no man of honour should decline.
https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/1718/pg1718-images.html...
svieira
The idea is that unexecuted ideas can actually become addictive. You keep telling yourself, "boy, that thing is going to be amazing whenever I get around to making it!"
And the more you tell yourself this, the more you become petrified that it won't be great, making you even less likely to actually work on it.
virgil_disgr4ce
sph
Funny, I didn't read this as career advice, but social advice. Like, get off the apps, get off the couch, go sit at a bar alone, ask someone to hang out.
multisport