Just Do It

Hey,

it’s Sunday morning in Berlin, the sun is crawling up. I have my headphones on to not wake up my girlfriend. I trust some people are falling out of Berghain, while I fall into my morning pages to write this week’s post.

Enjoy.

📸 Photo of the Week

Two ideas

1. Doing something for the first time. Last Monday I had my first Improv class. Here are some observations:

   • Celebrating failure is part of the Improv mindset. In Improv mindset, failure is an opportunity. For instance, there was this one time when I messed up another participant’s name. Everyone around me started celebrating. My initial reaction was agitation and embarrassment, but then I raised my arms in the air and joined the celebration (though somewhat artificially)

   • The inner censor is ruthless, he’s been trained for decades.

   • Active listening to the partner and working with what she has to offer makes it easier. Easier said than done.

   • The instant I try and think of something smart I’m screwed. Like that one time where I was supposed to touch as many objects as possible in the room and call them by a new name. I look left and right, then I see the purple coloured Vans in the left corner of the room, so I touch them and call them “Lamborghini”. Right next to them I touch the chair and call it “Porsche”. Then the purse to the right of the chair “Ferrari”. Then my hand moves towards the wall (and my mind starts thinking, what other luxury car brands are there? None comes to mind and I get stuck for a moment), then I touch the wall and call it “Salesforce”. By the time I touch the window, I call it “Steve Jobs”. This experience reminded me of the quote from Tony Robbins, “When you get in your head, you’re dead.”

   • Simplify, simplify, simplify. My conscious mind is trained to complicate things. A lot of the Improv stuff should probably happen in System 1 as Daniel Kahneman called it, the fast mind. You see, I did it again, I write my Newsletter and I try and act all smart. But hey, decades of training, at least I have excuses, right?
     So this one time I am in a group with two strangers and we are supposed to find three commonalities within 5 seconds. Doesn’t sound hard right, but after 5 seconds we managed to find one commonality and 6 things that we don’t have in common like one came from Poland and had 3 siblings. “Simplify, simplify, simplify” the trainer goes. Next turn, “we all have eyes. Oh and we all have parents. And we all have a father and a mother.”

   • There is no need to be original. Whenever I say “mhh” or “ähh” it’s quite likely I am trying to be original or smart… I said a lot of “mhhs” and “ähhs” in my first lesson.

   • I got reminded of my school days in a good way. When I peeked into the room to the left of the classroom, I saw a bunch of “Turnhallen Matten” and I saw myself in the gym of Heilwig Gymnasium (my old highschool) for a split second.

2. Art and Entrepreneurship. It’s Saturday and I sit in front of the church at Ludwirgskirchplatz reading “the WAR of ART” by Steven Pressfield. It’s supposed to help writers access their inner voice or something wacky like that. Here is what stood out to me:

   • The central theme of the book is resistance. Resistance shows you where to go. The bigger the resistance the bigger the learning opportunity. Really? What about jumping from an airplane without a parachute? Gotcha haha.

   • Steven describes how he writes every day and doesn’t care how much or what the quality of the writing is. He just does it every day for about 4 hours.

   • The ability to reject immediate gratification in favour of long-term growth, health, and integrity. Reminds me of what my host dad Chris told me about the importance of foregoing short-term gratification for longterm gratification in life.

   • “Resistance has no strength of its own. Every ounce of juice it possesses comes from us. We feed it with power by our fear of it. Master that fear and we conquer Resistance.”, fear is not a good guide my father likes to say. Maybe fear is an excellent guide, when it shows me the challenges that are worth tackling the most.

   • About halfway through the book, Steven talks about the society that brings forth the artist: “… culture possesses affluence, stability, enough excess of resource to permit the luxury of self-examination. The artist is grounded in freedom.” and I wonder: What the heck is an artist?

   • Suddenly I get distracted when a couple with their 3 year old put their feet into the fountain basin, where I saw a dead rat swimming a month ago. Their feet are in the water before I can warn them. So I look back down into the book.

   • Then I read something that gives me hope: “Self-doubt can be an ally. … The counterfeit innovator is wildly self-confident. The real one is scared to death.”

   • “It is one thing to study war and another to live the warrior’s life.”. It reminds me of the term “Entrepreneurporn” that my former flatmate used when he talked about people going to Entrepreneur meetups without building anything. At the time, I felt like a voyeur who was caught right in the act. Oops.

Three cool links

1. Mike Knoop (Zapier co-founder) on his favourite thought experiment to distinguish between AI and AGI → loved it, because it brings the whole AGI hype into perspective

2. Dude who posted a bunch of images that put the size of things like the Titanic or the Pyramids into perspective: Thread on the real size of things → I included the thread for fun and was baffled by number 16

3. (nur auf deutsch) David’s und meine neue “Meine Erste Million” Podcast Episode ist draussen. Wir sprechen über den feuchten Traum eines jeden BWLers → hört mal rein

Personal note

That’s it for today.

Now do me a favour… tell me what you think!

I wrote it. You read it. How was it?

Dennis

P.S. - if you wanna go read this on a rad website (seriously) or send to a friend, here’s the link: check it out!

P.P.S. Let me know what you’re currently resisting and I may share a secret with you.