Happy Free Thoughts Thursday, people.

Heard this on a podcast about the story of Trader Joe's today:

“The road to success is paved with mistakes well handled.” — Stanley Marcus

I don't know about you, but I make a lot of mistakes. This was good to hear.

1 Thought From Me (and Paul Graham):

From Me

One problem I have—both here and with YouTube—is that I focus too much on the result and too little on the process. I lose focus of the work because I get distracted by the outcome.

Not only is this detrimental to the quality of my work, but it also eliminates fun from the process of creation and turns these incredible opportunities for play that can provide a living into chores which must get done.

Often, I think the most important thing we can do for ourselves is simply get out of our own way.

From Paul Graham

Read the rest of his essays here.

A palliative care nurse called Bronnie Ware made a list of the biggest regrets of the dying. Her list seems plausible. I could see myself — can see myself — making at least 4 of these 5 mistakes.

If you had to compress them into a single piece of advice, it might be: don't be a cog. The 5 regrets paint a portrait of post-industrial man, who shrinks himself into a shape that fits his circumstances, then turns dutifully till he stops.

The alarming thing is, the mistakes that produce these regrets are all errors of omission. You forget your dreams, ignore your family, suppress your feelings, neglect your friends, and forget to be happy. Errors of omission are a particularly dangerous type of mistake, because you make them by default.

I would like to avoid making these mistakes. But how do you avoid mistakes you make by default? Ideally you transform your life so it has other defaults. But it may not be possible to do that completely. As long as these mistakes happen by default, you probably have to be reminded not to make them. So I inverted the 5 regrets, yielding a list of 5 commands:

Don't ignore your dreams; don't work too much; say what you think; cultivate friendships; be happy.

which I then put at the top of the file I use as a todo list.

Conclusion

We can die at any second.

What's the point of doing all of this if we can't have fun?

As always, a question for me and for you.

Live your life to the fullest,

Chris

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