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social media isn't a set of tools to allow humans to communicate with humans. It is a set of embedding mechanisms to allow technologies to use humans to communicate with each other, in an orgy of self-organizing.... The
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Ryan Holiday |
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In the way that a good wine must be aged, or that we let meat marinate for hours in spices and sauce, an idea must be given space to develop. Rushing into things eliminates that space. Another
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Ryan Holiday |
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Creating is often a solitary experience. Yet work made entirely in isolation is usually doomed to remain lonely.
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Ryan Holiday |
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No one is entitled to relationships only because their work is genius. Relationships have to be earned, and maintained.
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Ryan Holiday |
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You can pay for influence the way you can pay for sex, but from what I understand neither is quite the same as when you get it the old-fashioned way. Just as earned media is always better than paid media, cultivating real influence and relationships is far better than paying for eyeballs and fake friends.
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Ryan Holiday |
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Especially when the leaders in your supposed community make it clear that that is exactly how they feel about you when it comes down to the crunch. But no, ignore that. It is in this moment that we must show the true strength of will within us. A few years ago, in the middle of the financial crisis, the artist and musician Henry Rollins managed to express this deeply human obligation better than millennia of religious doctrine ever have:
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Ryan Holiday |
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People claim to want to do something that matters, yet they measure themselves against things that don't, and track their progress not in years but in microseconds.
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Ryan Holiday |
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don't just want fuel. You need it. You can't go
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Ryan Holiday |
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slowly building muscle and strengthening his upper body against his weak lungs and for the future. By his early twenties the battle against asthma was essentially over, he'd worked--almost literally--that weakness out of his body.
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Ryan Holiday |
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Michael Arrington, the loudmouth founder and former editor in chief of TechCrunch, is famous for investing in the start-ups that his blogs would then cover. Although he no longer runs TechCrunch, he was a partner in two investment funds during his tenure and now manages his own, CrunchFund. In other words, even when he is not a direct investor he has connections or interests in dozens of companies on his beat, and his insider knowledge help..
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Ryan Holiday |
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he was willing to risk great personal harm and expend massive amounts of energy to develop that hardiness. You'll have far better luck toughening yourself up than you ever will trying to take the teeth out of a world that is--at best--indifferent to your existence. Whether we were born weak like Roosevelt
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Ryan Holiday |
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Today blogs are our representatives in these degradation ceremonies. They level the accusations on the behalf of the "outraged public." How dare you hold yourself up in front of us as a human being instead of as a caricature, they seem to say. If you don't feel shame, then we will make you feel shame. The onlookers delight in the destruction and pain."
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Ryan Holiday |
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The reason subscription (and RSS) was abandoned was because in a subscription economy the users are in control. In the on-off model, the competition might be more vicious, but its on the terms of the publisher. Having followers instead of subscribers - where readers have to check back on sites often are barraged with a stream of refreshing content laden with ads - is much better for their bottom line.
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Ryan Holiday |
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I'm alarmed at how many creators gloss over creating. They fritter away their time on Twitter and Facebook--not killing time, but believing that they are building up followers to be the recipients of their unremarkable work.
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Ryan Holiday |
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Ordinary people shy away from negative situations, just as they do with failure. They do their best to avoid trouble. What great people do is the opposite. They are at their best in these situations. They turn personal tragedy or misfortune to their advantage.
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Ryan Holiday |
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Humans are still primed to detect threats and dangers that no longer exist -- think of the cold sweat when you're stressed about money, or the fight-or-flight response that kicks in when your boss yells at you. Our safety is not truly at risk here -- there is little danger that we will starve or that violence will break out -- though it certainly feels that way sometimes. We have a choice about how we respond to this situation (or any situa..
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Ryan Holiday |
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The idea that you won't have to work to sell your product is more than entitled.
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Ryan Holiday |
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I always prefer to start from a place of reality, not from my own projections and preferences. Humility is clearer-eyed than ego--and that's important because humility always works harder than ego.
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Ryan Holiday |
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Ben Horowitz: "There is no silver bullet. . . . No, we're going to have to use a lot of lead bullets."
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Ryan Holiday |
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Focusing on smaller, progressive parts of the work also eliminates the tendency to sit on your ass and dream indefinitely. There
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Ryan Holiday |
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Successfully finding and "scratching" a niche requires asking and answering a question that very few creators seem to do: Who is this thing for? Instead, many creators want to be for everyone . . . and as a result end up being for no one."
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Ryan Holiday |
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Not "be positive" but learn to be ceaselessly creative and opportunistic. Not: This is not so bad. But: I can make this good."
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Ryan Holiday |
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To be great, one must make great work, and making great work is incredibly hard. It must be our primary focus. We must set out, from the beginning, with complete and total commitment to the idea that our best chance of success starts during the creative process.
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Ryan Holiday |
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Paul Graham explains, "The best way to increase a startup's growth rate is to make the product so good people recommend it to their friends."
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Ryan Holiday |
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To borrow from Budd Schulberg's description of a media manipulator in his classic novel The Harder They Fall, I was "indulging myself in the illusions that we can deal in filth without becoming the thing we touch." I no longer have those illusions. Winston Churchill wrote of the appeasers of his age that "each one hopes that if he feeds the crocodile enough, the crocodile will eat him last." I was even more delusional. I thought I could ski..
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Ryan Holiday |
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To create something is a daring, beautiful act. The
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Ryan Holiday |
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Some companies like Airbnb and Instragram spend a long time trying new iterations until they achieve what growth hackers call Product Market Fit (PMF);
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Ryan Holiday |
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The link economy encourages bloggers to repeat what "other people are saying" and link to it instead of doing their own reporting and standing behind it. This changes the news from what has happened into what someone said the news is."
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Ryan Holiday |
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Choose not to be harmed--and you won't feel harmed. Don't feel harmed--and you haven't been. --MARCUS AURELIUS R
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Ryan Holiday |
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Where one person sees a crisis, another can see opportunity. Where one is blinded by success, another sees reality with ruthless objectivity. Where one loses control of emotions, another can remain calm. Desperation, despair, fear, powerlessness--these reactions are functions of our perceptions. You must realize: Nothing makes us feel this way; we choose to give in to such feelings. Or, like Rockefeller, choose not to. And it is precisely a..
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Ryan Holiday |
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The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.
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Ryan Holiday |
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Let's be honest. Most of the time we don't find ourselves in horrible situations we must simply endure. Rather, we face some minor disadvantage or get stuck with some less-than-favorable conditions. Or we're trying to do something really hard and find ourselves outmatched, overstretched, or out of ideas. Well, the same logic applies. Turn it around. Find some benefit. Use it as fuel.
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Ryan Holiday |
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Focusing exclusively on what is in our power magnifies and enhances our power. But every ounce of energy directed at things we can't actually influence is wasted, self-indulgent, and self-destructive.
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Ryan Holiday |
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You will come across obstacles in life -- fair and unfair. And you will discover, time and time again, that what matters most is not what these obstacles are but how we see them, how we react to them, and whether we keep our composure. You will learn that this reaction determines how successful we will be in overcoming -- or possibly thriving because of -- them. Where one person sees a crisis, another can see opportunity. Where one is blind..
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Ryan Holiday |
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through our perception of events, we are complicit in the creation--as well as the destruction--of every one of our obstacles.
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Ryan Holiday |
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There are a few things to keep in mind when faced with a seemingly insurmountable obstacle. We must try: To be objective To control emotions and keep an even keel To choose to see the good in a situation To steady our nerves To ignore what disturbs or limits others To place things in perspective To revert to the present moment To focus on what can be controlled
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Ryan Holiday |
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Because though our doubts (and self-doubts) feel real, they have very little bearing on what is and isn't possible.
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Ryan Holiday |
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We choose how we'll look at things. We retain the ability to inject perspective into a situation. We can't change the obstacles themselves--that part of the equation is set--but the power of perspective can change how the obstacles appear.
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Ryan Holiday |
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When action is our priority, vanity falls away.
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Ryan Holiday |
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When you take away the question mark, it usually turns their headline into a lie.
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Ryan Holiday |
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We decide what we will make of each and every situation. We decide whether we'll break or whether we'll resist. We decide whether we'll assent or reject. No one can force us to give up or to believe something that is untrue (such as, that a situation is absolutely hopeless or impossible to improve). Our perceptions are the thing that we're in complete control of.
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Ryan Holiday |
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Every obstacle is unique to each of us. But the responses they elicit are the same: Fear. Frustration. Confusion. Helplessness. Depression. Anger.
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Ryan Holiday |
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The researchers found that while sadness is an extreme emotion, it is a wholly unviral one. Sadness, like what one might feel to see a stray dog shivering for warmth or a homeless man begging for money, is typically a low-arousal emotion. Sadness depresses our impulse for social sharing. It's why nobody wanted to share the Magnum photos but gladly shared the ones on the Huffington Post. The HuffPo photos were awe-some; they made us angry, o..
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Ryan Holiday |
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Andy Grove, former CEO of Intel, outlined when he described what happens to businesses in tumultuous times: "Bad companies are destroyed by crisis. Good companies survive them. Great companies are improved by them."
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Ryan Holiday |