Seinfeld Strategie

https://jamesclear.com/stop-procrastinating-seinfeld-strategy

He said the way to be a better comic was to create better jokes and the way to create better jokes was to write every day.

He told me to get a big wall calendar that has a whole year on one page and hang it on a prominent wall. The next step was to get a big red magic marker. He said for each day that I do my task of writing, I get to put a big red X over that day.

“After a few days you'll have a chain. Just keep at it and the chain will grow longer every day. You'll like seeing that chain, especially when you get a few weeks under your belt. Your only job is to not break the chain.”

You'll notice that Seinfeld didn't say a single thing about results.
It didn’t matter if he was motivated or not. It didn’t matter if he was writing great jokes or not. It didn't matter if what he was working on would ever make it into a show. All that mattered was “not breaking the chain.”
And that's one of the simple secrets behind Seinfeld's remarkable productivity and consistency. For years, the comedian simply focused on “not breaking the chain.”

Consistency compounds

If it takes 2 minutes or less, just do it now. Dont put it off.

30 years training to create in 30 seconds

As the story goes, Picasso was walking though the market one day when a woman spotted him. She stopped the artist, pulled out a piece of paper and said, “Mr. Picasso, I am a fan of your work. Please, could you do a little drawing for me?”

Picasso smiled and quickly drew a small, but beautiful piece of art on the paper. Then, he handed the paper back to her saying, “That will be one million dollars.”

“But Mr. Picasso,” the woman said. “It only took you thirty seconds to draw this little masterpiece.”

“My good woman,” Picasso said, “It took me thirty years to draw that masterpiece in thirty seconds.”

 

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In any creative endeavor you have to give yourself permission to create junk. There is no way around it. Sometimes you have to write 4 terrible pages just to discover that you wrote one good sentence in the second paragraph of the third page.

Creating something useful and compelling is like being a gold miner. You have to sift through pounds of dirt and rock and silt just to find a speck of gold in the middle of it all. Bits and pieces of genius will find their way to you, if you give yourself permission to let the muse flow.

 

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Inspiration is for amateurs. The rest of us just show up and get to work.
—Chuck Close

Amateurs create when they feel inspired. Professionals create on a schedule.

Finish something. Anything. Stop researching, planning, and preparing to do the work and just do the work. It doesn't matter how good or how bad it is. You don't need to set the world on fire with your first try. You just need to prove to yourself that you have what it takes to produce something.

There are no artists, athletes, entrepreneurs, or scientists who became great by half-finishing their work. Stop debating what you should make and just make something.

Practice Self-Compassion

Everyone struggles to create great art. Even great artists.

When I write, I feel like an armless legless man with a crayon in my mouth.
—Kurt Vonnegut

Share Your Work

Share your work publicly. It will hold you accountable to creating your best work. It will provide feedback for doing better work. And when you see others connect with what you create, it will inspire you and make you care more.

 

How to Find Your Creative Genius

Finding your creative genius is easy: do the work, finish something, get feedback, find ways to improve, show up again tomorrow. Repeat for ten years. Or twenty. Or thirty.

Inspiration only reveals itself after perspiration. 

"Mindset - How you can fulfill your potential" - Carol Dweck

• "I don't divide the world into the weak and the strong, or the successes and the failures... I divide the world into the learners and nonlearners."
• It's breathtaking how many reject an opportunity to learn.
• "Becoming is better than being." The fixed mindset does not allow people the luxury of becoming. They have to already be.
• When people believe their basic qualities can be developed, failures may still hurt, but failures don't define them. And if abilitites can be expanded - if change and growth are possible - then there are still many paths to success.
• We endow our heroes with superhuman abilities that led them inevitably toward their greatness. [...] People with the growth mindset, however, believe something very different. For them, even geniuses have to work hard for their achievements.
• They must not be as smart as I am, I thought to myself. It never occured to me that they might be just as smart and more hardworking! For me it was either-or.
• Seen through the lens of the growth mindset, these are stories about the transformative power of effort - the power of effort to change your ability and to change you as a person.
• Nothing is harder than saying: "I gave it my all and it wasn't good enough."
• Many growth-minded people didnt even plan to go to the top. They got there as a result of doing what they love. It's ironic: The top is where the fixed-mindset people hunger to be, but it's where many growth-minded people arrive as a by-product of their enthusiasm for what they do. This point is also crucial. In the fixed mindset, everyhing is about the outcome. I fyou fail - or if you're not the best - it's all been wasted. The growth mindset allows people to value what they're doing regardless or the outcome.
• Praise like this: "You must have worked really hard." They were not made to feel that they had some special gift, they were praised for doing what it takes to succeed.
• The effort-praised students still loved the problems, and many of them said that the hard problems were the most fun.
• Girls are often so perfect, well behaved, they're so cute, they're so helpful, and they're so precocious. Girls learn to trust people's estimates of them. (...) Boys are constantly being scolded and punished.
• The fixed mindset, plus stereotyping, plus women's trust in people's assessment: I think we can begin to understand why there's a gender gap in math and science.
• What's their secret? Is it passed down in the genes? I believe it's passed down in the mindset. It's the most growth-mindset family I've ever seen. (...) Their heads are not filled with limiting thoughts, a fragile sense of belonging, and a belief that other people can define them.
• Do you label your kids? (...) Find a growth-mindset way to compliment them.
• He used to leave the house at six in the morning to go practice before school. The coach was taken aback by his willingness to work harder than anyone else. Practices his shots for hours. "a genius who constantly wants to upgrade his genius". Success stems from the mind. "The mental toughness and the heart are a lot stronger than some of the physical advantages you might have."
• "There is something about seeing myself improve that motivates and excites me."
• "I believe ability can get you to the top,  but it takes character to keep you there." It takes real character to keep working as hard or even harder once you're there.
• Those with the growth mindset found success in doing their best, in learning and improving. "For me the joy of athletics has never resided in winning. I derive just as much happiness fron the process as from the results. I dont mind losing as long as I see improvement or I feel I've done as well as I possibly could. If I lose, I just go back to the track and work some more." "After every game or practice, if you walk off the field knowing that you gave everything you had, you will always be a winner."
• Hard as it is, perhaps he should admire the fact that her father went for it, instead of being contemptuous that he didnt quite make it.
• True self-confidence is "the courage to be open - to welcome change and new ideas regardless of their source."
• "I'll be damned if I'm going to sit here and feel sorry for myself!" (Perhaps this phrase should be the mantra of the growth mindset)
• In your partnership you can have a fixed mindset about three things:
1. You can believe that your qualities are fixed
2. your partners qualities are fixed
3. and the relationships qualities are fixed
• The growth mindset says all of these things can be developed. All - you, your partner, and the relationship - are capable of growth and change.
• As a legacy of my fixed mindset, I still have an irresistible urge to defend myself and assign blame when something in a relationship goes wrong. "It's not my fault!" To deal with this bad habit, my husband and I invented a third party, an imaginary man named Maurice. Whenever I start in on who's to blame, we invoke poor Maurice and pin it on him.
• I remember when we were kids and did something dumb, like drop our ice-cream cone on our foot, we'd turn to our friend and say "Look what you made me do." Blame may make you feel less foolish, but you still have a shoe full of ice cream - and a friend who's on the defensive. In a relationship, the growth mindset lets you rise above blame, understand the problem, and try to fix it - together.
• "Oh no. To me the whole point of marriage is to encourage your partners development and have them encourage yours."
• It can be a fixed-mindset message that says:" You have permanent traits and I'm judging them. Or it can be a growth-mindset message that says: You are a developing person and I am interested in your development
• Praising children's intelligence harms their motivation and its harms their performance
• You learned so quickly, youre so smart
• look at that drawing martha is he the next picasso or what
• translates into
• if i dont learn something quickly im not smart
• i should try drawing anything hard or theyll see im no picasso
• id better quit studying or ghey wont think im brilliant
• "youre brilliant" - I mean to say:"You searched for strategies, kept at it, tried all kinds of solutions and finally mastered it"
• If parents want to give their children a gift, the best thing they can do is to teach their children to love challenges, be intrigued by mistakes, enjoy effort, and keep on learning. 
• I asked questions that made her reflect on the effort she put into studying and on how she has improved from the year before.
• We should keep away from praise that implies that were proud of them for their intelligence or talent rather than for the work they put in.
• We can praise them as much as we want for the growth-oriented process - what they accomplished through practice, study, persistence, and good strategies. And we can ask them about their work in a way that admires and appreciates their efforts and choices.
• So what should we say when children complete a task - say, math problems - quickly and perfectly? Should we deny them the praise they have earned? Yes. When this happens, I say, "Whoops. I guess that was too easy. I apologize for wasting your time. Lets do something you can really learn from.
• If your kid didnt win: Tell her she didnt deserve to win
• It seems hardhearted under the circumstances. And of course you wouldnt say it quite that way. But thats pretty much what her growth-minded father told her.
• "I know how you feel. Its so disappointing to have your hopes up and to perform your best but not to win. But you know, you havent really earned it yet. There were many girls there wove been in gymnastics longer than you and whove worked a lot harder than you. If this is something you really want, then its something youll really have to work for.
• A growth mindset dialogue:
• Gee. I am so clumsy
• That not what we say when nails spill
• What do you say?
• You say, the nails spilled - I'll pick them up!
• Just like that?
• Just like that
• Thanks, Dad.
• Children learn these lessons early. Children as young as toddlers pick up these messages from their parents, learning that their mistakes are worthy of judgement and punishment. Or learning that their mistakes are an occasion for suggestions and teaching.
• Next time youre in a position to discipline, ask yourself. What is the message I am sending here: I will judge and punish you? Or I will help you think and lear?
• "If Tiger (Wood) had wanted to be a plumber, I wouldnt have minded, as long as he was a hell of a plumber. The goal was for him to be a good person. Hes a great person." Tiger says in return: "My parents have been the biggest influence in my life. They taught me to give of myself, my time, talent, and, most of all, my love."
• What are they teaching the students en route? To love learning. To eventually learn and think for themselves. And to work hard on the fundamentals.
• Some educators try to reassure their students that they're just fine as they are. Growth-minded teachers tell students the truth and then give them the tools to close the gap.
• If you have room on your mirror, copy them over and tape them there, too. "What are the opportunities for learning and growth today? For myself? For the people around me?

What is financial planning?

What is financial planning?

Planning is a mix of
- lies
- politics
- wishful thinking

"Knowledge and productivity are like compound interest.”

Knowledge and productivity are like compound interest

“It is a poor workman who blames his tools – the good man gets on with the job, given what he's got, and gets the best answer he can.”

Fooled by Randomness - Nassim Taleb

• It is as simple as that: Past events will always look less random than they were (it is called the hindsight bias) I would listen to somehone's discussion of his own past realizing that much of what he was saying was just backfit explanations concocted ex post by his delutet mind.
• Probability is not a mere cmoputation of odds on the dice or more complicated variants; it is the acceptance of the lack of certainty in our knowledge and the development of methods for dealing with our ignorance. Outside of textbooks and casinos, probability almost never presents itself as a mathematical problem or a brain teaser.
• I spend all my career attacking the quantitative use of propability
• Let me make it clear here: Of course chance favors the prepared! Hard work, showing up on time, wearing a clean (preferably white) shirt, using deodorant, and some such conventional things contribute to success - they are certainly necessary but may be insufficient as they do not cause success. The same applies to the conventional values of persistence, doggedness and perseverance: necessary, very necessary. One needs to go out and buy a lottery ticket in order to win. Does it mean that the work involved in the trip to the store caused the winning? Of course skills count, but they do count less in highly random environments than they do in dentistry.
• That all millionaires were persistent, hardworking people does not make persistent hard workers become millionaires: Plenty of unsuccessful entrepreneurs were persistent, hardworking people.
• Clearly risk taking is necessary for large success - but it is also neccessary for failure. Had the author done the same study on bankrupt citizens he would certainly have found a predilection for risk taking.
• It is a mistake to use, as journalists and some economists do, statistics without logic, but the reverse does not hold: It is not a mistake to use logic without statistics.
• Most journalists do not take things too seriously: After all, this business of journalism is about pure entertainment, not a search for truth, aprticularly when it comes to radio and television.
• Regrettably, some people play the game too seriously, they are paid to read too much into things. All my life I have suffered the conflict between my love of literature and poetry and my profound allergy to most teachers of literature and "critics". Te French thinker and poet Paul Valery was surprised to listen to a commentary of his poem that found meanings that had until then escaped him (of course, it was pointed out to him that these were intended by his subconscious)
• Probability theory is a young arrival in mathematics; probability applied to practice is almost nonexistent as a discipline.
• Needless to say that the ideas of this book fall sqwuarely into the Tragic category: We are faulty and there is no need to bother trying to correct our flaws. We are so defective and so mismatched to our environment that we can just work around these flaws.
• Work ethics draw people to focus on noise rather than the signal
• He is extremely rich on the average of lives he could have led - he takes so little risk. [...] He protects himself from the rare event. [...] Arguably, in expectation, a dentist is considerably richter than the rock musician who is driven in a pink Rolls Royce [...] For one cannot consider a professino without taking into account the average of the people who enter it, not the sample of those who have succeeded in it.
• An event that has already taken place has 100% probability, i.e. certainty
• When you look at the past, the past always be deterministic, since only single observation took place. [...] While we know that history flows forward, it is difficult to realize that we envision it backward.[...] Those, who are very good at predicting the past will think of themselvey as good at predicting the future.
• If there is anything better than noise in the mass of "urgent" news pounding us, it would be like a needle in a haystack. People do not realize that the media is paid to get your attention. For a journalist, silence rarely surpasses any word.
• It takes a huge investment in introspection to learn that the thirty or more hours spend "studying" the news last month neither had any predictive ability during your activities of that month, neither had any predictive ability during your activities of that month nor did it impact your current knowledge of the world.
• Over one year we observe roughly 0.7 parts noise for every one part performance. Over one month 2,32 for 1, one hour 30 to 1, one second 1796 to 1. [...] I deal with it by having no access to information. [...] If an event is important enough, it will fnid its way to my ears. [...] Why I prefer not to read the newspaper.
• Finally, this explains why people who look too closely at randonmness burn out, their emotions drained by the series of pangs they experience. [...] negative effect for an average loss (then mostly by noise) to be up to 2.5 the magnitude of a positive one (also here from noise))
• Let us remember that economists are evaluated on how intelligent they sound, not on a scientific measure of their knowledge of reality.
• Investors and businesses are not paif in probabilities, they are paid in dollars. Accordingly, it is not how likely an event is to happen that matters, it is how much is made when it happens that should be the consideration.
• The best description of my lifelong business in the market is "skewed bets", that is, I try to benefit from rare events that do not tend to repeat themselves frequently, but, accordingly, present a large payoff when they occur. I try to make money infrequently, as infrequently as possible, simply because I believe that rare events are not fairly valued, and that the rarer the event, the more undervalued it will be in price. In addition to my own empiricism, I think that the counterintuitive aspect of the trade (and the fact that our emotional wiring does not accomodate it) gives me some form of advantage.
• The agent would prefer the number of losses to be low and the number of gains to be high, rather than optimizing the total performance.
• No amount of observations of white swans can allow the inference that all swans are white, but the observation of a single black swan is sufficient to refute that conclusion.
• There is a severe aspect of naive empiricism. I can use data to disprove a proposition, never to prove one. I can use history to refute a conjecture, never to affirm it.
• The Astologist can always find a reason to fit the past event, by saying that Mars was probably in line but not too much so.
• In other words those that have failed do not show up in the sample. (...) By living on Park Avenue, one does not have exposure to the losers, one only sees the winners.
• The social treadmill effect: You get rich, move to rich neighborhoods, then become poor again. To that add the psychological treadmill effect, you get used to wealth and revert to a set point of satisfaction. This problem of some people never really getting to feel satisfied by wealth.
• Real randomness does not look random
• You may study for a year and learn nothing, then, unless you are disheartened by the empty results and give up, something will come to you in a flash. (...) Those who go the extra mile are rewarded.(...) Most people give up before the reward.
• Better to be loved by a dozen than liked by the hundreds.
• Recall that the accomplishment from which I derive the most pride is my weaning myself from television and the news media.
•  The so-called attribution bias. You attribute your successes to skills, but your failures to randomness.
• The findings that 80 to 90% of people think that they are above the average in many things.
• How to behave:
• Dress at your best
• Leave a good impression
• Try not to blame others for your fate
• Never exhibit any self-pity
• Do not complain
• The only article Lady Fortuna has no control over is your behavior

Epicurus

“Self-sufficiency,” wrote Epicurus, “is the greatest of all wealth.” Epictetus added that “wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants.”

Growth Mindset: "Be comfortable with being uncomfortable the whole time."

Marc Aurel - Wege zu sich selbst

• sanftmütig "(Sanftmut bezeichnet also eine milde, nachsichtige menschliche Wesensart)"
• Vom ruhmvollen Gedächtnisse meines Vaters erhielt ich den Antrieb zu einem anspruchslosen und zugleich männlichen Wesen
• Freigebigkeit und Enthaltsamkeit. Liebe zur Einfachheit in Nahrung un zu einer von der Üppigkeit der Reichen abweichenden Lebensweise
• Ausdauer in Anstrengungen, Zufriedenheit mit wenigem und Selbstständigkeit
• warnte mich vor dem Trachten nach eiteln Dingen und dem Glau ben an das Gerede der Gaukler und Schwarzkünstler ...
• stammt bei mir die Überzeugung, ich müsse an meiner Besserung und Charakterbildung arbeiten.
• meinen Widersachern und Beleidigern bereitwillig und versöhnlich entgegenkommen, sobald sie selbst geneigt wären, widereinzulenken.
• Schriften aufmerksam zu lesen.
• nicht im mindestens etwas anderes als die Vernunft sich zum Leitstern wählt. steter Gleichmut.
• Ungekünstelte Würde des Benehmens. Sorgsamkeit im Erraten von Freundeswünschen, die Geduld gegen Unwissende und gegen Leute, welche gedankenlosem Wahne frönen, Nie dem Zörne oder einer anderen Leidenschaft Ausbrücke zu gestatten. Regungen der zärtlichsten Liebe und mich eines guten Rufes, jedoch ohne viel Aufhebens, und eines reichen Wissens, aber ohne Prahlerei, zu befleißigen.
• Mich des Tadels und verletzender Vorwürfe zu enthalten.
• Von meinen Lehrern mit Wärme Gutes zu reden und meine Kinder wahrhaft zu lieben.
• von meinen Freunden das beste zu hoffen und auf ihre Liebe zu vertrauen
• herzig kund zu tun, was ich von ihnen und was nicht erwarte, ohne sie dies erst lange erraten zu lassen
• von der Pflicht der Menschen, sich selbst zu beherrwschen
• Von ihm selbst glaub te jedermann, er rede, wie er denke, und tue nichts von dem, was er tue, in schlimmer Absicht
• Das Leben meines Vaters war für mich eine Schule der Milde.
• Ein Freund der Tätigkeit
• In jeder Lage zufrieden, war er stets heiter, auf die Zukunft nahm er von ferne schon Bedacht
• So pflegte er auch seines Leibes mit Maßen
• daß er Männern, welche in etwas eine vorzügliche Stärke besaßen, ohne Neid den Vorrang einräumte und ihnen sogar dazu behilflich war, daß jeder nach dem Maße seiner besonderen Geschicklichkeit Anerkennung finde.
• die dir obliegenden Geschäfte mit gewissenhaftem und ungekünsteltem Ernste, mit warmer Menschenliebe Freimut und Gerechtigkeit zu vollziehen, wenn du jede Handlung als die letzte deines Lebens verrichtest
• Wenn du vor dir selbst keine Achtung hast, sondern deine Glückseligkeit bei den Seelen anderer suchst.
• Es gibt nämlich auch Toren ,die sich mit vieler Geschäftigkeit ihr ganzes Leben hindurch abmühen, dabei aber kein Ziel vor Augen haben, worauf all ihr Dichten und Trachten ganz und gar gerichtet wäre.
• dagegen müssen diejenigen notwendig unglücklich werden, welche den Bewegungen ihrer eigenen Seele nicht mit ihren Gedanken folgen
• Du musst stets daran denken, was die Natur des Ganzen und was die deinige sei, wie diese sich zu jener verhalte, welche ein Teil und von welchem Ganzen sie ein Teil sei, und daß niemand dich hindern könne, in steter Übereinstimmung mit der Natur, von welcher du ein Teil bist, zu handeln und zu reden.
• Was heißt sterben? so wird man darin nichts anderes mehr erblicken können, als eine Wirkung der Natur. Wer sich aber vor einer Naturwirkung fürchtet, ist ein Kind.
• wenn jemand uns mit der Frage überraschte: "Was denkst du im Augenblick?" sofort mit Freimütigkeit Bescheid geben könnten: "Dies und das dachte ich", sodass man daraus sogleich ersehen könnte, hier ist alles lauter und wohlwollend in Gedanken, wie man es von einem geselligen Wesen erwarten kann, das alle Vorstellungen der Wollust oder der Genußsucht überhaupt, dergleichen der Streitsucht, des Neides, des Argwohnes und anderes der Art sich aus dem Sinne schlägt, wovon du nur mit Schamröte gestehen könntest, dass du dich innerlich damit beschäftigt habest.
• tief durchdrungen vom Geiste der Gerechtigkeit und von ganzer Seele zufrieden mit dem, was ihm begegnet und beschwert wird.
• Sei heiter und nicht bedüfrtig der Dienste, die von außen kommen, auch nicht bedürftig des Friedens, welchen andere gewähren. Aufrecht also mußst du stgehen, ohne aufrecht gehalten zu werden.
• ein flammend Feuer pflegt das, was ihm zugeführt wird, sich gar schnell anzueignen und zu verzehren und lodert gerade davon nur um so höher empor.
• Steht es dir ja frei, zu jeder dir beliebigen Stunde dich auf dich selbst zurückzuziehen.Gibt es ja doch für den Menschen keine geräuschlosere und ungestörtere Zufluchtsstätte als eine eigene Seele
• Denn auf was solltest du auch unwillig sein? "Auf die Schlechtigkeit der Menschen?"
• Die Gegenstände der Sinnenwelt deine Seele nicht berühren, sondern Außendinge sind und unbeweglich bleiben, mithin Störungen deines Seelenfriedens nur aus deiner Einbildung entstehen.
• Den Frohsinn, der aus dem Wenigtun entspringt. Mehr Muße und weniger Unruge haben. Frage dich also bei jeglicher Sache: Gehört diese etwa zu den unnötigen Dingen?
• "Ein Seelchen bist du, von einem Leichnam belastet", wie Epiktet sagte
• Kaum war jegliches Ding zum Vorschein gekommen, so ist es auch schon wiederweggeführt, ein anderes herbeigetragen, aber auch das wird weggeschwemmt werden.
• Alles, was uns zustoßen mag, ist so gewöhnlich und bekannt, wie die Rose im Frühling un die Frucht zur Erntezeit. Dahin gehörrten also dauch Krankheiten und Tod, Verleumdung und Nachstellung und was sonst noch die Toten erfreut oder betrübt.
• Gleichwie man bei Fleischgerichten und anderen Eßwaren derart denken soll: "DAs ist also der Leichnam eines Fisches, das der Leichnam eines Vogels oder eines Schweins!" und hinwiederum beim Falernerwein: "Er ist nichts, als der ausgedrückte Saft einer Traube!" oder beim Purpur: "Er ist nur Schafwolle in das Blut einer Schnecke getaucht!" und bei der geschlechtlichen Beiwohnung: "Sie ist eben die Reibung einer Blase und Ausscheidung von Schleim mit Zuckungen verbunden!" - solche Vorstellungen kommen nämlich den Gegenständen selbst anz nahe und durchdringen ihr Wesen, sodass man sieht, was eigentlich an ihnen sei -, ebenso nun muß mans im ganzen Leben machen und wo einem Dinge in noch so vertrauenwerter GEstalt vorgespiegelt werden, sie entlarven, ihren Unwert sich anschaulich machen und die schimmernde Einkleidung, womit sie sich brüsten, ihnen benehmen. Denn der Schein ist ein fruchbarer Betzrüger, und gerade wenn man glaubt, sich mit den allerbedeutensten Dingen zu beschäftigen, bezaubert an am meisten.
• Wie grausam ist es doch, den Menschen nicht zu gestatten, nach dem zu streben, was ihnen als angemessen und zuträglich erscheint! Und doch gestattest du ihnen gewissermaßen nicht, dies zu tun, wenn du über ihre Vergehungen ungehalten bist. Denn sie lassen sich ja überall durch den Schein des für sie Angemessenen und Zuträglichen dazu fortreißen. "Aber es verhält sich nicht so." Darum belehre sie und zeige es ihnen, ohne über sie ungehalten zu sein!
• Der Außenwelt soll man mitnichten zürnen; sie kümmert sich um nicht.s

The soul of a new machine - Tracy Kidder

A book from the times of the first computers. A journalist goes along with a engineering team who develops a next generation of computer.

• About the new HQ: "Who was the architect?" - "We didn't have one". Company engineers designed the HQ building themselves. And they made it functional and cheap.
• They never tried to hoard a majority of the stock, but used it instead as a tool for growth. Many young entrepreneurs, confusing ownership with control, can't bring themselves to do this.
• When they chose their lawyer, who would deak with the financial community for them , they insisted that he invest some of his own money in their company. "We dnot want you running away if we get in trouble. We want you there protecting your own money."
• Their lawyer insisted that each of the founder "take down a million bucks". This so that they could negotiate without the dread of losing everything.
• IBM and other mainframe companies spent more money selling their products and serving their customers than they did in actually building their machines.
• "Can I get you signed up to do your part?" Toms message is: "Are you guys gonna do it or sit on your ass and complain?" Its a challenge he throws at them. "West brought us out of our depression into the honesty of pure work. He put new life into a lot of peoples jobs.
• By signing up for a project you agreed to do whatever was neccessary for success.
• the pratical virtues of the ritual were manifold. Labor was no longer coerced. Labor volunteered. When you signed up you in effect declared: "I want to do this job and I'll give it my heart and soul." 
• When they had time on their hands to look up from the machine, some saw that they were building it all by themselves, without any significant help from their leader. It was their project, theirs alone.
• but not many bosses would have done as much as he did for them, letting them grow in their work, giving them a chance to really do something.
• "a feeling of accomplishment", "self-fulfillment", "self-satisfaction" 
• Part of you is in that machine
• He sat up the opportunity and he didnt stand in anyones way
• He welcomed a journalist to observe his team
• Cray said that he liked to hire inexperienced engineers right out of school, because they do not usually know what's supposed to be impossible.
• They didnt know what they could not do.
• somepeople would rather work twelve hours a day of their on choosing than eight that are prescribed
• Grades mattered in this first winnowing of applications - not only as an indication of ability but also as a basis for guessing about a recruit's capacity for long, hard work
• When you deep dive into problems:
• can take a grip on an engineers thoughts and hold on. After playing this way for a while, you look at a tree and, aha, it is clear that a tree is much like a computer and a road with side streets is - what else? a kind of computer program.
• Once, someone brought a crying baby past his door, and afterward it took him an hour to retrace his steps through the circuit design he had been pondering.
• Time in a computer is an interesting concept
• I like to work around "Why", he told me. "I prefer not to know the established limits and what other people thing, when I start a project."
• "The wayto stay on schedule", he said, "Is to make anothe one."
• "If you cant get what you need from some manager at your level in another department, go to his boss - thats the way to get things done.
• "It doesnt matter how hard you work on something. What counts is finishing and having it work."
• "Lets see. I am a little confused here." he tends to say now, when what he means is "You guys are all wrong."
• These guys dont realize how dependent they are on that thing to create their identities.