Someone stole $90 million from a company I was involved in.
Im a poor judge of people.
Some things I cant learn.
I tend to like people too much.
So its hard for me to be a good judge of people, no matter how much I try.
Whats the role of talent?
But you have to start with it.
Talent is the seed of skill.
How do you know if you are talented?
If you loved it when you were ten years old.
If you dream about it.
If you like to read about it.
In the past 20 years Ive wanted to learn how to do some things really well.
This is a rule of the universe.
I read every Judy Blume book.
I read everything I could.
I loved it.Most of my friends got bored with me and soon I was very lonely.
Except when I was writing.
Read It
Bobby Fischer wasnt that good at chess.
He had talent but nobody thought much of him.
So around the age of 12-13 he disappeared for a year.
He did this later in his 20s.
Spassky desperately needed to win to keep the match going.
Fischer needed to draw to win the title.
Spassky didnt have a chance after that.b) He learned enough Russian to read the Russian chess magazines.
At the time, the top 20 players in the world were all Russian.
Studying the history, studying the best players, is the key to being the best player.
Even if you started off with average talent.
Try It.
But Not Too Hard.
Its only built by quantity.
But growth will stop and you wont be happy.
In fact, everything I put on this list, makes you learn 10x faster.
Study the History.
Study 1s and 0s.
Read Hemingway and Virginia Woolf and the Beats, and the works that have withstood the test of time.
They have withstood the test of time.
Versus millions of other books, for a reason.
They are the best in the world.
Then study the current criticism of those books to see what you have missed.
All the businesses that flourished in every depression.
Read Zero to One by Peter Thiel.
Watch The Profit on CNBC.
Read about Steve Jobs.
Read about the downfall of Kodak in The End of Power.Dont read self-help business books.
You are about to enter a great field, the field of innovation that has created modern society.
He had to teach a bunch of Marines how to improve their sharpshooting.
I had never shot a gun in my life, he said.
He brought the target closer.He put it just five feet from them.
They all shot bullseyes.
Then he moved it back bit by bit until it was the standard distance.
They were still shooting bulls-eyes.Richard Branson started a magazine before he started an airline.
Bill Gates wrote BASIC before his team wrote Windows.
Ernest Hemingway never thought he could write a novel.
So he wrote dozens of short stories.Programmers write Hello, World programs before they make their search engines.
Study What You Did
The other day I threw everything out.
I threw out all my books (donated).
I threw out all my clothes.
I threw out old computers.
I threw out plates I never used.
I threw out sheets I would never have guests for.
I found a novel I wrote in 1991.
For the first time in those 24 years, I re-read it.
I studied what I did wrong (character unrelatable.
Deus ex machina all over the place).
Someone told me a story about Amy Schumer, one of my favorite comedians.
She videotapes all her performances.
Then she goes back to her room and studies the performance second by second.
I should have paused another quarter-second here, she might say.
She wants to be the best at comedy.
It was painful for me.
But I had to look at it and see what was wrong.
Where did I make a mistake.
You ask lousy questions: Why am I no good?
Instead of good questions: What did I do wrong and how can I improve?
Example: I hate watching myself after a TV appearance.
I have never done it.
So I will never get better at that.
People seldom get better as individuals.
They get better as groups.
All of these people couldve tinkered by themselves.
But humans are tribal mammals.
I had a friend who wanted to get better at painting.
But she thought she had to be in Paris, with all the conditions right.
She never made it to Paris.
When you die: are you 2 writing sessions old?
Or are you 50,0000?
Find Your Evil Plan
Eventually the student passes the master.
The first hedge fund manager I worked for now hates me.
I started my own fund and his fund went out of business.
My evil plan was ultimately to be better than him.
But how?After all of the above, you find your unique voice.
And when you speak in that voice, the world hears something it has never heard before.
Your old teachers and friends might not want to hear that voice.
There are all the ideas in the past combined with the new beautiful you.
To make something nobody has ever seen before and perhaps will never see again.
The Only Technique To Learn Something Neworiginally appeared onQuora.
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