Beat (the) box (Ricky Weekly #23)
This is where I share 3 things every week with my friends and anyone else interested.
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A picture from my life:
This is me after a workout and my friend David after a long travel day. We were both delirious but still managed to get together late at night to catch up. We’ve been friends since we were 18 but he lives in Geneva now so we don’t get to see each other much 😢
Thing on my mind:
I’m recovering from sickness so I’m a day late 🤒. This newsletter is not as lucid as I’d liked given the topic but I wanted to get it out for regularity sake.
My old essay on mindset inequality went somewhat viral again last week. I remember last time it went viral in 2016 because Paul Graham tweeted it. This time it was because Benedict Evans included it in his newsletter, and he probably saw it because of Jeremy Liew’s tweet. Ever since I wrote that essay on a whim to try to understand myself better, I’ve been surprised and intimidated by the reception. Many people shared their stories with me to the point where I couldn’t get back to all of them despite by best efforts. I also felt uneasy replying because many of the stories I heard were much tougher than anything I could’ve imagined. Their stories didn’t get the same reception because they were not as well-situated. My story got picked up because I know Paul Graham and Jeremy Liew in real life, and because I went to Stanford and got to start companies, which are what people think are markers of “success.”
When my essay received a ton of attention, I had opportunities to talk more about it but I didn’t engage because I felt uncomfortable being defined by it. After I wrote it, I remember I went to a startup party and someone recognized me as “the poverty guy.” That has the same effect as calling someone a “rich kid” because it boxes you in. The fact that most people don’t know my background is because I’m much more concerned about what I’m doing now and will be doing in the future. The only box I’ve gotten more comfortable with over the years is “startup founder” because that’s my craft. But I used to cringe even hearing that because my ambition wanted it to be “successful startup founder.” I’m better about that now.
Since taking a break from startups this year I’ve been writing, organizing events, and doing standup comedy. It’s interesting to hear people quickly re-“box” me as a “comedian” or “writer” or “organizer.” That’s better than “the poverty guy” and even “startup founder.” The more boxes, the better, because I am all and none of those things and it becomes more obvious when there are a lot of boxes available to describe me. My friend’s been telling me about his desire to be more unapologetically himself, and I think I resonate with that. One way to do it is with just sheer output. The more I put out there, the more parts of me gets out there. People who are paying attention will understand that they will always be getting only small glimpses of what I have to offer.
Piece of content I recommend:
Paul Graham’s The Bus Ticket Theory of Genius and Wait But Why’s Tim Urban on Parsing and Transmitting Complex Ideas
Paul Graham offers a theory about what it takes to do great work and teases out the difference between obsession and ambition. Tim Urban breaks down his process of explaining complex ideas.
Speaking of great work, did you know that it took Paul Graham 3 months to write his Refragmentation essay?
Did you know it takes Tim Urban on average 150 hours to research a topic and much much longer (like a year) to write about it?
I find it refreshing to be reminded that great work don’t appear by accident. I remember reading Barack Obama’s Dreams from My Father and thinking to myself, “this guy is trying to play it off but he clearly wants to be President.” Recently I heard on the NYTimes The Daily podcast that Pete Buttigieg raised his hand in high school when his teacher asked his class if anyone wanted to be president and that actually made me like him more. Would’ve turned me off in the past, but now I appreciate it.
If you like Naval’s Tweets, did you know that he regularly writes down ideas in Tweet form as a way to “compress” his learnings, and that there are hundreds of Tweets that he threw out for every Tweet he ends up posting? Heard it on some podcast but can’t find the link so you’ll just have to trust me on this one.
Robert Caro spends an inordinate amount of time on his books, but even he gets anxious about being too slow. Here’s a quote I found:
Unknown, worryingly broke and uncertain whether or not he would ever publish his biography of Robert Moses, Robert Caro earned a spot to work in the Allen Room at the New York Public Library. When asked the dreaded question, “How long have you been working on your book?” by another writer in the Allen Room, Caro offered the truth: five years. The response that came back was an immediate relief to Caro: “Oh…that’s not so long. I have been working on my Washington [book] for nine years.” Finally, some other writer understood the depth of his toil.
Hope to send y’all something less rambl-y next week. ❤️
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As always, you can find out what I’m thinking in more real-time on Twitter and my essays are on my website. My latest essay is called “Single-serving friends”