There is a writer who talks about studying bad work as well. Douglas Adams said humans were uniquely qualified to learn from the mistakes of others and yet apparently highly disinclined to do so. And I like your statement about when you read about these incredible people. You're also reading about all the times they fuck things up. That is where your maximum opportunity for learning something new comes.
Billy Oppenheimer is a researcher for Ryan Holiday. He is also known for his viral long-form tweets and Six at 6 on Sunday newsletter. Billy is insatiably curious. He is a master at drawing lessons from anecdotes from the worlds of sports, music, comedy, business, and more. He joins the show to discuss how to cultivate good taste, whether everything is a remix, why he learns through introjection, and a whole lot more. Important Links:
Show Notes:
- Focus on doing the thing
- SIX at 6’s origin story
- Learning through introjection
- Developing taste & cultivating curiosity
- “People don’t have ideas, ideas have people”
- How Billy practices his scales
- Fiction vs non-fiction
- Repetition, repetition, repetition
- Should we study more failures?
- Process compounds
- “Care, but don’t care too much”
- Has anyone succeeded without persistence?
- Conceptual ancestors
- Everything’s a remix
- Taste, tools, markets & feedback
- Finding your pain points
- MUCH more!
Books Mentioned:
- Trust Me, I'm Lying; by Ryan Holiday
- Psychology of Money; by Morgan Housel
- Atomic Habits; by James Clear
- The Immortality Key : The Secret History of the Religion with No Name; by Brian C. Muraresku
- Reality Hunger; by David Shields
- The Power of Myth; by Joseph Campbell & Bill Moyers
- Cloud Atlas; by David Mitchell
- The Great Gatsby; by F. Scott Fitzgerald
- The Da Vinci Code; by Dan Brown