Join 📚 Roger's Highlights
A batch of the best highlights from what roger's read, .
This goes back to the basic principle we talked about in the first chapter—the importance of engaging in purposeful practice instead of mindless repetition without any clear plan for getting better. If you want to improve in chess, you don’t do it by playing chess; you do it with solitary study of the grandmasters’ games. If you want to improve in darts, you don’t do it by going to the bar with your friends and letting the loser buy the next round; you do it by spending some time alone working on reproducing your throwing motion exactly from one throw to the next.
Peak
Anders Ericsson, Robert Pool
I learned quickly that most people really want someone else to be in charge and bear the responsibility for bad decisions. And even if you think they’re far older, more experienced, and even more qualified than you are, if you take their calls, reply to their emails, show real interest in their work, and are willing to take responsibility and make decisions, they’ll not only accept you, the vast majority of the time they’ll gladly do whatever you tell them to do. And if you’re willing to reject the notion that shit flows downhill and instead be the one protecting them from egos, politics, and personalities, they’ll follow you anywhere. That need for leadership proved far more acute over the next few months in two disturbing ways. The first was a phone call. I was at Rod’s house one morning because Rod preferred to work from home. (“Work” meaning a loose mix of a few phone calls, watching SportsCenter, reading long biographies of Napoleon, preparing to go for a run, going for a run, stretching after the run, and then showering for at least ninety minutes after that.)
But no matter the medicinal virtues of being a true friend or sustaining a long, close relationship with another, the ultimate touchstone of friendship is not improvement, neither of the other nor of the self: the ultimate touchstone is witness, the privilege of having been seen by someone and the equal privilege of being granted the sight of the essence of another, to have walked with them and to have believed in them, and sometimes just to have accompanied them for however brief a span, on a journey impossible to accomplish alone.
...catch up on these, and many more highlights
Readwise