There is a Scandinavian saying which some of us might well take as a rallying cry for our lives: The north wind made the Vikings! Wherever did we get the idea that secure and pleasant living, the absence of difficulty, and the comfort of ease, ever of themselves made people either good or happy? Upon the contrary, people who pity themselves go on pitying themselves even when they are laid softly on a cushion, but always in history character and happiness have come to people in all sorts of circumstances, good, bad, and indifferent, when they shouldered their personal responsibility. So, repeatedly the north wind has made the Vikings.

Most people are metaphysically and spiritually dead by the time they hit middle age. Their curiosity is stifled by their day-to-day obligations. They know very little about the complex world they live in. Don't even care to know. They mistake their narrow little reality tunnel as "life."

They cling to certainties and belief systems and hardly ever take the time to read profound books that'll shake things up. They "believe" what they've been taught, what they've been conditioned to think.

They are the majority and the whimpering world we all inhabit reflects this.

We can keep ourselves so busy, fill our lives with so many diversions, stuff our heads with so much knowledge, involve ourselves with so many people and cover so much ground that we never have time to probe the fearful and wonderful world within… By middle life most of us are accomplished fugitives from ourselves.

We have now sunk to a depth at which the restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men.

It is important to learn to be surprised by simple facts.

Niven’s Laws

1.a. Never throw shit at an armed man.
1.b. Never stand next to someone who is throwing shit at an armed man.
2. Never fire a laser at a mirror.
3. Mother Nature doesn’t care if you’re having fun.
4. F × S = k. The product of Freedom and Security is a constant. To gain more freedom of thought and/or action, you must give up some security, and vice versa.
5. Psi and/or magical powers, if real, are nearly useless.
6. It is easier to destroy than create.
7. Any damn fool can predict the past.
8. History never repeats itself.
9. Ethics change with technology.
10. There ain’t no justice.
11. Anarchy is the least stable of social structures. It falls apart at a touch.
12. There is a time and place for tact. And there are times when tact is entirely misplaced.
13. The ways of being human are bounded but infinite.
14. The world’s dullest subjects, in order:
a. Somebody else’s diet.
b. How to make money for a worthy cause.
c. Special Interest Liberation.
15. The only universal message in science fiction: There exist minds that think as well as you do, but differently. (Niven’s corollary: The gene-tampered turkey you’re talking to isn’t necessarily one of them.)
16. Never waste calories (i.e., don’t eat food just because it’s available, or cheap; only eat food you’ll enjoy, because you have to limit overall calorie intake).
17. There is no cause so right that one cannot find a fool following it.
18. No technique works if it isn’t used.
19. Not responsible for advice not taken.
20. Old age is not for sissies.

In such case you'll find yourself spending most of your time fighting to not become a complete bureaucrat, and eventually using only the minority (if any) of your time doing actual work.

However there's plenty of people that's there to "strategize", to "synergize", they're on online calls all day long, it's all career path and promotions and (hopefully) golden parachutes for them, so they'll call it exactly the opposite of "dull". What you call "dull" is actually their goal.

In the end, I think that a single mountain range is enough exploration for an entire lifetime.

The purpose of a system is what it does. There is no point in claiming that the purpose of a system is to do what it constantly fails to do.

Left unchecked organizations default to bureaucracy. People default to distraction.

It doesn't take long for 3 priorities to become 10. It doesn't take long for 2 people in a meeting to become 8. It doesn't take long to move from people making decisions to committees.

The most productive organizations and people spend a lot of energy fighting what feels good in pursuit of what gets results.

It is not enough that we do our best; sometimes we must do what is required.

The longer I live, the more deeply I learn that love — whether we call it friendship or family or romance — is the work of mirroring and magnifying each other's light.

The pessimist criticizes, the optimist creates.

If an idiot were to tell you the same story every day for a year, you would end by believing it.

Awareness, not age, leads to wisdom.

One toxic employee wipes out the gains for more than two superstars. In fact, a superstar, defined as the top 1% of workers in terms of productivity, adds about $5,000 per year to the company’s profit, while a toxic worker costs about $12,000 per year.

1. Weird teenage hobbies - Teenage years are the hardest time to go against social pressures. If they can go against the crowd as a teenager, they can go against the crowd as an adult.

2. Energy distortion field - If you meet with them when you're tired and defeated, you leave the room ready to run a marathon on a treadmill with max incline. Low agency people do the opposite.

3. Golden question - If you're in a 3rd world prison cell and had to call someone to get you out, who would you call? That's the highest agency person you know.

4. You can never guess their opinions - The boxer that writes poetry. The advertiser obsessed with the history of war. The beauty queen who reads Nietzsche. If their beliefs don't line up with their stereotypes, they've exercised agency.

5. Immigrant mentality - If they've moved from their hometown, that's a good sign. If they've moved from their home country, that's an even greater sign.

It takes agency to spot you're in the wrong place, resourcefulness to operationalise a move and a growth mindset to start from zero in a new location.

6. They send you niche content - Low agency people look at the social engagement of content before deeming its quality. High agency people just look at the content. They spot upcoming trends very early.

7. Mean to your face but nice behind your back - The social incentives are to be nice to people's faces and gossip behind their backs. To do the opposite requires agency because they're swimming against the social tide.

The people who really run organizations are usually found several levels down, where it is still possible to get things done.

Deleted code is debugged code.

Have no fear of perfection – you’ll never reach it.