How You Can Admire Yourself
How You Can Admire Yourself
Welcome to Your Lazy Sunday, a newsletter to help you…
Embrace Your Lazy
Lazy Questions of the Week
When starting a big project, ask yourself what’s the fastest way I can get a hit of dopamine? Or what is the laziest I can reach that success?
What can I do to get feedback here and now? How can I shorten the feedback loop?
Sculpt Yourself
“How can a man come to know himself? Never by thinking, but by doing.” - Goethe, Maxims and Reflections
You can’t think your way into self-growth. Thinking is a necessary first step, but it must be converted into a lazy system or habit as fast as possible.
We can’t “know” by writing, thinking, or even having profound shower thoughts.
“We only know what we make” - Giambattista Vico
As a natural armchair philosopher, this is something I have to continually remind myself of.
I admire people who embody. They don’t just think. They make. Then, they are.
To get from thinking —> being. Start small. Small things make bigger things happen. If you start small, you slowly deal with the real thing that stops action: Emotional Resistance 👻.
“There are people who make no mistakes because they never wish to do anything worth doing.” - Goethe
If you do one small thing every day, eventually you’ll find that not only will other people admire you. But more importantly…
You’ll admire yourself.
Wonder
Are You a Fox, Hedgehog, or Something More Powerful?
“Some might argue that Buzzfeed quizzes are informative. I’ve never found that to be true (Although now I know I’m not a real adult, but two kids in a trenchcoat… so who’s to tell).
Today I want you to introduce to the OG intellectual “parlor game.” The BuzzFeed quiz before Buzzfeed quizzes. It’s pretty simple and much more interesting.
It comes from a phrase from ancient Greek poet Archilochus:
“A Fox knows many things, but a Hedgehog one important thing.”
Let me quickly explain the distinction so we can talk about the interesting part.
🦔
To author Jim Collins, All great leaders are hedgehogs. They can “simplify a complex world into a single organizing idea”
Hedgehogs are experts in one thing and relate everything in the world to that. It can be expertise or grand theory
[They] relate everything to a single central vision, one system, less or more coherent or articulate, in terms of which they understand, think and feel – a single, universal, organising principle in terms of which alone all that they are and say has significance -Isaiah Berlin, The Hedgehog and the Fox
In terms of actors: Movie stars such as Julia Roberts, Will Smith, and Tom Cruise are Hedgehog actors. They’re actors who know who they are and what their brand is. They do their thing really well. They are more likely to be bad actors, but they’re also more likely to be insanely successful and develop cults of personality.
🦊
A fox is the primordial jack of all trades, master of none. But the entire phrase conveys their hidden strength. The phrase used to be a jack of all trades is a master of none, but oftentimes better than a master of one.
A fox has many things he knows and is more interested in meta-learning and self-reflection than learning. Since they channel their energy to find things that are worth doing…they are more knowledgeable and realistic about the world than hedgehogs.
“[Foxes are] those who pursue many ends, often unrelated and even contradictory, connected, if at all, only in some de facto way, for some psychological or physiological cause, related to no moral or aesthetic principle.” - Isaiah Berlin, The Hedgehog and the Fox
In terms of actors: They’re the character actors who can disappear into their role. When foxy actors are successful, you don’t see the actor, you just see the character. Someone like Daniel Day-Lewis prides himself on being a foxy actor. Joaquin Phoenix and Philip Seymour Hoffman are good examples. They are often shy or uninterested in Hollywood-ing. They are bad at interviews and are seemingly boring people. You can’t always pin down who they are because they contain multitudes.
Here’s where it gets interesting.
You should now have a good idea of which you are. This is where it gets interesting.
Are you being honest with yourself? Are you self diagnosing the right way?
Usually, people aren’t. They call themselves a hedgehog or fox depending on what they want to be. Usually, they actually are the other one.
The better, more interesting distinction is…Are you a hedgehog who secretly wants to be a fox? Or a fox who secretly wants to be a hedgehog?
I’m a fox who secretly wants to be a hedgehog, and that defines and explains me in ways I didn’t think was possible for a simple intellectual parlor game”
Read the full article on my website
If there is a bigger quarantine mood than this (from Alex Krokus), I don’t know it.
Hope your definition of fine gets a little better.
Till next time my lazy,
Pranav