Lacking significance through having been overused; unoriginal and trite.
Unsolicited Advice
Unsolicited Advice

Unsolicited Advice

The MFIC

Luke, it was great meeting you and hanging out, although we could have spent more time together. I was planning on working on my enigma persona, but you were too much fun.

MFIC, RM.

That was the first of thousands of emails from my then “new boss” (MFIC stood for “Mother Fucker in Charge,” borrowed from Mayor Young) the day after we left Coachella in 2004. There was a time when I almost considered him a best friend and a time when we didn’t talk at all. We had so many plans and ideas and it was all electrifying and none of it panned out.

I’ve been missing him dearly for about a year now and looks like I’ll be missing him for the rest of my life.

Taking this one to heart, and in the future trying to remember these two things: don’t wait to do things you wanna do, and to let go of stupid shit.

Hope to see you again, Bob.

Love,

Luke

I’ve noticed something.

On any site where you can ask questions and crowdsource answers (this extends to social media), people will respond regardless of whether or not they have anything to offer. Even if they are wrong. It seems people just want to converse.

Don’t ask questions on the Internet. Look for answers, or people you trust that can point you in the right direction.

June 25, 1956 – June 8, 2018

Bourdain was a hero to me.

Today is a reminder.

To travel more.

To eat more good food.

To have more sex.

To really listen to others.

To try my best to never lose hope.

Rules for a Knight

Just finished Ethan Hawke’s epistolary novel written as a letter from a knight going into battle, to their children, imparting knowledge and what they assume will be their last words.

The book is brief and contains simple, effective language and great advice, mostly collected from various sources (credited at the end).

A few rules that stood out to me:

Humility
Never announce that you are a knight, simply behave as one.

Friendship
The quality of your life will, to a large extent, be decided by with whom you elect to spend your time.

Forgiveness
Those who cannot easily forgive will not collect many friends. Look for the best in others.

Discipline
Excellence lives in attention to detail. Give your all, all the time. Don’t save anything for the walk home.

Principles & Values

Friends of mine own a pair of remarkable BBQ restaurants.

The food is great. They are great. Their principles and values are worth a read. Many (all?) can be adapted not only to any business, but life in general:

Be the best restaurant we can be, not just the best BBQ restaurant.

Produce the highest quality food at all levels and exceed standards.

Provide the most knowledgeable and remarkable customer service that exceeds all expectations.

Every item on the menu must be exceptional. A bigger menu isn’t a better menu.

Have a kitchen/restaurant that is so clean and safe that you’d be proud to show a customer at any time.

Be solution focused, not problem focused.

Honesty, integrity, and respect in all interactions with customers and colleagues.

Have the best communication in the industry.

Assume the best in others and be empathetic. Especially with customers.

Always ask, “how could this be better?” Challenge all sacred cows. Push to be the absolute best.

Empower Others – don’t be a bottleneck. Be systems and process focused.

Operate from a place of positivity, not negativity.

Operate with logic, facts and numbers. Not from emotion.

Be respectful of everyone’s time.

Bootstrap it: do more with less and work with the tools you have.

Tired of not doing the things I want to do.

That includes being tired of missing the things I used to do.

In the past year or so I’ve built and discarded about five or six skateboards online.

I finally pulled the trigger. Mark Gonzales deck, Spitfire wheels, Independent trucks. Life is too short to be missing out. To fear other’s perceptions. If you get any sort of joy from something harmless, let that shit ride.

(One last Gonz video for good measure. Apologies for the low-quality. As far as I’m concerned whichever service makes old skate videos available wins the streaming wars.)

On Reading

Still deleting/sorting old bookmarks. Found several related to reading.

Which is something I need to do more of.  One day I’ll read books and not just buy them. 

Farnam Street recommends trying to get through 25 pages per day. They see this as a clear path to completing works that might otherwise seem daunting:

Then I thought about all of the other great works I wanted to get to in my lifetime. Caro has four (eventually five) books about LBJ that are masterpieces on 20th century American politics. I want to read Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. I want to read Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina and War and Peace. I want to read Boswell’s Johnson. Shirer’s Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations. More of Ron Chernow’s biographies.

Let’s say that two days out of each month, you probably won’t have time to read. Plus Christmas. That gives you 340 days a year of solid reading time. 25 pages a day for 340 days is 8,500 pages. 8,500. What I have also found is that, when I commit to a minimum of 25 pages, I almost always read more. So let’s call the 8,500 pages 10,000. (I only need to extend that 25 pages into 30 to get there.)

With 10,000 pages a year, at a general pace of 25/day, what can we get done?

Well, The Power Broker is 1,100 pages. The four LBJ books are collectively 3,552 pages. Tolstoy’s two masterpieces come in at a combined 2,160. Gibbons is six volumes and runs to about 3,660 pages. That’s 10,472 pages.

Bill Gates thinks you should dedicate an hour at a time to reading and has some pretty good thoughts on how to read.

Austin Kleon also has good advice, including carrying a book with you at all times and keeping a stack to read nearby.

And throwing your phone in the ocean.

 

Unsolicited Advice

Been slowly making my way through old bookmarks. Here’s a good one: John Perry Barlow’s list of twenty-five principles of adult behavior.

From the recently deceased Silicon visionary/occasional Grateful Dead lyricist’s mouth: “I don’t expect the perfect attainment of these principles. However, I post them as a standard for my conduct as an adult. Should any of my friends or colleagues catch me violating one of them, bust me.” Wholeheartedly echo this sentiment.

1. Be patient. No matter what.
2. Don’t badmouth: Assign responsibility, never blame. Say nothing behind another’s back you’d be unwilling to say, in exactly the same tone and language, to his face.
3. Never assume the motives of others are, to them, less noble than yours are to you.
4. Expand your sense of the possible.
5. Don’t trouble yourself with matters you truly cannot change.
6. Expect no more of anyone than you yourself can deliver.
7. Tolerate ambiguity.
8. Laugh at yourself frequently.
9. Concern yourself with what is right rather than who is right.
10. Never forget that, no matter how certain, you might be wrong.
11. Give up blood sports.
12. Remember that your life belongs to others as well. Do not endanger it frivolously. And never endanger the life of another.
13. Never lie to anyone for any reason. (Lies of omission are sometimes exempt.)
14. Learn the needs of those around you and respect them.
15. Avoid the pursuit of happiness. Seek to define your mission and pursue that.
16. Reduce your use of the first personal pronoun.
17. Praise at least as often as you disparage.
18. Never let your errors pass without admission.
19. Become less suspicious of joy.
20. Understand humility.
21. Forgive.
22. Foster dignity.
23. Live memorably.
24. Love yourself.
25. Endure.