Quotes

Risk Aversion

This quote pretty much sums up what happens to successful people as they grow older. They lose the ability to risk it all. The more successful they are, the more they want to protect what they have. You go from being a creator to a protector/hoarder.

One doesn’t have to look too far — those making headlines these days are too worried about the future, instead of trying to build a better one. It is not just individuals — even companies become a bit more complacent and take fewer chances. And nowhere is it more on display than it is in Silicon Valley, where companies are starting to age and are hampered by their valuations. The former risk-takers have become risk-averse.

For me, the hardest challenge is to unlearn, and be willing to embrace change, however scary it might appear to be. I try and do this every day —

Continue reading...Continue reading Risk Aversion

Musings
14 comments

Learn The Lesson, Leave the Event

“You can write a narrative in your head, and spin yourself down a negative path, and beat yourself up and second guess. But what’s true is you made what you thought was the best decision in the moment. Then, you leave it behind. There’s no going back. Everyone makes mistakes. Everyone makes good decisions, bad decisions, or they just didn’t work. For me, it’s, ‘Learn the lesson. Leave the event.’”

Stephen Vogt, manager, The Cleveland Guardians

What a great perspective on life, and dealing with adversity. Vogt was speaking to the press after a loss to the Yankees in the 2024 American League Championship series.

Musings
4 comments

I Voted!

person holding white and blue round plastic container
Photo by Manny Becerra on Unsplash

Democracy isn’t just a bunch of abstract principles and dusty laws in some book somewhere. It’s the values we live by. It’s the way we treat each other, including those who don’t look like us or pray like us or see the world exactly like we do. 

President Barack Obama.

Musings
0 comments

Is writing a contact sport?

Writing is an intellectual contact sport, similar in
some respects to football. The effort required can be
exhausting, the goal unreached, and you are hurt on
almost every play; but that doesn’t deprive a man or
a boy from getting peculiar pleasures form the
game.”

The Silent Season of a Hero, Gay Talese
Musings
0 comments

Tourists vs Purists

Photos by Om. Made with iPhone 13 Pro Max.

I was saddened by the passing of young and exciting new designer Virgil Abloh. He was so young and fresh in his thinking about pop culture and how it intersected with fashion. I had met him a while ago at the launch of the Apple Watch, and we talked about sneakers and pop culture. It was not difficult to get in a conversation with him. I have followed his work from the time he worked with Kanye West. In his obituaries, this one paragraph from the accompanying text for his exhibition, Figures of Speech stood out.

Tourist and purist, that’s my main device to understand the sections of culture, that move culture forward. You have a purist, that’s like, I know the whole art history of everything, you can’t do this, this was done 20-times before you thought of it. Like,

Continue reading...Continue reading Tourists vs Purists

Musings, Technology
0 comments

Janet Malcolm on writing, journalism

I get bored easily—no less with my own ideas than with those of others. Writing for me is a process of constantly throwing out stuff that doesn’t seem interesting enough. 

Janet Malcolm

Janet Malcolm, a writer for The New Yorker, and author of several books, passed away last week. Malcolm was known for her, how should I put it, (perhaps) well-deserved scorn for her chosen profession and those who practiced it. I came across an interview with her in The Paris Review about her approach to writing, the realities (and inanities) of journalism as a profession. Here are some great zingers and wisdom from this conversation with Katie Roiphe, the Cultural Reporting and Cricistim program director at New York University. In her own words:

  1. Sources (or subjects) will “tell their story to anyone who will listen to it, and the story will not be affected by the behavior or personality of

Continue reading...Continue reading Janet Malcolm on writing, journalism

Musings
0 comments

Still thinking about Steve

Nine years ago yesterday, Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple, died. He is gone, but never far from my mind. I am not alone, for all the right reasons. I often think about him and his approach to products. And not to mention some great quotes and wisdom he left behind in his many interviews. I wrote The Tao of Steve when he passed. 

I leave you with another piece of wisdom from Steve: 

"I have a great respect for incremental improvement, and I’ve done that sort of thing in my life, but I’ve always been attracted to the more revolutionary changes. I don’t know why. Because they’re harder. They’re much more stressful emotionally. And you usually go through a period where everybody tells you that you’ve completely failed"
Technology
0 comments

Time redefines our horizons

A friend recently shared this paragraph from Atul Gawande’s book, Being Mortal. I was reminded of this when I lay in bed thinking about the past 72-hours and my parents. It is pretty clear how the pandemic has changed everything for all of us. And if anything, we should start appreciating the frail nature of our lives, our relationships and redefine the horizons of our life.

Fifteen years later, when she was a scholar, the experience led her to formulate a hypothesis: how we seek to spend our time may depend on how much time we perceive ourselves to have. When you are young and healthy, you believe you will live forever.

You do not worry about losing any of your capabilities. People tell you “the world is your oyster,” “the sky is the limit,” and so on. And you are willing to delay gratification—to invest years, for example, in

Continue reading...Continue reading Time redefines our horizons

Musings
0 comments