Hi friends,

This week, I had lunch with the former Director of HR, and he gave me a masterclass in corporate communications. He learned the craft from a CEO he once worked for. One day, he asked him: "What's your secret?

The CEO replied: "I make my messages so simple that Forrest Gump could've come up with them, and repeat them with mind-numbing consistency."

At Write of Passage, I've spent the better part of the past year boiling my operating principles into mantras, and now keep a cheat sheet of them on my desk so I can easily call back to them whenever I talk to team members.

Before I get into today's Finds, here are a few things from me:

1. ​Amp It Up: The operating philosophy that Frank Slootman's used to build three billion-dollar companies, and how we use it at Write of Passage. (Full essay | abridged version)
2. ​Build a Strong Hammer: My short video about an age-old question: "When is it best to double-down on your strengths and when should you fix your weaknesses?"
3. ​The Stupid Test: Peter Thiel once said that the best investments sometimes look so stupid that smart investors say no to them. Every now and then, it's good to ask: "What would Forrest Gump do?" (Short write-up here)
4. My Podcast with Noah Kagan: The CEO of App Sumo interviewed me about the philosophy of René Girard, why the Cain & Abel myth is my favorite story in the Bible, and when I realized it was time to start Write of Passage. (Listen: Apple | Spotify)

Today's Finds

​School is Not Enough: My deep dislike of school is one of the driving forces behind my career. As kids, we spent years doing fake and meaningless work. By putting a bunch of kids in the same classroom, with the same teacher, and forcing them to move at the same speed, we constrain the growth of our smartest & most passionate students, while simultaneously making life miserable for struggling students. With the Internet, we can finally make serious changes. No longer do kids predominantly need to learn from teachers. They can learn from adaptive apps and content they find online. Part of the problem with school is that we don't treat kids seriously. We under-estimate their abilities. We talk down to them. We discourage them from working, even when they want to. Many of the greatest minds started work at a young age. As Simon Sarris writes, "Leonardo da Vinci was a studio apprentice to Verrocchio at 14 years old. Walt Disney took on a number of jobs, chiefly delivering papers, by 11. When Vladimir Nabokov was 16, he published his first poetry collection while still in school. Andrew Carnegie finished schooling at 12 and was 13 when he began his second job as a telegraph office boy, where he convinced his superiors to teach him the telegraph machine itself. By 16, he was the family’s mainstay of income." School is a means, not an end. It's a tool for discovering what you ultimately want to work on. Once you find that thing, leave school. Go off-script. Get off the default path. Take on hard projects. The modern education system encourages the opposite — a period of extended adolescence where you put off doing what you want to do.

The Best Moments in Sports: Somebody on Twitter said: "I will never understand men’s obsession with sports." People responded in droves of epic sports clips. Open this tweet, click on quote tweets, and watch the clips. There are some gems. My favorites are the Corrales – Castillo fight, this Kansas City Chiefs touchdown, the Hunter Renfrow's route technique as a wide receiver, and for good measure, I'll add Tiger Woods' Masters victory in 2019 — the arms in the air, the way he hugs his son, and the sheer pandemonium of the crowd.

​Haunted Buildings & Paranormal Experiences: In the 1980s, a British engineer named Vic Tandy heard that his company's laboratory was haunted. Nonsense, he thought. There's no such thing as "haunted." But once he started working there, he noticed some unusual sensations in his body, such as sweats and cold shivers. The building creaked. The cats moved weirdly. It was spooky, indeed. One day, while at his desk, he became convinced that he was being watched, then a figure silently emerged to his left, at the edge of his vision. The hairs on his neck stood up. Tandy remembers a noticeable chill in the room. As soon as he mustered up the courage to face the being, it vanished and disappeared. Something was up. Tandy knew it. To investigate, he brought a foil blade into the lab, which frantically vibrated up and down once he started using it. But he kept it on. By moving around the room, he discovered an ambient, low-frequency (~19 HZ) standing wave that was coming from a fan in the air-extraction system. The wave disappeared once he changed the fan's mounting, and so went the ghostly feeling of the lab. (Originally sourced from Tomorrow & Tomorrow & Tomorrow)

​Tim Ferriss, on Collin & Samir: Seems like everybody's heard Tim Ferriss interviewing others, but he rarely gets interviewed himself. In this episode, Ferriss talks about how creators should choose a game they can play for the long term. Platforms reward consistency. Posting on each one comes with serious competition for attention. He's chosen to focus on audio-only podcasting because it's so easy for him to do consistently. He's avoided video because it requires a team and a studio, which would make it harder for him to stay consistent.

​The Bible Project: A YouTube channel dedicated to teaching the most important book in the West. The videos are animated and thoughtfully scripted. Most of them are between 4–8 minutes long. I trust their theology too. They've published a bunch of videos, so I recommend using the Playlists section to navigate the channel. There, you'll find video series about The Old Testament, The New Testament, How to Read the Bible, and the Wisdom Literature. Otherwise, I recommend watching one of their book overviews before beginning a new one. They'll give you a 40,000-foot view, which will give you context before you dive into specific verses.