Saving Inspiration

The older you get, the more your dating pool shrinks. You also run into the Problem of Grandma’s Lamp: the more settled you get, the harder it is to adjust to a potentially excellent mate who doesn’t quite fit into the life you’ve made. Obviously, these barriers are not insurmountable, since lots of people get married in their late thirties. But it’s easier if you’ve got an open mind: if you’re ready to get married whenever the right person presents themself.

Note Law #3 – “Multiple Projects Lead to Multiple Successes”

Peter is a prolific “Unfocuser”.

He runs Singularity University, The X Prize foundation and Planetary Resources. Multiple companies started in the span of a few years.

In short, almost every great entrepreneur I’ve studied – chose NOT to focus.

Focus is myth. It’s bull. And if you’re working under me, especially on my marketing team, you have to get used to my inability to focus.

This does not mean NOT getting things done. Instead it means getting multiple things done WITHOUT stress.

In short,  for many great entrepreneurs - Focus is the Distraction.  It’s  the big myth that distracts them from truly being great and pursuing their crazy dreams.

He also maneuvered around uncooperative Reagan administration officials in 1988 to send an educational AIDS pamphlet to more than 100 million U.S. households, the largest public health mailing ever done.

Acquiring empathy seemed a taller order, given that my Aspergerish point of reference is myself in every circumstance. (Someone just slipped and killed himself in the men’s room? I see. How long until they get him out of there so I can go?) But I’ve learned that people can develop empathy, even if by rote. With diligent practice, it can evolve from a contrived acknowledgment of other people’s feelings to the real thing.

To that end, I started asking Kristen how her day was and then paying more attention to her body language than her words. (Occasionally I would have to ask if I was reading her correctly.) If I sensed she was tired, I would take the kids out so she could have quiet time. If she seemed really burned out, I would offer to give her a foot massage, or to just listen. Soon these started to feel like real rather than manufactured emotional responses.

Nobody’s life ever really falls apart, exactly. Lives unravel, thread by thread. First, I came to realize that the job wasn’t the right job. Then the city wasn’t the right city. Two threads loose, easily stitched back in; there are other jobs, other cities. Our house went on the market. I resigned.

Then, a month ago, the person I thought I was going to spend the rest of my life with came home from a neighborhood-scouting trip to a place we were intent on moving back to. “We need to talk”. Never good. “I can’t do this anymore. We’re just too different”. The seam, ripped.

But the most provocative and wide-ranging implication of the new Kenyan study is that we don’t know what is natural for human runners. If, said Kevin G. Hatala, a graduate student in evolutionary anthropology at George Washington University who led the new study, ancient humans “regularly ran fast for sustained periods of time,” like Kalenjin runners do today, then they were likely forefoot or midfoot strikers.

But if their hunts and other activities were conducted at a more sedate pace, closer to that of the Daasanach, then our ancestors were quite likely heel strikers and, if that was the case, wearing shoes and striking with your heel doesn’t necessarily represent a warped running form.