Give Like Bill Gates
Life arc hint #6. Give like Bill Gates.
Make the life you want. Enable those you love. Rise to the highest you will ever rise. Then, at your crest, use your platform for Good.
Utilize all that you have, however much or little it is, to address things that suck for most of humanity. Systematic suck. Attack these points with the same ferocity, the same passion, you used to succeed, but knowingly deplete your resources to actively force change.
Execute Like Tim Cook
Life arc hint #5. Execute Like Tim Cook.
With funding, sheer force of will, and by thinking big Cook has built history’s best logistics system. It has yielded the world’s most successful company, and one he clearly loves. Along the way, he parsed design thinking to address fountains of suck. He woke up at 4am and gave up day-to-day family to do it.
You will work for most of your life. The later you were born, the more likely it is you will work until you die. Finding pleasure in what you do isn’t enough. You have to be passionate about it enough to dedicate your time, skills, cognitive ability, and entire self to it. 100%. Related: The closest thing to savings you will have is the ability to store your resources (above + cash) long enough to spend them to do your work better when necessary.
Design Like Steve Jobs
Life arc hint #4 is no surprise. Design like Steve Jobs.
Solve problems, well. The first step to this is figuring out what the problem is. What specifically sucks in the way someone currently does something? Unless you’re thinking in terms of systems, this will be hard. The next step is to design a solution (using discipline driven simplicity) to make that system not suck. The final step is to have the force of will to focus on that point of suck until it shrivels and disappears (proper motivation and passion helps).
It’s that simple.
Love Like Devdas
Life arc hint #3. Love like Devdas.
Devdas is the protagonist in one of the finest novellas I’ve ever read. The son of a prominent family, he fell in love with a lower class girl he grew up with. She loved him back. The world and its wealth demanded he could not be with her. He lost sight of the big picture , and succumbed to the pressure. Instead, she was married to someone else. His fall ensues, ending in a tragic trip to see her one last time. It is simply written, maybe 100 pages, but emotionally demanding.
The lesson? Experience all-encompassing, life-forfeiting, sacrificing-everything love.
The kind that makes living worth it. Doesn’t matter for whom. For her, him, the kids, your parents, the company, the cause, the book, or the dog. Just experience the kind that, when afire, makes the world easier to bear. The kind that, if lost, the only logical conclusion is to drink yourself to death. (Just don’t fuck up to the point where that is true.)
Think Like Karl Marx
Life arc hint #2: Consider entire systems.
Stick a hand in and feel their flows. Think about their evolution. Dream of massive dialectic shifts. Time when they will occur. Think about what you can do to participate, dampen, or accelerate.
That could be writing a book. Or working for someone who is. Or starting a company, or blowing something up, or funding a new project. Or pivoting an existing organization. Or setting yourself on fire in front of the right people.
But always think huge. Because it increases your chances of mattering. Most of humanity was anonymous and lost to dusty history. Do not fall into their ranks.
If you do this right, engaging in arguments about particular actors (mostly in politics) becomes a nonstarter. It is tough to bicker when you can think through how to solve the underlying problem.
A word to the wise. Marx matters not because he wrote, but because Engels took his unfinished tome and finally shipped the damn thing. Produce. And, unlike Marx, try to be able to care for your family.