Outlier

When Work is Your Passion

My favorite quote was written by my brother a long time ago when we were freshman in college. It’s amazing to think that it still rings true after so long.

When you are passionate about something it is difficult to devote yourself to other causes. Everything pales in comparison to what you really love. To strive valiantly for something that is not in your heart defeats you because you know at the very best it is a compromise, and at the very worst, the loss of who you are…

Until we discover our passion we are protected. We are safe within the comfort that life’s existence is not as scary, as unpredictable, or unstable as it could be if we found something that we were willing to give everything for. Until we know what it feels like to wake up in the morning everyday smiling, until we know passion…we can be satisfied with the routine.

But if we glimpse opportunity—that overwhelming chasm—we realize that we must leap away from life. And because to leap is to no longer fear falling, those who have taken that leap—those who have passion— no longer think, feel, or believe the way that others do.

Where work was once the means, it becomes the goal. It’s because for someone who has found passion… the journey is the goal. How does it make sense to work for something when it is the work itself that you work for? 

Love it. Thank you brother for your words of wisdom.

Eric Ries on Racism and Meritocracy in Silicon Valley

Eric Ries recently wrote a post in Techcrunch on racism and meritocracy in Silicon Valley. His scientific approach is especially refreshing as prejudice and bias often flow thick and heavy when discussions of race arise.

I’d like to share a couple quick thoughts on talent in Silicon Valley using the most prestigious incubator in Silicon Valley as a case in point.  

Ron Conway has described Y Combinator as “the Harvard of incubator programs” yet it is nowhere near as diverse.

I was a member of the summer 2011 class of Y Combinator and I can tell you first hand that it was one of the most homogeneous environments I had ever been in. It’s true that there was little diversity in the racial sense but what struck me most was the lack of diversity of backgrounds, attitudes, and personality types.

This is sad not so much for Y Combinator but more as a strong indicator that some of the attributes valued most highly in Silicon Valley are also some of the same elements contributing to its lack of diversity.

Y Combinator is an elite program and many investors consider it to be one of the best indicators of entrepreneurial potential. The frenzy that investors approach each demo day is also an indicator that many of the biases that Y Combinator uses to select entrepreneurs are also embraced by a large number of other investors.

This is worrisome because big, unconventional ideas move the world forward and we have a selection bias in Silicon Valley that tends to overlook entrepreneurs that don’t fit a certain mold.

Ron Conway is a successful entrepreneur and one of the most successful angel investors in history. If he were a young person today, he would not get into Y Combinator. A Young Steve Jobs definitely would not get in.

As Eric Ries pointed out, I think diversity is a worthy goal unto itself but if a system has strong bias against diversity, doesn’t it also have strong bias against outliers?

And who will change the world if not the outliers?

Security is an Illision

Don’t cling to the past when you have the opportunity to seek out the future

Excerpt From Deepak Chopra - The 7 Laws Of Success

The search for security is an illusion. In ancient wisdom traditions, the solution to this whole dilemma lies in the wisdom of insecurity, or the wisdom of uncertainty. This means that the search for security and certainty is actually an attachment to the known. And what’s the known? The known is our past. The Known is nothing other than the prison of past conditioning. There’s no evolution in that—absolutely none at all. And when there is no evolution, there is stagnation, entropy, disorder, and decay.

Uncertainty, on the other hand, is the fertile ground of pure creativity and freedom. Uncertainty means stepping into the unknown in every moment of our existence. The unknown is the field of all possibilities, ever fresh, ever new, always open to the creation of new manifestations. Without uncertainty and the unknown, life is just the stale repetition of outworn memories. You become the victim of the past, and your tormentor today is your self left over from yesterday. 

Relinquish your attachment to the known, step into the unknown, and you will step into the field of all possibilities. In your willingness to step into the unknown, you will have the wisdom of uncertainty factored in. This means that in every moment of your life, you will have excitement, adventure, mystery. You will experience the fun of life—the magic, the celebration, the exhilaration, the exultation of your own spirit.

An outlying observation, or outlier, is one that appears to deviate markedly from other members of the sample in which it occurs.