You Will Be a Newbie Forever – Kevin Kelly

January 01, 2018

• You will be newbie forever. Get good at the beginner mode: learning new programs, asking dumb questions, making stupid mistakes, soliciting help.

A vacation plus a disaster equals an adventure.
A worthy goal for a year is to learn enough about a subject so that you can’t believe how ignorant you were a year earlier.
Acquire at the last possible moment. Technologies improve so fast you should postpone getting anything until 5 minutes before you need it. Then accept the fact that anything you buy is already obsolete.
Acquiring things will rarely bring you deep satisfaction, but acquiring experiences will.
Always demand a deadline. A deadline weeds out the extraneous and the ordinary and it prevents you from trying to make it perfect so you have to make it different. Different is much better.
Anything real begins with a fiction of what it could be. Imagination therefore is the most potent force in the universe and a skill you can get better at. It’s the one skill in life that benefits from ignoring what everybody else knows.
Anything you buy, you must maintain. A purchase is just the beginning. You can expect to devote as much money/time in maintaining a technology as you did in acquiring and installing it.
Art is in what you leave out.
Be prepared. When you are 90% done any large project, like a house, a film, an event, an app, the rest of the myriad details will take a second 90% to complete.
Be suspicious of any technology that requires walls to prevent access. If you can’t fix it, modify it or hack it yourself, that is a sign. * Teaching others what you learn (like posting solutions to things you figured out) is the best way to keep learning about a technology yourself.
Before you are old attend as many funerals as you can bear and listen. Nobody talks about the departed’s achievements. The only thing people mention is what kind of person you were while you were achieving.
Being able to listen well is a superpower. While listening to someone you love, keep asking them “Is there more?” until there is no more.
Being enthusiastic is worth 25 IQ points.
Buying tools? Start with buying the absolute cheapest tools you can find. Upgrade the ones that you use a lot. If you wind up using something as a tool for a job, buy the very best you can afford.
Don’t be afraid to ask a question that may sound stupid because 99% of the time everyone else is thinking of that same question and is too embarrassed to ask it.
Don’t be the best. Be the only.
Don’t be the smartest person in the room. Hang out with, and learn from, people smarter than yourself. Even better, find smart people who will disagree with you.
Don’t ever respond to a solicitation or proposal on the phone. The urgency is a disguise.
Don’t say anything about someone in an email that you would not be comfortable saying to them directly because eventually they will read it.
Don’t take it personally when someone turns you down. Assume they are just like you — occupied, distracted. Try again later. It’s amazing how often a second try works.
Don’t trust all-purpose glue.
Eliminating clutter makes room for your true treasures.
Every new technology will bite back. The more powerful its gifts, the more powerfully it can be abused. Look for its costs.
Everyone is shy. Other people are waiting for you to introduce yourself to them, they want you to send them an email, they are waiting for you to ask them on a date. So go ahead.
Experience is overrated. When hiring, hire for aptitude, train for skills. Most really amazing or great things have been done by people doing them for the very first time.
Extraordinary claims should require extraordinary evidence to be believed.
Find the minimum amount of technology that will maximize your options.
Following your bliss is a recipe for paralysis if you don’t know what you are passionate about. A better motto for most youth is to master something. Anything. Through mastery of one thing you can drift towards extensions of that mastery that bring you more joy and eventually you’ll discover where your bliss is.
For every dollar you spend purchasing something substantial, expect to pay a dollar in repairs, maintenance, or disposal, by the end of its life.
For every expert opinion that you find online, seek out an equal but opposite expert opinion somewhere else. Don’t rely on raves only. If you have not heard any negatives, you have not yet found all the opinions.
Friends are better than money. Almost anything that money can do, friends can do better. In so many ways, a friend with a boat is better than owning a boat.
Gratitude will unlock all other virtues and is something you can get better at.
Hatred is a curse that does not affect the hated. It only affects the hater. So release a grudge as if it was poison.
How to apologize? Quickly, specifically, sincerely.
I’m positive that in one hundred years much of what I take to be true today will be proved to be wrong. Maybe even embarrassingly wrong. And I try really hard to identify what it is that I am wrong about today.
If you desperately need a job, you are just another problem for a boss. But if you can solve many of the problems the boss has right now, you are hired. To be hired, think like your boss.
If you lose or forget to bring a cable and adapter or charger, check with your hotel. Most hotels have a drawer full of cables, adapters, and chargers that others have left behind and probably have the one that you want if you can claim it after you borrow it.
If you’re looking for something in your house and then you finally find it, when you’re done with it, don’t put it back where you found it, put it back where you first looked for it.
If you’re not falling down occasionally, you’re just coasting.
Keep it easy to switch. You will leave the tool you are using today at some time in the near future. How easy will it be to leave? If leaving forces you to leave all your data behind, or to learn a new way of typing, or to surrender four other technologies you were still using, then maybe this is not the best one to start.
Learn how to learn from those who disagree with you or even offend you. See if you can find truth in what they believe.
Learn how to take a twenty minute power nap without embarrassment.
Never get involved in a land war in Asia.
Never use a credit card for credit. The only kind of credit or debt that’s acceptable is debt to acquire something whose value will increase over time — like a house. The exchange value of most things diminishes or vanishes the moment you purchase them so don’t be in debt to losers.
Nobody has any idea of what a new invention will really be good for, including its inventors. You can’t evaluate new things by merely thinking about them. To evaluate, try it, then think.
Often learning a new tool requires unlearning old ones. The habits of using a land line phone don’t work in email or cell phone. The habits of email don’t work in twitter. The habits of twitter won’t work in what is next. Try to leave the old habits behind when venturing to new forms.
On vacation, go to the most remote place on your itinerary first, bypassing the cities. You’ll maximize the shock of otherness in the remote and then later you’ll welcome the familiar comforts of a city on the way back.
Optimize your generosity. No one on their deathbed has ever regretted giving away too much.
Over the long term, the future is decided by optimists. To be an optimist you don’t have to ignore the many problems we create. You have to imagine improving our capacity to solve those problems.
Perhaps the most counterintuitive truth of the universe is that the more you give to others, the more you’ll get. Understanding that is the beginning of wisdom.
Promptness is a sign of respect.
Pros are just amateurs who know how to gracefully recover from their mistakes.
Quality is not always related to price. Sometimes expensive gear is better, sometimes the least expensive is best for you. Most folks don’t ever use the premium features they paid for. And 95% of most tools are abandoned before they wear out. Quality is related to your personal use.
Reading to your children regularly will bond you together and will kick-start their imaginations.
Risks are relative. The risks of a new technology can’t be evaluation alone; they must be compared to the risks of the older technology, or no technology. For instance the risks of a new dental MRI must be compared to the risks of an old x-ray, or to the risks of no x-ray and getting cavities. The costs of the new must be compared to costs of the old.
Rule of 7 in research: you can find out almost anything if you’re willing to go seven levels. If the first source you ask doesn’t know, then you ask them who you should ask next. And so on, down the line. If you’re willing to do that to the seventh source, you will almost always get your answer.
Rule of three in conversation. To get to the real reason, ask a person to go deeper than what they have just said, then again, and then once more. The third time’s answer is close to the truth.
Saving money and investing money are good habits. Small amounts of money invested very regularly for many decades without deliberation is one path to wealth.
Separate the process of creation from improving. You can’t write and edit, or sculpt and polish, or make and analyze at the same time. If you do, the editor stops the creator. While you invent, don’t select. While you sketch, don’t inspect. While you write the first draft, don’t reflect. At the start the creator mind must be unleashed from judgment.
Show up. Keep showing up. Somebody successful once said ‘99% of success is just showing up.’
Take sabbaticals. Once a week let go of your tools. Once a year take a break from the whole system gracefully. Once in your life step back completely and turn everything off until your soul says to turn it back on. You’ll return with renewed enthusiasm and perspective.
The golden rule will never fail you. It is the foundation of all the other virtues.
The more that you are interested in others, the more interesting they find you. So to be interesting, be interested.
The older the technology, the more likely it will continue to be useful. It may need to find a more limited new job, but don’t dismiss it. Some of the best new things are old things re-imagined.
The proper response to a stupid technology is not to outlaw it but to make a better one yourself, just as the proper response to a stupid idea is not to outlaw it but to replace it with a better idea.
The purpose of the habit is to remove that action from self negotiation. You no longer expend energy deciding whether to do it, you just do it. Good habits can range from telling the truth to flossing.
The second order effects of technology usually only arrive when everyone has one, or it is present everywhere. Drones are cool, but what if everyone has one hovering over their shoulder?
The universe is conspiring behind your back to make you a success. This would be much easier to do if you embrace this paranoia.
There is no limit on better. Talent is unevenly distributed, but there is no limit on how much we can do with what we start with.
This is true: it is hard to cheat an honest man.
To make mistakes is human. To own your mistakes is divine. Nothing elevates a person higher than quickly admitting and taking personal responsibilities for the mistakes that you make and then fixing them fairly. If you mess up, fess up. It’s astounding how powerful this ownership is.
To make something good, just do it. To make something great, just re-do it, re-do it, re-do it. The secret to making fine things is in remaking them.
Tools are metaphors that shape how you think. What embedded assumptions does the new tool make? Does it assume right-handedness, or literacy, or a password, or a place to throw it away? Where the defaults are set can reflect a tool’s bias. You should ask yourself what does this technology assume?
Treating a person to a meal never fails and is so easy to do. It’s powerful with old friends and it’s a great way to make new friends.
Trust me: there is no “them”.
What other thing do you give up? This one has taken me a long time to learn. The only way to take up a new technology is to reduce an old one in my life already. Social media, for instance, must come at the expense of something else I was doing – even if it just daydreaming.
When an object is lost, 99% of the time it is hiding within arm’s reach of where it was last seen. So, search in all possible locations in that radius and you’ll find it.
When crisis and disaster strike, don’t waste them. No problems, no progress.
When someone is nasty, or rude, or hateful, or mean with you, pretend that they have a disease. That makes it easier to have empathy towards them which can often soften the conflict.
When you die, you take absolutely nothing with you except your reputation.
When you get an invitation to do something in the future, ask yourself, ‘Would I accept this if it was scheduled for tomorrow?’ Not too many promises will pass that immediacy filter.
When you’re young, spend at least six months to one year living as poor as you can, owning as little as you possibly can, eating beans and rice in a tiny room or tent to experience what your worst lifestyle may be. That way, when you have something in the future that you want to risk, you won’t be afraid of the worst-case scenario.
You are what you do. Not what you say, not what you believe, not how you vote, but what you spend your time on.
You can obsess about serving your customers, clients, audiences, or you can obsess about beating the competition. Both work. But of the two, obsessing about your customers will take you much further.
You don’t really want to be famous. Read the biography of any famous person.
You don’t need to understand the mechanics of a new technology before you start using it. The best way to understand it is to use it.
You will be newbie forever. Get good at the beginner mode: learning new programs, asking dumb questions, making stupid mistakes, soliciting help.

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