Living life to its fullest - Graham Weaver
Go all in now!
Graham Weaver is the founder of Alpine Investors, a private equity firm. He teaches a strategic management course at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business. He had some good advice on how to live life in his talk as part of the Last Lecture series.
1: Take the nail out
Weaver calls anything that is holding you back as a nail. There are 4 types of nails.
2: Follow your passion energy
Weaver strongly suggests following your energy rather than passion1. Find activities that energize you.
9 lives exercise
He suggests the ‘9 lives exercise’ to uncover energizing activities.
1st life is your life right now.
Now, think about alternatives in terms of career, hobbies, etc. For example, you may be a software engineer in your 1st life. Your 2nd life could be as a writer. 3rd a traveler and so on.
For the lives 2-9, there are two rules
They have to start today
They should be energizing
Once you have identified your 9 lives, pull things out of lives 2-9 into your current 1st life.
3: Go all in
What would you do if you knew that you would not fail? The inner critic’s strongest weapon is the suggestion that you are not ready, yet.
Weaver gives an example of going all in. He spent 60 hours on a 5-minute presentation. It eventually led him to get what he wanted - to be a teacher.
Weaver summarizes the lesson in a single slide.
Paul Graham had suggested using curiosity or interestingness as the North Star. Weaver suggests energy. Pick your poison!