Greenlights
I’ve been in this life for fifty years, been trying to work out its riddle for forty-two, and been keeping diaries of clues to that riddle for the last thirty-five. Notes about successes and failures, joys and sorrows, things that made me marvel, and things that made me laugh out loud. How to be fair. How to have less stress. How to have fun. How to hurt people less. How to get hurt less. How to be a good man. How to have meaning in life. How to be more me.Recently, I worked up the courage to sit down with those diaries. I found stories I experienced, lessons I learned and forgot, poems, prayers, prescriptions, beliefs about what matters, some great photographs, and a whole bunch of bumper stickers. I found a reliable theme, an approach to living that gave me more satisfaction, at the time, and still: If you know how, and when, to deal with life’s challenges - how to get relative with theinevitable- you can enjoy a state of success I call “catching greenlights.”So I took a one-way ticket to the desert and wrote this book: an album, a record, a story of my life so far. This is fifty years of my sights and seens, felts and figured-outs, cools and shamefuls. Graces, truths, and beauties of brutality.
Stats for nerds
3recommend
7mentions
5people
2021–2025years
43% recommend57% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- In the last year I did a lot of thinking along these lines (I’m 30 for context).
Until now I’ve spent a lot of my focus chasing credentials, even if I didn’t really realize that.
For example, having good schools, companies, etc (YC even!) on the resume.
All of that served me well, but I think now it’s important to switch to harvesting some of the fruits of that labor and deciding what I inherently want to pursue.
I get joy out of a bunch of things; spending time with my family, running a business, even learning and listening to my favorite podcasts. I’m much more focused on doing things that bring me joy now, and the choices I make are in service of that.
A few things I read last year that were influential for me:
Obituary for a Quiet Life (relatively short): https://bittersoutherner.com/feature/2023/obituary-for-a-qui...
Greenlights by Matthew McConaughey
The Comfort Crisis by Michael Easter
My tl;dr is really just the pursuit of love, joy, good health, and good money.
- Here is another good thread from a few days ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33849267
Here is the list of some of the good books I read this year https://brajeshwar.com/2022/books/
Starting this year, instead of writing the list at the year-end, I have decided that I will just write as I read along. Besides the 5 odd I listed from a comment on this thread, here are others I have listed from other threads on Hackernews and Twitter. The URL is a pattern anyway, so it will be https://brajeshwar.com/2023/books/
- How to Be Perfect: The Correct Answer to Every Moral Question by Michael Schur, https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/How-to-Be-Perfect/Mic...
- [How to Stop Worrying and Start Living](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Stop_Worrying_and_Start...) is from the popular author [Dale Carnegie](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dale_Carnegie) of the [How to Win Friends and Influence People](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Win_Friends_and_Influen...) fame.
- A young girl's diary https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Diary_of_a_Young_Girl)
- Greenlights by [Matthew McConaughey](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_McConaughey)
- How Asia Works: Success and Failure In the World's Most Dynamic Region
- How the World Really Works: A Scientist’s Guide to Our Past, Present and Future by Vaclav Smil
- How To Talk: Siblings Without Rivalry by [Adele Faber](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adele_Faber)
- Impact Mapping: Making a big impact with software products and projects
- Monetizing Innovation: How Smart Companies Design the Product Around the Price
- Product-Led Growth: How to Build a Product That Sells Itself
- Rewire Your Anxious Brain: How to Use the Neuroscience of Fear to End Anxiety, Panic, and Worry
- The Courage To Be Disliked: How to free yourself, change your life and achieve real happiness
- [The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hitchhiker%27s_Guide_to_th...) by [Douglas Adams](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Adams)
- [Windfall: The Booming Business of Global Warming](https://www.amazon.com/Windfall-Booming-Business-Global-Warm...) by [McKenzie Funk](https://www.mckenziefunk.com)
- The Book You Wish Your Parents Had Read: (and Your Children Will Be Glad That You Did) by Philippa Perry
- Greenlights - Matthew McConaughey (https://greenlights.com/)
- Matthew McConaughey mines 35 years of his personal journal entries to offer a playbook for entrepreneurs in "Greenlights."
His opening line is, "This is not a traditional memoir." He tells stories from his life and shares insights, but his objective is to offer approaches. Written when he turned 50, it draws on 35 years of journals he kept, starting when he turned 15.
"This is a playbook, based on adventures in my life. [...] This is a story about greenlights. This is the first fifty years of my life, of my resume so far on the way to my eulogy." Matthew McConaughey in "Greenlights"
- Most of the books I read are influenced by similar threads on HN. This year has not been good overall and it impacted my reading. I need to finish writing the post https://brajeshwar.com/2023/books/
“How to Be Perfect: The Correct Answer to Every Moral Question” by Michael Schur is a fun book that opens with a good question, “Should I punch my friend in the face for no reason?”
I have been meaning to and this year I finally read The Diary of a Young Girl.
For 2024, here are some of the ones from my list (sorry for the formatting, copied Markdown from my notes);
- [Chip War: The Fight for the World's Most Critical Technology](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chip_War:_The_Fight_for_the_Wo...) by [Chris Miller](https://www.christophermiller.net)
- [First Principles](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Principles_(book)) by [Thomas E. Ricks](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_E._Ricks_(journalist))
- [Greenlights](https://greenlights.com) by [Matthew McConaughey](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_McConaughey)
- How Asia Works: Success and Failure in the World's Most Dynamic Region by Joe Studwell
- [Poor Economics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poor_Economics): A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty by [Abhijit V. Banerjee](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abhijit_Banerjee), and [Esther Duflo](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esther_Duflo)
- Raising An Emotionally Intelligent Child The Heart of Parenting by [John Gottman](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Gottman), and Joan DeClaire
- [The Book You Wish Your Parents Had Read](https://www.amazon.com/Book-Wish-Your-Parents-Read/dp/198487...): (and Your Children Will Be Glad That You Did) by [Philippa Perry](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philippa_Perry)
- [The End Of The World Is Just The Beginning: Mapping The Collapse Of Globalization](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_End_of_the_World_is_just_t...) by [Peter Zeihan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Zeihan)
- [The Tatas: How a Family Built a Business and a Nation](https://www.amazon.com/Tatas-Family-Built-Business-Nation/dp...) by [Girish Kuber](https://mr.wikipedia.org/wiki/गिरीश_कुबेर), and English translation by Vikrant Pande.
- [Windfall: The Booming Business of Global Warming](https://www.amazon.com/Windfall-Booming-Business-Global-Warm...) by [McKenzie Funk](https://www.mckenziefunk.com)
- [Dieter Rams: The Complete Works](https://www.amazon.com/Dieter-Rams-Complete-Klaus-Klemp/dp/1...) by [Klaus Klemp](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klaus_Klemp)
- Disconnecting works for me. I don't participate in social media outside Hackernews and only read RSS feeds and newsletters from high signal-to-noise sources. About phones, I have a basic smartphone that I use for calls, messaging, calendar, and some day-to-day life apps.
I used to be hooked on social media like Reddit, YouTube, Facebook, and mainstream media. But over time, I've grown increasingly disillusioned with the quality of the content soup on them. So for me, there was never a need to constrain and curate information actively.
As Matthew McConaughey wrote in their book "Greenlights" - "When we decrease the options [choices] that don't feed us, we eventually, almost accidentally, have more options in front of us that do." Worked out that way for me with information. Just decrease the amount of algorithmic sludge you consume, and you'll find that the quality of the information you take in increases.
