Sebastian Marshall > Quotes

“we live in a silly showy narcissistic culture, where people do things less for the joy and engagement of their activities, and more so that they can photograph and Instagram or Facebook that they've done the activities.”
― Sebastian Marshall, Roguelike

“The history books ever and always celebrate the daring battles, but the wars are won before and after the battles, not during. Battles lead to defeat, not victory. Hidetada, you must learn this. Fighting desperately is not glorious; it means you have already made a mistake and taken an unnecessary gamble.”
― Sebastian Marshall, MACHINA

“Is what I’m doing in this current 30-minute block serving to build the next 10 years of my life the way I want to?”
― Sebastian Marshall, MACHINA

“Almost Always Use Limited Duration Trials: There’s many things I’ve permanently quit in my life and never gone back to, but these days, I recommend everyone starts with a limited duration trial — 3 weeks or a month, typically. If it’s December 5th, it's not so hard to quit candy for the rest of December. You can say, “Ok, once New Year’s hits, I can eat candy all I want.” If someone really tries to push candy on you at Christmas, you can say: “Well, I’m not doing candy all December. Experiment. Come January, sure, but for December — no way, 100% not.” It’s a lot easier psychologically to commit to do something of limited time duration.”
― Sebastian Marshall, PROGRESSION

“It really actually doesn't take much time to run small experiments, and the payoff is greater levels of energy and more thriving across your entire life. Take this area seriously, and periodically run a small experiment. When you discover ways to get immensely more energy, clarity, and health, it leads to a positive multiplier across all of your life.”
― Sebastian Marshall, PROGRESSION

“The “best guess” as to what you’ll do in any given situation is easy to make –   Guess you’ll do the same thing you did last time.   It’s painfully simple and stunning in its accuracy.”
― Sebastian Marshall, PROGRESSION

“While learning skills and ingraining them as muscle memory or autopilot responses, it is important that only one way be taught. W.E. Hicks' 1952 study found that as the possible responses increased from one to two, reaction time increased by 58 percent. In”
― Sebastian Marshall, PROGRESSION

“It’s a really wonderful feeling knowing you’ve completed all the work you have to do in a day, before most people even woke up.”
― Sebastian Marshall, PROGRESSION

“Hideyoshi had won Nobunaga’s trust as an innovative thinker and someone who could actually get things done, reliably, without any excuses or failure.”
― Sebastian Marshall, MACHINA

“we also see two things that are very salient for Napoleon –   1. Whenever he saw an opportunity, he immediately felt a strong desire to seize it with bold and lightning-quick action.   2. When threatened or in a dangerous situation, his default inclination was to attack.   A lot of his success came from #1 – this is where came his bold actions to join the French army, to defect from one of his posts (where he was luckily rewarded with a promotion instead of a court-martial; it could have gone either way); his hurrying back to France from Egypt in the chaos of Second Coalition defeats of France; etc.   But later it became the first piece of his eventual downfall, the opportunistic seizing of the Throne of Spain and betrayal of his Spanish allies. It was not reasoned-through or carefully planned enough – he saw the weakness of the Spanish monarchy and just immediately seized upon it.   A lot of his success likewise came from #2 – Austerlitz is the most famous – but eventually, he followed this pattern into the Russian Campaign with disastrous consequences.”
― Sebastian Marshall, PROGRESSION

“The key is to always hone in on the most critical issue, recognize it, and go from there.   Once that aim is secure, the next most important issue. And so on.”
― Sebastian Marshall, MACHINA

“You can lose any particular short-term battle of will, but if you give yourself dozens, hundreds, thousands of opportunities to improve with a stacked-deck and best practices in place, you’ll be able to wear down and achieve just about any goal. Then, you’ll find yourself with all those factors — entrainment, homeostasis, the patterns encoded into your neurons, and a general drive and intensity about life — these will all be working for you to continue the pattern of ascent.”
― Sebastian Marshall, PROGRESSION

“Nevertheless, no matter what, you should inventory and do analysis if there are many things at stake that compete for limited resources.”
― Sebastian Marshall, MACHINA

“I’ll remind you that I’m largely apolitical; I reject left nor right; the only direction that appeals to me is – up.”
― Sebastian Marshall, MACHINA

“ENTRAINMENT IS STUPIDLY EASY TO DO   It’s stupidly easy to start doing entrainment for yourself.    You pick a single type of action, behavior, or situation.   You carefully think through what the ideal response is.   You train that response into yourself so it becomes automatic.   ***”
― Sebastian Marshall, PROGRESSION

“As a leader yourself, you should always study the bounds of tradition and what the current agreements are between stakeholders. Things change and move as time passes; how are they moving?”
― Sebastian Marshall, MACHINA

“Obviously, if you’re mountaineering and neglect to check the earth’s surface while climbing or neglect key supplies, you might be caught in a rockslide or freeze to death. Mountaineering forcibly instills discipline in a climber who wishes to stay alive.”
― Sebastian Marshall, MACHINA

“You have homeostatic pressures. Don’t naively assume they’re “real” – reason through them to the root cause.   2. You have default entrained responses – don’t deploy them blindly without occasional checking and re-checking them, searching for better ways.   3. Your brain naturally matches and finds patterns – don’t be satisfied until you’ve fully explored what other patterns might be more applicable or superior for your situation.”
― Sebastian Marshall, PROGRESSION

“2. Craftsmanship goes from an outlet for aesthetic expression to being dominated by functional considerations; craftsmanship wanes as a place to cultivate aesthetics and the romantic.”
― Sebastian Marshall, PROGRESSION

“In psychology, cognitive dissonance is the mental stress or discomfort experienced by an individual who holds two or more contradictory beliefs, ideas, or values at the same time;”
― Sebastian Marshall, MACHINA

“Issue #1: Failure to Face Reality ”
― Sebastian Marshall, PROGRESSION

“Situations are always fluid. Continuing your default responses to internal pressures is a very dangerous thing if your situation changes or evolves.”
― Sebastian Marshall, PROGRESSION

“I can’t stress how important this is, and how liberating.  Your results in a new discipline will likely be the baseline results of that field. If you take up running, you’ll get injured at the rate that new runners get injured. If you’ve been incredibly durable in the past, then you’ll get injured at the rate that incredibly durable people get injured.  Why is this important? Because it sets realistic expectations, and then you can mitigate the risks and improve your statistical odds.”
― Sebastian Marshall, PROGRESSION

“Take the Toyota assembly line example: it’s not at all obvious that stopping the entire production line for a small defect, incurring a half million dollars of costs and stopping the entire factory, will lead to a company that is the most profitable and effective.”
― Sebastian Marshall, PROGRESSION

“Adherence is key. Keep it in mind when designing experiments; design experiments you can adhere to.   3.”
― Sebastian Marshall, PROGRESSION

“Do you need to do all of this? No, of course no. But as you gradually implement it, you can either bank and invest the gains, redeploy the spending to accomplishing other key priorities you’ve got,”
― Sebastian Marshall, PROGRESSION

“Separate your objectives into,   MUST WANT NICE   Must: Any term you mark a ‘must’ needs to happen or no deal. You literally won’t discuss or budge on a single ‘must.”
― Sebastian Marshall, MACHINA

“The soldiers were not paid on time, and often looted and stole – sometimes from enemies, and sometimes friends – to survive.   While it sounds so basic and trivial, Napoleon found a way to get his soldiers in shoes, get their wages paid, secured enough ammunition and food, improved sanitation, dismissed unruly and incompetent officers, and otherwise just got on with the business of soldiering.   There was no particular magic to it, though the effects would be dramatic.   Likewise, while known for some of his brilliant maneuvers, Napoleon often just out-worked his adversaries. He planned more. He did more reconnaissance. He engaged in more diplomacy. He trained more. He marched more.”
― Sebastian Marshall, PROGRESSION

“The enemy’s rear is the guerrillas’ front; they themselves have no rear. Their logistical problems are solved in a direct and elementary fashion: The enemy is the principal source of weapons, equipment, and ammunition. “Mao once said: “We have a claim on the output of the arsenals of London as well as of Hanyang, and what is more, it is to be delivered to us by the enemy’s own transport corps. This is the sober truth, not a joke.”
― Sebastian Marshall, PROGRESSION

“You can choose your next actions and do them. If things don’t unfold the way you like, you can study why and make adjustments. This is a good thing.”
― Sebastian Marshall, MACHINA