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There Are No Prescriptions
Stop looking for shortcuts in life.
The human brain is wired to look for shortcuts. The most popular shortcut we all obsessively crave today is a prescription.
What should I do to start a company? How do I make my blog go viral? How do I find my purpose, passion, and, most importantly — ‘the one’?
We look for a step-by-step guide. A list. A life-changing book, podcast, or article. A hack that would save us from ourselves. And because demand creates supply, we get a generation that’s drowned in advice on how to live.
Prescriptions and guides don’t work because you can’t follow the rules to greatness. Even if you check all the checkboxes in imitating Steve Jobs, you won’t create the next Apple. Even if Steve Jobs himself went back and could live his life over again, mimicking himself, he wouldn’t have succeeded.
(There’s a reason, I guess, why most successful entrepreneurs never read books on business success.)
Prescriptions don’t work because they limit your view.
Greatness requires a high dosage of insecurity, unpredictability, and figuring things out on the spot. Mediocrity is about hiding away from these things because it feels unpleasant. Following the rules, guides, and biographies of successful people is a highway to…
