Peter Thiel on what works at work (2014)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/on-leadership/wp/2014/10/10/peter-thiel-on-what-works-at-work/

by tim_sw • 11 years ago

40 5 11 years ago

VinzO• 11 years ago

I really like the idea that you should live every day as though it's going to go on forever instead of living it like it's the last one.

mcphilip• 11 years ago

Reminds me of Nietzsche's thoughts on Eternal Recurrence. Instead of living each day like it's your last, you live each day like it will be repeated indefinitely in exactly the same way:

The greatest weight. -- What, if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: "This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything unutterably small or great in your life will have to return to you, all in the same succession and sequence -- even this spider and this moonlight between the trees, and even this moment and I myself. The eternal hourglass of existence is turned upside down again and again, and you with it, speck of dust!" Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus? Or have you once experienced a tremendous moment when you would have answered him: "You are a god and never have I heard anything more divine"? If this thought gained possession of you, it would change you as you are, or perhaps crush you. (GS 341)

http://myweb.lmu.edu/tshanahan/Nietzsche-Eternal_Recurrence....

yablak• 11 years ago

"The internal management application of this is that it’s always a bad idea to set one’s employees too much against one another. You want to find ways to differentiate people’s roles. Frame it this way: If you were a sociopathic boss who wanted to create trouble for your employees, the formula you would follow would be to tell two people to do the exact same thing. That’s a guaranteed formula for creating conflict. If you’re not a sociopath, you want to be very careful to avoid this."

Love this quote. Especially relevant in large organizations, where the probability of such conflicts occurring by chance increases with headcount. And it's especially worse when execs encourage it.

olliepop• 11 years ago

Ironic that after beginning the interview with "What’s a question you always hope you’ll be asked in interviews, but no one ever seems to ask you?" it concludes on the same note that many of these kinds of interviews do: "What’s it like to be a billionaire?"

dang• 11 years ago

https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Peter%20Thiel%20on%20what%20wo...

Peter Thiel on what works at work (2014)

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