In the famous novel, The Idiot (free Kindle edition), by the great Russian writer, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, the protagonist, Prince Myshkin, is perceived and called an idiot throughout the book.

In reality, he is quite astute, but his epileptic fits and his "saintly nature" fool others into thinking he is idiotic.

Here are 5 passages that shed light on the psychology of human relationships:

1. The importance of projecting positive energy:

"Probably when he is alone he looks quite different, and hardly smiles at all!" thought the prince.

In Part 1, I discussed the importance of incentives as explained in the book.

Today, I will highlight some key concepts from the book and how I have applied them to my life.

Data and Noise

"A very rarely discussed property of data: it is toxic in large quantities—even in moderate quantities."

Reading the newspaper everyday? You could be spending your time better. Why is the newspaper the exact same size (give or take a page or two) every day? On some days, more news happens than others, so a newspaper should reflect that. Somedays it could only be 1 page and others upwards of 100 pages.

I just finished listening to Antifragile, by Nassim Taleb. It advocates for systems (economic, government, institutional, and personal) that gain from disorder.

I started the audiobook a few weeks back while I was at an airport. About 2 hours in , I thought "I am definitely going to reread or re-listen to this book."

A complex read, I plan on addressing this in a series of posts.

There is a famous anecdote told by Charlie Munger about the night shift at a FedEx logistics center. The crew working there was responsable for receiving inventory and placing it on trucks to their respective destinations.

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat."

-Theodore Roosevelt

"I was crushed. Here I was, forty-two years old, divorced, childless, having given up all normal human pursuits to chase the dream of being a writer; now I’ve finally got my name on a big-time Hollywood production starring Linda Hamilton, and what happens? I’m a loser, a phony; my life is worthless, and so am I.

My friend Tony Keppelman snapped me out of it by asking if I was gonna quit. Hell, no! “Then be happy. You’re where you wanted to be, aren’t you? So you’re taking a few blows. That’s the price for being in the arena and not on the sidelines. Stop complaining and be grateful.”

-Steven Pressfield, The War of Art

If you are looking to be a better strategist, stop viewing advice as rules. Instead, consider them to be guidelines. Why?

For starters, there is a lot of conflicting advice from successful people. Variations of the following statements have been made by multiple millionaire entrepreneurs:

Do you start working full-time on your startup/idea?

"Make sure to have your business profitable before quitting your day job."

or

The competence of those in your professional (and personal) network can oftentimes be validated by very simple tests. Consider the following.

I need to get a 2LB package sent from a small town in Peru to the capital, Lima.

I am not in Lima and need someone there that can receive the package and send it to me in a different country.

"The American man has been taught that while it is better to avoid a fight; that honor cannot always be defended with reason. He should never admit fear. He should always strive to put the blade in his adversary’s chest, not his back. An American man should know how to load and fire a gun.

He should know how to ride a horse, bet on a horse, bet on the stock market, and bet on the cards. A good man should know a woman’s body and know how to please her. His woman, in turn, should never speak anything but well of him in public. An American man should have been raised in the church, rejected the church and eventually found virtue in the church.

The American man should be educated. He should work. He should honor his debts and live within his means. He should be able to recite poetry and have bits of true philosophy at his fingertips. He should be able to play an instrument and know how to help a rose grow. 

An American man should know how to dress and speak his language well. He should be handy and mechanically inclined and yet his nails must be clean. A man should have children, and at some point his children should reject him. And in the course of his life, a man’s children should return and find virtue in him.

This is what an American man should be. Of course, no such man has ever existed, and no man probably ever will."