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Kevin Kelly — Excellent Advice for Living (#669)

  • Tim Ferriss
    • Illustration via 99designs | Photo originally by Christopher Michel

    “Your goal in life is to be able to say on the day before you die that you have fully become yourself.”

    — Kevin Kelly

    Kevin Kelly (@kevin2kelly) helped launch and edit Wired magazine. He has written for The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal, among many other publications.

    He is the author of the new book Excellent Advice for Living: Wisdom I Wish I’d Known Earlier. Other books by Kevin Kelly include Out of Control, the 1994 classic book on decentralized emergent systems; The Silver Cord, a graphic novel about robots and angels; What Technology Wants, a robust theory of technology; Vanishing Asia, his 50-year project to photograph the disappearing cultures of Asia, and The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future, a New York Times bestseller.

    Kevin is currently co-chair of The Long Now Foundation, which is building a clock in a mountain that will tick for 10,000 years. He also has a daily blog; a weekly podcast about cool tools; and a weekly newsletter, Recomendo, a free, one-page list of six very brief recommendations of cool stuff. He is also a Senior Maverick at Wired. He lives in Pacifica, California.

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    Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Castbox, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Amazon Music, or on your favorite podcast platform. You can watch the interview on YouTube here.

    Brought to you by LinkedIn Jobs recruitment platform with 900M+ users, Pique premium pu’er tea crystals, and Eight Sleep’s Pod Cover sleeping solution for dynamic cooling and heating.

    The transcript of this episode can be found here. Transcripts of all episodes can be found here.

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    #669: Kevin Kelly — Excellent Advice for Living

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    Want to hear one of my favorite conversations with Kevin? Listen to this interview (recorded in three short parts), in which we discussed population implosions, The Long Now Foundation, organizational methods for learning, Amish technology assimilation, why you don’t want to be a billionaire, the greatest gift you can give to your child, and much more!

    #25: Interview of Kevin Kelly, Co-Founder of WIRED, Polymath, Most Interesting Man In The World?
    #26: Interview of Kevin Kelly, Co-Founder of WIRED, Polymath, Most Interesting Man In The World?
    #27: Interview of Kevin Kelly, Co-Founder of WIRED, Polymath, Most Interesting Man In The World?

    What was your favorite quote or lesson from this episode? Please let me know in the comments.

    Erratum: In the interview, Nova Scotia was named as the setting for Anne of Green Gables, whereas the setting is Prince Edward Island.

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    SHOW NOTES

    MORE KEVIN KELLY QUOTES FROM THE INTERVIEW

    “It isn’t as if these mechanical systems are imitating biology. I’m saying they actually have the same dynamics. The dynamics that are powering biology are powering the technium and the technology. It’s the same.”
    — Kevin Kelly

    “It’s very hard to make good, complicated things work because generally there’s more ways things can fail than they can succeed, and it’s very unlikely that we’re going to make something really good that’s complicated, inadvertently. They’re hard to do. So we have to see it and believe that it can be done, and that is where the optimism comes in, is envisioning something and then believing that you could make it real.”
    — Kevin Kelly

    “Exotropy is this idea of this increasing order that comes at the cost of increasing entropy.”
    — Kevin Kelly

    “Tools will get specialized. They will become so embedded that we will cease to think about them.”
    — Kevin Kelly

    “There’s something I call thinkism, which is this reliance on trying to solve problems by thinking about them.”
    — Kevin Kelly

    “You can find no better medicine for your family than regular meals together without screens.”
    — Kevin Kelly

    “What you do on your bad days matters more than what you do on your good days.”
    — Kevin Kelly

    “Greatness is incompatible with optimizing in the short term.”
    — Kevin Kelly

    “You don’t marry a person, you marry a family.”
    — Kevin Kelly

    “If you can’t tell what you desperately need, it’s probably sleep.”
    — Kevin Kelly

    “Don’t aim to have others like you, aim to have them respect you.”
    — Kevin Kelly

    “A balcony or porch needs to be at least six feet deep or it won’t be used.”
    — Kevin Kelly

    “Learn to tie a bowline knot. Practice in the dark with one hand for the rest of your life. You’ll use this knot more times than you could ever believe.”
    — Kevin Kelly

    “When you feel pressure to pick a choice, don’t forget the choice of not choosing any.”
    — Kevin Kelly

    “When you’re in your twenties, you should spend a little bit of time doing something that’s sort of crazy, insane, unprofitable, unorthodox, orthogonal, because that’s going to be your touchstone and the foundation of your success later on.”
    — Kevin Kelly

    “Don’t aim to be the best. Be the only.”
    — Kevin Kelly

    “You want to be doing something where it’s hard to explain to your mother what it is that you do.”
    — Kevin Kelly

    “Your enjoyment of travel is inversely proportional to the size of your luggage.”
    — Kevin Kelly

    “For the best results with your children, spend only half the money you think you should but double the time with them.”
    — Kevin Kelly

    “A vacation plus a disaster equals an adventure.”
    — Kevin Kelly

    “If an elementary school student is struggling, first thing, check their eyesight.”
    — Kevin Kelly

    “Purchase the most recent tourist guidebook to your hometown or region. You’ll learn a lot by playing the tourist once a year.”
    — Kevin Kelly

    “To signal an emergency, use the rule of three: Three shouts, three horn blasts, or three whistles.”
    — Kevin Kelly

    “When you’re stuck, explain your problem to others. Often simply laying out a problem will present a solution. Make ‘explaining the problem’ part of your troubleshooting process.”
    — Kevin Kelly

    “Your goal in life is to be able to say on the day before you die that you have fully become yourself.”
    — Kevin Kelly

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