1% Smarter Newsletter No. 004
What I'm reading, listening to, and learning from the week ending 12/11/21
Early in the morning of January 25, 1996, a man named Jonathan Larson died unexpectedly in his New York City home from an undiagnosed heart condition. He was 35 years old.
Elsewhere in the city that evening, the musical Rent opened to its first live audience. An instant hit, it would win a Pulitzer Prize and three Tony Awards, including Best Musical. The musical appeared on Broadway for 12 consecutive years, making it one of the longest running shows in history.
What did these events have in common?
Larson was the playwright who created Rent. He did not live to see its success.
I watched Lin Manuel-Miranda’s movie tick, tick...BOOM! this past week, which chronicles Larson’s life as a struggling artist in New York. I am not a musical theater geek. What could I learn from the tale of a broke creative, aspiring to write the next Great American Musical while waiting tables to make ends meet?
Lots, actually.
Larson’s tragedy exemplifies the perils of the “arrival fallacy:” the idea that, upon reaching some long sought-after goal, life will finally feel complete; that upon achieving success, a heretofore elusive sense of contentment and peace will finally be obtained.
Arrival fallacy is all around us. Think about the fancy degree you studied for, the promotion you hustled for, the fitness goal you sweated for, the retirement you saved for. Once you reached the goal, of course, you likely experienced deep satisfaction at having worked hard to accomplish something difficult and great.
But how long did that feeling last? An hour, a day, a week? Probably much shorter than you expected. Suddenly, a new goal appeared on the horizon, and the original goal became yesterday’s news.
Are we condemned to spin on a hedonic treadmill, forever striving for some future contentment that always turns out to be a mirage?
Luckily, no. The antidote to the arrival fallacy is to find purpose and joy in the process, not merely the outcome.
If Larson succumbed to the arrival fallacy, he would have died an unsatisfied man. Despite dedicating his life to musical theater, he had few accolades or traditional measures of success at the time of his demise.
However, if he found happiness and fulfillment in the journey itself, then I expect he died in peace, having spent his life creating his unique form of art.
May we all choose the latter path: to set lofty and audacious goals, yes, but also to learn to love the process of striving for them.
💡 Featured Content
My top picks this week (best if viewed in order)
📺 Bitcoin Plunge featuring Adam Davidson on The Colbert Report (2013)
📄 From contemptuous to indifferent to curious to pretty damn excited: my journey to web3 by Adam Davidson (2021)
🖥 Web3
📄 The Pareto Funtier by Packy McCormick
🎧 CryptoPunks – The NFTs That Started It All. Their Origin Story and Future Plans on Modern Finance
🎧 5 Mental Models for Web3 featuring Chris Dixon on Bankless
👨💻 Tech History
📄 Why the Web Won't Be Nirvana by Clifford Stoll (1995)
📺 What is the Internet? featuring Bill Gates on Late Night with David Letterman (1995)
🏛 Government and Policy
📄 As Violence Arrives in Rich Neighborhoods, Liberals And Ex-Radicals Buy Guns And Mobilize To Oust Progressive D.A.s by Michael Shellenberger
💰 Money & Investing
📄 How People Get Rich Now by Paul Graham
📄 The new Fear and Greed by Josh Brown
📄 It’s OK To Build Wealth Slowly by Ben Carlson
📄 The Nothingness of Money by Lawrence Yeo
🎨 The Arts
tick, tick...BOOM! featuring Andrew Garfield and directed by Lin Manuel-Miranda
🌐 Miscellaneous
Questions by Patrick Collison