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thank you for sharing, you are the best

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of course!

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Interesting reflection on taste, developing taste, and how the reciprocal relationship between taste as a user and taste as a designer. The climbing videos were super cool!

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I like the idea of "superclarity".

What I always remind people is that it's the speaker's responsibility to ensure they're clear in their communication, not the listener's.

Once you see the task from this perspective, you'll enter the communication with a different (more effective) mindset.

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It's definitely a method to get less frustrated when someone doesn't understand you.

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Random thought when you mentioned sharing something from Paul at least every month. What if you were only ever allowed to read one thing from the same individual, ever? Never repeat read from the same person?

I first started thinking about this in terms of social pleasantries. How are you? Good. But what if you had to answer that question differently every single time? What might happen?

I’m confident Paul’s writing is awesome. I’m confident writers might initially hate this thought exercise. But it leads to considering what writing online is for. On the surface it’s about collecting new insights and perspectives. However, I have found over time, for me, that it’s just as much about creating relationships... and that’s why i probably read the same authors over and over again (like this newsletter :)

What do you think about that?

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I'm not sure what you mean. To identify something someone wrote that expresses their philosophy the most clearly?

I think online writing is as much for the writer as the reader. I write to clarify my thoughts. I write because I read/watch/hear things that make me rethink or think of edge cases of ideas. And the relationships you build through writing has the additional benefit of bringing more ideas or counterexamples.

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I see a parallel between the fun you're having with setting climbing routes and the work that Paul is doing. The pathless path is a self-designed climb that perfectly stretches the climber in ways that exercise his or her essential spirit. So in a way, it's not pathless at all. It's an intentional route that perfectly matches the growth needs of the climber. It just takes a while to find. And a big double-vote for grabbing Paul's book, it's beautifully written and inspiring.

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Oh wow, that's a great metaphor.

The way I think about the pathless path is when you are at the start or in the midst of the pathless path, it's pathless. But when you look back, it's a path. The dots always connect, but they're always invisible beforehand. This might have been an analogy that Paul made in the book.

But I really like the metaphor as setting a route as finding your pathless path. It's a blank slate and you're creating a challenging route. Too easy, and you're bored. Too difficult, and you quit. But it's self directed.

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Yeah I love both framings. I think I ways think of it as “you can’t explain it to someone on the default path” but also someone on a weird path doesn’t need an explanation

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What V levels are those routes??

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v3s at my gym

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