Wisereads Vol. 54 — How to Live on 24 Hours a Day, The Silicon Valley Canon, and more

Last week, we shared Candide by Voltaire, a classic satirical novella that comments on the folly of obstinate optimism. This week, we're sharing How to Live on 24 Hours a Day, a short guide from 1910 on making the most of your time.

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Following a tweet from Patrick Collison of Stripe, Tanner Greer reflects on what defines greatness in the Silicon Valley community through the lens of its unofficial reading list. "Intelligence is only one of the two altars worshiped in Silicon Valley. The other is action. The founders of the Valley invariably think of themselves as men of action: they code, they build, disrupt, they invent, they conquer. This is a culture where insight, intelligence, and knowledge are treasured—but treasured as tools of action, not goods in and of themselves."

For better or worse, first impressions can shape the trajectory of a relationship. James Buckhouse, Design Partner at Sequoia Capital, unpacks the art of a memorable first greeting. "If someone asks you 'what do you do?' resist the temptation to respond with your job title. Instead, respond with an 'I believe' statement… Open with an idea, and the conversation is already interesting before it begins. We crave interestingness over almost all else."

The Times considers how a humble survivalist outpost in Alaska evolved into the world’s third-largest retailer. "It would be hard to argue that Costco buyers don’t know what they are getting into. After all, they have to ferry the cart with the seven-foot artificial tree, the solar panel, the steel pet coffin and the three-month supply of Belgian mini-cream puffs back to the car. 'The idea is that you don’t feel that these are temptations,' said Ayelet Fishbach, a behavioral psychologist at the University of Chicago, Booth School of Business. 'You’re getting a great deal.'"

Why do vacations seem to fly by, yet in hindsight, they feel longer than our everyday routines? Productivity expert Ali Abdaal examines this paradox and the neuroscience behind our distorted sense of time. "There's actually two different types of time perception. There is in-the-moment time perception and then there is remembered time perception… If you're doing something very stimulating and there is a lot of change, and a lot of novelty, that absolutely flies by in the moment. There's a lot going on, it's very exciting, but then when you remember it, it feels very long because you have all these novel memories."

Tim Denning compiles the sage advice of Wired Senior Maverick and author Kevin Kelly in his latest thread, including: "Almost anything money can do, friends can do better. In so many ways a friend with a boat is better than owning a boat," and "When crisis and disaster strike, don’t waste them."

Borrowing a character from Benjamin Graham's The Intelligent Investor, Howard Marks sheds light on market volatility following the Bank of Japan's rate increase. "Graham intended Mr. Market as a metaphor for the market as a whole. Given Mr. Market’s inconsistent behavior, the prices he assigns to stocks each day can diverge – sometimes wildly – from their fair value. When he’s overenthusiastic, you can sell to him at prices that are intrinsically too high. And when he’s overly fearful, you can buy from him at prices that are fundamentally too low. Thus, his miscalculations provide profit opportunities to investors interested in taking advantage of them."

In response to conventional financial advice like "How to live on eight shillings a week," Arnold Bennett penned his own short but impactful guide: How to Live on 24 Hours a Day.

"It has been said that time is money. That proverb understates the case. Time is a great deal more than money. If you have time you can obtain money—usually. But though you have the wealth of a cloak-room attendant at the Carlton Hotel, you cannot buy yourself a minute more time than I have, or the cat by the fire has."

First published in 1910 and praised by Ali Abdaal and Farnam Street, this classic offers timeless wisdom on maximizing your day. We invite you to check out other editions from Global Grey, where Julie, a solo curator, has meticulously formatted over 2,500 public domain ebooks.

Jane Ratcliffe's Substack, Beyond, features essays, writing advice, and interviews with the greatest "heart-centered" authors. From Listen To My Gut, with Julie Barton: "One of my all time favorite pieces of wisdom is Georgia O’Keeffe’s line, 'I have already settled it for myself so flattery and criticism go down the same drain and I am quite free.'... When my sad-girl and soul dog memoir hit the New York Times Bestseller list, O’Keefe’s words so beautifully encapsulated how I was feeling. Of course I was thrilled that the book was well received, but I also began to realize that praise like that wouldn’t do what I thought it would do: fix my life or make me a creative workhorse."