Real artists ship.
Stated goal · Apple, c. 1983
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Build a personal computer in a garageWith Steve Wozniak. One board. Six customers. Ship.
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Make the computer feel humanDemand a font that reads like a book. Build the Macintosh.
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Get fired — and keep movingFound NeXT. Buy Pixar from George Lucas for $5M. Wait.
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Return. Cut 70% of the product line.Four quadrants on a whiteboard. Ship iMac.
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Put 1,000 songs in a pocketThen put the internet in a pocket. Then put the studio in a hand.
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Ship until the last dayNo prompt was the bottleneck. The list was the bottleneck.
Can you execute your unique ActionList?
The goal you state as a prompt drives the ActionList unique to you. Without that unique list, the genius dies silently.
My life is my message.
Stated goal · 1947 · self-attributed
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Spin your own clothWear khadi. Refuse the British mill. One spool a day. Compounds.
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Refuse cooperation, peacefullyResign British titles. Boycott their schools, their courts, their salt.
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Walk 240 miles to the seaPick up one fistful of salt. Make an empire visible to itself.
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Fast until the country listensBody as the audit log. Truth-force as the protocol.
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Repeat every day, for 32 yearsNo prompt engineering. Every action recorded. Every retreat retired.
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Witness independence on the 15thThe graph crystallised. A nation moved.
Why can you not compound?
Because your mind compounds. One action becomes a thousand. Your ActionList outlives you — that's the only intelligence that ever scaled.
Smile at one another.
Stated goal · Hadith · Tirmidhi
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Smile at the strangerCharity, free, with no marginal cost. The first node.
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Greet the neighbour by nameMemory is the precondition of community. Run the retrieval.
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Speak kindly — or stay silentThe Lance Rule, written 1,400 years before there was a model to enforce it.
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Share what you haveA date. A glass of water. A line of code. The graph grows on this.
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Forgive the slight before you sleepRetirement protocol. Otherwise the graph rots overnight.
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Repeat tomorrowCompounding is the only superpower that survives the listmaker.
Whose ActionList do you follow?
The attention you possess is limited. The ActionList you focus on every morning is the life you build by evening.