Netflix You Quotes

you are the bane of my existence, and the object of all my desires

Netflix learned a similar lesson early on in its life cycle: don’t trust what people tell you; trust what they do.

I wasn't loneliness if it could be eradicated with work or a Netflix marathon or a good book. Real loneliness would stick with you all the time. Real loneliness would hurt you nonstop.

Oh my God, are you trying to get citizenship? Are they deporting you back to Canada because we’ve been sharing Malcolm’s Netflix password? Tell them we didn’t know it was a federal crime. No, wait, don’t tell them anything until we get you a lawyer. And, Ol, I will marry you. I’ll get you a green card and you won’t have to—

Be sad, hell, sit in bed all weekend and just watch Netflix. I’ve had those times too. But don’t stop living your life for them.

As you get older, if you’re at all self-aware, you learn two important things about yourself: what you like, and what you’re good at. Anyone who gets to spend his day doing both of those things is a lucky man.

Netflix means not having to suck in your stomach or think of anything smart or adorable to say. It means a whole night of not wondering what people think about you. No alcohol, and no flirtation, and no confusion, and every organ calm and settled.

It’s taboo to admit that you’re lonely. You can make jokes about it, of course. You can tell people that you spend most of your time with Netflix or that you haven’t left the house today and you might not even go outside tomorrow. Ha ha, funny. But rarely do you ever tell people about the true depths of your loneliness, about how you feel more and more alienated from your friends each passing day and you’re not sure how to fix it. It seems like everyone is just better at living than you are. A part of you knew this was going to happen. Growing up, you just had this feeling that you wouldn’t transition well to adult life, that you’d fall right through the cracks. And look at you now. La di da, it’s happening. Your mother, your father, your grandparents: they all look at you like you’re some prized jewel and they tell you over and over again just how lucky you are to be young and have your whole life ahead of you. “Getting old ain’t for sissies,” your father tells you wearily. You wish they’d stop saying these things to you because all it does is fill you with guilt and panic. All it does is remind you of how much you’re not taking advantage of your youth. You want to kiss all kinds of different people, you want to wake up in a stranger’s bed maybe once or twice just to see if it feels good to feel nothing, you want to have a group of friends that feels like a tribe, a bonafide family. You want to go from one place to the next constantly and have your weekends feel like one long epic day. You want to dance to stupid music in your stupid room and have a nice job that doesn’t get in the way of living your life too much. You want to be less scared, less anxious, and more willing. Because if you’re closed off now, you can only imagine what you’ll be like later. Every day you vow to change some aspect of your life and every day you fail. At this point, you’re starting to question your own power as a human being. As of right now, your fears have you beat. They’re the ones that are holding your twenties hostage. Stop thinking that everyone is having more sex than you, that everyone has more friends than you, that everyone out is having more fun than you. Not because it’s not true (it might be!) but because that kind of thinking leaves you frozen. You’ve already spent enough time feeling like you’re stuck, like you’re watching your life fall through you like a fast dissolve and you’re unable to hold on to anything. I don’t know if you ever get better. I don’t know if a person can just wake up one day and decide to be an active participant in their life. I’d like to think so. I’d like to think that people get better each and every day but that’s not really true. People get worse and it’s their stories that end up getting forgotten because we can’t stand an unhappy ending. The sick have to get better. Our normalcy depends upon it. You have to value yourself. You have to want great things for your life. This sort of shit doesn’t happen overnight but it can and will happen if you want it. Do you want it bad enough? Does the fear of being filled with regret in your thirties trump your fear of living today? We shall see.

you're going to get things wrong. you just don't want to get the same things wrong twice.

If you give employees more freedom instead of developing processes to prevent them from exercising their own judgment, they will make better decisions and it’s easier to hold them accountable.

it made our workforce smarter. When you give low-level employees access to information that is generally reserved for high-level executives, they get more done on their own. They work faster without stopping to ask for information and approval. They make better decisions without needing input from the top.

I get the bedroom and Netflix, and you wander the island to check on your hidden horcruxes.

We already share a meal service subscription and a Netflix account. In fact, if you won’t marry me, I’m going to change my password.

It wasn’t loneliness if it could be eradicated with work or a Netflix marathon or a good book. Real loneliness would stick with you all the time. Real loneliness would hurt you nonstop.

You see, a startup is a lonely place. You are working on something that no one believes in, that you’ve been told time and time again will never work. It’s you against the world. But the reality is that you can’t really do it on your own. You need to enlist help. Bring others around to your way of thinking. Let them share in your enthusiasm.

Adulthood was all about compromises, wasn’t it? You decide what you need, what you want, and shift your priorities around until you find the least bad combination. Each compromise was a link in a chain, and if that chain dragged you down to the bottom of the East River? Well … at least you had Netflix and Spotify to distract you while you sank.

Culture isn’t what you say. It’s what you do.

What movie do you want to watch? I have Netflix, so we have a lot of options.

What? I have great taste in guys.” “Your taste is questionable at best. Just last week you were drooling over that guy on the Netflix show we were watching.” “And . . .” “Bon, it was a documentary about a serial killer.

Did you get me that movie about Genghis Khan? 'It's in the Netflix queue, but that's not the surprise. You don't need to worry, it'll be something good. I just don't want you to feel depressed about going home.' Oh, I won't. But it would be cool to have a stream like this in the backyard. Can you make one? 'Ummm... no.' I figured. Can't blame a hound for trying. Oberon was indeed surprised when we got back home to Tempe. Hal had made the arrangements for me and Oberon perked up as soon as we were dropped off by the shuttle from the car rental company. 'Hey, smells like someone's in my territory,' he said. 'Nobody could be here without my permission, you know that.' 'Flidais did it.' 'That isn't Flidais you smell, believe me.' I opened the front door, and Oberon immediately ran to the kitchen window that gazed upon the backyard. He barked joyously when he saw what was waiting for him there. 'French poodles! All black and curly with poofy little tails!' 'And every one of them in heat.' 'Oh, WOW! Thanks Atticus! I can't wait to sniff their asses!' He bounded over to the door and pawed at it because the doggie door was closed to prevent the poodles from entering. 'You earned it, buddy. Hold on, get down off the door so I can open it for you, and be careful, don't hurt any of them.' I opened the door, expecting him to bolt through it and dive into his own personal canine harem, but instead he took one step and stopped, looking up at me with a mournful expression, his ears drooping and a tiny whine escaping his snout. 'Only five?

So I’ll call you?” he asks, smiling. “We can Netflix and chill?” He laughs as he says it, leaning against the car with his hands in his pockets. “You’re an asshole, Sawyer! And you’re at least a decade too old to be using that phrase!

Surely there must be something we can do to combat aging’s normal but corrosive affects on memory performance. These declines in memory creation, retrieval, and processing speed aren’t all inevitable, are they? You’re not gonna like this, but appears the answer is ultimately yes. If you eat a daily diet of doughnuts, only go for a run if someone is chasing you, regularly sacrifice sleep by binge watching entire seasons of the latest show on Netflix until 3 AM, and are chronically stressed, you’ll most definitely accelerate the ageing of your memory.

If you have a team of five stunning employees and two adequate ones, the adequate ones will sap managers’ energy, so they have less time for the top performers, reduce the quality of group discussions, lowering the team’s overall IQ, force others to develop ways to work around them, reducing efficiency, drive staff who seek excellence to quit, and show the team you accept mediocrity, thus multiplying the problem.

If you’re watching Netflix every time it’s time for you to do X, that’s a hiding place. You’re afraid to face the fear of imperfection that comes along with every endeavor, so you’re hiding from it by doing something that requires no skill. You might write a bad sentence on your blog, but no one’s going to critique the way you watch TV. “I

The Fearless Organization, she explains that if you want to encourage innovation, you should develop an environment where people feel safe to dream, speak up, and take risks. The safer the atmosphere, the more innovation you will have.

Adrian Cockcroft, Netflix’s seminal cloud architect, was once asked by a senior leader in a Fortune 500 company where he got his amazing people from. Cockcroft replied, “I hired them from you!

Are we Netflix and chilling?” he asks. Jai makes a face. “I don’t know what that means.” “Are you twenty-five or are you eighty-five?” Nick asks, eyes bright. “Whippersnapper,” Jai grumbles, and Nick laughs.

Humility is important in a leader and role model. When you succeed, speak about it softly or let others mention it for you. But when you make a mistake say it clearly and loudly, so that everyone can learn and profit from your errors. In other words, “Whisper wins and shout mistakes.

Oh, I have big plans. Netflix, ice cream, cutting Gabe out of all my pictures and burning his head. It’s gonna be a whole thing.

Why would you want YouTube, Facebook or Netflix running in a decentralized way with no central body in charge? It eliminates the problem of excessive personal information on Facebook, or your YouTube viewing habits being monitored and marketed to.

The problem with your generation,” the professor preached, sticking his hands into his pockets, “is a bloated sense of entitlement. You feel owed everything, and you want it now. Why suffer the sweet agony of watching a television series just to find out the big reveal you’ve waited years to discover when you can just wait for the entire series to appear on Netflix and watch all fifty episodes in three days, right?” “Exactly!” a guy on the other side of the room blurted out. “Work smarter, not harder.

above all you have to be humble, you have to be curious, and you have to remember to listen before you speak and to learn before you teach. With this approach, you can’t help but become more effective every day in this ever-fascinating multicultural world.

The weak breeze whispers nothing the water screams sublime. His feet shift, teeter-totter deep breaths, stand back, it’s time. Toes untouch the overpass soon he’s water-bound. Eyes locked shut but peek to see the view from halfway down. A little wind, a summer sun a river rich and regal. A flood of fond endorphins brings a calm that knows no equal. You’re flying now, you see things much more clear than from the ground. It's all okay, or it would be were you not now halfway down. Thrash to break from gravity what now could slow the drop? All I’d give for toes to touch the safety back at top. But this is it, the deed is done silence drowns the sound. Before I leaped I should've seen the view from halfway down. I really should’ve thought about the view from halfway down. I wish I could've known about the view from halfway down—

I think one of the reasons that I feel empty after watching a lot of TV, and one of the things that makes TV seductive, is that it gives the illusion of relationships with people. It's a way to have people in the room talking and being entertaining, but it doesn't require anything of me. I mean, I can see them, they can't see me. And, and, they're there for me, and I can, I can receive from the TV, I can receive entertainment and stimulation. Without having to give anything back but the most tangential kind of attention. And that is very seductive. The problem is it's also very empty. Because one of the differences about having a real person there is that number one, I've gotta do some work. Like, he pays attention to me, I gotta pay attention to him. You know: I watch him, he watches me. The stress level goes up. But there's also, there's something nourishing about it, because I think like as creatures, we've all got to figure out how to be together in the same room. And so TV is like candy in that it's more pleasurable and easier than the real food. But it also doesn't have any of the nourishment of real food. And the thing, what the book is supposed to be about is, What has happened to us, that I'm now willing--and I do this too--that I'm willing to derive enormous amounts of my sense of community and awareness of other people, from television? But I'm not willing to undergo the stress and awkwardness and potential shit of dealing with real people. And that as the Internet grows, and as our ability to be linked up, like--I mean, you and I coulda done this through e-mail, and I never woulda had to meet you, and that woulda been easier for me. Right? Like, at a certain point, we're gonna have to build some machinery, inside our guts, to help us deal with this. Because the technology is just gonna get better and better and better and better. And it's gonna get easier and easier, and more and more convenient, and more and more pleasurable, to be alone with images on a screen, given to us by people who do not love us but want our money. Which is all right. In low doses, right? But if that's the basic main staple of your diet, you're gonna die. In a meaningful way, you're going to die.

Streamline your products by choosing the bare minimum for your most necessary jobs. Don’t force yourself to choose among five different cleaners like you’re scrolling a Netflix queue of disinfectants. Pick up a bottle and go clean. You don’t need to waste time choosing

I had to find the courage to start saying no to things I didn't want to do because once you turn thirty, pretending starts taking a toll on your immune system. I had to learn how to say no to others and yes to myself, and today I no longer feel ashamed for not being "fun" and being down for every draining activity I'm asked to do. I'm no longer terrified I'll be judged, abandoned, rejected, or left out. And if I am, good. Turns out it's kind of my dream to be left out of doing things I don't want to do. What this means is that unless your invite involves cheese, Netflix, Mexican wrestling, Moscow mules, or actual mules, chances are, in the words of Randy Jackson, "That's gonna be a no for me, dog.

How amazing I look?” “You looked amazing before we came here. What have you been doing in there for almost four hours? Watching Netflix?” She tilts her head to the side and pouts. “You have an interesting way of giving compliments.

Come on." She grabbed my arm and hauled me to my feet. "You're not going to sit around and watch Netflix and eat ice cream all day. Get in the shower." "But I like ice cream..." My argument was ineffective as she manhandled me down the hall toward the bathroom. "You'll like brunch better." She was right. Brunch had mimosas.

And so the cycle of innocence found, lost, found again, and finally lost is complete. Just as a peanut is neither a pea nor a nut… and a thighmaster is neither a thigh nor a master… so our hero learned that Netflix and Chill means neither Netflix nor Chill. And if you’re just learning this for the first time, welcome to the end of your innocence.

I can't let you take the blame for something I did. You have too much to lose.

You don't realize how strong you are until you have to be.

do at least 10% more than you are asked to

There is a DIY Netflix Project which creates a pair of socks that will pause what you're watching if you fall asleep while watching.

Please, if it’s before one a.m., it doesn’t even count as a booty call. You’re still on ‘Netflix and Chill’ time.

I've always been 15 to 20 years ahead. As one of the first publishers to publish digitally in 2000 to become a digital publishing pioneer, before the Kindle and the height of digital book publishing in 2012-2015; I had digital books published, was one of the first on Amazon as an independent publisher, and became a beta for them years later. 20 Years before streaming networks like Amazon Prime, Netflix, and Hulu became the giants that they are in streaming; I envisioned a digital library of films and videos (even wrote about one in a scenario in my contemporary fiction book Loving Summer years later), which now became a form of streaming on-demand video today. This all comes from vision, being able to see far ahead through imagination as well as real evidence. When you can see this; you are truly blessed and gifted." Kailin Gow, Futurist, STEM Books Bestselling Award-winning Author and Publisher

I'm still in love with you. I tried not to be, it didn't work...I want another chance. I'm in love with you. Mark, i- i have a boyfriend. I know. I'm saying you can have a husband.

Self-driving cars are so lonely. Are you really going to use all that extra commute time to binge-watch Netflix? Why not hire me to sit next to you and whistle all your favorite tunes?

And then there's this: no matter how many bullshit stories you have or don't have, there are no guarantees in life. Nothing is owed to us. That "not knowing" is scary, but the tools to help us--writing, breathing, yoga, connecting--are all we have. And honestly, sometimes the tools are Netflix and coffee as well as breathing and yoga and writing. But we must have tools.

If people want what you have, they will break down your door, leap over broken links, and beg you for more. If they don’t want what you’ve got, changing the color palette won’t make a damned bit of difference.

If you’ve ever binge-watched a season or two of a TV show on Netflix when you should be studying, or finishing an assignment, or going to sleep, you know how an appealing distraction can trigger a self-defeating choice.

Honestly, couples who don’t fight freak me out. They’re like one broken dish away from snapping. The next thing you know, they’ll be the subjects of a Netflix documentary series titled Love and Murder: The Couple Next Door.

You browse through Netflix or Hotstar to find something interesting to watch. At last, you end up watching your favourite show that you have already watched several times. This world is also a show. But there are many such shows available in parallel realms. When you go to sleep here, your soul browses through the list of other shows, watches a few teasers, but at last comes back to this show because it is attached to the characters of this show.

Why are you so surprised? Joss Whedon is a god. I never would have made it through med school without Netflix and Buffy the Vampire Slayer.” “Buffy?” Wren said the name like she was talking about one of her best friends. “All six seasons?

Why suffer the sweet agony of watching a television series just to find out the big reveal you’ve waited years to discover when you can just wait for the entire series to appear on Netflix and watch all fifty episodes in three days, right?

That’s when we added a new element to our culture. We now say that it is disloyal to Netflix when you disagree with an idea and do not express that disagreement. By withholding your opinion, you are implicitly choosing to not help the company.

Truths like: Distrust epiphanies. The best ideas rarely come on a mountaintop in a flash of lightning. They don’t even come to you on the side of a mountain, when you’re stuck in traffic behind a sand truck. They make themselves apparent more slowly, gradually, over weeks and months. And in fact, when you finally have one, you might not realize it for a long time.

Most women learn the hard way never to let a man treat you like worn out old house slippers, only good for taking to bed or for comfort while he watches tv. If he wouldn't take you into the world, proudly, for everyone to see, he can do Netflix alone.

Want to watch a movie? Netflix is a better librarian, with a better library, than any library in the country. The Netflix librarian knows about every movie, knows what you’ve seen and what you’re likely to want to see. If the goal is to connect viewers with movies, Netflix wins.

Barry Schwartz points out in his book, The Paradox of Choice, that this kind of sheep-in-wolf’s-clothing decision is more likely to come up the more options you have to choose from. The greater the number of available options, the greater the likelihood that more than one of those options will look pretty good to you. The more options that look pretty good to you, the more time you spend in analysis paralysis. That’s the paradox: more choice, more anxiety. Remember, if the only choices are between Paris and a trout cannery, no one has a problem. But what if the choices are Paris or Rome or Amsterdam or Santorini or Machu Picchu? You get the picture. THE ONLY-OPTION TEST For any options you’re considering, ask yourself, “If this were the only option I had, would I be happy with it?” A useful tool you can use to break the gridlock is the Only-Option Test. If this were the only thing I could order on the menu . . . If this were the only show I could watch on Netflix tonight . . . If this were the only place I could go for vacation . . . If this were the only college I got accepted to . . . If this were the only house I could buy . . . If this were the only job I got offered . . . The Only-Option Test clears away the debris cluttering your decision. If you’d be happy if Paris were your only option, and you’d be happy if Rome were your only option, that reveals that if you just flip a coin, you’ll be happy whichever way the coin lands.

Other signs of the apocalypse proliferate. After a pop-up ad appears on her screen, Vivian announces that she plans to sign up for Netflix. She buys a digital camera on Amazon with one click. She asks Molly if she's ever seen the sneezing baby panda video on YouTube. She even joins Facebook.

Ever notice how on a bad day you never deserve a salad? I mean how long do you think your bad mood would really last if you only fed your brat celery? How many bad days would your brat tolerate if it no longer got rewarded a drink, a cigarette, or an entire Netflix series on the couch for it.

Streamline your products by choosing the bare minimum for your most necessary jobs. Don’t force yourself to choose among five different cleaners like you’re scrolling a Netflix queue of disinfectants. Pick up a bottle and go clean. You don’t need to waste time choosing something when you can decide once.

Perhaps love in the digital age is more like Netflix binge-watching: we enjoy bursts of fantasy, and then move on to something else when it’s done. Like browsing for a new series on Netflix, if the relationship doesn’t fit perfectly, you can trade it in for something new with the click of a button or a swipe on your phone.

What is Netflix and chill?” Okay, if I hadn’t already put my foot down, Dante’s lack of current pop culture without a doubt makes the decision an easy one. “It’s code for a fuck session.” I gape at Cain in shock. “No, it isn’t!” The asshole just quirks a brow. “When it’s you and us, wearing sweats and squished on a sofa together… yeah, it is.

Be careful with what you know. That's where most people's troubles begin.

There are bad ideas. But you don’t know an idea is bad until you’ve tried it.

Embrace iteration as the road to improvement, but don't let that lull you into rolling out poorly-thought-out crap.

that—no matter where you come from—when it comes to working across cultural differences, talk, talk, talk.

If you’re hiring someone for an operational position, say window washer, ice-cream scooper, or driver, the best employee might deliver double the value of the average.

The more you and others in your company respond to all candid moments with belonging cues, the more courageous people will be in their candor.

Thank you, Caillou, for having a nonphonetic title so my son cannot look you up on Netflix.

Netflix came to a similar conclusion for improving its recommendation algorithm. Decoding movies’ traits to figure out what you like was very complex and less accurate than simply analogizing you to many other customers with similar viewing histories. Instead of predicting what you might like, they examine who you are like, and the complexity is captured therein.

The challenge, however, is that Google, Facebook, Netflix, and Amazon do not publish their algorithms. In fact, the methods they use to filter the information you see are deeply proprietary and the “secret sauce” that drives each company’s profitability. The problem with this invisible “black box” algorithmic approach to information is that we do not know what has been edited out for us and what we are not seeing. As a result, our digital lives, mediated through a sea of screens, are being actively manipulated and filtered on a daily basis in ways that are both opaque and indecipherable.

This is the nub of F&R. If your people choose to abuse the freedom you give them, you need to fire them and fire them loudly, so others understand the ramifications. Without this, freedom doesn’t work.

If you trust your people to handle appropriately sensitive information, the trust you demonstrate will instigate feelings of responsibility and your employees will show you just how trustworthy they are.

I get the bedroom and Netflix, you wander the island to check on your hidden horcruxes." "You know in order to create a horcruxx you have to have murdered someone, right?" I stare up at him, hating the tiny fluttering that get going in my chest because he knows the Harry Potter reference. I knew he was a book lover, but to be the same kind of book lover I am? It makes my insides melt. "You just made my joke very dark, Ethan.

How we spend our time says a lot about who we are. To a great extent, our habits define us. You might call yourself an artist, but if you spend most of your time on the sofa watching Netflix, you're really a couch potato.

I felt him smile against my skin as he continued his path. “Me neither. How about you, me, and Netflix?” Hell, yeah. “And no one can know I’m messing around with a pansy-ass rich boy, okay? I’d lose my street cred.” He snorted, shaking with laughter. “Hey, it’s not the label on the jeans but what’s inside that matters.” And he hefted me up, gripping my ass and pressing me to him. I moaned, feeling the heat between us. Yeah, okay, smart ass.

What do they all say? That will never work. By now, I hope you know what my answer to that line is. Nobody Knows Anything. I only get to write this book once. And I’d feel like I missed an opportunity if I ended this story without giving you some advice. The most powerful step that anyone can take to turn their dreams into reality is a simple one: you just need to start. The only real way to find out if your idea is a good one is to do it. You’ll learn more in one hour of doing something than in a lifetime of thinking about it. So take that step. Build something, make something, test something, sell something. Learn for yourself if your idea is a good one. What happens if your idea doesn’t work? What happens if your test fails, if nobody orders your product or joins your club? What if sales don’t go up and customer complaints don’t go down? What if you get halfway through writing your novel and get writer’s block? What if after dozens of tries – even hundreds of attempts – you still haven’t seen your dream become anything close to real? You have to learn to love the problem, not the solution. That’s how you stay engaged when things take longer than you expected.

Habits are built on consistency, and you build consistency by showing up again and again. It’s not about the actual workout, how many shirts you hang up, or what you do after you turn off Netflix; the point is, you went to the gym, made it to the bedroom for tidying, and turned off the TV. If you just keep showing up, it will feel far more natural and effortless to do more—get into the workout, fold the rest of the laundry, or prep your lunch for the next day. Chase consistency.

If you are continuously choosing video games, Netflix, or anything else over your spouse and your marriage, your marriage will seriously suffer long-term. If you aren’t making your spouse a priority, you are not fulfilling your marital vows. You married a person; your Netflix account, your console, and even your children should not come before your marriage. In fact, what your kids need more than to be in seven extracurriculars is to have a family that is stable, loving, and fun.

Maybe this is a bad time to bring this up, but you need to pay your credit card bill. It’s maxed out, and you’ve missed the past two due dates. And the thing is—and this is going to sound selfish, because it is—but your Netflix account got suspended, and I was only halfway through season three of Cheers. The laugh track is a bit off-putting, but it’s still a good show. I really love the plot twist that Norm’s nagging wife, Vera, turns out to have been dead for ten years, and Norm has kept her memory alive by continuing a fictional narrative about her. Sam and Diane knew that Vera wasn’t really alive and that Norm was delusional, but in episode seven, when they go to check in on Norm, they find him cuddled up next to her decayed corpse and reading her Lord Byron’s “The First Kiss of Love,” and he’s crying. The stench is unbearable, but less unbearable than the brutal truth of the moment. My point is, I didn’t get to finish watching Cheers because you’re behind on your credit card payments. I need you to deal with that.

Faced with this disparity, Netflix stopped asking people to tell them what they wanted to see in the future and started building a model based on millions of clicks and views from similar customers. The company began greeting its users with suggested lists of films based not on what they claimed to like but on what the data said they were likely to view. The result: customers visited Netflix more frequently and watched more movies. “The algorithms know you better than you know yourself,” says Xavier Amatriain, a former data scientist at Netflix.

I've been thinking about what you said about seeing and not seeing. I had a painting teacher once tell me that the difference between a good painting and a great painting is typically five strokes. And they're usually the five boldest strokes in the painting. The question is, of course, is which five strokes?

A lot of times a new relationship might feel less exciting simply because it’s healthy! There isn’t the agonizing push and pull you had with that jerk who didn’t want to commit but liked to Netflix and chill occasionally. You’re not experiencing a roller coaster of emotions every twelve hours for days on end. You’re not so confused about their intentions that you’re rereading every text conversation fifty times. So your OCD or anxiety tries to make sense of this big change and falsely decides, “You don’t like this new person enough.” When in reality, drama does not equal love. Oftentimes, it means the exact opposite.

So what now? After we all leave this church, leave the reception, go home, put in laundry, watch a show on Netflix, go to bed, get up tomorrow. And tomorrow. And tomorrow. This has to mean something. Something lasting. I mean, why do we do this thing, wakes and funerals? A sign of respect, of course, for the dead. A sign of respect for the family. But I wonder if it’s also for all of us. Each of us here. Surely it’s a reminder. But perhaps also a call to a state of grace, if only for a few moments. A pause to remember how fleeting our own mortality is. I had an office mate.” I was tempted to look at Tuan but couldn’t quite do it.

So be the father and husband who makes wild love to your wife at night, wakes early in the morning to bake your family chocolate chip cookies for the evening family dinner, then rips your boys out of bed to go lift heavy kettlebells in the garage and drag sandbags up and down the driveway—followed by dirty, sweaty bear hugs afterward. But don't be the father and husband who stays absent and distracted with "noble" email and social media work all day, then gathers the family round Netflix in the basement in the evening so they can eat takeout while you have an excuse to dink on your phone some more as they're distracted by their own giant screen.

WHEN ONE OF YOUR PEOPLE DOES SOMETHING DUMB DON’T BLAME THEM. INSTEAD ASK YOURSELF WHAT CONTEXT YOU FAILED TO SET. ARE YOU ARTICULATE AND INSPIRING ENOUGH IN EXPRESSING YOUR GOALS AND STRATEGY? HAVE YOU CLEARLY EXPLAINED ALL THE ASSUMPTIONS AND RISKS THAT WILL HELP YOUR TEAM TO MAKE GOOD DECISIONS? ARE YOU AND YOUR EMPLOYEES HIGHLY ALIGNED ON VISION AND OBJECTIVES?

PIPs are of course expensive. If you put someone on a four-month PIP, that’s four months you have to pay an underperformer and countless hours spent by the line manager and HR enforcing and documenting the process. Instead of pouring that capital into a prolonged PIP, give it to the employee in a nice, big, up-front severance package, tell him you’re sorry it didn’t work out, and wish him well in his next adventure.

There are only three kinds of relationships in the animal kingdom. The first is commensalism. One example: Fish finding hiding spots in coral reefs. Fish profit, but life for the coral doesn’t change. Then there’s mutualism, a relationship where both animals benefit from each other. The tricky thing about animals is you don’t always know what kind of relationship you’re in. Which brings me to relationship number three. The parasitic.

if you hire a high-performing chef and give her free range to cook what she wants, but you haven’t shared that your family hates salt and that any salad dressing with sugar will be rejected by all, it’s likely your household of fusspots won’t like the meal delivered to their plates. In this case, it’s not your chef’s fault. It’s yours. You hired the right person, but you didn’t provide enough context. You gave your cook freedom, but you and your chef were not aligned.

There are also generational knowledges in play, accessed and skilled within a history of televisual experiments in educational entertainment. For US academics schooled in the fifties, sixties, and seventies some old TV shows haunt this vignette as well. Two are Walter Cronkite’s You Are There (CBS, 1953–57) and Steve Allen’s Meeting of Minds (PBS, 1977–81). During the mid-century decades either or both could be found on the TV screen and in US secondary school classrooms. Even now the thoughtfully presentist You are There reenactments can be viewed on DVDs from Netflix; you can be personally addressed and included as Cronkite interviews Socrates about his choice to poison himself with hemlock rather than submit to exile after ostracism in ancient Athens. Cronkite’s interviews, scripted by blacklisted Hollywood writers, were specifically charged with messages against McCarthy-style witch hunts that were “felt” rather than spoken out.

Amusing ourselves to death,” as the social critic Neil Postman called it, has never been more convenient.[3] You can disappear into the black hole of Netflix, become a workaholic in pursuit of riches or fame, or simply “eat, drink, and be merry” in the adult playground of the modern city. Western culture is arguably built around the denial of death through the coping mechanism of distraction. As Ronald Rolheiser put it, “We are distracting ourselves into spiritual oblivion.”[4]

symphony isn’t what you’re going for. Leave the conductor and the sheet music behind. Build a jazz band instead. Jazz emphasizes individual spontaneity. The musicians know the overall structure of the song but have the freedom to improvise, riffing off one another other, creating incredible music. Of course, you can’t just remove the rules and processes, tell your team to be a jazz band, and expect it to be so. Without the right conditions, chaos will ensue. But now, after reading this book, you have a map. Once you begin to hear the music, keep focused. Culture isn’t something you can build up and then ignore. At Netflix, we are constantly debating our culture and expecting it will continually evolve. To build a team that is innovative, fast, and flexible, keep things a little bit loose. Welcome constant change. Operate a little closer toward the edge of chaos. Don’t provide a musical score and build a symphonic orchestra. Work on creating those jazz conditions and hire the type of employees who long to be part of an improvisational band. When it all comes together, the music is beautiful.

Here are some questions that not only will elicit stories but also might yield relatively interesting answers: • “How did you spend your morning today?” • “What’s the farthest you’ve ever been from another human?” • “What’s something weird or unusual you did early on in life?” • “What’s a story one of your references might tell me when I call them?” • “If I was the perfect Netflix, what type of movies would I recommend for you and why?” • “How do you feel you are different from the people at your current company?” • “What views do you hold religiously, almost irrationally?” • “How did you prepare for this interview?” • “What subreddits, blogs, or online communities do you enjoy?” • “What is something esoteric you do?

STEP 4: BEWARE OF LIMINAL MOMENTS Liminal moments are transitions from one thing to another throughout our days. Have you ever picked up your phone while waiting for a traffic light to change, then found yourself still looking at your phone while driving? Or opened a tab in your web browser, got annoyed by how long it’s taking to load, and opened up another page while you waited? Or looked at a social media app while walking from one meeting to the next, only to keep scrolling when you got back to your desk? There’s nothing wrong with any of these actions per se. Rather, what’s dangerous is that by doing them “for just a second,” we’re likely to do things we later regret, like getting off track for half an hour or getting into a car accident. A technique I’ve found particularly helpful for dealing with this distraction trap is the “ten-minute rule.” If I find myself wanting to check my phone as a pacification device when I can’t think of anything better to do, I tell myself it’s fine to give in, but not right now. I have to wait just ten minutes. This technique is effective at helping me deal with all sorts of potential distractions, like googling something rather than writing, eating something unhealthy when I’m bored, or watching another episode on Netflix when I’m “too tired to go to bed.” This rule allows time to do what some behavioral psychologists call “surfing the urge.” When an urge takes hold, noticing the sensations and riding them like a wave—neither pushing them away nor acting on them—helps us cope until the feelings subside.

As the philosopher and Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius said, “The happiness of your life depends on the quality of your thoughts.” As true today as in Roman times. The state of your mind, body, and spirit is the direct result of all the decisions you’ve made in your life up until this moment. Physical health, cognitive performance, happiness, and well-being—these are driven almost entirely by our beliefs and behaviors. Day after day, choosing to exercise or watch Netflix, pull an all-nighter or get some sleep, eat clean or binge on mint chocolate-chip ice cream—all these decisions create our days, and our days create our lives as a whole. Each of us faces unique physical and mental challenges, but no matter what hand you’ve been dealt, your mindset makes a massive difference.

a young Goldman Sachs banker named Joseph Park was sitting in his apartment, frustrated at the effort required to get access to entertainment. Why should he trek all the way to Blockbuster to rent a movie? He should just be able to open a website, pick out a movie, and have it delivered to his door. Despite raising around $250 million, Kozmo, the company Park founded, went bankrupt in 2001. His biggest mistake was making a brash promise for one-hour delivery of virtually anything, and investing in building national operations to support growth that never happened. One study of over three thousand startups indicates that roughly three out of every four fail because of premature scaling—making investments that the market isn’t yet ready to support. Had Park proceeded more slowly, he might have noticed that with the current technology available, one-hour delivery was an impractical and low-margin business. There was, however, a tremendous demand for online movie rentals. Netflix was just then getting off the ground, and Kozmo might have been able to compete in the area of mail-order rentals and then online movie streaming. Later, he might have been able to capitalize on technological changes that made it possible for Instacart to build a logistics operation that made one-hour grocery delivery scalable and profitable. Since the market is more defined when settlers enter, they can focus on providing superior quality instead of deliberating about what to offer in the first place. “Wouldn’t you rather be second or third and see how the guy in first did, and then . . . improve it?” Malcolm Gladwell asked in an interview. “When ideas get really complicated, and when the world gets complicated, it’s foolish to think the person who’s first can work it all out,” Gladwell remarked. “Most good things, it takes a long time to figure them out.”* Second, there’s reason to believe that the kinds of people who choose to be late movers may be better suited to succeed. Risk seekers are drawn to being first, and they’re prone to making impulsive decisions. Meanwhile, more risk-averse entrepreneurs watch from the sidelines, waiting for the right opportunity and balancing their risk portfolios before entering. In a study of software startups, strategy researchers Elizabeth Pontikes and William Barnett find that when entrepreneurs rush to follow the crowd into hyped markets, their startups are less likely to survive and grow. When entrepreneurs wait for the market to cool down, they have higher odds of success: “Nonconformists . . . that buck the trend are most likely to stay in the market, receive funding, and ultimately go public.” Third, along with being less recklessly ambitious, settlers can improve upon competitors’ technology to make products better. When you’re the first to market, you have to make all the mistakes yourself. Meanwhile, settlers can watch and learn from your errors. “Moving first is a tactic, not a goal,” Peter Thiel writes in Zero to One; “being the first mover doesn’t do you any good if someone else comes along and unseats you.” Fourth, whereas pioneers tend to get stuck in their early offerings, settlers can observe market changes and shifting consumer tastes and adjust accordingly. In a study of the U.S. automobile industry over nearly a century, pioneers had lower survival rates because they struggled to establish legitimacy, developed routines that didn’t fit the market, and became obsolete as consumer needs clarified. Settlers also have the luxury of waiting for the market to be ready. When Warby Parker launched, e-commerce companies had been thriving for more than a decade, though other companies had tried selling glasses online with little success. “There’s no way it would have worked before,” Neil Blumenthal tells me. “We had to wait for Amazon, Zappos, and Blue Nile to get people comfortable buying products they typically wouldn’t order online.

The first thing I want to say about Boyfriend is that he’s an extraordinarily decent human being. He’s kind and generous, funny and smart, and when he’s not making you laugh, he’ll drive to the drugstore at two a.m. to get you that antibiotic you just can’t wait until morning for. If he happens to be at Costco, he’ll text to ask if you need anything, and when you reply that you just need some laundry detergent, he’ll bring home your favorite meatballs and twenty jugs of maple syrup for the waffles he makes you from scratch. He’ll carry those twenty jugs from the garage to your kitchen, pack nineteen of them neatly into the tall cabinet you can’t reach, and place one on the counter, accessible for the morning. He’ll also leave love notes on your desk, hold your hand and open doors, and never complain about being dragged to family events because he genuinely enjoys hanging out with your relatives, even the nosy or elderly ones. For no reason at all, he’ll send you Amazon packages full of books (books being the equivalent of flowers to you), and at night you’ll both curl up and read passages from them aloud to each other, pausing only to make out. While you’re binge-watching Netflix, he’ll rub that spot on your back where you have mild scoliosis, and when he stops, and you nudge him, he’ll continue rubbing for exactly sixty more delicious seconds before he tries to weasel out without your noticing (you’ll pretend not to notice). He’ll let you finish his sandwiches and sentences and sunscreen and listen so attentively to the details of your day that, like your personal biographer, he’ll remember more about your life than you will. If this portrait sounds skewed, it is.

Deprive a cat of sleep and it would die in two weeks. Deprive a human and he would become psychotic. His work was killing people. How was he supposed to frighten these guys? Run up behind them in a halloween mask and shout boo? He never saw the point of views -- what did it matter if it was an ocean or a brick wall you were looking at? People travelled hundreds, sometimes thousands of miles to commit suicide someplace with a beautiful view. Did a view matter when oblivion beckoned? They could put him in a garbage bin after he was gone, for all he cared. That's all the human race was anyway. Garbage with attitude. A cutting word is worse than a bowstring. A cut may heal but a cut of the tongue does not. The Sakawa students were all from poor, underprivileged backgrounds. Sakawa was a mix of religious juju and modern internet technology. They were taught, in structured classes, the art of online fraud as well as arcane African rituals -- which included animal sacrifice -- to have a voodoo effect on their victims, ensuring the success of each fraud. of which there was a wide variety. The British Empire spend five hundred years plundering the world. The word is 'thanks'. 'That's what it is, Roy! He won't come out, he has locked the doors! What if he self-harms, Roy! I mean -- what if he kills himself?' 'I will have to take him off my Christmas list.' "Any chance you can recover any of it?' 'You sitting near a window, Gerry?' 'Near a window? Sure, right by a window?' 'Can you see the sky?' 'Uh-huh. Got a clear view.' 'See any pigs flying past?' To dream of death is good for those in fear, for the death have no more fears. '...Cleo took me to the opera once. I spent the whole time praying for a fat lady to come on stage and start singing. Or a heart attack --whichever come sooner.' '..there is something strongly powerful -- almost magnetic -- about internet romances. A connection that is far stronger than a traditional meeting of two people. Maybe because on the internet you can lie all the time, each person gives the other their good side. It's intoxicating. That's one of the things which makes it so dangerous -- and such easy pickings for fraudsters.' He was more than a little pleased that he was about to ruin his boss's morning -- and, with a bit of luck, his entire day. ..a guy who had been born angry and had just got even angrier with each passing year. '...Then at some point in the future, I'll probably die in an overcrowded hospital corridor with some bloody hung-over medical student jumping up and down on my chest because they couldn't find a defibrillator. 'Give me your hand, bro,' the shorter one said. 'That one, the right one, yeah.' On the screen the MasterChef contestant said, 'Now with a sharp knife...' Jules de Copland drove away from Gatwick Airport in.a new car, a small Kia, hired under a different name and card, from a different rental firm, Avis. 'I was talking about her attitude. But I'll tell you this, Roy. The day I can't say a woman -- or a man -- is plug ugly, that's the day I want to be taken out and shot.' It seems to me the world is in a strange place where everyone chooses to be offended all the time. 'But not too much in the way of brains,' GlennBranson chipped in. 'Would have needed the old Specialist Search Unite to find any trace of them.' 'Ever heard of knocking on a door?' 'Dunno that film -- was it on Netflix?' 'One word, four letters. Begins with an S for Sierra, ends with a T for Tango. Or if you'd like the longest version, we've been one word, six letters, begins with F for Foxtrot, ends with D for Delta.' No Cop liked entering a prison. In general there was a deep cultural dislike of all police officers by the inmates. And every officer entering.a prison, for whatever purposes, was always aware that if a riot kicked off while they were there, they could be both an instant hostage and a prime target for violence.