Category: A Matter of Time
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Cargo cult confidence
A couple of people from a tribe untouched by civilization are scouting their nearby land. They see a freight airplane landing on a runway. The plane is full of food. They report back to their tribe and instruct them to build a runway for an airplane. They believe once they build a runway, the airplane…
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Doing the impossible
Nobody thought it was possible to run a mile in less than four minutes. Until 70 years ago, one person did it. He believed he could, because he saw his run times improve slowly and steadily. Then a month after that, somebody else ran a mile in under four minutes. Since then, nearly 2,000 more…
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Most things won’t go anywhere…
So you need to either commit to making an important project go somewhere by promoting it constantly. Or you need to use it as a reason to make more work. If a hypothetical 10% of your work goes somewhere, then making 10 projects mean one goes somewhere. But if you make 100 projects, then you…
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The timeline of change
A lot of change happens on its own timeline. You can push, pull, and prod at it, and yet rushing it is like honking your car’s horn in gridlock traffic. Most times it just takes the time it takes. There are still many decisions in your control: What’s not in your control is when the…
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Pay to play vs. paid to play
At a conference, one person will pay $20,000 to get on stage and speak. Another person doing the same thing will get paid $20,000. What does the second person have that the first person doesn’t? There are at least three things: In other words, the organizers of the conference recognize the second person as a…
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Desire vs. drive
A desire passes. “Oh, that is so cool,” you say. A strong desire may even consume your mind for a few days, but eventually you forget about it. A drive is more like a compulsion. “I need to do that,” or “It has to be this way,” and you can’t stop thinking about it for…
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Short-term vs. long-term
Two different 18-year-olds, from two different families, are about to enter college. Then, tragedy: both have one parent leave the family. They each have two younger siblings they need to raise. One decides the right thing to do is not go to college and help their remaining parent raise their siblings. They are stuck doing…
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Reality catches up
A good plan is preparation—or at least, preliminary work—for dealing with reality. Sometimes, you may want to avoid planning, and take a more spontaneous stance to your work. For example, if you find yourself inspired or in the zone, you may want to clear your calendar of your other obligations—or prevent those events from accumulating…
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Basketball evolved because its inventor let go of control
On December 21, 1891, there was a big blizzard in Springfield, Massachusetts. Students wouldn’t be able to go outside for days. A thirty-year-old Canadian teacher at the YMCA Training School, James Naismith, had to figure out how to keep his students busy. James started off with a game of indoor football, which was too violent,…
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Help the best idea win
Ken Kocienda asks in his book, Creative Selection, “Two people have imagined two cute puppies. I assert mine is cuter. What do we do now? Do we have a cuteness argument?” Of course not. The solution is simple: in order to conduct a debate on the topic, the two people need to find pictures of…