Category: Expectations
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Constructive criticism
People who praise everything you can seem extremely supportive. They hype your work, and build up your self-image. While this energy may make you feel more confident, and can help you gather the energy to nurture an initial idea, pure praise also doesn’t help you make your work better. A statement that sounds like constructive…
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Make the present catch up to the future
When you make a prediction about the future, you are putting your reputation on the line. If your prediction comes true, people trust you more. If your prediction doesn’t come true, people trust you less. When you are working with people’s expectations, making a simple prediction, “I’m going to get this thing done today,” helps…
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Selling and transparency
When Michael Karnjanaprakorn worked as a CEO, a fair part of his job involved getting people to join, invest in, or partner with the company. In order to do this, he would need to persuade people to buy into his vision. In other words, he would sell. As he gained more experience with selling, Michael…
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Pursuing vs. ensuing
There are two extremes at how you approach a goal. Pursuing: At one end, you are in pursuing mode, chasing the goal directly, stopping at nothing to achieve it—you are going to get it, or you will die trying. You say no to the many inessential items because they are distractions. You do your best…
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Earning confidence
When you go to the gym, you only see benefits if you actually do the exercise. While a coach, trainer, or friend can support you through the process, they can’t do the actual work for you. If they lifted the weights, they would get stronger—not you. Similarly, you can’t simply trade bodies with someone who…
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Prove it
If you want to do something, like really want to do it, you need to prove it. That starts with you proving it to yourself. In difficult circumstances, do you make excuses? Or do you face your problem head on? Are you willing to make difficult decisions to do what you’ve committed to? Are you…
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“What if I’m no good?”
Let’s say you want to do something creative. You’re not sure about how good you really are, or how much money you’ll make, or whether or not you’ll “go somewhere” with it. Would you do it anyway? The answer needs to be a resounding yes. That’s the level of drive and sacrifice that it takes…
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A second opinion, before giving up
A schoolteacher writes the first three pages of a short story on a typewriter. When he’s done, he’s disgusted with it. It was getting too long, he didn’t know how to market it, he didn’t like the character, he couldn’t relate to the story, the list goes on… He throws it out. His wife finds…
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Believe it
Donny Deutsch writes in Often Wrong, Never in Doubt: There are 20,000 advertising copywriters in New York City right now. If I polled them, I’m absolutely positive that 19,990 would say they deserve to be a creative director. “I’m working for them, I’m smarter than they are, I do all the work…” Every one of…
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The dirt
In Clear Thinking, Shane Parrish writes: Too often decision-makers get their information and observations from sources that are multiple degrees removed from the problem….You can’t make good decisions with bad information. In fact, when you see people making decisions that don’t make sense to you, chances are they’re based on different information than you’ve consumed.…