Category: Expectations
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Deconstructing Pat Riley’s guarantee
In The Optimism Bias, Tali Sharot writes a story about Pat Riley, who was head coach of the Los Angeles Lakers in the 1980s and had just won the 1987 NBA Championship: In the midst of the postvictory celebration, Riley was approached by a reporter. The journalist wanted to know if Riley believed the Lakers…
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Nice vs. kind
In Clear Thinking, Shane Parrish writes: Too often, the people we ask for feedback are kind but not nice. Kind people will tell you things a nice person will not. A kind person will tell you that you have spinach on your teeth. A nice person won’t because it’s uncomfortable. A kind person will tell…
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To break through perfectionism, take a small step in any direction
In Hidden Potential, Adam Grant writes (I’ve reformatted for a better list read): In their quest for flawless results, research suggests that perfectionists tend to get three things wrong. In Adversity for Sale, Jeezy writes: I always tell people when you’re feeling stressed out, lost, and overwhelmed, you’re better off taking a small step in…
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Two kinds of truths
Just a few years before I wrote this, WeWork was valued at $47 billion and raised $1.5 billion in cash. That’s a whopping amount of cash; to put it into perspective, several years before that, Meta had acquired Instagram for $1 billion. Yesterday, WeWork declared bankruptcy. In The Snowball, Alice Schroeder writes, “[Benjamin] Graham used…
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“You don’t need to get comfortable before you can practice your skills”
Adam Grant shares a learning key from polyglots—people who learned several languages—in Hidden Potential: You don’t have to wait until you’ve acquired an entire library of knowledge to start to communicate. Your mental library expands as you communicate. When I asked Sara Maria what it takes to begin, she said she no longer waits to…
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“You want to feel a gap between what you expected and what actually happened”
In Same as Ever, Morgan Housel dedicates a chapter to expectations. He writes: What generates the emotion is the big gap between expectations and reality. When you think of it like that, you realize how powerful expectations are. They can make a celebrity feel miserable and a destitute family feel amazing. It’s astounding. Everyone, everywhere,…
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Three quotes on ordinariness
“We think that if only we get the big things right, everything will magically fall into place. If we choose to marry the right person, it’ll all be okay. If we choose the right career, we’ll be happy. If we pick the right investment, we’ll be rich. This wisdom is, at best, partially true. You…
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Positioning and patience
Maybe your positioning isn’t setting you up to be patient. There is a lot of power in focusing on the long-term. Jeff Bezos says to Wired: If everything you do needs to work on a three-year time horizon, then you’re competing against a lot of people. But if you’re willing to invest on a seven-year…
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Seth Godin, on expectations
In my research process for the next book, I’ve put together a long list of people who write about expectations. Seth stands out; he’s written several posts on the topic this year.
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Endurance
The ability to stick it out is criminally underrated. Not only will you outlast the competition, you will also gain an experience that demonstrates your ability—and bring it to the next thing you do.