Category: Expectations
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Three dimensional business cards
I once heard a CEO of a construction company describe his buildings as three dimensional business cards. It was a great way of thinking about work, and emphasizing why it’s important to do a good job on everything. When a prospective client sees the work you did for somebody else, even if they’re not on…
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Procrastination
When you don’t do something you said you would do, you’re hurting your confidence. Procrastination is a great example of that. If you said you were going to work on something for an hour, and then you open up social media for five minutes and an hour goes by, you need to find a new…
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Presenting uncertainty
If somebody is approaching you about a simple question that you know is impossible to answer, you want to respond with a demonstration of your expertise. Let them know the uncertainty is justified; show historical evidence that what they are asking is difficult to predict. Look at the evidence or circumstances and let the person…
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Confidence buffer
A friend once told me about pitching one of the world’s biggest companies. While they didn’t do business together, my friend was saying it was incredible—borderline a miracle—that the sales conversation even went that far. Then he reflected that it was his own responsibility. He said, “We shouldn’t have to be perfect to get it.”…
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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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Be nice and kind to yourself
When you’re being nice, you are being polite with the intention of making someone feel good. You may be withholding your honesty because you don’t want to hurt someone’s feelings. When you’re being kind, you are being honest with the intention of helping someone improve. You will tell someone that there is food in their…
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Two types of confidence
Confidence means different things to different people. Generally, there are two types of confidence: Epistemic confidence describes a person’s certainty about what’s true. When a meteorologist reports a 70% chance of rain, they are expressing epistemic confidence. Social confidence describes a person’s comfort with their social expression and role. When a person steps on a…
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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…