Category: Expectations
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POSSE
Platforms can amplify your voice, certainly. However, publishing directly on them as a medium also changes the way you approach writing. A platform incentivizes you to think of what your work can do for you; true creative work requires you to consider what you can do for your work—and for other people. It’s a platform’s…
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“Why not?”
Sometimes you don’t need a good reason to do something. You need a good reason to not do it. Also, “Why not me?” Is there a good reason that you don’t deserve something good to happen to you? Is there a good reason that something positive shouldn’t happen to you? (The same question can be…
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Your bowl of spaghetti
In Truth, Hector Macdonald writes, “A schoolteacher of mine once compared history to a bowl of spaghetti. There are many strands, all mixed up together, he said. Historians have to select a strand and pull it free from the rest to paint a coherent picture of the past. I still think it’s a great metaphor.…
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Charlie Munger, on low expectations
The first rule of a happy life is low expectations. If you have unrealistic expectations you’re going to be miserable your whole life. You want to have reasonable expectations and take life’s results good and bad as they happen with a certain amount of stoicism. Charlie Munger, via Morgan Housel
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Paul Graham, on raising ambition
Economist and author Tyler Cowen recently spoke to Y Combinator founder Paul Graham. There’s a particular section of their conversation that caught my interest, which was about raising other people’s ambitions. Cowen had previously written a blog post on the topic, concluding, “This is in fact one of the most valuable things you can do…
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Expectations vs. support
Expectation: The prospect of the future; grounds upon which something excellent is expected to happen; prospect of anything good to come, esp. of property or rank. (Webster’s 1913) Support: That which upholds, sustains, or keeps from falling, as a prop, a pillar, or a foundation of any kind. (Webster’s 1913) While these two concepts don’t…
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Predictive processing theory
A common saying goes, “We see the world not as it is, but as we are.” Philosopher Andy Clark wrote a book on this topic. His thesis is centered on the predictive processing theory, suggesting that the brain’s main function is to make predictions. He writes in The Experience Machine: Nothing we do or experience—if…
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The subtle misery of high expectations
There’s a centuries-old train of thought that equates expectations with results. In Blessed, author Kate Bowler quotes Essek William Kenyon, writing, “Christian talk about hope had to be amended, for, as Kenyon claimed, “Hope says, ‘I will get it sometime.’ Faith says, ‘I have it now.’”” Bowler described the core of this metaphysical train of…
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Serious possibilism
People often call me an optimist, because I show them the enormous progress they didn’t know about. That makes me angry. I’m not an optimist. That makes me sound naïve. I’m a very serious “possibilist.” That’s something I made up. It means someone who neither hopes without reason, nor fears without reason, someone who constantly…
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Losing 101
You might’ve been born and bred to win. As a kid, you might’ve won awards, made the most friends, or been recognized as an excellent athlete. Many of us grow up like this, children of parents who were taught to do the same. We mostly learn to do this as individuals. In situations like this,…