Category: Expectations
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Participation trophies
In The Art of Possibility, Roz and Ben Zander write, “Enrolling is not about forcing, cajoling, tricking, bargaining, pressuring, or guilt-tripping someone into doing something your way. Enrollment is the art and practice of generating a spark of possibility for others to share.” A generous assumption of why participation trophies exist: it balances the all-consuming…
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Play to your strengths
It’s one thing to find a strategy, tactic, or best practice that worked for someone else. The internet is bursting with people sharing what works for them. It’s an entirely different thing to find the practice that works for you. You are the most important factor in how the things you do turn out. For…
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Steps to success
The Milwaukee Bucks were one of the favorites to win the NBA playoffs this year, finishing at the top of their conference division. The team had already won a championship in 2021. That didn’t happen. Instead, the team lost in the first round, to the eighth seed Miami Heat. Journalist Eric Nehm recently asked Bucks’…
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Question everything
In Figures of Speech, an essay entitled, Virgil Abloh: A Hundred Percent, Virgil Abloh and Anja Aronowsky Cronberg write: Get this. I was the idiot who believed that all fashion design was deeper than just clothing. I thought each season was about a concept that represented a larger idea. Don’t get me wrong, I know…
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Start with the end in mind
In The Art of Possibility, Ben and Roz Zander write: “Each student in this class will get an A for the course,” I announce. “However, there is one requirement that you must fulfill to earn this grade: Sometime during the next two weeks, you must write me a letter dated next May, which begins with…
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Learning to love rejection
A few days ago, I wrote one of my favorite posts: red lights. It reminds me of an opening story in the third chapter of Creative Doing, entitled, “Make Constraints Your Canvas.” I recently came across a quote from Virgil Abloh on rejection. In an interview with the New York Times, the writer mentions a…
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Make your work the best practice, and let people copy it
People copy today. Incentives reward derivative work. Sequels, song covers, and newsjacking (including celebrity culture) are all signs of this. The most constructive thing you can do in this environment is to behave the way you want to see more people behave, and then to promote your work and make it a best practice. People…
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Red lights
A red light is not an obstacle getting in the way of your destination; it is the destination. You are constantly arriving at the destination, the place you’re meant to be. Even if it wasn’t the place you had in mind, or the place you want to go, you’re meant to be wherever you are,…
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Seeing the expectations you picked up
Expectations work like gravitational pressure. It feels similar to mimetic desire (perhaps the two are related!), like there’s no way to escape what’s being expected of you. The forces of these expectations have very real consequences. For example, if your teachers expected you to learn well and get high grades, they’d behave in ways that…
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“You can do anything…”
With the implication that if you don’t, that was your choice. Your responsibility. Or if you’re being hard on yourself, it’s your fault you are stuck in the circumstances you’re in. As I wrote the other day, there’s a sense of cruelty to this, not only because it’s not a gentle idea; it’s also simply…