Category: Life
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Work isn’t meant to be escaped
Entrepreneur Curtis Jackson, also known as recording artist 50 Cent, writes in Hustle Harder, Hustle Smarter: One of the most important realizations I came to early in my business career is that I’m running through an endless tunnel. What I mean by that is I came to understand that there’s no “happily ever after.” No…
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Breaking the curse of perspective
It’s so easy to spot other people’s blind spots, and it’s incredibly difficult to spot your own. Sometimes, that’s because we’re effectively blind to it; our perspective of the world doesn’t allow us to see what’s really happening. Other times, it’s because we don’t want to see it; our perspective of the world protects us…
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Replace rankings
The leaderboard is one of the most common diagrams we use to measure the best and the worst. Whether it’s, “Top five, dead or alive,” or “Stack ranking,” we use rankings as a way to make decisions. Unfortunately, with letter grades and awards, we’re also the constant subject of rankings; so much so that we…
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Less is a practice
Throughout life, we’re taught to pick up more stuff. I mean this not only in the literal sense of buying products, but also in the sense of work. Exploring and picking up more opportunities. Exploiting current opportunities more. Meeting more people. It’s easy to say that you’re going to do less, which seems to be…
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Printing lottery tickets
Here’s something that’s difficult to be honest about: Positive outcomes can’t be entirely designed or engineered. Sometimes they need exploration, discovery, and curiosity. These projects probably won’t have clear payoffs or immediate expected value; in fact, most of the time, they won’t. But with each project and insight, you’re also opening up new possible futures…
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Acceptance mindset
Growth mindset is eating the world; taken to its extreme, it proposes complete freedom and responsibility. If you don’t change, then it’s your fault. That extreme is a trap just as sticky as a fixed mindset. There are some things that you’re probably not going to be able to change. You’re better off accepting and…
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While you can afford to be bad at it…
Practice it while the stakes are low. Practice it when you don’t need to. Practice it poorly, clumsily, in a messy way, until you learn how to practice it better. You’ll thank yourself.
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“It’ll just take 5 minutes”
It won’t, because clicking and typing isn’t the hard part or the long part. It’s the thought that comes before the clicking and typing. For example, say you have to reschedule a new event; you’ll look around for a new schedule and time in your calendar, write up an apology, consider if that person really…
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Good is good enough
Doing something well is very different than doing something perfectly. In many cases, good is more than enough to get you started in the direction you want to go. If you need to do something perfectly in order to achieve your goal, your process isn’t tight enough yet. Something’s missing.
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Easy businesses
Easy businesses don’t exist. Grass is greener syndrome does. So does the Dunning–Kruger effect. Every industry and field has its own challenges and rewards. You’ll be better equipped to deal with some than others.