Category: Life
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Delusions and evolutionary fitness
Shankar Vedantam and Bill Mesler write in Useful Delusions: In recent years, psychologists and neuroscientists have shown that the human brain is designed to make a number of errors in perception and judgment. These “bugs”—distortions, shortcuts and other cognitive cross-wiring—produce slanted pictures of reality. They exist for a reason: Evolution found that, on average, the…
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Change the metaphor
You and I constantly tell ourselves stories about our work, and these stories affect how we treat the work and treat the people we work with. The most important thing to remember is you always have a choice to flip the metaphor or introduce a new one. That’s a starting point for you to see…
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Big fish in a bigger pond
In Lucky Me, Rich Paul writes: Now I have to help guys in the league who used to be stars, but can’t let go of their ego and accept a new role. Then there are my young clients coming into the NBA; every one of them was once the star on their high school or…
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Dreams vs. delusions
A dream coming true is a delusion that becomes reality. A delusion is a dream that didn’t become a physical reality. (Yet!) If your delusion or dream comes true, you’ll look like a genius. Until it does though, you will experience a degree of loneliness. In other words, you can and should expect to be…
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Restraint
A few days ago, I woke up to the word, “Restraint.” I like this phrase, “If ‘the essence of strategy is choosing what not to do,’ as Michael Porter famously wrote, then the essence of execution is truly not doing it.” One very tangible example comes from editing, where I learned to use rich words…
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“How can I help?”
Or, “What would be most helpful?” If someone’s ever nice enough to ask you this, it’s generally a good idea to have a pointed, specific, answer to this question. It just takes a little bit of preparation before the meeting, or even a more intentional mindset during the meeting, to see how the other person…
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Parenthood and possibilities
A few days after we came home from the hospital, I sent a letter to a friend, including a photo of my son and some first impressions of fatherhood. He responded, simply, “Everything is possible again.” It was the perfect thing to write, because that was exactly how it felt. We could retell our stories…
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Foundation first
One philosophy or heuristic I have been drawn to recently is to prioritize foundational activities. Personal life: wash your face, work out, eat healthy and regularly, feed your cat, shower, do laundry, present yourself, journal, write, draw, etc. Do things that make you feel alive. This is actually the most important foundation. Professional life: keep…
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When happiness happens
You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life. Albert Camus HAPPINESS.—A butterfly, which when pursued, seems always just beyond your grasp, but if you sit down quietly may alight upon you. New Orleans Crescent
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Value your ignorance
My friend Abdel’s lament, after watching a student “solve” the Rubik’s Cube on his desk just like the YouTube video showed her how: “You need to value your ignorance.” Ross Gay, The Book of Delights When I played video games as a young boy, I constantly referred to cheat codes and guides. I wanted to…