-
The dirt
In Clear Thinking, Shane Parrish writes: Too often decision-makers get their information and observations from sources that are multiple degrees removed from the problem….You can’t make good decisions with bad information. In fact, when you see people making decisions that don’t make sense to you, chances are they’re based on different information than you’ve consumed.…
-
Pivot sooner and slower
My friend Jason Shen writes in his new book, The Path to Pivot: “If your startup isn’t working, don’t wait until you’ve got just a few months of runway left to make a desperate gamble on a new direction. Instead, think about pivoting sooner, and slower so you can make the best decision and bring…
-
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…
-
Pain, suffering, and low expectations
When asked about advice for students, Jensen Huang says that one of his key advantages is low expectations: You want to refine the character of your company. You want greatness out of them, and greatness is not intelligence, as you know. Greatness comes from character, [which] isn’t isn’t formed out of smart people. It’s formed…
-
Entrepreneurship isn’t a job title, it’s a mindset
Some words from Satish Kanwar came to mind today, which is a lesson he learned after selling his business: The truth is, it took me longer than I care to admit to realize that I had been thinking about my identity the completely wrong way. Being an entrepreneur wasn’t attached to this business. It was…
-
Preparation enables presence
Whether you’re playing in a competitive sport, appearing as a speaker, or attending an important meeting, showing up prepared will set you up to be more present.
-
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…
-
Notes-based meeting prep
Earlier this week, my coworker and I had a 1-1 meeting and she was delighted to see that I had brought a small index card and pen to the meeting. We spent a few minutes chatting about it. Here’s what I said: Before every meeting, I prepare a 4×6 index card. If there is a…
-
The case of the stolen smell
I recently saw James Blake tweet, “The brainwashing worked and now people think music is free.” Then, a couple of days later, I read this story: In the days of old Yedo, as Tokyo was once called, storytellers told wonderful tales. Many of the stories were about the wit and wisdom of Ooka Tadasuke. Ooka…
-
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…