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Five life lessons from playing board games
You can learn a lot about life from playing board games. Here are five lessons I’ve picked up from the past few years: The point is to have fun, not to win. If you want to play competitively, then join a tournament—don’t do that with your friends. The point is to enjoy each other’s company.…
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Hold yourself accountable
In Clear Thinking, Shane Parrish writes: Self-accountability means taking responsibility for your abilities, your inabilities, and your actions. If you can’t do that, you might never move forward. You might not have someone in your life who holds you accountable, but that doesn’t matter. You can hold yourself accountable. Others might not expect more from…
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100% off
“There is no product or service more ecological, sustainable and recyclable as the one we do not use.” — Philippe Bihouix (via Rohan Rajiv) Do you really need it? 40% off a product you’re not going to regularly use is not as good as 100% off a product you don’t buy and store in your…
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Deconstructing Pat Riley’s guarantee
In The Optimism Bias, Tali Sharot writes a story about Pat Riley, who was head coach of the Los Angeles Lakers in the 1980s and had just won the 1987 NBA Championship: In the midst of the postvictory celebration, Riley was approached by a reporter. The journalist wanted to know if Riley believed the Lakers…
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Make a book about a person
There’s a niche that doesn’t often get discussed: books about people. This can come in the form of short, unauthorized biographies like Clayton Geoffreys’s sport series, or Jake Brown’s In the Studio series. (I have bought books from both.) These books aren’t long, Caro-sized, biographies; they can be very short books, effectively long introductions to…
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Out the trunk
In his memoir Lucky Me, Rich Paul shares a motto—a philosophy, an approach, a stance, etc.—that I really like, “Out the trunk.” Rich is a jersey connoisseur; in the early 2000s, he had spent thousands of dollars buying rare jerseys at Distant Replays. He eventually met owner Andy Hyman and offered to invest in Distant…
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Three types of imaginary barriers
In Creative Doing, I write, “After years of learning and applying rules, you might live within these constraints even when they don’t actually apply to you. You’ll feel like you’re bumping into invisible walls.” I call these walls imaginary barriers. (You can read the full prompt here.) Here are three types of imaginary barriers—amongst many…
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Rich Paul on flying private, salary with LeBron, and fronting
I came across Rich Paul’s memoir at a bookstore the other day, so I picked it up and I’m really enjoying it. Naturally, I also started digging into some of his appearances at YouTube. I really liked his panel with Junior Bridgeman and Earn Your Leisure. Junior has a great story too, but some notable…
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On businesses publishing books
If you’re a business targeting the small group of people who still read—maybe 2% of the American population (a number from Seth Godin (17:00))—you are deciding to target one of the oldest fandoms in the world. For example, you may be inherently selecting people who are interested in intellectual matters. Or, they’re ambitious enough to…
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“Should I be doing that instead?”
There’s a saying that the best workout plan is the one that you’re actually going to do. It’s a great approach to exercise. As a principle, it can be just as effective when you apply it to other parts of your life as well. What works for somebody else isn’t going to be what works…