Below are some of the most intriguing, thought-provoking and actionable performance-related content pieces I read, watched or listened to this week. A Lesson In Friendship A very personal post from Shane at Farnam Street. https://fs.blog/2014/08/a-lesson-in-friendship/ What Do You Know Now? “What do you know now that you wish you knew twenty years ago?” https://theirrelevantinvestor.com/2019/05/12/what-do-you-know-now/ Degrees … Read more
A little something different this week as we take a break from our normal format. I have MANY favorites in a broad range of genres and categories but if I had to break it down to a tight list of five personal and professional reads for a desert island, or space station, or deep-water exploration … Read more
* The Truth About Burnout: “When we are obsessively passionate, we are constantly striving for things that are outside of our control. When it’s not firmly grounded in a strong foundation, striving leads to craving, and craving leads to suffering.”
* Time Management Through a New Lens: “Productivity Isn’t About Time Management. It’s About Attention Management.”
* Useful and Overlooked Skills: “The ability to recognize that your wins might not signal that you did anything right in the same way your losses might not signal you did anything wrong is vital to learning something valuable from real-world feedback.”
* The Lies We Tell: “We make up stories in our minds and then against all evidence, defend them tooth and nail. Understanding why we do this is the key to discovering truth and making wiser decisions.”
* On Being Alone: “I don’t believe it’s a sign of weakness to feel lonely.”
* Yes, It’s All Your Fault: Active vs. Passive Mindsets: “The hard truth is that most things in your life – good and bad – are your fault. The sooner you realize that, the better things will be.”
* Work Like The Client Is You In Two Years: “Two years is enough time for a few big, valuable projects to completely change your life, if you work on them like a high-value professional.”
* Yes, It’s All Your Fault: Active vs. Passive Mindsets “The hard truth is that most things in your life – good and bad – are your fault. The sooner you realize that, the better things will be.”
* Being Wrong and Changing Your Mind: “We’re more likely to apologize for our behavior than we are for our ideas because it’s easier to admit you did wrong to others than it is to admit you did wrong to yourself.”
* Developing Emotional Intelligence: “Self-awareness involves understanding yourself and your behavior on three levels: 1) what you’re doing, 2) how you feel about it, and 3) the hardest part, figuring out what you don’t know about yourself.”
* The Life-Changing Magic of Unfollowing Almost Everybody: “You’ll feel a lot of aversion and indifference, and small moments of joy. When in doubt, unfollow. I was ruthless and regret nothing.”
*The Anatomy of a Great Decision: “Evaluating decisions on outcomes prevents us from learning.”
* A Guide to Habit Resilience: “Habit resilience is the ability to bounce back when things don’t go as you planned, to stay positive, to encourage yourself, to forgive yourself, to be loving and compassionate with yourself, to shake it off and start again afresh.”
* The Psychological Price of Entrepreneurship: “People who are on the energetic, motivated, and creative side are both more likely to be entrepreneurial and more likely to have strong emotional states. Those states may include depression, despair, hopelessness, worthlessness, loss of motivation, and suicidal thinking.”
* The Importance of Knowing Yourself: “Don’t let anyone decide who you are.”
* How Experiences Influence How You Think About Risk and Reward: “People with different experience than us aren’t necessarily smarter. Part of why learning through experience isn’t necessarily good or bad is due to the lessons we take away from experience.”
* Why Smart People Fall For Fads: “Two of the three variables are highly relevant to why smart people fall for fads: 1. Our need for control over our lives; 2. Our need for belonging.”
* Why Every Detail of Your Craft Matters (PODCAST): “I don’t have a problem catering to individual needs, but if I’m going to do it, then I’ve got to do it my way and just make it better than what the perception would have been.”
* Go Deeper Not Wider: “By taking a whole year to go deeper instead of wider, you end up with a rich but carefully curated collection of personal interests, rather than the hoard of mostly-dormant infatuations that happens so easily in post-industrial society.”
* Living a Values-Driven Life in the Face of Trauma: “When you give up the control agenda and stop pouring your energy into trying to escape, avoid or extinguish difficult feelings, you free up space to work towards your values, which leads to more meaningful living.”
* Why You Procrastinate: “Procrastination isn’t a unique character flaw or a mysterious curse on your ability to manage time, but a way of coping with challenging emotions and negative moods…”
* Death, Taxes, and a Few Other Things: “Empathy and putting-yourself-in-others’-shoes only go so far.”
* Counter-intuitive Competitive Advantages: “Scared and running > fat and happy.”
* Your Lifestyle Has Already Been Designed “A heartfelt rant about how our work makes us so tired and unfulfilled that we give the money right back.”
* Separating Identity From Passion: “Identities seem permanent, but they are in fact malleable. It may seem like we are stuck as who we are, but our stories can be altered.”
* The Shadow Side of Greatness: “Success in one area is often tied to failure in another area, especially at the extreme end of performance. The more extreme the greatness, the longer the shadow it casts.”
* Why Second Chances Are Important: “My whole life is a second chance. People need (and usually deserve) second chances because often the first version of themselves they put out into the world is not even close to the finished product they’ll want everyone to see them as.”
* Overcoming Your Demons: Morgan’s struggle with stuttering and his public-facing career.
* What Is Amazon? An amazingly detailed essay on Amazon, Walmart and retail.
* Getting Busy on the Proof: “We tend to equate or at least connect intelligence and rational thinking. However, intelligent people can and do believe crazy things. It is highly likely that you and I believe crazy things.”
* What The Hell Is Going On? “A snapshot of our current place in history related to commerce, education, information scarcity and politics.”
