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companies aren’t born in garages. Companies are born in companies.
This is an economic issue as well as an emotional one: In a survey of 10,000 employees from the 1,000 largest companies, 40% of workers cited “lack of recognition” as a key reason for leaving a job.
It’s a compelling idea: Might the future of business lie in encouraging Shoulds rather than indulging Wants?
Focusing illusions even distort our judgments about ourselves. In another study, some college students were asked, “How happy are you?” and then “How many dates did you have last month?” The researchers found a pretty weak correlation between the level of happiness and the number of dates. But then (hilariously) the researchers flipped the order of the two questions. Suddenly, there was a strong correlation. Having just confessed to a lack of dates, students reported that their lives were joyless.
As jazz great Charles Mingus famously said, “You can’t improvise on nothing, man; you’ve gotta improvise on something.”
Products make the leap from pedestrian to premium when their creators think of them as ideas.
Luxury has become more about personal pleasure and self-expression and less about status.
Luxury goods are no longer a sign of status; they’re the mark of connoisseurship.
A good statistic is one that aids a decision or shapes an opinion. For a stat to do either of those, it must be dragged within the everyday. That’s your job – to do the dragging. In our world of billions and trillions, that can be a lot of manual labor. But it’s worth it: A number people can grasp is a number that can make a difference.
In fact, new psychological research suggests that grit – defined as endurance in pursuit of long-term goals and an ability to persist in the face of adversity – is a key part of what makes people successful.
Grit is not synonymous with hard work. It involves a certain single-mindedness. An ungritty prison inmate will formulate a new plan of escape every month, but a gritty prison inmate will tunnel his way out one spoonful of concrete at a time.
