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STRESS-TESTING IDEAS WITH A “RED TEAM”
Where can you create a “red team” in your life to stress-test your most treasured beliefs?
ALWAYS FORWARD
21-Day No Complaint experiment
The question I’ll never answer is, ‘What would you have done differently had you known X?’ I never, ever play that game because you didn’t know X.
“STRONG VIEWS, LOOSELY HELD”
Steve Martin’s autobiography, Born Standing Up: A Comic’s Life. Marc highlighted one takeaway: “He says the key to success is, ‘Be so good they can’t ignore you.’”
“Smart people should make things.”
Steve Jobs quote
in a 1995 interview conducted by the Santa Clara Valley Historical Association, while Jobs was still at NeXT: “Life can be much broader, once you discover one simple fact, and that is that everything around you that you call ‘life’ was made up by people that were no smarter than you. And you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use. Once you learn that, you’ll never be the same again.”
“To do original work: It’s not necessary to know something nobody else knows. It is necessary to believe something few other people believe.”
“‘Far more money has been lost by investors trying to anticipate corrections, than has been lost in corrections themselves.’—Peter Lynch”
“PRODUCTIVITY” TRICKS FOR THE NEUROTIC, MANIC-DEPRESSIVE, AND CRAZY (LIKE ME)
Personally, I suck at efficiency (doing things quickly). To compensate and cope, here’s my 8-step process for maximizing efficacy (doing the right things): Wake up at least 1 hour before you have to be at a computer screen. Email is the mind-killer. Make a cup of tea (I like pu-erh) and sit down with a pen/pencil and paper. Write down the 3 to 5 things—and no more—that are making you the most anxious or uncomfortable. They’re often things that have been punted from one day’s to-do list to the next, to the next, to the next, and so on. Most important usually equals most uncomfortable, with some
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“Once we get those muddy, maddening, confusing thoughts [nebulous worries, jitters, and preoccupations] on the page, we face our day with clearer eyes.”
the process matters more than the product.
I’m just caging my monkey mind on paper so I can get on with my fucking day.
Morning pages don’t need to solve your problems. They simply need to get them out of your head, where they’ll otherwise bounce around all day like a bullet ricocheting inside your skull.
So if you’re planning to do something with your life, if you have a 10-year plan of how to get there, you should ask: Why can’t you do this in 6 months?
SETH GODIN
BE A MEANINGFUL SPECIFIC INSTEAD OF A WANDERING GENERALITY On saying “no” and declining things: “The phone rings, and lots of people want a thing. If it doesn’t align with the thing that is your mission, and you say ‘yes,’ now [your mission is] their mission. There’s nothing wrong with being a wandering generality instead of a meaningful specific, but don’t expect to make the change you [hope] to make if that’s what you do.
“Once you have enough for beans and rice and taking care of your family and a few other things, money is a story. You can tell yourself any story you want about money, and it’s better to tell yourself a story about money that you can happily live with.”
WHAT YOU TRACK DETERMINES YOUR LENS—CHOOSE CAREFULLY
To keep track of all the times it worked? All the times we took a risk? All the times we were able to brighten someone else’s day? When we start doing that, we can redefine ourselves as people who are able to make an impact on the world. It took me a bunch of cycles to figure out that the narrative was up to me.
“My friend Lynn Gordon is a brilliant thinker and designer, and for years, she was in the business of designing toys and soft goods for moms with toddlers. Every toy company in America was mean to her, rejected her, had nothing to do with her. I said: ‘Lynn, it’s simple. Toy companies don’t like toy designers. They’re not organized to do business with toy designers. They’re not hoping toy designers will come to them.’ I said, ‘Come with me into the book business. Because every day, there are underpaid, really smart people in the book business who wake up waiting for the next idea to come
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He inspired me to start “cycling off” of quantification, much like I cycle off of supplements for at least 1 week every 2 months (example: I took July 2016 off of tracking weight/body fat, social media, website, and newsletter stats).
There are no real rules, so make rules that work for you.
If you spend 2 hours a day without an electronic device, looking your kid in the eye, talking to them and solving interesting problems, you will raise a different kid than someone who doesn’t do that.
we need to teach kids two things: 1) how to lead, and 2) how to solve interesting problems. Because the fact is, there are plenty of countries on Earth where there are people who are willing to be obedient and work harder for less money than us. So we cannot out-obedience the competition. Therefore, we have to out-lead or out-solve the other people….
Works of Pema Chödrön:
The Art of Possibility by Rosamund Stone Zander and Benjamin Zander:
The War of Art by Steven Pressfield:
SCOTT ADAMS
If you want an average, successful life, it doesn’t take much planning. Just stay out of trouble, go to school, and apply for jobs you might like. But if you want something extraordinary, you have two paths: 1) Become the best at one specific thing. 2) Become very good (top 25%) at two or more things. The first strategy is difficult to the point of near impossibility. Few people will ever play in the NBA or make a platinum album. I don’t recommend anyone even try. The second strategy is fairly easy. Everyone has at least a few areas in which they could be in the top 25% with some effort.
I always advise young people to become good public speakers (top 25%). Anyone can do it with practice. If you add that talent to any other, suddenly you’re the boss of the people who have only one skill. Or get a degree in business on top of your engineering degree, law degree, medical degree, science degree, or whatever. Suddenly you’re in charge, or maybe you’re starting your own company using your combined knowledge. Capitalism rewards things that are both rare and valuable. You make yourself rare by combining two or more “pretty goods” until no one else has your mix. … At least one of the
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“If you’re looking for a formula for greatness, the closest we’ll ever get, I think, is this: Consistency driven by a deep love of the work.”
‘Sitting is the new smoking.’”
“Thoreau writes, ‘The really efficient laborer will be found not to crowd his day with work, but will saunter to his task surrounded by a wide halo of ease and leisure. There will be a wide margin for relaxation to his day. He is only earnest to secure the kernels of time, and does not exaggerate the value of the husk.’
‘Those who work much, do not work hard.’
“Ours is a culture where we wear our ability to get by on very little sleep as a kind of badge of honor that symbolizes work ethic, or toughness, or some other virtue—but really, it’s a total profound failure of priorities and of self-respect.”
On the Shortness of Life by Seneca.
If you don’t have the patience to read something, don’t have the hubris to comment on it.”
Out of more than 4,600 articles on Brain Pickings, what are Maria’s starting recommendations? “The Shortness of Life: Seneca on Busyness and the Art of Living Wide Rather Than Living Long” “How to Find Your Purpose and Do What You Love” “9 Learnings from 9 Years of Brain Pickings” Anything about Alan Watts: “Alan Watts has changed my life. I’ve written about him quite a bit.”
DISCIPLINE EQUALS FREEDOM
“You can’t blame your boss for not giving you the support you need. Plenty of people will say, ‘It’s my boss’s fault.’ No, it’s actually your fault because you haven’t educated him, you haven’t influenced him, you haven’t explained to him in a manner he understands why you need this support that you need. That’s extreme ownership. Own it all.”
WHAT MAKES A GOOD COMMANDER? “The immediate answer that comes to mind is ‘humility.’ Because you’ve got to be humble, and you’ve got to be coachable….
It was almost always a question of their ability to listen, open their mind, and see that, maybe, there’s a better way to do things. That is from a lack of humility….
being able to detach as a leader is critical.”
SEBASTIAN JUNGER
THE CALMING EFFECT OF ACTING INSTEAD OF WAITING
