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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Dorie Clark
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December 14 - December 31, 2021
There’s a great quote by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow that goes something like: we measure ourselves by what we feel capable of doing, while others measure us based on what we’ve done.
I’ve come to understand what few recognize: the rate of payoff for persevering during those dark days isn’t linear. It’s exponential.
What I’ve come to love about patience is that, ultimately, it’s the truest test of merit: Are you willing to do the work, despite no guaranteed outcome? We earn our success by toiling without recognition, accolades, or even any certainty that it’s going to come to fruition. We have to take it on faith and do it anyway. That’s strategic patience.
It’s blogging when no one reads your blog, to test ideas and create an audience.
Herbert Simon, a professor of computer science and psychology at Carnegie Mellon, made a prescient prediction. “In an information-rich world,” he said, “the wealth of information creates a dearth of something else … the attention of its recipients.”9 The solution was clear: “to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it.” In other words, we have to get smart about what we focus on.
Should I be doing this task at all? Could I delegate it to someone else, or stop doing it altogether? Where should I focus my effort in order to get the biggest return? If I were starting fresh today, would I still choose to invest in this project?
If you start operating from the calendar rather than a to-do list, you take back control over your day.
“You don’t need time to have a good idea,” he told me. “You need space. And you can’t think appropriately if you don’t have space in your head. It takes zero time to have an innovative idea or to make a decision, but if you don’t have psychic space, those things are not necessarily impossible, but they’re suboptimal.”
studies show that looking busy can also be a way of increasing your social status (“I’m important!”) or a distraction from asking uncomfortable questions.
Think about reframing what it means for people to be busy. The less we see it as “They’re in demand,” and the more we see it as “They don’t even have control over their own schedules,” the less appealing it will be.
Schedule and set limits around your true priorities.
“When deciding whether to do something, if you feel anything less than ‘Wow! That would be amazing! Absolutely! Hell yeah!’—then say ‘no.’”
the most successful companies were the ones who were unafraid to choose what to be bad at.
in order to be great at something, you had to be willing to be bad at something else.
“Choosing to be bad is your only shot at achieving greatness. And resisting it is a recipe for mediocrity.”
Saying yes to everything means being average at everything. Saying no, conversely, is what gives us the rare opportunity to be great.
Clearing the brush is essential for long-term thinking: we need to stop spending time on ephemera, and set our own priorities.
One possible alternative—a great one, if you feel clear about pursuing it—is to optimize for meaning. For some, the path to meaning is through working directly for a cause they care about, or perhaps the opportunity to maximize other interests, such as time spent with family or on a beloved hobby.
When you’re still figuring out what feels meaningful, or if you’re a Renaissance person drawn to many different things, I’ve found it’s helpful to optimize for interesting.
“Whenever you have a choice of what to do,” she told Marion, “choose the more interesting path.”
When it comes to long-term thinking, we often assume we need to know the answers in advance. After all, how else can we plan? But no one is omniscient, and things frequently change along the way.
When you’re unsure of where your interests lie—or you feel like you used to know and have lost touch—go back to first principles and think about what inspired you at the beginning of your journey. Sometimes we just need to remember what got us started in the first place.
The real advantage of optimizing for interesting isn’t just that you can accumulate cool stories to tell at the bar. It’s that pursuing interesting experiences opens up possibilities that otherwise may have been hidden or inaccessible.
Here’s another great question to ask as you’re figuring out which goals to pursue: what kind of person do you want to be?
Playing the long game means acknowledging we aren’t already experts at everything, and that it’s OK to sometimes look foolish in service of becoming the person we want to be.
The whole point of playing the long game is understanding that ridiculous goals are ridiculous right now—not forever. When we force ourselves to take our goals to extremes—What would ultimate success look like?—we can create an honest road map for ourselves. It might take five years, or ten, or twenty. But that time will pass anyway.
If a goal is worth pursuing, it’s worth pursuing the version of it we actually want—not one that’s watered down to protect our ego.
When we make the choice to optimize for interesting, we’re investing in our future selves.
Playing the long game means preparing ourselves for an uncertain future, where, because of the effort we’ve invested over time, we’re ready to take full advantage of the opportunities life presents.
The default in our culture is to optimize for money and choose a lucrative career. Often, the only other alternative that gets talked about is optimizing for meaning
One possibility is to “optimize for interesting” and follow your curiosity.
Look at how you already spend your time voluntarily, which is a strong indicator of genuine interest.
Think about your original motivations for pursuing your field or interests, and reconnect with them.
Not every experience or path has to be linear. Just because something isn’t the established path doesn’t mean it’s the wrong one.
Identify experiences that will help you grow into that.
Don’t be constrained by what’s possible now. Think about where you’d like to be in the future.
there’s a wide gulf between being intrigued by a topic and actually making it a core part of your life and career. That’s where 20% time comes in, because it gives you permission to explore your interest and see what works while the stakes are relatively low.
The truth is, it’s challenging to carve out 20% time—even if you work at the company that popularized the concept. You have to make the extra effort, fight against other pressures on your schedule, and create your own openings. But the rewards of experimenting strategically are worth it.
“heartbeat income,” a baseline of money that will pay the mortgage and give him the minimum standard of living that he needs.
you should never bet more than you can afford to lose. That’s why it’s only 20%. But you do need to bet something, because otherwise, you can expect a lifetime of doing the same thing over and over again.
Even if you have no idea what your ultimate goal is professionally, embracing 20% time is still a good idea.
We all face obstacles and internal barriers—and if want to master 20% time and get good at accomplishing our stated goals, we need to learn how to outsmart ourselves.
Here’s the ultimate way to de-risk your 20% time: make sure that even if you lose, you still win.
we overestimate what we can accomplish in a day, and underestimate what we can accomplish in a year.
The gift of 20% time, especially when we think in decades, is that even if we ultimately change plans or decide on a different course, the small steps we take now compound over time, and give us more options in the future.
No one is going to hand you development opportunities on a platter. You need to seek them out proactively.
Think about devoting 20% of your time to explore new areas.
The best time to test out new ideas is when you’re in a strong position—not when you’re in a weakened one and are desperate to find the “next thing.” Start planning now!
“How can I win, even if I lose?”
you can make the most progress by focusing disproportionately on one key goal, rather than spreading yourself thin across several.
