“Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men’s blood and probably themselves will not be realized.
Make big plans; aim high in hope and work, remembering that a noble, logical diagram once recorded will never die, but long after we are gone will be a living thing, asserting itself with ever-growing insistency.
Remember that our sons and grandsons are going to do things that would stagger us.”
— Daniel Burnham
https://fs.blog/brain-food/march-6-2022/
#Quote #mjbQuote #Ambition #mjbDoTheWork
Tiny Thought, Asymmetry
Linear games are won by working harder than others. And the harder other people work, the higher the bar. You need to work harder and harder, just to stay in the same relative position.
Asymmetry is different. Even people who understand asymmetry consistently underestimate its power.
Positive asymmetry happens when you have a lot of upside and little downside. Negative asymmetry is when you have little upside and high downside. Finding hidden or overlooked asymmetry is the key to an unstoppable advantage. And there is a lot of it hiding in plain sight.
Consider trust. A lot of people are slow to trust. Their default level of trust is about 40% and you earn more.
Very few people understand that a low trust approach reduces positive asymmetry.
Most of the time people deserve to be trusted by default. Perhaps 3% of the time they take advantage of you and make you look foolish. In an effort to avoid what happens 3% of the time, people forgo asymmetric upside.
Not only does a low trust approach eliminate the upside, but you spend your time looking over your shoulder worrying about how someone might take advantage of you. That’s no way to live.
High trust people want to be around other high trust people.
I’m pretty trustworthy by default. And while some people have taken advantage of me, I still prefer my approach because there is no ceiling on what’s possible. The three largest business deals of my life have all been high-trust deals.
A low trust approach might put a floor on how often you get taken advantage of, but it puts a ceiling on what’s possible.
— Shane Parrish
https://fs.blog/brain-food/march-6-2022/
#Quote #mjbQuote #MentalModels
“The greatest gift you can give another is the purity of your attention.”
— Richard Moss
https://thoughtkick.com/post/677717777658806272
#Quote #mjbQuote #Life
“You have to get to a point where your mood doesn’t shift based on the insignificant actions of someone else.”
— Unknown
https://thoughtkick.com/post/677362380415664128
#Quote #mjbQuote #Life #Stoicism #mjbStocism
“The best portion of your life will be the small, nameless moments you spend smiling with someone who matters to you.”
— Ritu Ghatourey
https://thoughtkick.com/post/677675984604020736
#Quote #mjbQuote #Life #Love
What looks like skill is often routine.
The incremental gains are too small to notice until they are too large to ignore.
— Shane Parrish
https://twitter.com/ShaneAParrish/status/1499016924965056513
#Quote #mjbQuote #mjbDoTheWork
Motivation comes and goes. If you want to do something consistently, then don’t pick a level of difficulty that will hinge on you feeling motivated.
Make it easy enough and simple enough that you’ll do it even when you don’t feel very motivated.
— James Clear
https://twitter.com/JamesClear/status/1499051910476746755
#Quote #mjbQuote #Consistency #mjbDoTheWork
“Healing is layers.
Healing is time.
Healing is excruciating.
Once you think it’s done, it’s not.”
— Mary DeMuth
#Quote #mjbQuote #Life
“Patience is not passive, on the contrary, it is concentrated strength.”
― Bruce Lee
People wait in different ways. Some are passive. Others are active. These two approaches are as different as the results they yield.
Passive patience is waiting for the world to give you the thing you want. A lot of people live their life with passive patience. Rather than go after the promotion at work they expect it to fall in their lap. Rather than go after the love of their life, they sit back and expect to be courted. Rather than chase their dreams, they wait for just the right opening that always seems around the corner but never comes. These people have the wrong kind of patience.
Active patience is different. Active patience demands action and intention, even while waiting for results. Active patience means not only applying for the promotion but taking your time to build the skills you need to put yourself in the best position to succeed. Active patience means starting the business, writing the book, going after the love of your life.
Active patience puts you in the best position to get what you want. There is almost always an action you can take to improve the odds.
Active in the moment but patient with the results.
Active patience.
One of the most beneficial skills you can learn in life is how to consistently put yourself in a good position. The person who finds themselves in a strong position can take advantage of circumstances while others are forced into a series of poor choices.
Strong positions are not an accident. Weak positions aren’t bad luck.
Telling someone they need to put themselves in a strong position is useless. Everyone knows they need a strong foundation to build a house that can weather a storm (or a wolf, thank you Three Little Pigs) but not everyone knows how we can create that foundation.
The answer is as simple as it is frustrating. The position you find yourself in today is the accumulation of the small choices that you’ve been making for years.
If that’s the case, why doesn’t everyone make choices that will put them in a good position in the future?
The ordinary choices that guarantee a strong future go unnoticed. There is no pat on the back for doing the right thing just as there is no slap on the wrist for doing the wrong thing.
Eating a chocolate bar right now won’t make you unhealthy. Just as not eating it won’t make you healthy. Saving money today won’t make you rich, just as not saving it won’t make you poor. Reading a chapter of a great book today won’t solve your problems just as not reading it won’t make them worse.
Not doing the obvious thing you know you should do — the thing that positions you for future success — rarely hurts you right away.
The small choices we make on a daily basis either work for us or against us. One choice puts time on your side. The other ensures it’s working against you. Time amplifies what you feed it.
On the first day, the difference between the choices that help us and the choices that hurt us isn’t noticeable. But as the days turn to weeks, weeks into years, and years into decades do the small choices create massively different results.
Whenever this idea is brought up, people are quick to interject. “But … I do these things and I don’t get the results.” And it’s true, most of us make the right choices most of the time. But most of the time isn’t the same as all of the time.
For your choices to compound, you need to be consistent. Intensity will only carry you in the short term but if you want compounding results you need consistency. In the absence of immediate rewards, we can keep up the intensity for a while but most of us become intermittent.
A lack of consistency keeps ordinary people from extraordinary results. It’s like we’re Sisyphus rolling a boulder halfway up the hill, only to throw our hands in the air and go home. When we show up the next day, we see the boulder at the bottom of the hill. Not only did this undermine our progress but it makes getting started even harder.
Excelling at the small choices that compound over time perpetually leaves you in favorable circumstances. No matter what happens in the world, you’re never in a position where you are forced into a bad decision.
If you want results you need to be willing to pay the price. The price is both easier than you imagine and harder than you think. The price is consistently doing the small choices that put you on the path to success for years. The price is knowing that time is working on your side even when the results don’t show it … yet.
When you look below the surface, giant leaps aren’t really giant leaps at all. They’re a series of ordinary choices that suddenly become noticeable. If you look for the magic moment, you’ll miss how ordinary becomes extraordinary.