...For some, money represents freedom, opportunity, security, or peace of mind. For me, money was a barrier to my goals and dreams. It was the reason I couldn’t do or have the things I wanted in life...
...Most of us tend to ignore micro-stresses and just focus on the big stuff, but the small things require our attention too...
...It’s not that people don’t have the time to offer an honest ‘thank you’. It’s that they don’t want to acknowledge the obligation or connection...
...Part of the challenge of hanging out with cannibals is that it’s very difficult to get a good night’s sleep...
...To increase trust on teams, leaders must understand what influences people’s willingness to trust, as well as what makes leaders trustworthy...
...Upon reaching the top, the new researcher begins doing novel work, throwing new stones onto the top of the mountain and making it a little taller for whoever comes next...
...In other words, how quickly you act after coming to a decision is just as important as how you come to said decision...
...Making personal preferences and working styles explicit speeds up the forming and norming process...
...Understanding the difference between these two points of view is one of the highest leverage ways to improve your and your team’s effectiveness. Failing to understand it is probably one of the largest sources of waste and frustration in most companies...
...I grew up thinking that being smart was the thing most to be desired. Perhaps you did too. But I bet it's not what you really want. Imagine you had a choice between being really smart but discovering nothing new, and being less smart but discovering lots of new ideas...
...As I reflect on my evolution in leadership, I can’t help but think of the early days; back when I had “no clue what I was doing”. What stands out is the troublesome perception of leadership that I started with, extracted from pattern-matching the “leaders of our day”...
...Leverage is everywhere. You felt it as a kid shooting peas across the room with a spoon. Or when you first used a calculator, and wondered why your teachers made you do long division by hand for 3 years...
...In the spirit of multidisciplinary learning, Seeking Wisdom is a compendium of ideas from biology, psychology, statistics, physics, economics, and human behavior...
...Instead of focussing on making our work bigger, we focus on making it work harder. Instead of aiming to maximise our impact, we aim to minimise our waste...
...Regardless of how the options may change, the effectiveness of this framework and exercise seems to endure. I hope you leverage this approach for yourself and to talk through career or work moves with your team, your leader, your friends - anyone who is looking for some structure in their thinking...
...The empty part of the drawer is what makes it a useful tool...
...When you hold an option and the world moves with you, you enjoy the benefits; when the world moves against you, you are shielded from the bad outcome since you are not obligated to do anything. Optionality is the state of enjoying possibilities without being on the hook to do anything...
...An unmotivated student is unlikely to learn much at school. But there’s a wide range of opinion on what parents and teachers can do to instill that motivation. Some swear by rewards and prizes. Others lavish praise or dole it out judiciously...
...While we all hold an opinion on almost everything, how many of us actually do the work required to have an opinion?...
...Most approaches to time management make things worse. Start by acknowledging your limits...
