Timeless Ideas | February 7, 2021
Here’s your weekly dose of timeless ideas to sharpen your mind, make smarter decisions, and live better.
Quotes
I.
I owe my success to having listened respectfully to the very best advice, and then going away and doing the exact opposite.
― G.K. Chesterton
II.
Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.
― George Bernard Shaw
III.
The bravest people are the ones who don’t mind looking like cowards.
― T.H. White
Ideas
I.
The more you try to force it, the less likely you are to succeed. True missions, it turns out, require two things. First you need career capital, which requires patience. Second, you need to be ceaselessly scanning your always-changing view of the adjacent possible in your field, looking for the next big idea. This requires a dedication to brainstorming and exposure to new ideas. Combined, these two commitments describe a lifestyle, not a series of steps that automatically spit out a mission when completed.
Cal Newport in So Good They Can't Ignore You
II.
Every generation of humans believed it had all the answers it needed, except for a few mysteries they assumed would be solved at any moment. And they all believed their ancestors were simplistic and deluded. What are the odds that you are the first generation of humans who will understand reality?
Scott Adams in God's Debris: A Thought Experiment
III.
Negotiate in their world. Persuasion is not about how bright or smooth or forceful you are. It’s about the other party convincing themselves that the solution you want is their own idea. So don’t beat them with logic or brute force. Ask them questions that open paths to your goals. It’s not about you.
Chris Voss in Never Split the Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It
Articles Worth Reading
I.
The Four Desires Driving All Human Behavior
Maria Popova | Brain Pickings
All human activity is prompted by desire. There is a wholly fallacious theory advanced by some earnest moralists to the effect that it is possible to resist desire in the interests of duty and moral principle. I say this is fallacious, not because no man ever acts from a sense of duty, but because duty has no hold on him unless he desires to be dutiful.
II.
8 Psychological Tricks of Restaurant Menus
Jessica Hullinger | Mental Floss
A restaurant’s menu is more than just a random list of dishes. Restaurants use their menus to influence what you’re having for dinner. It has likely been strategically tailored at the hands of a menu engineer or consultant to ensure it's on-brand, easy to read, and most importantly, profitable.
III.
Craig Wright | Aeon
If you work for a genius, you might be berated or abused, or you could lose your job. If someone close to you is a genius, you might find that his or her work or passion always comes first. Yet to those so abused, made miserable or redundant, exploited or ignored, sincere thanks is in order for ‘taking one for the team’, the team being all of us who subsequently benefit from the greater cultural good that ‘your’ genius has done. To paraphrase the writer Edmond de Goncourt: almost no one loves the genius until he or she is dead. But then we do, because now life is better.
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