Timeless Ideas | October 10, 2021
Here’s your weekly dose of timeless ideas to sharpen your mind, make smarter decisions, and live better.
Quotes
I.
The number one reason most people don't get what they want is that they don't know what they want.
― T. Harv Eker
II.
Nothing, nothing at all, matters as much as bringing the right people into your life. They will teach you everything you need to know.
― Guy Spier
III.
Advice is one thing that is freely given away, but watch that you only take what is worth having.
― George Clason
Ideas
I.
Lying is, almost by definition, a refusal to cooperate with others. It condenses a lack of trust and trustworthiness into a single act. It is both a failure of understanding and an unwillingness to be understood. To lie is to recoil from relationship. By lying, we deny others a view of the world as it is. Our dishonesty not only influences the choices they make, it often determines the choices they can make—and in ways we cannot always predict. Every lie is a direct assault upon the autonomy of those we lie to.
Sam Harris in Lying
II.
Some people are born into families that encourage education; others are against it. Some are born into flourishing economies encouraging of entrepreneurship; others are born into war and destitution. I want you to be successful, and I want you to earn it. But realize that not all success is due to hard work, and not all poverty is due to laziness. Keep this in mind when judging people, including yourself.
Morgan Housel in The Psychology of Money
III.
The best cure for overconfidence in your beliefs is to constantly remind yourself that you have experienced less than a tiny fraction of a percent of what has happened in the world. As Will and Ariel Durant write in The Lessons of History, “All of the history of humankind is a short chapter in the history of biology. And all of biology is a short chapter in the history of the planet. And the planet is a short chapter in the history of the universe.”
Gautam Baid, in The Joys of Compounding: The Passionate Pursuit of Lifelong Learning
Articles Worth Reading
I.
The history of what we call work
Aaron Benanav | The Nation
For the longest part of our history, humans lived as hunter-gatherers who neither experienced economic growth nor worried about its absence. Instead of working many hours each day in order to acquire as much as possible, our nature—insofar as we have one—has been to do the minimum amount of work necessary to underwrite a good life.
II.
Dan Harris, Rebecca Rashid, Arthur Brooks | The Atlantic
Manage your feelings so they don’t manage you. Only when we admit we have a problem can we begin to find solutions. Tirst episode of How to Build a Happy Life explores the neuroscience of emotional management, practices that help us befriend our inner monologue, and challenges to getting in touch with our feelings. Our journey to happier living starts with the question: How do I feel right now?
III.
Psychological ‘specialness spirals’ can make ordinary items feel like treasures
Jacqueline Rifkin | The Conversation
Have you ever bought an item and then just not gotten around to using it because the time never felt right? When people decide not to use something at one point in time, the item can start to feel more special. And as it feels more special, they want to protect it and are less likely to want to use it in the future. This accrual of specialness can be one explanation for how possessions accumulate and turn into unused clutter.
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