Timeless Ideas | October 3, 2021
Here’s your weekly dose of timeless ideas to sharpen your mind, make smarter decisions, and live better.
Quotes
I.
If the reason people invest is to make money, then in seeking advice they are asking others to tell them how to make money. That idea has some element of naïveté.
― Benjamin Graham
II.
It requires a great deal of boldness and a great deal of caution to make a great fortune; and when you have got it, it requires ten times as much wit to keep it.
— Nathan Mayer Rothschild
III.
People tend to overuse any idea or concept that delivers an emotional kick.
― Chip Heath
Ideas
I.
It is one thing to make a mistake, and quite another thing not to admit it. People will forgive mistakes, because mistakes are usually of the mind, mistakes of judgment. But people will not easily forgive the mistakes of the heart, the ill intention, the bad motives, the prideful justifying cover-up of the first mistake.
Stephen Covey in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
II.
If you want to know how to make people shun you and laugh at you behind your back and even despise you, here is the recipe: Never listen to anyone for long. Talk incessantly about yourself. If you have an idea while the other person is talking, don’t wait for him or her to finish: bust right in and interrupt in the middle of a sentence.
Dale Carnegie in How to Win Friends & Influence People
III.
When in doubt, vary, change, solve the problem, seize the opportunity, experiment, try something new (consistent, of course, with the core ideology)—even if you can’t predict precisely how things will turn out. Do something. If one thing fails, try another. Fix. Try. Do. Adjust. Move. Act. No matter what, don’t sit still.
Jim Collins in Built to Last
Articles Worth Reading
I.
Sophie Haigney | The Drift
One might feel compelled to ask why so many of these books exist, but the main reason is obvious: money. Book sales may be a drop in the bucket for some celebrities, but they can be major sources of income for politicians and ex-politicians. Books are like pieces of merchandise from which they can legally profit; writing books represents one of the few ways politicians can capitalize on their celebrity that is generally considered above-board, even by the most scrupulous.
II.
How mental health became a social media minefield
Rebecca Jennings | Vox
In the past decade, as social media has forced billions of us to virtually bump into people we never would have otherwise, many of us have also found the need to categorize people into recognizable boxes. One way to do so is by seizing on common human behaviors to name — gaslighting, emotional labor, trauma, parasocial relationships, “empath” as a noun — then disseminating them until they cease to mean much at all. We end up treating mental illness like a subculture, complete with its own vocabulary that only those in the know can use and weaponize.
III.
Is That All There Is? Why Burnout Is A Broken Promise
Whizy Kim | Refinery29
The so-called Great Resignation has been making headline after headline for months now, as people have been quitting their jobs in droves. It's a sign of the times — and of how fed up people are with the conditions of work — that people are now rejecting this worldview, and doing so to such a degree that it’s become a movement. If the movement has a motto, it would be the word that’s been on everyone’s lips over the past 18 months: burnout. But burnout isn't just fatigue. It's far more insidious and complicated.
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