Timeless Ideas | September 26, 2021

Here’s your weekly dose of timeless ideas to sharpen your mind, make smarter decisions, and live better.

Quotes

I.

You waste years by not being able to waste hours.

― Amos Tversky

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II.

Raise your words, not your voice. It is rain that grows flowers, not thunder.

― Rumi

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III.

A personal metric: how much of the day is spent doing things out of obligation rather than out of interest?

― Naval Ravikant

Ideas

I.

Out in the real world, in which actual human beings live, it’s hard to come up with a more stupid example than 'ditching the daily latte'. Want to get your finances in order? Great! All you have to do is wean yourself off an addictive, stimulatory drug, which you’ve been using all your adult life, will cause withdrawal symptoms and impair your performance when you try to quit, is universally available, woven into the very fabric of social life, is the only addiction that carries no stigma whatsoever, and helped bring about the Enlightenment. Oh, and it’s also really frickin’ delicious.

Richard Meadows in Optionality: How to Survive and Thrive in a Volatile World

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II.

A great source of frustration for people with a strong sense of entitlement is unmet expectations. If you believe that you’re special, and all you have to do is find your singular passion and turn it into a perfect job, that’s a recipe for disaster. The reality is that the world owes you nothing. You only become “special” by developing skills that are in demand, which takes focus, grit, and long-term work.

Kristy Shen in Quit Like a Millionaire: No Gimmicks, Luck, or Trust Fund Required

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III.

There is no desire that anyone holds for any other reason than that they believe they will feel better in the achievement of it. Whether it is a material object, a physical state of being, a relationship, a condition, or a circumstance - at the heart of every desire is the desire to feel good. And so, the standard of success in life is not the things or the money - the standard of success is absolutely the amount of joy you feel.

Esther Hicks, Ask and It Is Given: Learning to Manifest Your Desires

Articles Worth Reading

I.

Hard Work Isn’t the Point of the Office

Derek Thompson | The Atlantic

Offices’ biggest advantage isn’t hard work. It’s soft work—the gossip, eavesdropping, and casual relationship-building that aren’t a formal part of your job. The pandemic disrupted soft work, the vague middle space of weekday activity that isn’t hard work but also isn’t not-work.

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II.

One unlikely culprit to burnout? Your lack of laziness

Garrett Mitchell | Fast Company

If you’re feeling unmotivated or without direction, these sentiments aren’t necessarily character flaws but warning signs. The workforce is working harder and for longer hours than the decades before. Hard work is good, but not when it comes at the expense of the rest that we all need and deserve.

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III.

Lost perspective? Try this linguistic trick to reset your view

Ariana Orvell | Psyche

Changing the way you think about something is a powerful means to cope with and manage your emotional reaction to it. To make this process easier, you can try and work through your negative thoughts and feelings by addressing yourself using ‘you’ or your own name – that is, by using distanced self-talk you can leverage the structure of language to take a step back and see the bigger picture.

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