Power Corrupts. PowerPoint Corrupts Absolutely.
Edward Tufte
Category: Gems from Others
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Words to live by if you want to Excel in life
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Waiting before Shipping
Jerry Seinfeld in talk with Tim Ferris said this about writing:
When you write something (or create anything worth sharing), be kind to yourself as you have just accomplished a difficult task. Savor the feeling of having done something good. In case you share that with someone and they find problems with it, your sense of achievement would go down the drain immediately. Instead, sleep on it and wait for 24 hours before sharing it. After such a duration, you would be more open to getting critiqued and you can also go through it again to make it better. Shipping immediately isn’t the best when it comes to creative arts.
This applies to everything except cooking. That’s why Twitter might not be the right medium for being actually creative. Meme-making might work there but not art.
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Leaky Faucet Theory
Peter Shankman of ‘Faster Than Normal’ says:
Think about it (problems) like a leaky faucet that’s overflowing the sink onto your kitchen floor: you could spend all your time constantly cleaning up the water that’s destroying your floor (i.e., fixing the things that happened because a trigger set you off) or you could fix the leak in the first place. Fixing the leak is a lot easier, right?
Often when things go awry, we tend to blame non-important things instead of fixing the source. Finding the source might not always be hard if we really try.
I am not intending to impart wisdom here. I am just reminding myself of this. 🙂
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Pygmalion Placebo
In this post on the A Learning A Day daily blog by Rohan Rajiv the Pygmalion Effect is mentioned.
Pygmalion Effect, also called Rosenthal effect, says that if you and everyone around you believe in something, there are more chances of you making it happen. In other words, high expectation lead to better results while lower expectations lead to poorer. It is a bit similar to the Placebo effect in Medical Science.
Right now, there are 3 or more Vaccines with high efficacy are peeking from the horizon. While there are skeptics, there’s a huge populace which is betting on its success. Even if they end up being reasonable in effectiveness, this effect might make it more effective.
Same thing works with confidence. Isn’t it?
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Complaining a lot? Read this
This has to become THE mantra for anytime things don’t go right:
When You Complain, Nobody Wants to Help You.
Stephen Hawking -
Changing Perspectives
This is one powerful message to change perspectives.
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So I recently read: ‘Your Life in Weeks’ on WaitButWhy.com
I generally don’t think long-term. I do have ambitions and I have a general plan but there is no more irksome question than “Where do you see yourself after 5 years?”. Memes about this question being asked in 2015 are already aplenty. All your plans, goals, and targets crumble as soon as a personal calamity occurs.
Just a day after Diwali 78% people of my family fell sick which totally ruined all the festivities. The scare is still hanging in the balance and the road to recovery is still a few weeks longer. This has totally toppled everyone’s plans, goals, and targets and now everyone is looking for short-term betterment.
I recently read: Your Life in Weeks (https://waitbutwhy.com/2014/05/life-weeks.html). Summarizing it below:
Think about your life. Divide it into weeks (or months or years or decades). If you are already in your 30s, 33% of your life has already gone. The majority of the time you spent with your parents, your real friends, and your hobbies might already be spent. Many of the attempts are already being used up as we speak.
Courtesy: WaitButWhy.com But, it is not all bad. We still have 66% of the life left. That is actually good. The most satisfactory time is yet to come your way. Your earlier time might have been for your own self. Maybe, now is the time to think about others. Now might be the time when you can guide others to lead their lives better. Now might be the time when you can devote to your latent hobbies. The others can be anyone you care for.
We will always be short of time. But there might be a wee bit of time in your week left to spend thinking about others. Think of your life in weeks or months or years or decades. Many greats achieved their highs in their careers in 2nd halves of their lives. So can we.
There will be a mixed bag of news coming our way as we grow older. Many of them would be out of our control anyway. So, instead of saying why me, we can change our perspective and think about what can be done to change the next few coming weeks, or years, or decades. But don’t reply to the dreaded question about where do you see yourself after 5 years as the answer remains: In the mirror.
Photo by United Nations COVID-19 Response on Unsplash
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Simple doesn’t mean easy
The Hacker’s Diet starts with this passage:
There’s an old Wall Street Tale: a tyro asks an old-timer, “How do you make money in the market?”
The wise man answers, “Nothing could be simpler: buy low, sell high“. The beginner asks, “How can I learn to do that?”. The sage responds, “Ahhh… that takes a lifetime.”
Simple doesn’t mean easy.
Probably this is how Democracies work too.
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Singh vs Murthy
Back in June 2019, I had got an opportunity to hear from one of the best speakers (from the Toastmasters’ community) in Bangalore, Gauri Seshadri. She delivered this speech which I found inspirational and fascinating. I am not exactly paraphrasing but recalling from memory. She came from a family of Indian Army folks which made the story much more credible (I am not an expert on ranks so excuse in advance).
Here it goes,
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The True Egalitarian Aspect of Success
I am a big fan of Casey Neistat (YouTube in case you don’t know him). He said, in an interview:
“You realize that you will never be the best-looking person in the room. You’ll never be the smartest person in the room. You’ll never be the most educated, the most well-versed. You can never compete on those levels. But what you can always compete on, the true egalitarian aspect to success is hard work. You can always work harder than the next guy.”
Some people may appear that they were born with a specific talent. Or they might happen to be born with certain privileges. It is not their fault. But, in case you have nothing of that sort, you can still have the full ability to try harder. And harder. And harder.
