- Everything is optional.
- Sure, the consequences of not doing something may be severe. Doesn’t mean it’s not optional
- Hold identity lightly. Resist definitively applying identity – to yourself, as well as to others. These declarations are self-limiting, persist longer than is useful or accurate, can be difficult to unwind, and is a barrier in-between two multi-faceted people.
- If it’s not on the calendar, it’s not real.
- Not everything needs to happen. Not everything needs to happen right now. Unless it’s happening right now, there’s a solid chance it still won’t happen.
- Reacting is a choice. Get comfortable creating space between stimulus and reaction.
- Don’t read the comments.
- Avoid the daily news.
- Between two choices, choose the one most minimizing future resentment.
- If you want to see how valuable something is – stop doing it.
- Be open to breaking your streak. The opposite of consistency is addiction.
- Similarly, don’t commit to regularly scheduled meetings w/o an end date. Responsiveness when it matters trumps regular low value interactions.
- There is always an overwhelming number of things happening at once.
- Beware of moralized preferences. There are lots of ways to get a successful outcome, few things are actually directly connected, and most everything is contextual.
- “Without awareness, there is no choice.” – JFK
- Just because you’re aware of something, doesn’t mean it’s for you. Repetition doesn’t change that.
- Most things don’t happen. (“But I stress that the universe is mainly made of nothing, that something is the exception. Nothing is the rule. That darkness is a commonplace; it is light that is the rarity.” – Carl Sagan)
- If the question has even come to mind then, yes, you should leave your job. Discomfort is not security.
- “You are probably too risk-averse.” – Nabeel S. Qureshi
- “Everything’s made up, nobody’s on charge, life’s not fair” – Dan Sullivan
- Almost everything is an exception to the rule, conversely, all rules have an extensive list of exceptions.
- “The standard pace is for chumps” – Derek Sivers
- “The system can be changed and normal is not permanent” – Seth Godin
- Mise en place
- Put things where you expect them to be.
- Prepare the environment for your success – and your collaborators success – before you start. This means; supplies are collected and organized, process is articulated and well-understood, the collaborators have the space and time to focus.
- As kindness to future you, wash your bowl immediately.
- Commit. Prepare. Pre-prepare.
- “Wherever You Ask The Question, That’s Where The Answer Should Be!” – Ryan Tierney, it’s far to common to ask about a place or space when you’re not there, inherently inviting speculation and fabrication. Go there. See for real. Put the answer there.
- Let the environment, and the systems therein, do the remembering.
- Do one thing at a time.
- Then, do the next obvious thing.
- Schedule what’s next. If you’re unsure what to do, the easiest thing to do is what’s on next your calendar.
- Later is more effort: “Things don’t actually take much time. Resistance/procrastination does. If no urgency exists, impose some” – Nabeel S. Qureshi
- Be where your feet are. One step at a time. One day at a time.
- No time-traveling (no obsessing on the past, no worrying about the future).
- Follow your breath.
- Learn to deal constructively with yourself. You are, and will always be, your biggest problem.
- Feelings are felt, somewhere in your body – tune into them.
- Feelings are not facts.
The bulk of the resistance is in your head. Everything is much more malleable, the range of acceptable solutions to a given problem is far wider, than it may first appear. - Always start eating before you start drinking.
- Nothing good ever happens after 10pm.
- The hours of sleep before midnight are worth more than those after.
- Sleep on it. “Only in a marriage proposal should you respond immediately. Everything else can wait 8 hours.” – Alan Weiss.
- Right now, do one thing to make yourself 8% happier, calmer, and more comfortable. Do it.
- Love yourself more (then more, and more…). Your capacity to love someone else is limited by your capacity to love yourself.
- Be comfortable being uncomfortable.
- “The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool” – Richard P. Feynman
- “I am not stuck in traffic, I am traffic” – Seth Godin
- The cup is already broken – appreciate the all the unbroken things around you.
- Gratitude is a foothold.
- Change is how we tell time.
- “Hardware eventually fails. Software eventually works.”
- Really commit to making the most valuable mess you can.
- All messes are a choice
- Always order the fish tacos.
- Life is in fact too short, and too short for bullshit.
- Everything obeys Sturgeon’s Law. Including the those things approved by Sturgeon’s Law.
- If you’re in your office – you’re not doing your most important work.
- If it has a deadline – it’s not your most important work.
- You already have everything you need to start.
- You do not need permission to start, you just need to start.
- First, try. Then, take a step back. Then, actually try.
- The path is made by walking.
- “The only technology you need is deadlines” – Paul Ford
- “There is no perfect moment to begin” – Seth Godin
- Success is not being interrupted.
- Success is requiring less.
- Make fewer, more significant, decisions.
- Do the thing only you can do.
- Savor your obsessions.
- Tell the stories no one else will tell but you
- Focus on the things no one else but you is in a position to do.
- There’s a complete and complex universe hidden behind every single thing. Be amazed, appreciative, and curious.
- Do it tired. Do it anxious. Do it slow.
- Be more specific.
- If you’re struggling with a problem, be more specific in defining it. Smaller more specific problems are easier to solve than big undefined ones, and the solutions are usually unexpected.
- Context is what’s scarce (credit to Tyler Cowen)
- Specifically ask for what you want. Accept ‘No’ for an answer.
- Additionally, if you don’t like an offer respond with a proposal that fits your preference.
- Make the implicit explicit & use your words. We’re all too wrapped up in our own minds to read yours.
- Language is an approximation – your complex thoughts and emotions are constantly being filtered through your understanding of your own language which are then mapped back into thoughts & emotions of your listener. Don’t assume you’ve got the most appropriate words or that you & your listener have the same meaning for the words you’ve chosen.
- If you have an opportunity to travel – take it. Do not cancel.
- Everything you experience is from the past.
- Everything has earlier origins, and started significantly smaller and more tenuously, than you realize (credit Tyler Cowen).
- Everything you’ve done was done by a past version of you. You’ve learned a lot since then, maybe grant yourself some grace.
- nothing is arbitrary
- Maps are assertions and aspirations.
- The tools and artifacts we use to organize, understand, and hypothesize about the world are just that. They are not the world and the world does not care.
- “The map is not the territory” – Alfred Korzybski.
- Reality always wins, “Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.” – Philip K. Dick
- “All models are wrong, but some are useful” – George Box
- “Outdated maps might be worth less than no map at all” – Seth Godin
- “No plan survives first contact with the enemy.” – Helmuth von Moltke the Elder
- Opportunities to fulfill your dreams always arrive before you’re ready.
- Relocate for more broad, more diverse, long-term opportunities. Do not move for an individual job or an individual person. Related, people don’t move when things are going well. Never ever move with IKEA furniture.
- The worst possible version of a thing will be wildly popular.
- “Every system is perfectly designed to get the result it does.” – Dr. Deming
- Pick up the tab.
- “There’s usually an opportunity to be of service” – Seth Godin
- Most problems are coordination problems.
- You can get on someone’s schedule in two weeks. Or right this very minute. Try both at the same time.
- Giving people an out, it makes them more likely to act.
- If you’re going to do something more than twice – on the third time, find a way to systemize it.
- Long game wins.
- Speed rarely matters more than persistence.
- The 40th iteration will always be better than the initial iteration.
- ‘Hope’ is a synonym for ‘resilience’.
- Kanter’s Law: “Everything looks like failure in the middle.”
- “Invest in slow growth” – Seth Godin
- Take ownership. Many around you will be grateful someone did.
- “If there’s a problem, assume that you are 100% the reason. If there’s a problem in a relationship, assume that it’s your problem, not theirs” – Bill Bain, Bain & Co.
- Do the next smallest thing that makes the desired outcome inevitable
- “Take responsibility, demand freedom, don’t seek authority” – Seth Godin
- Do not hobby lightly. Find a hobby or two and really dive in with both feet. Get obsessive about it for a while. Find a vector that is both challenging for you and a significant contribution to this community. Maybe this is competitions, maybe this is other administrative, maybe this is demonstrating new techniques or very old techniques. Whatever it is, find the edges of it that interest you enough to become an expert, without adding more stress to your life. You will only find unexpected opportunities the deeper you go.
- There is always another frontier.
- Interestingness is at the edges, at the intersections.
- Listen for the unexpected part. Then comment.
- Luxury and irresponsibility are often indistinguishable.
- Luxury looks different to everyone. It could be a nicer car, a nicer house, a larger family, nicer travel, whatever it is, it is luxury to you only by comparison. To them it is a banal expression of their values.
- Everyone has some luxury that you absolutely don’t want.
- “Advertising is a tax for being unremarkable” – Robert Stephens, founder of GeekSquad.
- Money is never the primary problem.
- Do not complain. Complaining implies you have no options for relief or improvement. There is nearly always at least one option.
- The future is continually changing our understanding of the past. Not in nefarious ways as described 1984, in ways that provide a richer and more complex understanding of our world. A simple example: Dinosaurs weren’t recognized until the 1820s. We didn’t discover the Chicxulub Crater until 1991.
Bonus, here’s my favorites from Kevin Kelly’s 88 Prompts for Long Term Thinking
- We trust the future.
- We have more obligation to the future than the past.
- There is far more future than there is the past; the future is a bigger territory.
- Tomorrow will arrive without our help; our job is to make tomorrow as big as possible.
- We are trying to equip the future so it can help itself.
- We want to create infinite games, where all who play, win.
- We aim to be good ancestors. – To be a good ancestor means doing the things you wished your ancestors did. What do we wish our great-grandparents did?
- Since progress is real, our descendants will have more information and better tools, which will make them more capable of fixing problems we can’t.
- The future is no more free of the past than the present is.
- To understand the far future, we must understand the deep past.
- The real risk to civilization is not serious errors, but serious forgetting.
- We seek to apply the lessons of the past to steer the future.
- The most important things will take more than one lifetime to complete.
- Civilization is multi-paced: Fast learns, slow remembers.
- Even large setbacks and disasters can be overcome by small compounding over long terms.
- Focus not on the outcomes, but on the processes that produce outcomes.
- We want to make long-term thinking automatic and common instead of difficult and rare.
- Let’s design a system so that 90% of the benefits are delivered after we are all dead.
- Long-term thinking keeps revisiting decisions so that unexpected solutions can be found later.
- The best choices today are those that lead to a greater number of choices in the future.
- We seek those possibilities that increase future possibilities for all.
- Individually we are better off with expanding possibilities for everyone.
- Things that have never happened before happen all the time.