March 16, 2025 - #620 - read online - Free Version

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Tiny Thoughts

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The most powerful productivity tool ever invented is simply the word "no."

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The single most effective habit is the willingness to change your own mind.

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If you want to understand someone, figure out the narrative they tell themselves about themself.

If you want to change your behavior, change your narrative. If you want to change someone else’s behavior, offer them a more compelling narrative they can tell themselves.

Insights

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Author Jodi Piccoult on why we love:

“You don’t love someone because they’re perfect, you love them in spite of the fact that they’re not.”

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George Clason with insight on the entropy of lifestyle creep:

“That what each of us calls our 'necessary expenses' will always grow to equal our incomes unless we protest to the contrary.”

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Larry Winget on integrity:

“Every time you’re tempted to slack off or do or be a little less than you could, remember that you are a person of integrity who lives by the simple creed: do what you said you would do, when you said you would do it, the way you said you would do it.”

The Repository

Jeff Bezos reminds us to focus on the inputs, not the outputs.

He gives the example of a higher stock price and works backward to the controllable inputs:

“What are the inputs to a higher stock price? Okay, well, free cash flow and return on invested capital are inputs to a higher stock price. Let’s keep working backwards. What are the inputs to free cash flow? And you keep working backwards until you get to something that’s controllable.”

He points out we can control costs, which is an input to free cash flow:

“If we can improve our picking efficiency in our fulfillment centers and reduce defects - reducing defects at the root is one of the best ways to lower cost structure - that starts to be a job you would accept. If you’re a reasonable person, you would say, I have no idea how to drive up the stock price - I can’t manage that directly. It’s not a controllable input. But I can make your picking algorithms more efficient, and that will reduce cost structure. And then you follow that chain all along the way. That’s what you do in all of these businesses.”

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The Knowledge Project [Outliers]

Most people hear Estée Lauder and think of cosmetics—lipstick, perfume, face cream.

But the real story isn’t just about makeup—it’s about an unstoppable force.

Estée Lauder didn’t just build a beauty brand; she rewrote the rules. She turned rejection into fuel, defied industry gatekeepers, and transformed a homemade face cream into a multi-billion-dollar global powerhouse.

"What makes a successful businesswoman? Is it talent? Well, perhaps, although I've known many enormously successful people who were not-gifted in any outstanding way, not blessed with particular talent. Is it, then, intelligence? Certainly, intelligence helps, but it's not necessarily education or the kind of intellectual reasoning needed to graduate from the Wharton School of Business that are essential. How many of your grandfathers came here from one or another "old country" and made a mark in America without the language, money, or contacts? What, then, is the mystical ingredient?

It's persistence. It's that certain little spirit that compels you to stick it out just when you're at your most tired. It's that quality that forces you to persevere, find the route around the stone wall. It's the immovable stubbornness that will not allow you to cave in when everyone says give up"

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Thanks for reading,

— Shane Parrish
Author of Clear Thinking

P.S. One of my kids, who has never driven, thinks he can do this.

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