⭐️ Quotes

There's no such thing as a mistake.

If you're smart about it, then a mistake is a valuable learning experience, a stepping stone to the next level of knowledge. It gives you practice and information that you can use to perform better next time.

​

The difference between the successful and the unsuccessful comes down to a single step: the extra rep in a workout, the extra time to perfect a presentation, the extra effort for a loved one. Take that step where it counts.

​

​

📜 Articles

​The Moral Bucket List​

Most of us are trained and focused from a young age on building a great career and professional look. If we happen to have a bucket list, it usually consists of things that are quite shallow: make a million dollars, become a CEO, go skydiving, travel to 30 countries. But such things quickly fade away.

A Moral Bucket List is a set of experiences that build you a rich and meaningful life. It focuses on doing things that give you a sense of inner satisfaction, down to your very core.

From the article:

Some ways you can build a moral bucket list:

• Be humble -- The world is constantly pushing for you to show off your accomplishments and social status. But being humble about your life allows you to live more naturally and honestly. Then you can be who you want to be since you're not trying to sell or fake anything
• Defeat your self-limits -- If you wish to live a truly rich life, make it a point to identify the limits of your comfort zone and deliberately push past them. This will create opportunities and experiences that you never imagined before
• Seek help from others -- It takes courage to admit to yourself that you have limitations and to go seek help. But once you take that step, you will realize how much more you can accomplish by working together with other good people
• Cultivate energising love -- People who feel fulfilled have a lot of love in their life. Do things that create new love in your life through genuine kindness. Nurture your current love through special effort so that it becomes even stronger
• Develop a sense of purpose -- If you're doing your job just for the money or status, then the sense of happiness that it brings you will be short-lived. But when there is a deeper meaning behind it, the work energises you. It drives you to achieve more and gives you the feeling that you're truly living your life
• Let go of who you were, become who you are -- In living a great life, you must put aside who you are in favour of the better person that you wish to be. Have the courage to take that leap, knowing that with enough heart you can make anything happen

​

​The Disrespect​

This article is raw, real, and to the point:

It's an often overlooked message but so, so true. If someone disagrees with you, it doesn't mean that they hate you personally or think you're stupid. They just have a different understanding of the thing you're looking at. That can come from a number of different sources: different experiences, different upbringing, different thinking processes, and most commonly different incentives. With all that in play, you're certainly going to disagree!

The key thing to understand is that human relationships play a big part in your professional and personal success. People can help protect you, give you opportunities, or otherwise enhance your life in a way that you wouldn't be able to otherwise. It's really important to have good relationships.

It's not complicated either. You don't need to read 100 books about human psychology or use any tricks.

• If someone disagrees with you, have a constructive discussion
• If you don't like someone or what they're doing, just be respectful for the time being or walk away
• When you're interacting with someone, put yourself in their shoes to think how to best deliver your message so they can understand

Overall, just be a respectful person and great things will come your way.

​

​

📚 Books

​Seeking Wisdom: From Darwin To Munger​

The book Seeking Wisdom is all about learning how to think better, drawing lessons from many writings, interviews, and examples of some of the world’s best thinkers. The book most frequently refers to Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger (Buffett’s business partner). Both of them have some of the best thinking and mental models that we currently know about as they’ve had tremendous investing success (which requires having razor sharp decision making). There are also others that the book refers to like Charles Darwin, Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Albert Einstein, Blaise Pascal, Richard Feynman, and Samuel Johnson.

The great thing about the book is that the lessons are presented in a simple, easy to understand way. You can tell just by how the chapters laid out in short but sweet bursts of wise nuggets.

​

28 Mistakes We Make Because of Our Psychology

Bevelin identifies 28 mistakes that we, or really our brain, makes because of our human psychology.

1. Association bias
2. Following rewards and running from punishment
3. Self-interest and incentives
4. Self-serving bias
5. Self-deceiving and in denial
6. The tendency to remain consistent with previous actions
7. Loving that which we are deprived from
8. Do-nothing by default
9. Being impatient
10. Envy and jealousy
11. Missing the small yet important details
12. Anchoring bias
13. Over-influence by recency
14. Blindness to abstract information
15. The tendency to reciprocate favours
16. Over-influence from liking
17. Bias from social proof
18. Automatically believing authority
19. Forcing it to make sense to meet a desired outcome
20. Respecting any kind of reason
21. Believing by default
22. Limitations of our memory
23. Always feeling the need to do something
24. Always feeling the need to say something
25. Influenced by our emotions
26. Stress clouds our judgement
27. Under the influence of alcohol, coffee, etc.
28. Multiple of the above compounding together

​

The Physics and Mathematics of Misjudgements

Bevelin goes through several (simple) techniques derived from mathematics that can be used for better thinking.

1. Systems thinking - We often think about problems too narrowly, only considering a single element or small part. But to make more accurate decisions, you must consider all the parts of the system, both in terms of how they work individually and collectively
2. Scale and limits - Consider what happens at scale, especially over the long-term. The small difference of 1% returns on your portfolio or 5% increase on your salary might seem tiny in the short-term, but in the long-term it’s enormous
3. Causes - Correlation does not equal causation; keep in mind that luck and randomness can play a big role in things. Also, consider multiple causes since there are often multiple factors at play
4. Numbers and their meaning - Don’t just look at single or average numbers. Make sure you consider as much data as possible so that you are not biased. Don’t take numbers as absolute values either; instead, consider the relative value of things
5. Probabilities and number of possible outcomes - Don’t underestimate the highly improbable. It always pays well to anticipate and take advantage of high-risk-high-reward opportunities
6. Margin of safety - Always add a margin of safety to your decision making. It's rare to be able to see all the possible scenarios, so most decisions and calculations are more like estimates. Safety margins protect you from mistakes and miscalculations
7. Coincidences and miracles - Coincidences and miracles are often just luck. Don’t hope for them, but also don’t be surprised if they happen

​

Guidelines to Better Thinking

The final part of Seeking Wisdom presents several tools for better thinking. They’re super easy to apply and backed by a lot of psychology research. Here I summarise the most useful ones:

1. Simplify things - The easiest way to make decisions is to first eliminate all of the bad options. That way you narrow your focus so you can spend your energy on the things that matter
2. Have goals - Your time and energy are limited, so you want to make sure that you’re spending them wisely. Set tangible goals to ensure that all of your efforts are focused in a single direction
3. Consider cause and effect - Look at the downstream consequences of all that you do. Who will be affected? What will happen in the short-term? What will happen in the long-term? This includes the effect of choosing particular options and the effect of doing nothing at all. Remember, choosing to do nothing is still an option
4. Get the numbers - Quantifying things will help you make more objective decisions. Make it a point to assign a number to each part of your analysis. Numbers ensure that you take your emotions out of the equation and maintain rationality
5. Think in risk - Think in terms of risk vs reward. You definitely want to be taking some risks so that you can have an amazing life, but you also want that safety net. Find a balance where you can achieve both

​

🎥 Videos

​SpaceX COO Gwynne Shotwell, Virtual Commencement Address, Northwestern University, June 14, 2021​

SpaceX is a company most well-known for being headed by Elon Musk and having grand ambitions for sending humans to Mars. Behind all of the hype, Gwynne Shotwell is making the whole machine run. As COO, she manages all business operations of the company including landing government contracts for funding, coordinating logistics, and making sure that all the supporting aspects of SpaceX are running smoothly, so that the scientists and engineers can do what they do without worry.

In this commencement speech to the 2021 graduating class of Northwestern University, Shotwell distills 3 fantastic lessons for both career and life:

1. Set and try to achieve absolutely absurd goals -- Shotwell tells the story of how she decided to join SpaceX back in 2002. She was struggling with the decision at first, being a single mother in a part-time job. What made her go through with it was the realisation that the most important part wasn't success or failure, it was the act of trying. You don't want to look back on your life and regret not having tried anything great. But when you try, you get a chance to do something exciting. Even if it doesn't work you'll still have a ton of fun doing it and can sleep well knowing that you had the courage to truly live your life
2. Work hard, really hard, and be helpful -- Shotwell was originally hired to lead sales at SpaceX. But whenever there was an opportunity to contribute more, she always took the initiative to do so. She recalls doing accounting and finance, legal work, contract negotiations, even vacuuming the carpets before a customer event! No matter what, she does what it takes to get the job done, knowing that in the long run such an attitude leads to great things
3. Be kind, but at minimum, be respectful -- It's clear that Shotwell is an ambitious, driven person, but she doesn't let those qualities get in the way of being kind to people. Everyone you meet is battling something whether it be a tough external challenge or their own internal demons. If you want to rise up, then everyone around you needs to rise together, and that requires mutual kindness

She concludes with this powerful statement:

​

​How a CEO Makes High Stakes Decisions​

Doug Conant, the CEO of the Campbell Soup Company, breaks down how he makes high stakes decisions.

Conant said that the most important thing is "creating a framework for what mattered most. If people knew what mattered, it would make it easier to decide." The main idea being that once everyone in an organization knows what the priorities are, then they can self-operate without the direction of the CEO or any kind of bureaucratic business overhead.

The most important decision for a leader to make, and you can think of yourself as a leader of your own life, is to figure out what your priorities are. It will make it a lot easier to do your job because then you can focus all of your efforts on the one goal, rather than wasting energy going in multiple non-primary directions.

Conant also touches upon how "slow equals fast." Take your time in figuring out what your priorities are. Once you've figured them out, moving fast becomes a lot easier because you don't have to adjust your direction as often.

At the same time, you can't expect that you'll have the perfect direction right from the get go. Even if you do at first, the world is so dynamic that your priorities might change over time. You can make things easier by doing regular interventions; check in and ask yourself:

• What's working?
• What's not working?
• What do we need to improve?

Do those mini course-corrections to make sure you're always on the right track and getting the most impact for your efforts.

​

🖼️ Beautiful Picture

The beauty of Paris

​