29 Lessons From The Greatest Strategic Minds Who Ever Lived, Fought, Or Led
“Practice the art of negative visualization: This lesson in strategy comes from the great Stoics philosophers like Seneca and Marcus Aurelius. They had a term—premeditatio malorum—for visualizing failure in advance. Why would they do that? Because if you imagine failure you start seeing all the ways that have led to that result. And you can start actively working on addressing and mitigating them in advance.”
How Tempus Machina Watches Transforms New Rolexes
“My first vintage Rolex, I had when I was 16 — it was a DateJust, a 1603,” said Davis. “I grew up my whole life having a 1675 my father bought me for like $215. You know, it’s one of those things from when you were a kid and you can’t shake it — there’s that ineffable quality where you look at it, and it just seems so right.”
First of all, Tempus Machina Watches was an immediate follow for me on Instagram. I relate to this quote simply because I grew up watching my father buy, sell, and work on Rolex watches. When I bought my first DateJust, it just felt right. When something is built so well, it speaks for itself.
Multitasking: Giving the World an Advantage it Shouldn’t Have
“Concentrating hard on something that is important is… I can’t succeed at all without doing it. I did not succeed in life by intelligence. I succeeded because I have a long attention span.”
I’ve been thinking about the “Deep Work” concept more and more after finishing the book and I can say it’s a simple concept, but one that takes time to master. We have so many distractions thrown in our face every minute it is becoming increasingly difficult to focus on one thing for a long period of time. A perfect example of this would be studying for an exam. Personally, I gained a lot more when I was alone, turned off all electronics, and had nothing but a pen, paper, notes, and my textbook. It wasn’t easy though. It isn’t easy to sit and read/study for 2 hours straight when you know people are posting on social media or texting you. It takes discipline, and it’s a skill that is necessary for doing good work.
21 Surprising Statistics That Reveal How Much Stuff We Actually Own
“Women will spend more than eight years of their lives shopping.”
“Over the course of our lifetime, we will spend a total of 3,680 hours or 153 days searching for misplaced items.The research found we lose up to nine items every day—or 198,743 in a lifetime. Phones, keys, sunglasses, and paperwork top the list.”
We don’t think about it often, but there is a lot more to lose from buying more things we don’t need other than spending money and gaining clutter. This article does a great job of putting a time perspective on buying more.
A Productivity Lesson from a Classic Arcade Game
“Similar to our reader from above losing his ability to play snake at a high level, your ability to write/code/strategize at a high level is significantly diminished every time you let your attention drift.”
“To put this another way: if you commit to long blocks without any interruption (not even the quickest of glances), you’ll be shocked by how much sharper and productive you feel.”
Cal Newport is the author of “Deep Work” and his blog is oftentimes full of gems. This article focuses on the benefits of focusing on one task without any interruption.
Ben Chestnut of MailChimp: Learn to Love the Job You’ve Got
“The most frequent life advice I give people is, be really careful who your friends are. Your friends should be better than you. Your friends should take you to new levels. A lot of people will just hang out with the same friends, and they don’t see that their friends are pulling them down. My mother used to tell me if you hang around with dogs, you become a dog. You’ve got to know when to find new friends.”
100% agree with this. If your friends don’t inspire you to hustle, you should get some new friends.
Yes or No
“Let me ask again: Why would you ever be excited to be with someone who is not excited to be with you? If they’re not happy with you now, what makes you think they’ll be happy to be with you later? Why do you make an effort to convince someone to date you when they make no effort to convince you? What does that say about you? That you believe you need to convince people to be with you?”
“Or as I often like to say in regards to dating, “If you have to ask, then that’s your answer.”
I think I’ll be forwarding this article to anyone who asks me for relationship advice in the future. If you have to convince someone that they should be with you, they aren’t that into you. You should stop.
Don’t be too inspired
“The more you see how other people do what they do, the harder it becomes to do things differently.”
An interesting take on inspiration and how sometimes the best way to be inspired is to not pay much attention to what others are doing.
How to Write Articles and Essays Quickly and Expertly
“Each of these types has a distinct and easy structure, and once you know what sort of writing you are doing, the rest of the article almost writes itself. The four types of structure are: argument, explanation, definition, and description. So, as you think about writing your first paragraph, ask yourself, what sort of article are you writing.”
“These are your choices of types of article or essay: Argument: convinces someone of something Explanation: tells why something happened instead of something else Definition: states what a word or concept means Description: identifies properties or qualities of things”
A great reminder on the styles of writing. You can make the process of writing a lot easier by answering the simple question of, “Why am I writing this?” beforehand.
Our secret’s out
“Earlier this year our co-founder Ties had a flash of genius. Our boxes are about the same size as a (really really reaaaally massive) flatscreen television. Flatscreen televisions always arrive in perfect condition. What if we just printed a flatscreen television on the side of our boxes? And just like that, shipping damage to our bikes dropped by 70–80%.”
This was one of my favorite articles that I read in September. I love simple business/life-hacks and this is a perfect example of one. Not everything has to have a high-tech solution. Not everything needs to be complicated. Sometimes the best solutions are the quickest and cheapest ones.