Article
How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big
Farnam Street
- In the morning, he is a creator, in the afternoon he’s a copier. Mindless tasks go later in the day. This is the single biggest change you can make to improve your odds of success.
- Few things are as destructive and limiting as a worldview that assumes people are mostly rational.
- We’re taught that being selfish is bad, but it all depends on how you look at it. Being selfish can be good. The most important form of selfishness involves spending time on your fitness, eating right, pursuing your career, and still spending quality time with your family and friends.
- Adults are starved for a kind word. When you understand the power of honest praise (as opposed to bullshitting, flattery, and sucking up), you realize that withholding it borders on immoral. If you see something that impresses you, a decent respect to humanity insists you voice your praise.
- don’t read the news to find truth, as that would be a foolish waste of time. I read the news to broaden my exposure to new topics and patterns that make my brain more efficient in general and to enjoy myself, because learning interesting things increases my energy and makes me feel optimistic.
- This is, at its core, the finding of the Stanford prison experiment. [W]e are designed to become in reality however we act. We fake it until it becomes real. Our core personality doesn’t change, but we quickly adopt the mannerisms and skills associated with our new status and position. In addition to this, we see ourselves as part of a new group and accordingly identify ourselves “with the other members and take on some of the characteristics of the group.” This is one of the reasons why sometimes people change when they get promoted.
- The ability to change your mind is probably one of the best life skills you can ever hope to develop. [Y]ou shouldn’t hesitate to modify your perceptions to whatever makes you happy, because you’re probably wrong about the underlying nature of reality anyway.
- Adams has looked for examples of people who use systems versus those who use goals. In most cases, he’s discovered that people using systems do better, and they are more innovative. “The systems-driven people have found a way to look at the familiar in new and more useful ways,” he says in the WSJ. If you do something every day, it’s a system. If you’re waiting to achieve it someday in the future, it’s a goal.
- The system-versus-goals model can be applied to most human endeavours. In the world of dieting, losing twenty pounds is a goal, but eating right is a system. In the exercise realm, running a marathon in under four hours is a goal, but exercising daily is a system. In business, making a million dollars is a goal, but being a serial entrepreneur is a system.
- Goal-oriented people exist in a state of continuous pre-success failure at best, and permanent failure at worst if things never work out. Systems people succeed every time they apply their systems, in the sense that they did what they intended to do. The goals people are fighting the feeling of discouragement at each turn. The systems people are feeling good every time they apply their system. That’s a big difference in terms of maintaining your personal energy in the right direction.
- What you really want is a system that increases your odds of success. Even if that system only improves the odds a little it adds up over a long life. In organizations, this means, for example, you should care more about the process by which you make decisions than analysis. It also means that you should focus on building a system that evolves, improves, and survives ego. Systems increase the odds of getting lucky. Or, if you want to put it another way, they reduce stupidity.
- On a scale of one to ten, the importance of understanding psychology is a solid ten.