A critical quality for success is the ability to change your mind. A lot of ideas are bad until they’re good. And a lot of ideas are good until they’re bad.
Author: Shane Parrish | Source: Farnam Street | Subjects: Personal Improvement, Success / Failure
Sometimes amateurs believe they are professionals, but professionals never believe they are amateurs.
Author: Shane Parrish | Source: Farnam Street | Subjects: Career, Education | Scholarship, Personal Improvement
The person who cannot take advantage of an opportunity is no better off than the person that never sees it in the first place.
Author: Shane Parrish | Source: Farnam Street | Subjects: Personal Improvement, Success / Failure
Humility isn’t a lack of confidence but an earned confidence. The confidence to say that you might not be right, but you’ve done the diligence, and you’ve put in the work. Humility keeps you wondering what you’re missing or if someone is working harder than you. And yet when pride and arrogance take over, humility flees and so does our ability to learn, adapt, and … [ Read more ]
Author: Shane Parrish | Source: Farnam Street | Subjects: Education | Scholarship, Intelligence | Knowledge, Learning, Personal Improvement, Psychology | Behavior
Surprises alert you to flawed thinking. When results are not what you expected. When facts disagree with you. When someone does something unexpected. “What surprise tells you,” my friend Adam Robinson says, “is that your model of the world is incorrect.” And when your model of the world is incorrect, you need to figure out why.
Authors: Adam Robinson, Shane Parrish | Source: Farnam Street | Subjects: Concepts, Education | Scholarship, Math & Science, Personal Improvement, Truth | Right | Wrong
Working smarter is the most valuable form of working harder.
Author: Shane Parrish | Source: Farnam Street | Subjects: Personal Improvement, Success / Failure
There is nothing that gets in the way of success more than avoidance. We avoid hard conversations. We avoid certain people. We avoid hard decisions. We avoid evidence that contradicts what we think. We avoid starting a project until we’re certain of the outcome.
To justify our avoidance, we lie to ourselves. We tell ourselves that we’re noble — we don’t want to hurt someone’s feelings. … [ Read more ]
Author: Shane Parrish | Source: Farnam Street | Subjects: Life & Society, Personal Improvement, Psychology | Behavior, Relationships, Success / Failure
If you let motivation dictate your actions, inertia conspires to keep you in place. Action creates progress. Progress creates momentum. Momentum creates motivation.
Author: Shane Parrish | Source: Farnam Street | Subjects: Action | Accomplishment, Personal Improvement, Productivity & Time Management, Psychology | Behavior, Success / Failure
The biggest generator of long-term results is learning to do things when you don’t feel like doing them.
Author: Shane Parrish | Source: Farnam Street | Subjects: Personal Improvement, Success / Failure
Economic cycles are driven as much by human nature as by resources. When profits are flowing, it encourages overconfidence, greed, and complacency. When profits are nowhere to be found, it encourages fear, savings, and ruthless efficiency.
Author: Shane Parrish | Source: Farnam Street | Subject: Economics | Economy
When people’s actions have outcomes that don’t line up with how they see themselves, they tend to insulate their egos by blaming other people or unfavorable circumstances.
Author: Shane Parrish | Source: Farnam Street | Subject: Psychology | Behavior
Few things are more important in life than avoiding the wrong people.
It’s tempting to think that we are strong enough to avoid adopting the worst of others, but that’s not how it typically works.
We unconsciously become what we’re near. If you work for a jerk, sooner or later, you’ll become one yourself. If your colleagues are selfish, sooner or later, you become selfish. If you … [ Read more ]
Author: Shane Parrish | Source: Farnam Street | Subjects: Life & Society, Personal Improvement, Psychology | Behavior
There are two ways to measure how you are doing: internally or externally. Most of our growth comes from internal measurement, while most problems stem from external comparison.
Author: Shane Parrish | Source: Farnam Street | Subject: Personal Improvement
So much of life isn’t about intelligence or luck but putting yourself in a position for success. The cash-rich investor thrives in crashes. The well-rested athlete outperforms the exhausted star. The student who studies daily aces the pop quiz. The employee who leaves early gets to the meeting with the CEO on time while the other person sits in the unanticipated traffic. All seem lucky, … [ Read more ]
Author: Shane Parrish | Source: Farnam Street | Subjects: Life & Society, Personal Improvement
You can buy people’s skills but not their hearts.
You can buy people’s time but not their loyalty.
The most valuable things must be earned.
Author: Shane Parrish | Source: Farnam Street | Subjects: Life & Society, Personal Improvement
Within your circle of competence, you operate with an advantage. As you approach the perimeter (the limitations of your knowledge), your advantage starts to reduce. As you cross the perimeter, not only does your advantage vanish, but it transfers to other people. Suddenly, you find yourself playing in an area where others have an edge.
Author: Shane Parrish | Source: Farnam Street | Subjects: Personal Improvement, Success / Failure
Scarcity shapes our choices and drives our actions. When something is scarce, it suddenly becomes valuable. We want it more because there is less. This principle underlies everything from the price of gold to the thrill of the hunt. Scarcity isn’t just about material things. It applies to time, opportunities, and ideas… The key to navigating scarcity is understanding its power, recognizing when it’s driving … [ Read more ]
Author: Shane Parrish | Source: Farnam Street | Subjects: Personal Improvement, Psychology | Behavior
While we naturally understand that writing is a good way to share ideas with others, we under-appreciate just how much good writing helps us think about an idea ourselves. Writing is not only a means of communication, it enables us to practice reasoning.
Author: Shane Parrish | Source: Farnam Street | Subjects: Education | Scholarship, Reading | Writing, Thought | Inquiry
We tend to measure performance by what happens when things are going well. Yet how people, organizations, companies, leaders, and other things do on their best day isn’t all that instructive. To find the truth, we need to look at what happens on the worst day.
Author: Shane Parrish | Source: Farnam Street | Subjects: Personal Improvement, Success / Failure
When you know what’s coming, prepare. When you don’t know what’s coming, position.
Author: Shane Parrish | Subjects: Life & Society, Personal Improvement