KEY TAKEAWAYS

VIDEO📺

How an Economic Machine Works

• Don't have debt rise faster than income
• Don't have income rise faster than productivity, because you will eventually become uncompetitive.
• Do all that you can to raise your productivity because in the long run that's what matters most.

QUOTES ❝

"Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm."-Winston Churchill

RULE OF THUMB 👍

• Pain + Reflection = Progress
• Pay more attention to the swing than the shot
• Maturity is the ability to reject good alternatives to pursue even better ones.
• Pain is nature's reminder that there is something important to learn for the one feeling it.
• Don't get hung up on views on how things should be because you'll miss out on learning how they really are.
• Evolving is life's greatest accomplishment and it's greatest reward.
• Don't overweight first-order consequences relative to second or third-order ones.
• Having expectations for people including yourself without knowing what they are like is a sure way to get in trouble.
• Any damn fool can make it complex. It takes a genius to make it simple.
• If you look back at yourself a year ago and you aren't shocked by how stupid you were, you haven't learned much.
• Being open-minded is much more important than being bright or smart. No matter how much they know, close-minded people will waste your time.
• Recognize that getting in sync is a 2-way responsibility. In any conversation there is a responsibility to express and a responsibility to listen.
• Think about peoples believability to access the likelihood that their opinions are good.
• The only purpose of money is to get what you want so think hard about what you value and put it above money.
• Watch out for the unfocused and the unproductive theoretical “should”. A theoretical "should" occurs when people assume that others or themselves should be able to do something when they don't know whether they can.
• Don't act before thinking. Take the time to come up with a game-plan. The time you spent on thinking through your plan will be virtually nothing in relation to the amount of time that will be spent doing, and it will make doing radically more effective.

COLLABORATION 🤝

• People who have shared values and principles get along. People who don't, will suffer constant misunderstandings and conflicts.
• Judging people before really seeing things through their eyes stands in the way of understanding their circumstances. And it isn't smart.

• We work with others to get three things:

  • Leverage to accomplish our chosen mission in a bigger and better way than we can achieve alone.
  • Quality relationships that make for a great community.
  • Money that allows us to buy what we need and want for ourselves or others.
• Since the relative importance of these varies by person it's up to you to determine the quantities and mix you want. The most important thing is to realize that they are mutually supportive.

TIPS 💁‍♂️

• When faced with a choice between two things you need and that are seemingly at odds go slowly to figure out how you can have as much as possible of both. There's almost always a good path that you just haven't figured out yet. So look for it until you find it rather than settle for the choice that is then apparent to you.
• Reality is optimizing for the whole not for you. Contribute to the whole and you would probably be rewarded.
• Train your lower level you with kindness and persistence to build habits.
• Don't overs squeeze dots. A dot is just one piece of data from one moment in time. Keep that in perspective while synthesizing it. You need to know how much learning you can get out of any single dot without overweighting it.
• Observe the patterns of mistakes to see if they are products of weaknesses.
• Spend lavishly on the time and energy you devote to getting in sync because its the best investment you can make.
• Be Open-minded and assertive at the same time.
• Don't pay as much attention to people's conclusions as to the reasoning that led them to their conclusions.
• Access believability by systematically accessing people's track records over time.
• When facing a change ask yourself "Am I being open-minded or am I being resistant?".
• Acknowledging a weakness is not the same thing as accepting it. It's a necessary first step towards overcoming it.
• Evaluate the merits of a past decision based not on what you know now but only on what you could have reasonably known at the time the decision was made. You can't evaluate choices in retrospect without the appropriate context.
• Don't confuse the quality of someone's circumstances with the quality of their approach to dealing with the circumstances. One can be good and the other can be bad and it is easy to confuse which is which.
• Identifying the fact that someone else doesn't know what to do doesn't mean you know what to do. It's one thing to point out a problem, it's another thing to have an accurate diagnosis and a quality solution.
• Use double do instead of double-checking to ensure mission-critical tasks are done correctly.

OBSERVATIONS 👀

• Being strong is better than being weak.
• Struggling gives one strength.
• If you work hard and work creatively you can have just about anything you want but not everything you want.
• Everything looks bigger up close.
• To be great one can't compromise the uncompromisable.
• Know that nobody can see themselves objectively.
• While it is straightforward to have a meritocracy in activities in which there is a clarity of relative abilities because the result speaks for themselves such as in sports where the fastest runner wins the race. It is much harder in a creative environment where different points of view about what's best have to be resolved.
• Watch out for assertive fast talkers. Fast talkers are people who articulately and assertively say things faster than they can be accessed as a way of pushing their agenda past other people's examination or objections. Don't be one of those people.
• Having open-minded conversations with people who disagree with you is the quickest way to get an education and to increase your probability of being right.
• If you are expecting people to be much better in the near future than they have been in the past you are probably making a serious mistake. Since people generally change slowly you should expect slow improvement at best.
• While the best designs are built from a rich understanding of actual problems - when you are just starting out on something you often have a design based on anticipated problems as opposed to actual ones.
• Guard railing is meant to help people who can by enlarge do their job well. It's intended to help good people perform better not help failing people reach the bar.
• If something seems hard, time-consuming, and frustrating take some time to step back and triangulate with others on whether there might be a better way to handle it.
• Don't get frustrated. If nothing bad is happening to you now wait a bit and it will. That is just reality. That is what it is and that important thing is to figure out what to do about it and not spend time moaning about how I wish it were different.

DECISION MAKING 🤔

• Recognize that the biggest threat to good decision making is harmful emotions.
• Decision making is a two-step process (First learning and then Deciding)
• Failing to consider second and third-order consequences is a cause of a lot of painfully bad decisions. And it is especially deadly when the first inferior option confirms your own biases.
• Synthesize the situation through time.
• When there is pain the animal instinct is fight or flight. Calm yourself down and reflect instead. If you can think clearly about what's behind it you will learn more about what reality is like and how to deal with it. Remember Pain + Reflection = Progress
• Recognize that conflicts are essential for great relationships because they are how people determine whether their principles are aligned and resolve their differences.
• Remember that the quality of the life you get will depend largely on the quality of the decisions that you make as you pursue your goals.
• See things from a higher level. In other words, you must get out of your own head to consider your views as just some among many and look down on the full array of points of view to access them in an idea meritocratic way rather than just in your own possessive way.

• An idea meritocracy requires people to do 3 things -

  1. Put their honest thoughts on the table for everyone to see.
  2. Have thoughtful disagreements where there are quality back and forth in which people evolve their thinking to come with the best collective answers possible.
  3. Abide by the idea meritocratic ways to get past their disagreements such as believability way to decision making.

ADDITIONAL TIPS 📝

• Hire people who are better than you.
• Train, guardrail, or remove people don't rehabilitate them. Training is a part of a plan to develop people's skills and help them evolve. Rehabilitation is an attempt to create significant changes in people's values and/or abilities. Since values and abilities are difficult to change, rehabilitation is typically impractical.
• Understand that a great manager is essentially an organizational ENGINEERS.
• If you give too many orders people will likely resent them and when you are not looking, defy them. The greatest influence you can have over Intelligent people and the greatest influence they will have on you comes from constantly getting in sync about what is true and what is best so that you all want the same things.
• Hold yourself and your people accountable and appreciate them for holding you accountable.
• Metrics - As the saying goes you can't manage what you can't measure.

CLOSING THOUGHTS 💭

• There is nothing you can't accomplish if you think creatively and have the character to do the difficult things.

• Above all else, authors wishes for you all are

  • You make your work and passion one and the same.
  • You can struggle well with others on your common mission to produce the previously mentioned rewards.
  • You can savor both your struggles and your rewards.
  • You will evolve quickly and contribute to evolution in a significant way.

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