2025-06 Worth Remembering

 Tim Minchin 9 Lessons 

1. You don't have to have a dream. Instead, passionate dedication to the pursuit of short-term goals. Be micro-ambitious, put your head down and work with pride on whatever is in front of you.

2. Don't seek happiness. Keep busy and aim to make someone else happy and you might find you get some as a side effect.

3. It's all luck. Empathy is intuitive but is also something you can work on intellectually.

4. Exercise. Take care of your body and you will need it.

5. Be hard on your opinions. Be intellectually rigorous, identify your biases, your prejudices and your privileges. Most of society's arguments are kept alive by a failure to acknowledge nuance.

6. Be a teacher. Share your ideas don't take for granted your education. Eejoice in what you learn and spray it.

7. Define yourself by what you love. Be demonstrative and generous in your praise of those you admire. Be pro-stuff, not just anti-stuff.

8. Respect people with less power than you.

9. Don't rush.  You don't need to already know what you're gonna do with the rest of your life. Fill our short existence with learning, taking pride in what you are doing, having compassion, being enthusiastic

2025-05 Worth Remembering

Simon Sinek, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCIu7Ja_TE0

There are two ways to see the world. 
Some people see the thing that they want
Some see the thing which prevents them from getting the thing they want

You can go after whatever you want
You just cannot deny anyone else to go after whatever you want

2025-03 Worth Remembering

Oliver Burkeman

When stumped by a life choice, choose “enlargement” over happiness. - major personal decisions should be made not by asking, “Will this make me happy?”, but “Will this choice enlarge me or diminish me?” 

The advice you don’t want to hear is usually the advice you need.

Laurel Thatcher Ulrich

Well-Behaved Women Seldom Make History

I felt privileged to attend a mentoring event organized by an industry organisation the day before International Women's Day. This is not man bashing event. In fact, during the whole day conference many women have recognised help from their male counterparts from work or elsewhere. This is definitely something I can relate to. I have received lots of opportunities, encouragement and belief from male figures in my life. I could not have been who I am without them. Yet, there are still invisible barriers and glass ceiling partly formed by unconscious biases in the society. Women's issues are diversity issues. When those issues are addressed, every human being benefits. We are all in one. 

2025-02 Worth Remembering

Adam Grant:

The purpose of negative emotions is not to cause misery. It's to prevent mistakes.

Outrage is a signal to speak up.
Anxiety is a prompt to prepare.
Guilt is a reminder to repair.
Disappointment is a cue to persist.

Pain reveals principles. Where we hurt is a clue to what we value. 

Jefferson Fisher:

Communicate to:

1) untie the knot of / unravel the argument, not to win the argument. This is how you can connect with the person.

2) have something to learn, not something to prove. Ask questions to see where you can fill in.

3) remember that the person you see is not the person you are talking to. You don't what this persons has gone through. Every person has a surface and a depth.

Philippa Perry:

So many wise advises from this piece on: how I matter in any area of my life

There are two levels of perceptions, based on facts and emotional reality.

Removing all external labels such as mother, daughter, wife, employee, we need to be seen as who we are as a whole person, I, not an it.

The deepest kind of mattering comes when we give and receive undivided presence, not from external validation.

Explore where you can invite more authentic connection into your life, through conversations with close friends, where you let them into this feeling instead of keeping it to yourself. It could mean making space for moments of being seen, for example, allowing yourself some vulnerability with others and engaging more openly with your children. The aim is not to add more responsibilities, but to notice where those deeper moments of presence can already exist.

You matter, not because of how many people you help, or what roles you play, but simply because you are you.

2025-01 Worth Remembering

Shane Parrish

Two rules to help you be consistent with exercise this year:

    1. Show up.

    2. You can quit tomorrow.
    Repeat.

**

Don't Forget:

Be reliable.
Do your job.
Speak for yourself.
Outcome over ego.
Focus on the details.
See challenges as opportunities.
Go to bed smarter than when you woke up.

Paul Graham

To write well you have to think clearly, and thinking clearly is hard.

In preindustrial times most people's jobs made them strong. Now if you want to be strong, you work out. So there are still strong people, but only those who choose to be.

It will be the same with writing. There will still be smart people, but only those who choose to be.

Thought of the day

 

Saturday, March 30, 2024

"I don't look to jump over seven-foot bars. I look for one-foot bars that I can step over."
--Warren Buffett

Thursday, April 4, 2024

"Beauty begins the moment you decide to be yourself."
--Coco Chanel

Thursday, April 11, 2024

"What we do is more important than what we say or what we say we believe."
--bell hooks

Thought of the day

 

Wednesday, January 24, 2024

"Do not bring people in your life who weigh you down. And trust your instincts ... good relationships feel good. They feel right. They don't hurt. They're not painful. That's not just with somebody you want to marry, but it's with the friends that you choose. It's with the people you surround yourselves with."
--Michelle Obama