Goal-oriented people exist in a state of continuous presuccess 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.
The system-versus-goals model can be applied to most human endeavors. 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.
Reality has a pulse, a rhythm, for lack of better words.
Inaccurate worldviews are the only kind there is.
Consider the people who routinely disagree with you. See how confident they look while being dead wrong? That’s exactly how you look to them.
If something is legal and profitable, it will happen, a lot.
If you think more privacy is always better, that is a case of loserthink. Every situation is different. Sometimes privacy is the problem that prevents the solution.
Every generation before us believed, like Snickers, that it had things figured out. We now know that every generation before us was wrong about a lot of it. Is it likely that you were born at the tipping point of history, in which humans know enough about reality to say we understand it? This is another case where humility is your friend.
The next ring – and your second-biggest priority – is economics. That includes your job, your investments, and even your house. You might wince at the fact that I put economics ahead of your family, your friends, and the rest of the world, but there’s a reason. If you don’t get your personal financial engine working right, you place a burden on everyone from your family to the country.
If eating a healthy diet feels unpleasant, you’re doing it wrong. And you’re wasting your limited stockpile of willpower.
This was about the time that my opinion of experts, and authority figures in general, began a steady descent that continues to this day.
I wouldn’t be satisfied simply escaping from my prison of silence; I was planning to escape, free the other inmates, shoot the warden, and burn down the prison. Sometimes I get that way. It’s a surprisingly useful frame of mind.
Persistence is useful, but there’s no point in being an idiot about it.
I’ve long seen failure as a tool, not an outcome.
The power of daydreaming is similar to the power of well-made movies that can make you cry or make you laugh.
Humans think they are rational, and they think they understand their reality. But they are wrong on both counts.
It’s smarter to see your big-idea projects as part of a system to improve your energy, contacts, and skills.
I have no reason to believe humans evolved with the capability to understand their reality. That capability was not important to survival. When it comes to evolution, any illusion that keeps us alive long enough to procreate is good enough.
If you can’t imagine any other explanation for a set of facts, it might be because you are bad at imagining things.
My mother, in the style of the times, told me I could do anything I set my sights on. She said I could be the president, an astronaut, or the next Charles Schulz. I believed her because at that point in my life I hadn’t yet noticed the pattern of her deceptions.