No. 513 – February 26, 2023
Timeless ideas and insights for life.
FS
The Hidden Power of Wisdom That Never Expires:
“Two kinds of people are good at foreseeing danger: those who have learned at their own expense, and the clever people who learn a great deal at the expense of others.”
— Source
Insight
“The thing that is least perceived about wealth is that all pleasure in money ends at the point where economy becomes unnecessary. The man who can buy anything he covets values nothing that he buys. There is a subtle pleasure in the extravagance that contests with prudence; in the anxious debates which we hold with ourselves whether we can or cannot afford a certain thing; in our attempts to justify our wisdom; in the risk and recklessness of our operations; in the long deferred and final joy of our possession; but this is a kind of pleasure which the man of boundless means never knows.”
— William Dawson, The Quest of the Simple Life
TKP
“Stress is any deviation from homeostasis or our neutral baseline position. So every time we tilt that pleasure, pain, balance to the side of pleasure or pain, we’re also setting off our own endogenous adrenaline or stress hormone. That is the definition of stress, a deviation from homeostasis. So I think that in many ways the source of our stress in modern life is the constant stimulation, the constant hits of pleasure from reaching for our phone in the morning to our morning cup of Joe to the donuts, to the Netflix binges at night, to the hookup, you name it. We’re actually experiencing stress as a result of overabundance.”
— From my conversation with Dr. Anna Lembke on pleasure, pain, and addiction. We discuss dopamine, addictive behaviors, warning signs, and treatment. She offers plenty of actionable insights and takeaways. Listen here or read the transcript.
Tiny Thought
Elevated standards create elevated results.
You notice this whenever you work with an outlier. The bar they set for themselves and others is beyond what most people imagine.
Standards apply not just to the quality of work you produce but the opportunities you work on. If you accept substandard work from yourself, you’ll only get average work from others. If you say yes to average projects, you’ll have no time for exceptional ones.
Raise the bar to raise the results.
Etc.
Get to the point:
“Make it clear up front what you want. Make the next steps obvious. If you have a recommendation, say it up front.”
— Source
Cheers,
— Shane
P.S. Hector the Hummingbird.
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