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Personal Philosophy

No. 480 — July 10, 2022

Brain Food is a weekly newsletter full of timeless insights you can use. 

FS

How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big

“Few things are as destructive and limiting as a worldview that assumes people are mostly rational.”

Insight

Eleanor Roosevelt on the link between personal philosophy and action:

“One’s philosophy is not best expressed in words; it is expressed in the choices one makes. In the long run, we shape our lives and we shape ourselves. The process never ends until we die. And the choices we make are ultimately our own responsibility.”

Tiny Thought

The quicker you want something, the easier you are to manipulate.

(Share this Tiny Thought on Twitter)

Etc.

+ Human Nature — “I think there are a number of reasons that looking at human beings as biological organisms can be unsettling. One of them is the possibility of inequality. If human nature is a “blank slate,” then by definition we’re all the same. Whereas if nature endows us with anything, then some people might be endowed with more of it than others are, or with different stuff than others are.”

+ Do The Work — “Do the work. That’s all the productivity advice you need, and the only useful productivity advice you’re ever going to get. You can direct your attention to a million optimizations— email, meetings, notes, calendar, time tracking, goals, todo lists, time estimates, prioritization frameworks, quantified self sensors, analytics, apps, documents, journaling. But don’t. Ignore all this, and do the work. When you do the work, everything else optimizes itself.”

P.S. Sinkholes explained.

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