Good chess players know when to sacrifice certain pieces to get closer to a larger objective or gambit in the game. As a businessperson, you’re going to have to make similar sacrifices if you want to make the changes that are really going to count.
Category: The Life Apprenticeship
A Forgiving Society is an Honest Society
Most great crimes begin with unconfessed small faults – things like bias. Those small faults can remain unconfessed because of greed or malice, but often enough it’s a wrongdoer’s fear that keeps them from confessing guilt. Without confession, guilt drives more guilt and more wrongdoing. By the time we find out about someone’s guilt anymore (especially with a public persona), it’s seemingly beyond forgiveness.
Don’t Pretend You Don’t Have an Exit Option
Leaving the tribe/the known/the mapped terrain is an essential part of being human. And as long as you know and remember and feel and exercise your right to declare independence and walk away, you won’t find yourself fighting the battles which drain most of us.
Don’t Go To College; Let College Come to You
If you’re working in a service industry job, you have a golden opportunity which most people working in more corporate office jobs rarely get. You have to interact on a daily basis with a staggering variety of human beings, all with their own stories, habits, skills, and perspectives.
Finite and Infinite Games for Liberty
If you care about human freedom, you might be playing the game of “abolish the state/this or that state agency.” After all, the collective framework we call the state is most responsible for the abuse of power in the world today. This is the game most people on the libertarian spectrum have chosen for a life end. As noble as this cause is, it suffers from the drawbacks of all finite games.
A Meditation on Internet Bullshit, Avoiding It, and Finding Truth
The internet is not an easy place to find truth. Truth and nuanced reporting is at a distinct disadvantage in a world of viral sharing. Bullshit is far more appealing, far more polarizing, and far more lucrative – in the short term – than reality.
Competing On Ideas Takes Way More Work Than Competing on Work
Solutions take work and time that largely happens behind the scenes for everyone else. Actual work is by nature private until it’s done. And that puts doers in a situation that can sometimes be precarious.
When You Do What Makes You Come Alive, Everyone Wins
“Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.” – Howard Thurman
The Restaurant Business Is the Romance Business
Restaurants are in an industry with low margins and lots of competition. They can’t afford to just fight other restaurants on the basis of food quality or price. The smart ones know they have to compete on the quality of experience.
The Books I Keep Coming Back To (and Why I Do)
I’m not a fan of retreading old ground where knowledge is concerned. Once I know something, I want to use it. I don’t want to just read it again. There are a few books that get an exception to that rule.