There are a lot of layers of social signaling out there. So much so, and it’s rewarded so heavily in online dopamine hits, that it’s easy to focus entirely on achieving better signals of status at the expense of achieving real value behind it all. When it comes to products, companies, or cryptocurrencies, just use…
Tag: value
Government Involvement Not Helping
It’s a wonderful thing when someone decides to help the community. I might even join them if their efforts align with my values. I’m somewhat less thrilled when someone mistakes running for office, getting a government job, or passing a law for helping. A government position or job is nothing to be proud of. It’s not honorable or praiseworthy. Everything is better without the threat of law or punishment, and when funded voluntarily. Worthwhile ideas don’t require arm twisting.
Your Limitations and the Logic of Self-Discipline
Consistency means routine, and routine means discipline. As I’ve worked to implement a new daily morning routine in the last month, I’ve had to call on more discipline than I’ve used in much of my life. If I wasn’t clear about the reason for discipline, I (like most people) probably wouldn’t be doing it. Again, discipline appears arbitrary and unfriendly when it’s not paired with self-interest.
How You Work Leads to Where You Work
It doesn’t matter what your current job is. It could be fast food, babysitting, a cool tech company, or construction. You can leverage it into a great next step. One of the best ways that almost everyone overlooks is by loving your current role and treating it with enthusiasm and pride. And letting it show.
The Secret of Selfishness
One of the great secrets I’ve discovered is that determining to find something beneficial and refusing to be merely a critic of anything I encounter changes my entire outlook and sets fire to my imagination. I’m not very good at it.
The Value of Small Inconveniences
Picking up trash and/or glass has become a routine now, and I’ve trained my mind to give myself a pat on the back when I do this small little act of improving the world. I know it seems ridiculous. But I know that just with that small action in the beginning of my day, I defeat a little bit of the laziness behind my failure to do good elsewhere.
The Success of Your Friends is Your Success
Envy is evil. Not just for it’s corrosive effects on society, but for what it can do to undermine your own success. Envy makes you bitter and joyless. Worse, it blinds you to your own potential and the opportunity around you. If the success of those around you makes you less happy, you’re in a death spiral. Conversely, one of the great secrets to personal growth and achievement is the realization that the success of your friends is your success. Not metaphorically, and not just ’cause it gives you feels. In a very literal sense.
The Values and Traits Behind My Best Relationships
What are the values you most look for when forming relationships? Great question! Any answer I give here will be incomplete, but I have come to notice some patterns in my most valuable relationships. Certain values and traits also help me quickly pick out people I want in my “tribe.”
Statism’s First Casualty Is the Truthful Use of Language
States engage not only in conquest, plunder, and oppression, but also—in order to create conditions in which the populace is rendered less likely to resist a state’s abuses or rebel against it—in pervasive bamboozlement. Those who support the state ideologically tend to engage in chronic misrepresentation of what the state does and how it does it. So, not only war—the characteristic state action—but statism in general makes truth the first casualty of its claims, proposals, programs, and projects.
When Smart People Unwittingly Embarrass Themselves
I shouldn’t be embarrassed for other people when they say stupid things. But I am. I can’t help it. I want to help them stop saying dumb things and embarrassing themselves. But when they refuse to see that what they said is dumb, due to being blinded by their superstition, they won’t believe they need to change. It’s sad. And painfully embarrassing.