“People who are successful in their work are often content being “unsuccessful” in the other areas of their lives — particularly their relationships. In other words, most people are okay with being mediocre spouses, parents and friends, but are not okay with being mediocre in their jobs.”
“This is the key to understanding the purchase of Whole Foods: to the outside it may seem that Amazon is buying a retailer. The truth, though, is that Amazon is buying a customer — the first-and-best customer that will instantly bring its grocery efforts to scale.”
“Dilemma: Confused with ‘problem’. If you have a problem, you do not know what to do. There may be many solutions. If you have a dilemma, you have a choice of two courses of action, neither attractive.”
“The earlier your company can identify, avoid, and dispose of Dead Snakes, the faster you’ll be able to build new products or features your customer actually wants, and grow your revenue accordingly.”
“The golden age of restaurants is a bit like today’s golden age of TV. For television viewers, there have never been more options or, perhaps, better quality programming. But as the number of original scripted shows has soared, so has the failure rate. A new drama is now four to five times more likely to be cancelled today than it was in the late 1990s.”
“The more stuff you do, the more you give luck a chance to find you.” — Scott Adams
When somebody asks for advice, their first question is never the one they REALLY want to ask.
This theory proved true in a conversation I had with someone who likes to write and is trying to figure out if a writing career would be a good fit for him.
“There is almost nothing outside of you that will help in any kind of lasting way, unless you’re waiting for an organ. You can’t buy, achieve or date serenity and peace of mind.”
“With a few tweaks, you’ll quickly drop through a wormhole placing you in the top 5–10 percent in your field. The challenge then becomes to move from there to the top — which movement is the real contest. Getting to the top 5–10 percent merely requires a change in lifestyle. Getting to the top 1 percent requires a fundamental change in your being.”
“Our main finding in this study was that, interestingly, older adults [focus on] relevant information as well as 20-year-olds. Where older adults suffered a deficit was in suppressing the irrelevant information…We discovered that their main attentional issue was that they are more distractible than younger adults.”