A view of life and commercial real estate from Newark and Licking County, Ohio
Go out of your way to be good to an older person. You'll discover that you can make somebody's entire day with a smile, a phone call, some fresh-picked daisies, or whatever it is you've got.
Our elders have so much to give to those who listen, but that are the ones who deserve to receive. Don't pass up the chance to brighten their lives. An old adage reminds us that they need only a little, but they need that little—a lot.
...................................................This is what it looks like.
Long-time readers will remember that my library card is one of my most valued possessions. Still, it important to know that said library is filled with traps, snares, sink-holes, and very long cul-de-sacs. I fell into one of those places around Thanksgiving. It was my intention, as the days got darker, to read some of the very important books that The-Wonder-That-Is-Amazon recently delivered to our home. Instead, I picked up a C. J. Box book at the library. Eight books later, I am not quite halfway through his Joe Pickett series. Sometimes the mind just wants to spend time in very long cul-de-sacs. The very important books will just have to wait. I highly recommend him to you.
...........................................he can stop with 100.
Most professions would benefit from at least one a day month where you did nothing but think. No meetings, no calls, no deliverables. Just a seat on the couch thinking about what’s working, what’s not, and what to do about it. One day a week is necessary for some fields. But it’s rare, because sitting on the couch doesn’t look like work, so managers raise an eyebrow – even if it’s obvious that if your job involves thinking you should be given time to think.
-Morgan Housel, from this post
..........................Step #1 is the hard part.
Step 9. You need to set the right expectations. . . .Whatever your reasoning, just go into it with low expectations. If you surpass them, that’s icing on the cake.
Mentally, we are all time travelers We might exhort one another to live in the moment, but the truth is that we can't, we don't—and wouldn't want to. What give life meaning is the rich and constant interplay between past, present, and future.
-Margaret Heffernan, Uncharted: How To Navigate The Future
47. Survey the circling stars, as though yourself were in mid-course with them. Often picture the changing and re-changing dance of the elements. Visions of this kind purge away the dross of our earth-bound life.
-Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book Seven
Despite all the high-level concepts consultants advertise, the bread and butter of every consultant's business is undoing entropy—cleaning up the debris and weeds that grow in every organizational garden.
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One of the clearest examples of entropy in business was the gradual decay of the order imposed on the early General Motors by Alfred Sloan. In this decay, one can see the value of competent management by its absence. Indeed, you cannot fully understand the value of the daily work of managers unless one accepts the general tendency of unmanaged human structures to become less ordered, less focused, and more blurred around the edges.
-Richard P. Rumelt, Good Strategy Bad Strategy: The Difference and Why It Matters
It is astonishing what you can do when you have a lot of energy, ambition and plenty of ignorance.
The greatest real thrill that life offers is to create, to construct, to develop something useful. Too often we fail to recognize and pay tribute to the creative spirit. It is that spirit that creates our jobs. There has to be this pioneer, the individual who has the courage, the ambition to overcome the obstacles that always develop when one tries to do something worthwhile, especially when it is new and different.
Growth and progress are related, for there is no resting place for an enterprise in a competitive economy.
We must move toward a soundly based and widely distributed economic well-being. This is the 'theory of plenty' as distinguished from the 'theory of scarcity' which has dominated our recent economic thinking and politics.
Bedside manners are no substitute for the right diagnosis.
I never give orders. I sell my ideas to my associates if I can. I accept their judgment if they convince me, as they frequently do, that I am wrong. I prefer to appeal to the intelligence of a man rather than attempt to exercise authority over him.
Get the facts. Recognize the equities of all concerned. Realize the necessity of doing a better job every day. Keep an open mind and work hard. The last is most important at all. There is no short cut.
If we are all in agreement on the decision - then I propose we postpone further discussion of this matter until our next meeting to give ourselves time to develop disagreement and perhaps gain some understanding of what the decision is all about.
It turns out that, if you ask yourself “Can I keep going?” rather than “Can I make it to the finish?” you’re far more likely to answer in the affirmative.
-Alex Hutchinson, from this essay
I hedge this out by investing like the glass is half full but saving like the glass is half empty.
-Ben Carlson, one fairly smart guy, shares his investment strategy
Yes, the actual act of making the work is sometimes a solo activity (drawing, writing, editing a film, etc) but the real driving force behind every creative pro is their community: their clients, collaborators, peers and the rest of the humans in the complex web of symbiotic relationships that give us inspiration, support and (ultimately) an income. Creativity cannot live in a vacuum. We depend on each other, like the members of any other ecosystem.
-Chase Jarvis, as cut-and-pasted from here
The ease of underestimating how bad things can be in the short run and how good they can be in the longer run is a leading cause of bad forecasts, bad decisions, and confused people. It’s common because it’s easier to go all in on either optimism or pessimism – having one foot on each side feels waffling.
But straddling both sides is usually the best stance.
-Morgan Housel, from this post
". . . the existential challenge of today's capitalism is to break the habit of both companies' and governments' reluctance to encourage innovation, despite their words.
Schumpeter's 'perennial gale of creative destruction' has been replaced by the gentle breezes of rent-seeking. Corporate managerialism is gradually squeezing the life out of enterprise as big companies in cosy cahoots with big government increasingly dominate the scene." . . .
". . . The economist Luigi Zingales argues that most of the time 'the best way to make lots of money is not to come up with brilliant ideas and work hard at implementing them but, instead, to cultivate a government ally."
-Matt Ridley, How Innovation Works: And Why It Flourishes in Freedom
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