RAFFIAPALM

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  • While what I don’t know about the future is probably much more than what I do know, what I do know is also a lot. Dealing with the future is all about:

    1. Perceiving and adapting to what is happening, even if it can’t be anticipated
    2. Coming up with probabilities for what might happen
    3. Knowing enough about what might happen to protect oneself against the unacceptable, even if one can’t do that perfectly

    Knowing how things have changed in the past leads me to consider the possibility that something similar might happen in the future. That is a big advantage relative to being unaware. “…”

    Knowing this, I am constantly looking for leading indicators of the same things happening again, and having leading indicators of these things, even if they aren’t perfect, puts me in a better position to protect myself than remaining blissfully unaware and unprepared for what might happen.

    — Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order: Why Nations Succeed and Fail by Ray Dalio

    Source: Amazon Kindle
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  • A process can be the equivalent of a mountain climber’s harness and rope, allowing you the freedom to explore without constant worry. A process, far from being a drag or a constraint, can actually give you the comfort to be bolder. And bolder is often the right direction.

    Short-run emotion, as we’ve seen, makes the status quo seductive. But when researchers ask the elderly what they regret about their lives, they don’t often regret something they did; they regret things they didn’t do. They regret not seizing opportunities. They regret hesitating. They regret being indecisive. Being decisive is itself a choice. Decisiveness is a way of behaving, not an inherited trait. It allows us to make brave and confident choices, not because we know we’ll be right but because it’s better to try and fail than to delay and regret.

    Our decisions will never be perfect, but they can be better. Bolder. Wiser. The right process can steer us toward the right choice. And the right choice, at the right moment, can make all the difference.

    — Decisive: How to Make Better Choices in Life and Work by Chip Heath, Dan Heath

    Source: Amazon Kindle
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  • As a good rule of thumb, proprietary technology must be at least 10 times better than its closest substitute in some important dimension to lead to a real monopolistic advantage. Anything less than an order of magnitude better will probably be perceived as a marginal improvement and will be hard to sell, especially in an already crowded market.

    The clearest way to make a 10x improvement is to invent something completely new. If you build something valuable where there was nothing before, the increase in value is theoretically infinite.

    — Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future by Peter Thiel, Blake Masters

    Source: Amazon Kindle
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  • When we assess our choices, we’ll take the inside view by default. We’ll consider the information in the spotlight and use it to form quick impressions. “…” What we’ve seen, though, is that we can correct this bias by doing two things: zooming out and zooming in.

    When we zoom out, we take the outside view, learning from the experiences of others who have made choices like the one we’re facing. When we zoom in, we take a close-up of the situation, looking for “color” that could inform our decision. Either strategy is helpful, and either one will add insight in a way that conference-room pontificating rarely will. When possible, we should do both.

    — Decisive: How to Make Better Choices in Life and Work by Chip Heath, Dan Heath

    Source: Amazon Kindle
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  • What I’ve learned over the years is that the best communicators learn to align their intentions with their impact. While intention is what someone wants to make happen or plans to accomplish, the impact involves the quality of the experience from the perspective of the receiver — and that impact may not correspond with what the communicator intended. When communicators monitor and align intention and impact successfully, people trust them more fully.

    — Conversational Intelligence: How Great Leaders Build Trust & Get Extraordinary Results by Judith E. Glaser

    Source: Amazon Kindle
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