Thuy > Recent Status Updates

“[C]ourage can be contagious.”

Treating phobias with two kinds of exposure therapy: systemic desensitization and flooding.

I think of flooding as dropping someone into the deep end - it’s fully immersive instead of little steps. Both are effective depending on the situation.

In so many words, it basically paraphrases what Shane Parrish has said repeatedly. You have to be willing to look stupid in the short term, in order to become smart in the long term.

Writing is a tool for thinking and learning.

“…procrastination isn’t a time management problem—it’s an emotion management problem.”

Paraphrasing:

The character skills that unleash hidden potential are: proactivity, determination, and discipline. It takes courage to seek out discomfort, the capacity to absorb the right info, and acceptance of the right imperfections.

The true measure of your potential is not the height of the peak you’ve reached, but how far you’ve climbed to get there.”

“…when people can’t see a path, they stop dreaming of the destination.”

“You can’t tell where people will land from where they begin. With the right opportunity and motivation to learn, anyone can build the skills to achieve greater things. Potential is not a matter of where you start, but how far you travel. We need to focus less on staying points and more on distance traveled.”

On the concept of time and the idea that it may not exist. "Is that clear? No, it isn't. There is so much still to be understood."

Electrons, quarks, photons, and gluons are the elementary particles (only about 10 types) which "act like bricks in a gigantic Lego set and with which the entire material reality surrounding us is constructed."

This book is so fun to read. I love Legos.

> All this highlights the importance of figuring out how to work effectively with a team you have inherited. **Fraught with trade-offs, the process is like repairing an airplane in midflight.**

“…much of human behavior is driven by incentives. We want to take actions that lead us to getting something good or avoiding something bad on a range of timescales. The incentives we create for ourselves and other people are a form of feedback, leading to loops that reinforce or discourage certain behaviors.”

"it does not matter how many tantrums a prima donna throws as long as she brings in the customers."

Drucker's nasty sexist attitude makes this book painful to read. Thanks for making the woman a negative example. Jerk.

I disagree that hiring prima donnas makes people great. The toxic ones can poison an entire team, and a team can contribute much more than an individual. "Go alone to go fast. Go together to go far."

"One can either direct a meeting and listen for the important things being said, or one can take part and talk; one cannot do both."

Yep. I prefer to practice my active listening skills in the majority of my meetings. It's the opposite if I have to give a presentation.

Focusing on contribution supplies the 4 basic requirements for effective human relations:
- communication
- teamwork
- self-development
- developing others

Drucker was a strong proponent of good communication skills, it seems.

"It is barbarian arrogance to assume that the layman can or should make the effort to understand him, and that it is enough if the man of knowledge talks to a handful of fellow experts who are his peers."

If you want to be effective, you must concern yourself with the usability of your knowledge. Inability to speak cross-division is bad.

"...every organization needs performance in three main areas: [...] direct results; building of values and their reaffirmation; and building and developing people for tomorrow."

Depriving an org of performance in any one of these areas will cause an organization to "decay and die."

Symptoms of time wasting:
1. Recurrent crises / putting out fires
2. Frequently a result of over-staffing (communication is a permutation among groups)
3. Malorganization - too many meetings
4. Malfunction of information. Info not flowing where it is needed / used.

Useless meetings - well this advice is not helpful. All of our team meetings are optional. Even 1:1s can be skipped.