Question to treat yourself better:

Would you treat your best friend the way you’re treating yourself?

One of the most common challenges for highly ambitious people:

We're too hard on ourselves.

Ambition, discipline, and high standards often go hand in hand, but it is possible for these typically positive qualities to slowly edge their way into destructive territory.

The next time you start being overly hard on yourself, ask this question:

Would you treat your best friend the way you're treating yourself?

Usually the answer is no—and if you wouldn't treat your best friend this way, you shouldn't treat yourself this way.

You want your best friend to grow and excel, but not at the expense of their health and sanity.

You want your best friend to fulfill their potential and exit their comfort zone, but not to the point of burnout.

You want your best friend to thrive in all facets of life, so you treat them in a way that is supportive of that goal.

Remember: The same rules should apply to how you treat yourself.

Always.

Quote on the greatest life hack:

"Only once you give yourself permission to stop trying to do it all, to stop saying yes to everyone, can you make your highest contribution towards the things that really matter." - Greg McKeown

The greatest life hack: Saying no.

(Share this on Twitter!)

Framework for understanding incentives:

The Shirky Principle

The Shirky Principle, named after writer Clay Shirky, states, "institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution."

In simple terms, companies (or people) have a tendency to avoid fully eliminating the problem that they sell a solution for, lest they become obsolete.

Business and profit incentives can actually preserve the existence of problems.

Potential examples of the Shirky Principle in action:

• Pharmaceutical companies see more money in treating lifelong illness than in curing it.
• Defense contractors make much more money from war than from peace. When there is peace, people wonder why we're spending so much money on national defense.
• Technology companies want their products to slow down after a period of time so that consumers buy the new model.
• Personal trainers make more money from clients remaining slightly unfit than from clients who become fit and no longer need their services.

While the Shirky Principle does have reasonably sound logic, it doesn't mean that all businesses or people fall into this tendency (there are plenty of personal trainers who find true purpose and fulfillment from making their clients incredibly fit!).

It does mean that, as consumers, we should be aware of seller incentives, faux problems, and fear-based sales tactics.

The Shirky Principle is one of those phenomenons that I haven't been able to unsee since learning it. I imagine it will be the same for you...

Tweet on working on the right thing:

This is an interesting, somewhat contrarian take on the root cause underlying behavior that looks like laziness.

It also reminded me that I want to listen to the Andre Agassi book, which is supposed to be incredible.

You can find the full tweet here. It's worth a few minutes of your time.

Article on old fashioned decision making:

​I Don’t Have the Secret to Making Hard Decisions, but I Do Have a Yellow Note Pad​

I think and write a lot about ways to make better decisions.

Robert Rubin, the former U.S. Treasury Secretary, swears by a simple application of probabilistic thinking, where he sketches out the various potential decisions, variables, risks, and outcomes on a basic yellow legal pad.

I am a huge proponent of writing things down the old fashioned way (I carry around a pocket notebook with me everywhere I go!), so this resonated. Going to give it a shot and report back.