The Power of Negative Thinking
5 things worth sharing this week
Alright so this week was a fun one. I’ve had a lot going on, but I’ve also been looking forward to writing the Monday post. My list of articles I’ve saved is well past the hundreds, and this gives me a valid excuse each week to look through those saved ideas and pull out concepts from them that are interesting and worth sharing.
Thank you for reading, I appreciate you, and I hope you enjoy these links as much as I did.
Act like you’ve already won.
A few weeks ago, I was on a Zoom call with a potential partner, and I found myself agreeing to things I didn't necessarily want to agree to…
By the time I got off the call, I had almost committed to delivering nearly twice the work for three-quarters of what I’d charge.
Much of my career has been spent in providing services for clients to build websites, apps, graphic design, etc. I’m very familiar with Justin’s reaction here. Sometimes you just take the work even if it goes against all rational thinking.
I appreciate Justin’s way of reframing your thinking if you provide services to someone. Imagine what things would look like if you were in a place where you didn’t need the work, but you still wanted to do it because the client or the work itself is something that excites you. Then price it accordingly.
Some of my most stressful projects have come from times when I charged too little and ultimately couldn’t give the time needed to ensure that the client could be happy. I vividly remember one client, paying only three figures, verbally yelling at me over the phone because of a deadline that he supposed I’d missed. This in stark contrast to another client that paid six figures, and happily sent the ACH payments in appreciation of the work.
Best Investments For Everyone
Disclaimer: This is not investment advice. I’m not qualified at all to help you know how to invest your money, this is just me sharing how I’ve done it.
Whether you're a human looking to invest in your future or a search engine crawler looking to index the web, everyone loves investment advice structured as a keyword-packed list with multiple clear subheadings. But in a world full of many different investment offerings, it can be hard to figure out the best investment for you. That's why we've put together this practical guide to help you find the investment offering that will best suit your needs.
A few years ago I was trying to figure out how my wife and I could start saving for retirement. I scoured the web, looked up financial gurus, and tried to sift through all the noise and chaos. I’d heard about investing in mutual funds, day trading, stocks, bonds, and a bunch of other terms I barely understood. It was a lot, hard to parse through, and definitely above my ability to grasp in the period of time I had available.
After some searching around I found Warren Buffet’s advice, recommending that you invest in an index fund representative of the entire stock market.
I wrestled through the horribly antiquated interface for Vanguard, signed up, and began putting our money into the S&P 500 via Roths.
Overall Best Investment: Vanguard Total Stock Market Index Fund
Uri takes a comical approach, that the best investment is the index fund regardless of who you are (unless you’re masochistic, in which case he has another option for you). And I agree.
Though I have plenty of other things I hope to do in life, from real estate to startups to hoping that the company I work at becomes successful, ultimately some of the money we make is just funneled into this index fund to forget and leave for decades to come.
TL;DR - Consider putting some money into an index fund and leave it there for years to come.
The Power of Negative Thinking
Self-help literature is ubiquitous in American culture: A staple of airport bookstores, grocery magazine aisles, as well as its own separate category on the New York Times Nonfiction bestseller list… It might seem as if this appetite for self-improvement and creative enlightenment is baked into America itself. Moreover, one could be tricked into believing that the self-help industry’s constant focus on managerial expertise, adversarial competition, and a phrenology-like fixation on types of people is a reflection of objective truth.
This is a fantastic setup to Erik Baker’s new book, Make Your Own Job: How the Entrepreneurial Work Ethic Exhausted America. This is my first time coming across this book. But I’m incredibly curious to read it in light of my work with Lance on Fractional and an upcoming episode with Paul Millerd of The Pathless Path.
There’s something here. Something where we can connect the history of our country to a belief that good work ethic is connected to a higher level of attainment in this life and the next. So many of us who grew up in this culture, myself included, have believed that work was the way to happiness, success, and salvation.
I still believe there’s some element of that, to be completely candid. I’ve been running my own businesses since I was 19, worked at a bunch of startups, and currently work at a company that I hope to help grow and build. This is in me, and I don’t think it’s going anywhere.
But what I’m trying to do is find that middle ground, that slight balance where I continue to do things that help people and push my own growth, but not as a means toward happiness and life fulfillment. I’m curious to pick up this book and see what answers it has.
… or the highway
But often, our instincts are a way of hiding, undermined by a lack of knowledge. If you haven’t done the reading and can’t see what the alternatives might be, instincts might be all you have left. And if you know the best way and persist in going with a hunch, it might be Resistance, a trap put in place by the part of you that feels like an imposter and is hesitant to do too well.
Years ago, at one of my first jobs, I was presenting a design idea to the CEO. I shared the concept and where I’d landed, and he asked me my rationale behind it. I started to explain, and he pushed harder. He wanted to uncover why I’d made certain decisions. Ultimately I had to admit that I wasn’t sure of some of the decisions, that it was based on a hunch.
He immediately relented. He was perfectly happy to know I’d brought him a design based on gut feeling, but he wanted to know if that was the case. He’d much rather me tell him I was trying, had an intuition about something but didn’t have a rationale to back it up, as opposed to trying to come up with a convincing argument based on faulty data.
I’ve thought about that often, and try to be very open about whether my idea is based on solid data, anecdotal data, or a hunch. Any of those can be valuable, but it removes some hubris from the equation by not pretending it’s all been figured out.
The best revenge is none
The best revenge is none. Heal yourself, forgive, move on and don't become like those who hurt you.
I love Dave’s story of being treated unkindly, and instead of looking for revenge he chose to keep pushing forward, and the damage that had been attempted eventually amounted to nothing and he continued with his life and work. This reminds me of the two arrows concept, and it’s one I’m hoping to carry in my own life—to be less worried about slights (perceived or real) and more focused on my own life and where I’m headed.
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