Guidance

Anna Wintour’s biography turned into maxims:

1. Hire talented people as found, not as needed.

2. Taste is as rare as a unicorn.

3.Your employees should describe you as “easy to understand.”

4.Pretend to be completely in control and people will assume that you are.

5.Have a sharp eye for the weaknesses of others.

6.Combine ruthless efficiency with hyp... See more

There are different types of hard work:

1. Outthinking (a better strategy, a shortcut)

2. Pure Effort (working longer, intensity)

3. Opportunistic (positioning yourself to take advantage of change)

4. Consistency (doing average things for longer)

Implicit in the promise of outsourcing and automation and time-saving devices is a freedom to be something other than what we ought to be. The liberation we are offered is a liberation from the very care-driven involvement in the world and in our communities that would render our lives meaningful and satisfying. In other words, the promise of liber... See more

A tradeoff occurs every time you get feedback. You become slightly more mainstream, slightly more aligned with the zeitgeist. You become marginally more of an exploiter than an explorer , standing on the shoulders of the giants who conceived the paradigm you’re striving to build upon. This is very effective when you want to align your work with oth... See more

As J. Jennifer Matthews puts it, in her book Radically Condensed Instructions for Being Just as You Are, “we cannot get anything out of life. There is no outside where we could take this thing to. There is no little pocket situated outside of life” to which you could take “life’s provisions and squirrel them away.” Spending your days trying to get ... See more