Sublime

Altering the ratio of rewards to contributions by making such negative contributions won’t improve a bank account, but it can balance accounts emotionally.

When stereotypes are evoked, they fill people’s minds with distracting thoughts—with secret worries about confirming the stereotype. People usually aren’t even aware of it, but they don’t have enough mental power left to do their best on the test.

Many entrepreneurs learned best-hiring practices from the book Topgrading: How Leading Companies Win by Hiring, Coaching and Keeping the Best People by Bradford

Milton Erickson.

That negative effect can be counteracted with an explicit social approval (Great job!) for exceeding the norm.

“If I do something only occasionally, people don’t adjust. If I make a habit of something, they adapt.”

Successful people make it their business to be conscious of what and who matter most. Their actions flow from their values. They strive to do what they can to make things better for the people who depend on them and on whom they depend, in all the different parts of their lives.

“However,” they added, “the distribution of effort across different instruments seems important. Those children identified as exceptional by [the school] turn out to be those children who distributed their effort more evenly across three instruments.” The less skilled students tended to spend their time on the first instrument they picked up, as if