Extending life is more important to most people than the intensity of life. Conflating longevity with quality robs us of peak experience in favor of caution for a gray future of deterioration.
The best advice is to prioritize your top 25 dreams, go for the top 5 and ignore the rest. Don’t outlast; instead, outdo.
Tag: values
- Theme: Growth
Don’t outlast; instead outdo
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1–2 minutes - Theme: Growth
Urgent vs Important
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1–2 minutesThe urgent is almost never important, but if we put off the ‘important’ (because it is more difficult or divisive) it will eventually become both important and urgent. This is when chaos ensues.
The difficulty is prioritizing: there is an appeal in urgent (easy/short-term/immediate) problem-solving, while work on the important (difficult/long-term/meaningful) problems sets the values that prevent cascading collapses of all things becoming chaotically urgent.
Paraphrase of "the 7 habits of highly effective people" and the Eisenhower Matrix. - Theme: Systems
Debunking the sanctity of nature
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1–2 minutesReturning to nature (what is natural) means returning to a state of purity before humans intervened. Yet, we often forget that nature is not beneficent, and most of human history is a struggle to stay alive.
Our romanticizing of nature is an idealistic return to a sanitized version: a version mediated by men.
We shamingly pronounce “it’s not natural” or “they are playing God,” which reveals a value judgment that original states are preferable, while denying the broader scope and benefit from advancement.
- Theme: Growth
“Value add”
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1–2 minutesWhen people say "value add," I cringe. It is like hearing a salesman say, "trust me."
If you have to convince someone of "robust bolstering effects," then the value is secondary: it is either glomming on or optimizing.
I have been "up sold" by mechanics and plumbers, but that is not a "value add." It is a simple service that does not reshape the current service. - Theme: Growth
Fickleness of Recognition
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1–2 minutesIf you want attention from a certain audience, put energy into that space. If you want freedom from catering to other people’s acceptance maintain your independence.
The trade-off is for recognition, which is how we tend to measure success, but external validation is a fraught and fickle path.
Today they love you, tomorrow they don’t.
- Theme: Self
Things break at the worst time
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1–2 minutesThe worst time is the most necessary time: the situation with the most reliance is also the situation with the most to lose.
The fact you rely on something is its value. Equally, no matter how robust, everything under stress eventually breaks. And it will always happen at the "worst time," as the failure designates the time as "worst."All that is left is to predetermine how to react after the break.
- Theme: Self
Distraction robs you of yourself
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1–2 minutesIf your attention is captured, you cannot choose what to focus on. Without focus, without awareness, you cannot prioritize.
Others control you, blown about by distractions, prodded into place by manipulations.
This is not yourself. To know yourself (your values), you must recognize the impulses: of me, not of me, which takes focus. - Theme: Growth
He who dies with the most toys wins
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1–2 minutes"He who dies with the most toys wins" is a child-like sentiment, and yet there is comfort in the physical items that surround us. They offer a concrete means to validate our place in the world, which delivers tangible stability.
When do we graduate from childhood’s external value measures to the maturation of internal worth? Hopefully, before we die.
- Theme: Growth
Practice knowing your value
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1–2 minutesIf you do not get what you want out of a situation, you may be unreasonable (unrealistic), which should be tested through more conditions until a pattern emerges. But most of us stay servile and complacent: accepting of the status quo.
What you miss out on is the beautiful fullness of being you to the extreme, knowing your worth not just internally but in society, and being appreciated for it. - Theme: Self
The pleasure principle’s principle failure.
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1–2 minutesHedonism is the pursuit of pleasure: your pleasure.
Over-indexed on hedonism converts altruism into a self-serving glow: loving your child is for your own benefit, not theirs.
This discounts all the other motivations by collapsing them into one principle (selfish motivation), which requires mental two-stepping to validate your impulse to care.
(As humans, we are a multiplicity of drives and perspectives, many of which are social bonds, ideological impulses, and non-rational responsibility to others… which need not be reduced into a singular perspective.)