From my perspective of being 71 years old and looking back on my life, its arc, and the life arcs of others, I decided to share the picture of what those life arcs look like with my grandchildren and other loved ones to help them see what they will encounter (1/4)
and plan for how to deal with it. While not all life arcs are the same, most are pretty similar when it comes to the most important things.
I am now passing this along to you because it might help you and your loved ones. You can read about it here. (2/4)
This exercise is intended to help you put your life in perspective and to plan for the future to help you get the life you want. This perspective has helped me and many people I have shared it with, and I hope you find it helpful as well. (3/4)
Knowing what people are like is the best indicator of how well they are likely to handle their responsibilities in the future. At Bridgewater, we call this "paying more attention to the swing than the shot." (1/4)
Since good and bad outcomes can arise from circumstances that might not have had anything to do with how the individual handled the situation, it is preferable to assess people based on both their reasoning and their outcomes. (2/4)
I probe their thinking in a very frank way so as not to let them off the hook. Doing this has taught me a lot about how to assess others' logic, and how to have better logic myself. (3/4)
If you don’t mind being wrong on the way to being right you’ll learn a lot--and increase your effectiveness. (1/4)
But if you can’t tolerate being wrong, you won’t grow, you’ll make yourself and everyone around you miserable, and your work environment will be marked by petty backbiting and malevolent barbs rather than by a healthy, honest search for truth. (2/4)
You must not let your need to be right be more important than your need to find out what’s true. Jeff Bezos described it well when he said, (3/4)
For example, bringing one’s finances to the point that one’s spending is greater than one’s earnings and one’s assets are greater than one’s liabilities can only be reversed by either working harder or consuming less, which is not easily done.
Still, this cycle needn’t transpire this way if those in their rich and powerful stages stay productive and safe by continuing to work hard and smart, earn more than they spend, save a lot, and make the system work well for most of the population.
A number of empires and dynasties have sustained themselves for hundreds of years and the United States, at 244 years old, has proven itself to be one of the most durable now in existence.
If you and others don't raise your perspectives, there’s no way you will resolve your disputes. You can surface the areas of disagreement informally or put them on a list to go over. (1/4)
I personally like to do both, though I encourage people to list their disagreements in order of priority so I/we can more easily direct them to the right party at the right time. (2/4)
The nubbiest questions (the ones that there is the greatest disagreement about) are the most important ones to thrash out, as they often concern differences in people’s values or their approaches to important decisions. (3/4)
On Presidents' Day, I think of Lincoln who was the president in our last civil war and his principles about civil war which we might want to remember as we appear to be headed towards our own civil war. Here are a couple which we should keep in mind: (1/4)
"A house divided against itself cannot stand." (2/4)
America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves. [paraphrase] (3/4)
People who achieve success and drive progress deeply understand the cause-effect relationships that govern reality and have principles for using them to get what they want. (1/4)
The converse is also true: Idealists who are not well grounded in reality create problems, not progress. What does a successful life look like? We all have our own deep-seated needs, so we each have to decide for ourselves what success is. (2/4)
I don’t care whether you want to be a master of the universe, a couch potato, or anything else—I really don’t. Some people want to change the world and others want to operate in simple harmony with it and savor life. Neither is better. (3/4)