1. The Productivity Paradox: Work longer, get less done.
(a visual thread)
2. The Advice Paradox: Taking more advice can leave you less well-prepared.
3. The Wisdom Paradox: The more you learn, the less you know.
4. The Opportunity Paradox: Take on less, accomplish more.
5. The Boredom Paradox: The most creative, captivating ideas stem directly from periods of intense boredom.
6. The Social Media Paradox: More connectedness, less connected.
7. The Failure Paradox: You have to fail more to succeed more.
8. The Talking Paradox: Talk less, say more.
9. The Speed Paradox: Strong, reliable brakes allow you to go fast.
10. The Looking Paradox: Stop looking in order to find what you're looking for.
11. The Control Paradox: More controlling, less control.
12. The Persuasion Paradox: Argue less, persuade more.
13. The Fear Paradox: The thing we fear the most is often the thing we most need to do.
14. The Shrinking Paradox: Sometimes you need to shrink before you can grow.
15. The Effort Paradox: You have to put in more effort to make something appear effortless.
16. The Money Paradox: You have to lose money to make money.
17. The News Paradox: The more news you consume, the less well-informed you are.
18. The Intelligence Paradox: Intelligence leads to stupidity.
19. The Death Paradox: Know your death to truly live your life.
20. The Growth Paradox: Growth takes a much longer time coming than you think, but then happens much faster than you ever thought possible.
These are the 20 most powerful paradoxes I've found.
If you enjoyed this, follow me @SahilBloom for more.
Join 500,000+ others who receive these insights in my 2x weekly newsletter (link in bio).
Roger Federer was the epitome of the Effort Paradox.
Effortless, elegant performances like this are just the result of an insanely large volume of effortful practice.
The unremarkable becomes remarkable.
Another classic story of the Effort Paradox: Picasso in the market.
What appeared to the untrained eye like an effortless wave of the hand was earned through years and years of effort and intensity.
For those who have asked, my friends at Off Menu did these graphics and designs for me.
They do design, websites, and everything in between for startups, brands, and creators. offmenu.design
The Locksmith Paradox says that as the locksmith improves at his craft, the customers become upset by the lower time input required to deliver a fixed output.
The results are the same, but the perception of value changed.
This focus (time>results) plagues most companies.
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
A 22-year-old follower recently messaged me asking for career advice.
Here are the 5 pieces of advice I shared:
1. Swallow the Frog: This is one of the greatest "hacks" to get ahead early in your career. Observe your boss, figure out what they hate doing, learn to do it, and… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…
Some of this is likely to elicit “Ok, Boomer” responses—and that’s ok.
I’m a big believer in balance, but I’m an even bigger believer that the early years of your career are the ideal time to do hard, unscalable, unbalanced things to build a foundation for life.
The whole narrative on working smart vs. hard has caused a lot of people to lose the plot.
Leverage is earned—not found.
When you’re starting out, you shouldn’t be focused on leverage.
You should be focused on creating value anywhere and everywhere.
If you spend a lot of time thinking about closed doors, you'll spot a lot of closed doors.
If you spend a lot of time thinking about open doors, you'll spot a lot of open doors.
You'll always find what you seek.
Pessimists sound smart, optimists retire young on beaches.
😂😂😂
There was a great study I’ll dig up and write about that found that self-reported “lucky” people were much better than their “unlucky” counterparts at seeing opportunity before them.
The “unlucky” people didn’t see the opportunity, where the “lucky” people did.