Clear Thinking

Give yourself time to get clear on what the problem is before you jump into solving it.

What may look like discipline often involves a carefully created environment to encourage certain behaviors. And what may look like poor choices is often just someone trying their best to use willpower and bumping up against their defaults. The people with the best defaults are typically the ones with the best environment. Sometimes it’s part of a

create a repository of “good behavior.” As

While there are many such instincts, four stand out to me as the most prominent, the most distinctive, and the most dangerous. These behaviors represent something akin to our brain’s default or factory settings.[3]

False dualities prevent you from seeing alternative paths and other information that might change your mind. On the other hand, taking away one of two clear options forces you to reframe the problem and get unstuck.

Self-confidence is also the strength to accept hard truths. We all have to deal with the world as it is, not as we want it to be. The quicker you stop denying inconvenient truths and start responding to difficult realities, the better.

don’t just ask experts what they think, ask them how they think.

he sent someone “to look around and see things that weren’t being reported—not just what they were yelling about.”

A final note on exemplars: just as other people serve on your personal board of directors, you serve on other people’s boards. Denzel Washington reminds us of this point: “You never know who you touch. You never know how or when you’ll have an impact, or how important your example can be to someone else.”[6]