Johanna

Remote teams need 5x the process. When i say processes, i don’t necessarily mean heavy-handed workflows, piles of paper and someone using a giant stamp confirming every action. I mean “systemized communication and expectations made explicit”.This can be as simple as: “We do check-ins every morning…” “Please before you do X always do Y…” These... See more

Criticizing others is a way of building trust. In a three-way friendship with X, Y, and Z, if X establishes that he and Y can together criticize Z, that may boost trust between Y and X, and also increase X’s relative power in the group. Criticizing “Charles Manson” doesn’t do this — you’ve got to take some chances with your targets.

Old age is much better than we think it will be. For a lot of people who read the book, I think they will wind up being a lot less fearful about the last third of life, and much more optimistic. As one person told me: “My advice about growing old? I’d tell them to find the magic.” 

Throughout my career I’ve noticed that when I work about 4-5 hours on something, I’m done. Regardless of whether I’ve allocated 6 or 8 or 10 hours to it, I either finish my tasks, or I run out of runway to finish them. Most of the time spent after that is just obsessive tweaking.

There is a great conflict between two of the most pressing problems of our time: poverty and climate change. To avoid global warming, the world needs to massively reduce CO2 emissions. But to end poverty, the world needs massive amounts of energy. In developing economies, every kWh of energy consumed is worth roughly $5 of GDP.

These plans fail even though they cheat and give themselves dictatorial power. “End corporate welfare, then redirect the money to UBI!” But if it was that easy to end corporate welfare, wouldn’t people have done it already, for non-UBI related reasons? “We’ll get a UBI by ending corporate welfare” is an outrageous claim. And even the plans that let... See more

But consider this: Do you know anyone who doesn’t have any blind spots? I strongly doubt it. Then why would you be any different? As Dalio makes clear, you must be active in the process of open-mindedness: It won’t happen by accident.