Week #4

You have to compete for the good things in life because everyone wants them

Hello everybody!

🎧 Songs I had on repeat this week

(and their beautiful music videos)

• Hey Now
• Fly Me to the Moon (Spotify, euphoria1 scene)

🪐 Various cool stuff

• No one gives a shit about you (~10 minutes)

  Interesting snippets:

  • It’s not personal. It’s just human nature.
  • This applies to everything you need or want. People care about themselves and how a situation will increase what’s valuable to them. […] People aren’t altruistic so much because it helps people, but more because it helps them feel good.
  • If you want more from the world, you have to give more to the world. The world doesn’t owe you shit. No amount of sulking or protesting will ever change this.
  • You can have whatever you want… if you’re willing to pay the price. […] Whatever you want, you are getting it from an auction […] You have to compete for the good things in life because everyone wants them. Competition raises your level so that you can take advantage of other favourable opportunities of similar quality.
• Simon Sinek on Millennials (~15 minutes)

  Interesting snippets:

  • […] too many of them […] were told that they were special […] that they can have anything they want in life just because they want it. […] They graduate […] and they’re thrust into the real world and, in an instant, they find out they are not special, their moms can’t get them a promotion, […] and, by the way, you can’t just have it because you want it.
  • The other problem to compound it is we are growing up in a Facebook/Instagram world […] We’re good at showing people that life is amazing even though I am depressed… Everybody sounds tough, and everybody sounds like they have it all figured out and the reality is there’s very little toughness and most people don’t have it all figured out.
  • We know that engagement with social media and our cell phones releases a chemical called dopamine. That’s why when you get a text – it feels good. […] It’s why we count the likes […] Dopamine is the exact same chemical that makes us feel good when we smoke, drink and gamble. […] It’s highly, highly addictive… We have age restrictions on smoking, drinking, and gambling but we have no age restrictions on social media and cell phones.
  • When we are very, very young, the only approval we need is the approval of our parents and as we go through adolescence we make this transition where we now need the approval of our peers. Very frustrating for our parents, very important for the teenager. […] It’s a highly, highly stressful and anxious period of our lives and we are supposed to learn to rely on our friends. Some people, quite by accident, discover alcohol, the numbing effects of dopamine, to help them cope with the stresses and anxieties of adolescence. Unfortunately, that becomes hard-wired in their brains and for the rest of their lives, when they suffer significant stress, they will not turn to a person, they will turn to the bottle.
  • The science is clear, we know that people who spend more time on Facebook suffer higher rates of depression […] Alcohol is not bad, too much alcohol is bad. Gambling is fun, too much gambling is dangerous. There is nothing wrong with social media and cellphones, it’s the imbalance. If you wake up and you check your phone before you say good morning to your girlfriend […], you have an addiction. And like all addictions, in time, it will destroy relationships, it will cost time, it will cost money and it will make your life worse.
  • You want to buy something, you go on Amazon and it arrives the next day. You want to watch a movie, log on and watch a movie. […] You want to watch a TV show, binge. […] Instant gratification. […] Everything you want you can have instantaneously […] except, job satisfaction and strength of relationships […] Things that really, really matter, like love or job fulfilment, joy, love of life, self-confidence, a skillset, any of these things, all of these things take time. […] They are slow, meandering, uncomfortable, messy processes.
  • In their entry-level jobs when asked “how’s it going?” they say “I think I’m going to quit.” And we’re like “why?” and they say “I’m not making an impact.” To which we say – “you’ve only been there eight months…” It’s as if they’re standing at the foot of a mountain and they have this abstract concept called “impact” that they want to have on the world, which is the summit. What they don’t see is the mountain. […] And so what this young generation needs to learn is patience.
  • When you don’t have a phone, you just check out the world. And that’s where ideas happen. The constant, constant, constant engagement is not where you have innovation and ideas. Ideas happen when our minds wander and we see something and we think, “I bet they could do that…” That’s called innovation. But we’re taking away all those little moments.

📚 Reading

I’ve already shared some resources on how to get into reading in the previous weeks3. Recently I discovered another great article about reading better. (~15 minutes)

Interesting snippets:

• Bad books are a grind. Good books almost read themselves.
• Skim a lot of books. Read a few. Immediately re-read the best ones twice.

🦉 Quotes of the week

Most people overestimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what they can do in ten years.— Bill Gates

You don't want to be the guy who succeeds in life while being high strung, high stress, and unhappy, leaving a trail of emotional wreckage with you and your loved ones. You want to be the guy or the girl who gets there calmly, quitely, without struggle. When there's a crisis going on, you want to be coolest in the room who still also figures out the correct answer.— Naval