<ul><li>Attracting exceptional people is a startup's most important task outside of finding product-market fit.</li><li>The most effective way to hire extraordinary people is to be so persistent it hurts.</li><li>Persistence and pestering are twins with scarcely a mark to distinguish them.</li><li>Find the right words, the right message, you can persist - if you fail, you pester.</li></ul>

Be Persistent

High impact work requires concentration, often for hours at a time. Levels Health gives its team the maximum possible deep work time by actively discouraging tools like Slack and meetings.This creates a business that runs asynchronously, reducing interruptions and protecting unbroken deep work.

Maximize Deep Work Time

Every successful company cares about serving its customers to some extent, but very few are genuinely obsessed with pleasing them in that word's truest meaning.To please your customers, you must obsess over them.A good example of true customer obsession is Coupang, who take extraordinary measures to improve their service, including giving delivery people a manual outlining the most esoteric details.

Obsess Over Your Customer

Never, ever, think about something else when you should be thinking about the power of incentives.

As tech insinuates itself into every aspect of our lives, companies and protocols act as pseudo-nation states with enormous impact and broad scopeTerra, a crypto project, takes inspiration from the founding of Singapore and how prime minister Lee Kuan Yew fostered prosperity.

Think Like a Nation-State

Sometimes aligning incentives involves tinkering, like spinning out part of the team to capitalize on an idea directly.The goal is the same: maximum incentive alignment.Example: AngelList constantly tinkers to align incentives for its many experiments.

Align the Incentives

Move to a space that captures instant eyeballs, especially if you have missed the early train.There is a difference between having a well-known brand and an influential one. FTX has made one of the most ambitious attempts to secure the latter.Entering the American market late, the cryptocurrency exchange has sought to capture attention and influence by partnering with beloved sporting institutions, buying the naming rights to the Miami Heat's arena, and sponsoring MLB uniforms.

Invest in Soft-Power

Built optionality into the product by designing the platform to host the long-tail of assets.<ul><li>Devin Finzer and Alex Atallah founded OpenSea when NFTs were scarcely a blip on the world's radar.</li><li>They preserved optionality by keeping burn low and bringing in money through fees.</li><li>When "PFP" collectibles like Bored Ape Yacht Club and CryptoPunks took off in 2021, OpenSea was well-positioned to capitalize.</li></ul>

Provide Optionality In Products

Focus on how you can intensify your most pronounced advantage.For example, Tiger Global focuses on its greatest strengths by moving quickly and relying on an encyclopedic knowledge of successful business models to pick winners, even at the cost of outsourcing commoditized operations.

Intensify Your Advantage

Define yourself by what you're not.<ul><li>Telegram has defined itself as a user-friendly private alternative to Big Blue's surveillance state.</li><li>As Facebook has fumbled through data breaches and congressional hearings, Telegram's allure has only grown more pronounced.</li></ul>

Find Your Counter-Positioning

Great businesses never sit still. They are constantly in a state of reinvention and internal bottoms-up disruption. Doing so opens new opportunities and protects against competitive displacement.To stave off staleness and disruption, businesses must innovate from within.

Proactively Reinvent Yourself

Nice pointers for businesses to go from also rans to success.

After publishing over half a million words on some of the world’s most innovative businesses, these are the 10 lessons I come back to again and again. You’ll find tactics from Stripe, FTX, Tiger Global, OpenSea, and other exceptional organizations.

Discover the world of business and economics.

economics

Economics

personaldevelopment

Personal Development

motivationandinspiration

Motivation & Inspiration

business

Business

10 Lessons from Great Businesses

If you want to keep people in your life, you have to tell them and be ready to put in the effort.Whether you've just moved away from your friend or you've been apart for years, long-distance friendships require a reciprocal commitment. That means reaching out, finding time to hang out and showing your friend, you value them.And the reciprocal is true – remember: They value you, too.

Be Explicit and Intentional About Keeping Your Long Distance Friend

The anchor also generates exclusivity, and that's something that builds our friendships when we have memories, experiences inside jokes that we share with one person that we don't have with other people.The key to building on your bond from afar is vulnerability. Your ability to show vulnerability is a big predictor of whether you'll stay close over time. Try being vulnerable about what's going on in your life and asking questions that welcome your friend's vulnerability.

Use Common Interests to Feel Connected – and Get Real

If you feel like your communication is in a rut, your friend probably feels that way too, so don't be afraid to be the first one to reach out. It shows your friend that they don't need to fear rejection.And when phone calls won't cut it, think about a visit. Visiting is one of the most important things we can do to keep a long-distance friendship going. There's no "right" frequency for visits, so talk about what works best for you and your friend.

Don't Hesitate to Reach Out

Separation is hard. Miscommunication happens. And because there's just a limited amount of time you get with your friend, it's easy to let conflicts go unaddressed.Try not to sweep things under the rug. In fact, addressing conflict is one of the ways you can become closer with your friend. But bringing issues up can feel scary.One common issue long-distance friends face is reciprocity. That's when one friend feels like they're putting more into the relationship than the other. The natural reaction is to back away, but, instead, try reaching out first.

Conflicts Are Natural and Healthy – Address Them Openly

Long distance friendships are a common reality of adulthood, as we move around for school, work or family. While they might require some planning and creativity to keep up, there's no reason to let physical distance keep you from staying connected.

communication

Communication

loveandrelationships

Love & Relationships

4 tips to stay connected when your friends live far away : Life Kit

It can be hard to disentangle whether effort is a cause or a consequence in a given situation. But we can look at effort through a feedback loop that looks like this:Effort > performance > pleasure > motivation > effort.

The Link Between Effort and Performance

In reality, one’s ability to put in an effort typically arises as a consequence of something, not as a major cause.<ul><li>To accomplish something, making an effort depends more on the right time and right place, rather than being the focal point. </li><li>It’s also a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy: If we believe in our abilities to accomplish something, we are more motivated, then we perform better, which feeds our belief in our abilities, and so on and so forth, leading to an ongoing cycle of effort-as-a-consequence.</li><li>Exerting effort is not always something that we can do over long periods of time.</li></ul>

Effort-Consequence Instead of Effort-Cause

The trick is to refrain from seeing effort as a cause or as a consequence, but rather as both. By seeing it this way, we can organize performance over the long term and generate an "addictive loop"—meaning a drive to repeat behaviors that are pleasurable by themselves.This approach counters the tendency to overestimate our ability to both make an undesired effort as well as resist the temptation of alternative pleasurable activities. An addictive loop approach avoids those two obstacles by aiming for activities that generate pleasure—hence our desire to make an effort, hence more activities.

Keeping Up the Good Work: Behavioral Loops and Pleasure

The role of leaders is to put in place a system of efforts-as-consequences, generating a spiral where outcomes get bigger and better as time goes on.<ul><li>Don’t neglect indirect activities that create pleasure, like giving feedback and offering training sessions. </li><li>Avoid a “no pain, no gain” mentality. </li><li>Grant people autonomy. </li><li>Leverage psychological drivers. For instance, the Pygmalion effect - people perform better just by feeling that their leader believes in them.</li><li>Orient discreetly through a gentle nudge. </li><li>Use social validation.  </li></ul>

Lessons for Leaders

Individuals can consciously organize themselves into performance-effort loops. <ul><li>Build an identity. Our actions tend to align with how we perceive ourselves and how others perceive us. </li><li>Make it a habit. Your brain is a creature of habit, and science has therefore identified habit formation as a key for success.</li><li>Be playful. Pleasure and play are linked—and if we frame something as a game, it can be more engaging and less depleting. </li><li>Break it down. If a large, long-term project is too overwhelming, break it into smaller tasks.</li></ul>

Lessons for Individuals

Such extrinsic motivation schemes—where effort is forced by external rewards—have been shown to lead generally to undesirable outcomes. While we can’t ignore them as short-term tactics, they only work in limited contexts, and only if properly inserted in a scheme balanced with intrinsic motivations.

Avoid Forced Effort

Viewing effort as part of a feedback loop could help us enjoy the process.

Understand yourself and those around you.

psychology

Psychology

How to Get Hooked on Making an Effort

Remember, the customer service representative isn't personally responsible for the problem you're calling about. When you speak to a representative, establish that you don't blame them for the problem.

Separate the Person from The Problem

If you're met with a wall of business-sounding script from the representative, try to remind them that you're both humans. Use the representative's name when you talk to them. You can even mention what's around your surroundings to give them a brief glimpse into your life.Now that's two humans talking as opposed to a customer service representative and a person they have to deal with.

Show Vulnerability

It can be awkward to ask for what you want. One way to make the situation less of a tug-of-war and more of a collaboration: try using  "caretaking" statements, like "I appreciate you being patient with me as we figure this thing out."You're not losing focus on the problem at hand, but you're also signalling the work they're doing to help you. This kind of language can preemptively keep tension low so you and the representative can focus on problem-solving together.

Give Caretaking Statements

Calibrated questions are that give the customer service representative a chance to pause and take your perspective.You can ask, "what would you do in my situation?" or "I really wasn't expecting to wake up to this unexpected charge – what do you think I should do next?" This helps them collaborate with you instead of having a standoff.A quick way to lose trust? Asking for their manager. Instead, you want to have the representative advocate for you to their manager – and they can't do that if you're threatening to get them in trouble with their boss.

Calibrated Questions: Make Them Your Ally

<ul>
<li>Being stuck on an endless call-transfer loop from department to department can be frustrating. But don't lose your cool. You can show your annoyance without blowing up.</li>
<li>Remind the representative you're not angry with them personally, and say something like: I'm really frustrated. I just want to tell you what's been my experience so far!</li>
<li>It should go without saying – but remember to be nice! Lying or screaming isn't going to get you what you want.</li>
<li>You are trying to show empathy and get empathy in return. When you need to move somebody emotionally, then you can move what their decisions are.</li>
</ul>

Don't Lie – Be True to Who You Are, While Also Being Respectful

Asking to speak to the manager isn't going to get the results you want. In this episode, negotiation consultant Craig dos Santos gives tips on how to make a customer service representative your collaborator instead of your enemy.

marketingandsales

Marketing & Sales

problemsolving

Problem Solving

How to talk to customer service – and actually get what you want : Life Kit

As children, our environments (parents, schools, friends) usually determine our actions, but later we might realize our family’s bloodline (natural skills or abilities) has already decided for us. Both sides of this coin are powerful motivators, but there’s a third option: self-reliance.You learn to make decisions independently when you grow older and wiser. You realize that destiny is perhaps more in your control. Such autonomy is important, even life-changing, no matter what driving forces have influenced your life to that point.

Nature Vs Nurture

Physical input affects our senses. Our physical memories affect how we react to similar items or events later in life.Mental or intellectual input affects our education. Formal schooling lasts for about 17 years, depending on personal, societal, and financial expectations or desires. Parents, teachers, friends, and strangers help expand our general knowledge. Emotional input affects our attitudes. From intimate relationships to exciting travels to frustrating computer apps, limitless experiences bring us the joys, sorrows, and thousands of other emotions that make life worth living.

The Three Types Of Environment

Our daily physical, intellectual, and emotional changes can bring good or bad results. It’s up to us to react accordingly to create the best situations for ourselves.Not every situation is controllable, but we do our best to avoid or prepare for them. People make this decision every day, and it’s their choice.We each have internal forces to deal with as well.

Environmental Control

While environment (external influence) is in our lives to varying degrees, heredity (internal influence) genetically provides physical traits or mental characteristics. If you inherit specific <a href="https://www.betterhealth.vic.gov.au/health/conditionsandtreatments/genes-and-genetics">genes</a> at birth (colorblindness, deafness, psoriasis, etc.), you experience the world from a particular unavoidable perspective through no fault of your own.So, we’ve got external and internal controllers, but we’re not entirely at their whim. Most of us have an ace in the hole.

Heredity

Our environment may surround us, and heredity may lie within us, but don’t forget that we also have initiative. We can make decisions if we wish to change. It’s not always easy — damned hard, sometimes.But we humans are too full of knowledge, dreams, and spirit to float through life, always at the whim of other forces.We begin life as products of our environment, but we grow and experience and become self-reliant, sometimes overcoming incredible odds.

Self-Reliance

We begin life as products of our environment, but we grow and experience and become self-reliant, sometimes overcoming incredible odds. With some exceptions, we can safely and responsibly use our environment to improve our lives or those of our peers.

The Bottom Line

In the 1983 comedy Trading Places, the millionaire Duke brothers conduct an experiment that swaps the lives of commodities broker Louis and streetwise conman Billy Ray. All due to a bet on heredity…

parenting

Parenting

Self-reliance May Be Your Unsung Hero

When we say, Im fine or Everythings fine, we’re denying our true feelings and experiences; we’re hoping to convince ourselves and others that everything really is okay.

We pretend to be fine to avoid conflicts. Sharing our true feelings or opinions might cause someone to get angry with us and thats scary or at least uncomfortable.

You also may have learned in childhood that you shouldnt need anything. Again, you may have been punished when you asked for something or your needs may have been ignored. When this happens repeatedly, we learn that we shouldnt ask for anything because no one cares about our needs and they wont be met.

Related to this is our desire to be easy going or low maintenance. Again, we dont want to be difficult (that might lead to a conflict) and we dont want to be a burden or need anything because that might drive people away. A history of dysfunctional relationships and fragile self-esteem has led us to believe that people wont like us (and perhaps theyll abandon or reject us) if we ask for too much or have complicated feelings. It feels safer to pretend were fine and be a dependable, cheerful friend or an easy-going daughter-in-law who never complains.

Why We Say, “I’m fine” When We Aren’t: Codependency, Denial, and Avoidance

Why We Say, “I’m fine” When We Aren’t: Codependency, Denial, and Avoidance Im fine. We say it all t

mentalhealth

Mental Health

Why We Say, "I'm fine" -- When We Aren't

In 2018, archaeologists moving bodies for reburial from a 19th-century cemetery in Birmingham to make way for the new HS2 station were puzzled to find several that had plates on their laps. Then someone remembered a curious custom from the nearby Welsh Marches – that of the village “sin-eater”.

What Does Faith Have to Offer Us?

A plate of bread and salt would be placed on the deceased’s lap while they were lying in repose. Just before the coffin was closed and the funeral cortege set off for the church, the village sin-eater arrived, ate the bread and was given some coins and a glass of ale for their trouble. The belief was that the deceased’s sins were absorbed by the salt and transferred into the bread, and then into the sin-eater.

Sin-Eater

Sin-eaters were usually elderly and destitute, and glad to have the money – not to mention the free food and drink. The price they paid was to be shunned by their community because of their macabre associations. The last known sin-eater was Richard Munslow, who died aged 73 in 1906. Sin-eating reminds us that, more than anything else, even the most staid of religions – in this case, Anglicanism – can be associated with surprisingly curious beliefs and rituals.

Sin-eating

Perhaps because of this, it has often been claimed that religious belief arises from ignorance and superstition. If that were the case, you might expect religion to gradually fade away as societies became better educated and more scientifically oriented.There are at least two reasons, however, why religions persist. One is the fact that, on average, religious people are generally happier, healthier and live longer. For better or for worse, they also have easier deaths when the time comes. The other is that religious people are more likely to feel that they belong to a community.

Ignorance & Superstition

In a survey I ran, those who reported attending religious services were depressed less frequently, felt their lives were more worthwhile, were more engaged with their local community, and felt greater trust towards others. These enormous benefits mean not only that religion has enduring appeal, but that religious practices make you “fit” in the evolutionary sense – and thus they tend to stick around.

Religious Services

Part of the reason people are attracted to religion is that its rituals – the standing, sitting and kneeling in unison, the singing, the listening to emotionally rousing sermons – trigger the brain’s endorphin system. This is the mechanism that underpins social bonding in all primates, including humans. Like opiates, endorphins produce a sense of bliss bordering on ecstasy, calmness and warmth, relaxation and trust, while elevating pain thresholds. In addition to these hedonic benefits, endorphins trigger the release of natural killer cells (part of the body’s immune system).

Religion Rituals

Endorphins also underpin the bonding of friendships and, through that, allow us to create supportive groups of like-minded individuals. This effect seems to be especially strong in the context of rituals, as has been shown experimentally in religious services in the UK and Brazil. It seems, therefore, that religions evolved to reinforce a sense of community cohesion, something that’s extremely important to our wellbeing and survival.

Context of Rituals

Our natural community size – the size of our personal social network, the number of friends we have on Facebook – is part of a relationship between group size and brain size in primates. Each species has a characteristic group size determined by the size of its brain. Ours is about 150. Not only is this the average size of personal social networks (the number of extended family and friends with whom you have meaningful relationships), but it also turns out to be the optimal size for religious congregations.

The Size of the Brain

If a congregation is smaller than about 100, it puts a heavy burden on the membership; if it is above about 200, it becomes increasingly prone to divisiveness. This seems to explain why big religions are so susceptible to fragmentation – constantly throwing up small sects (typically of a few hundred people at most) built round a charismatic leader whose wayward beliefs the hierarchy desperately tries to contain.

The Role of the Leader

Social bonding is important, of course, to many species. But there’s an aspect of religion that seems to be peculiarly human. Being able to engage in religious discussion – and hence explain the significance of the rituals and why you should take part – depends on the kinds of mind-reading, or “mentalising”, skills that play a crucial role in managing our everyday relationships. These are the skills that allow us to understand what someone else is thinking, to grasp their intentions. They allow us to utter sentences such as, “I know that you realise that Freddie believes that …”

Mind Reading and Mentalizing

To be able to do this, I have to be able to step back from the immediacy of the physical world so as to imagine the possibility that you might or might not think this, that Freddie might or might not intend whatever you thought he did, and even whether the person Freddie had in mind did or did not think what Freddie thought they did. Apes can do the first two steps in this chain, but that’s the limit. For humans, it comes easily, bringing with it an ability to imagine parallel worlds inhabited by invisible beings.

It’s a short step from there to religious ideas, which in turn lead to better bonding, which makes you more likely to survive. Survival means your superior mentalising skills will be passed on to a new generation, equally adept at religious thinking; a penchant for religion is therefore part of our genetic inheritance.

The Genetic Inheritance

But that’s not all. The same cognitive abilities that give us religion also allow us to ask why the world has to be the way it is (giving us science) and to imagine entirely fictional worlds (giving us literature). Thus, you could no more have a world where religion was cast aside as superstition than you could have one without science or stories. And that would be a very different world indeed.A History of God by Karen Armstrong (Vintage, £11.99)Religion Explained by Pascal Boyer (Basic Books, £14.35)World Religions – The Great Faiths Explored and Explained by John Bowker (DK, £19.99)

Fictional Worlds

In a world of scientific miracles, what does faith have to offer us?

religionandspirituality

Religion & Spirituality

health

Health

The big idea: do we still need religion?

Most of us try to either escape our emotions, or try to fix them. The healthier way to manage difficult feelings is to change your relationship with them.
Instead of treating painful emotions as enemies to be avoided or eliminated, you can learn to treat them as friends to be understood and accepted.

You And Your Emotions Are Friends

Most people have developed an unconscious habit of <a href="https://nickwignall.com/intellectualized-emotions/">intellectualizing</a> their emotions—using highly conceptual and vague language to talk about feelings rather than plain straightforward words.When you acknowledge how you're feeling in plain, simple language, it helps reduce the intensity of the feeling and teaches your brain a valuable lesson: emotions aren't things to be hidden or covered up-they're a normal, if uncomfortable, part of the human experience.

Name It to Tame It

Pain is the messenger. Pain is your body’s way of signaling that there is something very wrong with your wrist that needs to be fixed as soon as possible.Sadness is uncomfortable but not bad. It is a normal response to the loss of something valuable.The next time you experience a difficult or painful emotion, try to remind yourself that just because it feels bad doesn’t mean it is bad.

Just Because It Feels Bad Doesn’t Mean It Is Bad

Replace your instinct to be judgmental about how you're feeling with the habit of being curious about it.If you can cultivate a habit of cultivating a curious about difficult feelings, rather than judgmental, not only will those feelings subside more quickly, you will also be fostering a much kinder, gentler relationship with your own mind.

Be Curious, Not Judgmental

<ul><li>You can't expect to become an expert at managing hugely painful emotions if you haven't practiced</li><li>The best way to practice is to start small and work your way up</li><li>Social anxiety is a skill like anything else, so practice on smaller, easier situations first</li></ul>

Practice with Small Emotions

You can't get rid of painful emotions like anxiety or anger. But you can learn to build a healthier relationship with them.

4 Tips for Building a Healthier Relationship with Your Emotions - Nick Wignall

Work longer, get less done. Parkinson's Law says that work expands to fill the time available for its completion. When you establish fixed hours to your work, you find unproductive ways to fill it. Work like a lion instead - sprint, rest, repeat.

The Productivity Paradox

In order to grow, sometimes you need to shrink. Growth is never linear. One step back, two steps forward is a recipe for consistent, long-term success.

The Shrinking Paradox

The thing we fear the most is often the thing we most need to do. Fears - when avoided - become limiters on our growth and life. Make a habit of getting closer to your fears. Then take the leap - you may just find growth on the other side.

The Fear Paradox

You have to put in more effort to make something appear effortless. Effortless performances are often the result of a large volume of effortful, gritty practice.

The Effort Paradox

You have to fail more to succeed more. Our greatest moments of growth often stem directly from our greatest failures. Don't fear failure, just learn to fail smart and fast.

The Failure Paradox

The more you learn, the more you are exposed to the immense unknown. This should be empowering, not frightening. Embrace your own ignorance. Embrace lifelong learning.

The Wisdom Paradox

You have to lose money in order to make money. Sometimes you have to pay to learn.

The Money Paradox

The following are some of the most powerful paradoxes of life. Time to ponder ....

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productivity

Productivity

timemanagement

Time Management

Some Paradoxes (Part 1)

"Sometimes not everything that we want will happen, but that doesn't mean we have to give up"

One of the bad thoughts of humans is that when their goals or what they want are not achieved, they will think that they have failed. Even though it is not a failure. If we really think it's a failure then we must also really think that is the beginning of our success.

Bad Thoughts

When the that thing we want is not achieved or we are facing a failure, sometimes we get confused and become more overthinking then in the end we will give up. If we are experiencing something like that, it would be nice if we did a rest and think phase.Resting and Thinking Phase is a phase where we rest ourselves, mentally and mind from something bad that has happened or is happening but we still make plans for what we will do next. Or in other words we do refreshing but still think about the next step so that we don't think too much about the bad things in the problem.

Resting and Thinking Phase

In life we ​​have to make a lot of plans because if one plan doesn't come true, we can make other plans.For example, let's assume our plan is plan A, plan B, plan C. Then our first step is to do plan A but plan A is fails, because we have other plans so we can do plan B or the next plan.So what should we do if all our plans are fail?The answer is that we surrender all our plans to the God, it doesn't mean we give up, it's just that we keep fighting and trying but we trust whatever happens in the future to our God.

Plan A and Other Plans

Basically we have no reason to give up.Because actually we won't know what will happen in the future if we give up now. Let's think, do you know what will happen in your life tomorrow? Of course you don't know but if you think the bad things will happen tomorrow, trust me it's just your bad thoughts.We may fail today but it turns out that in the future we will get success.

Future

"Actually our life that we have to live is praying, learning and struggling. The problem of failing or succeeding is part of our destiny but God always has a good plan for humans."

It's just  simple ideas from me if we will face a failure :')

mindfulness

Mindfulness

Face Failure 

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