Non-practice

Billionaire Warren Buffett is quoted on saying:

The difference between successful people and really successful people is that really successful people say no to almost everything.

I guess that’s true when you’re a billionaire. You will get invited to a lot of social gatherings, interviews, tours, shows, that you need to create a method to protect yourself.

And if you’re in the top 5 richest people in the world, those invitations must come in large numbers.

Yet, I think the situation is totally different for someone just starting out. A student, a person just graduating, a person who worked for a few years, but now wants to switch careers, a person who tries something new – in my opinion, all of these scenarios fit another approach: try everything.

How will you know the interview is of poor quality? Do 3 interviews and you’ll know whether to accept an interview or not.

How will you know if a party is a good investment of your time? Go a few times and then decide.

How will you know if you’re good at a job if you don’t try it, put some time in it, try some more?

Sure, you can only experiment with the things which are reversible or don’t have huge implications, that’s clear.

Jim Bagnola used to say about a person who was reluctant to try things that he/she said – “I tried it once. It didn’t work out”.

The answer, obviously, is “try some more! See if it really fits you or not!”.

If you’re scared of dogs, like I am, the solution is not to avoid any contact with dogs, but have so many contacts with them that the fear disappears.

There are lots of videos online with veterinaries knowing how to handle animals – they’re so used to them, that they know their tricks.

An aggressive dog can be safely trained by a professional. That professional has a thing that the vast majority of people on Earth don’t have – huge experience with dogs.

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I’m almost always amazed at how people don’t try to prevent things.

Living healthy, doing the right thing, not polluting, being a good citizen, having the courage to say no or yes more often, protecting, safeguarding, launching, initiating, responding, being there, avoiding – these are all solutions to life. Sometimes, it’s good to hide, other times you need to show up.

There’s not a one-fits-all solution, you need to try and test things, you can never be 100% sure that the thing which you do is right. But drinking too much, sleeping a few hours, risking your health (and others around you), just so that you say you started the year on the right foot might not be a good start at all.

Sure, have fun, but it has to be at 2 AM?

It’s not always easy, and you will surely make mistakes – but the amplitude matters. It matters if you drink two glasses of champagne or until you can barely walk.

Safe life can be boring. On the same note, you’ll be here tomorrow.

Also, on the “boring” part – people are extremely good at adapting. You can get used to both having an incredible fortune or an incredible misfortune. People get accustomed to life after a while, be it “exciting” or “boring”. You can be happy with little and sad with a lot of things around you.

In IT there are lots of shortcuts, but I try to be prepared the best way that I can – backups, working with documents both in the cloud and on local storage, using security solutions, trying to be safe while browsing – they all help.

Sure, at some point, you might work for a while and discover that you’ve lost one hour’s worth of work. Sure, I can’t back-up everything all the time.

But most of the time I have everything backed up and the things which are not backed up are, generally, not as important.

How many people do you know who, for all of their important documents, use cloud backup?

On another hand, always backing things up is a bit annoying. All the documents need to be on the cloud, from time to time you need to do some manual backup, which isn’t exactly sexy.

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Let’s say someone asks you a favor.

• “Hire me!”
• “Teach me X!”
• “Get me into the masters!”
• “Give me object Y!”.

You want to help, but you would prefer investing in helping someone you know is committed. One possible solution would be to refuse the person – “Look, it’s better for both of us if we don’t do so”. What might an even better solution be?

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I’m surprised, a lot of times, on some measures taken at the last minute.

One example is with measures that have a clear deadline – “You must submit form X on day Y”. And then, one day or two before day Y, a new law comes, saying “We have postponed the rule with a few days/weeks/months”.

To me, that’s absurd – a lot of people, most likely, want to plan their submission, and not leave everything for the last day. Instead of making them happy, the politicians with power postpone the deadline for the few who, most likely, would have not met the deadline anyway.

It’s like having 10 employees, 5 which work hard, and 5 which don’t, and you give laws to helps those who, anyhow, don’t work that much.

Another example. Recently, the Government promised to give some answers and clarifications prior to starting the school, on September 14^th. And when were those clarifications/answers given? Just a week prior to the date. You have all the summer with no activity in the educational system, and then you give a reaction only one week prior to the start of the school.

The thing is, this encourages poor planning. If I see the politicians planning, actually preparing, things for the last minute, this gets done in other circles, who mimic the behavior of politicians.

We have CoVID since March 2020, and in September 2020 we discover we don’t have time to buy tablets for pupils to study on.

“We’ll just wait and see how it goes” is a much poor principle than “Chance favors the prepared mind.” – Louis Pasteur.

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