Non-practice

After Tokyo, we should bring the Olympic charade to an end | David Goldblatt | The Guardian:
“Ask the Finns, who abandoned the state-sponsored pursuit of medals and spent the money instead on active transport and accessible facilities. They barely win anything any more, but they have the most active and healthy old people in the world. In Britain we have a sack of gold and an obesity crisis.”

Focusing on results, just for the sake of results, is a wrong way of solving problems.

The best option? Work on the long run.

Don’t find an arbitrary goal, focus on long term.

A book on this subject: Amazon.com: How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big: Kind of the Story of My Life eBook : Adams, Scott: Kindle Store.

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I read recently a quote in the line of (very approximate quote, and I couldn’t find the original writer of it:

If you have trouble teaching some person something, that’s because you haven’t explained it kind enough.

That’s so true! A lot of times I blame, whenever I have issue explaining something, the technical aspects – I wasn’t good enough, smart enough. But it’s mostly related to kindness, to the happiness of sharing, to the joy of presenting something.

If I say something in a kind voice, if I care, then likely I will get some feedback, people will ask questions, I’ll get a glimpse on why the person didn’t learn that well.

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I’ve known persons that started businesses and had success with them.

At a cost, though – the happiness and peace of mind of their employees.

You can have an employer that is a pleasant person, knows how to be attractive, but when they get in a situation of power, they have no hesitation if showing their power.

I don’t especially admire those kinds of persons.

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Dr. Julie Gurner on Twitter:

What is the secret of truly confident people? Let’s pull back the curtain.

Even when you’re fantastic at what you do, you may have moments of insecurity professionally or elsewhere.

[…]

The secret is ridiculously simple: Their focus & where they operate.
– Insecure people focus on what they’re *not* good at & confront it often.
– Confident people focus on what they *are* good at & operate here regularly.
This mentally positions them for everything that comes.

The answer seems to be simple – try to focus on what you do best.

A lot of times we focus on the negative.

When you think of feedback from colleagues, negative thoughts come to mind.

When you consider feedback in the formal education, generally the “you’re lacking this” comes up.

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Sometimes, I compare myself with great thinkers and writers, and look at the things they’ve read and, most of them, I haven’t.

There’s just a tiny, small, miniscule issue with this thinking – I’m not a professional writer. My main job is not writing.

It’s like comparing a person who jogs half an hour in the evenings with a professional.

And whom do I admire, the “regular” professionals or the top performers? You got it – the top performers. So, coming back to the comparison, it’s like comparing myself with people who win national contests and go to Olympiad to represent the country.
I’ll let myself go this time. ;)

Are those people better? The problem is that there are no terms of comparison. What’s better – water or a spoon? You can’t compare these.

Give me some slack. :)

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Once, a friend asked me about creating a website to post memes (funny things, images, texts, perhaps videos, although it was a bit more complicated those years).

I told him that such ideas already exist in various forms, and his idea is doomed to fail.

9GAG was only founded in 2008, and, at least in Romania, only in recent years, it got very popular.

Did I advise him wrong? Sure!

What would I do now, would he ask me again?

I’d tell him it’s not the idea, but the execution that matters.

Even today you could make a funnier website.

And we’re extremely poor at predicting.

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