Some jokes can be annoying.

Some people like hearing jokes.

What’s the middle path?

There isn’t one. You can make very soft jokes, not offending anyone, you can be smiling, you can be serene, but the real jokes, the ones that make people laugh, are offensive – to some degree.

It’s part of the job description.

“I will not annoy anyone, so I will never tell a joke” is not a solution.

Choose your battles, learn when to joke and when not to, learn some people who enjoy the jokes, find out what hurts people.

But don’t stop joking because some people don’t like the jokes.

As much as some people would prefer to stop, there are some people who would prefer to continue.

“Do no evil”. Yes, that’s true.

Don’t make over-the-board jokes, don’t attack people, don’t use curse words.

But, within some limits, there are actually no boundaries.

Within some walls, there is liberty.

Get it, and accept the fact that some people would like some stricter laws and more enclosed walls.

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In “Chris Voss Teaches The Art of Negotiation”, the speaker sometimes refers to “calibrated question” – these help put things into context.

I have this problem – it’s difficult for me, sometimes, to give the general context.

I tend to focus on the small detail, on the little aspect, on the minor things.

Seeing the overall story is difficult.

Even when I think of future plans, it’s hard for me to say an overall conclusion. I tend to say “If all goes well, then …”.

It’s rare of me to say “we’ll do so-and-so”, because you can’t be 100% sure, and I don’t feel like making a promise I can’t keep.

How can I solve this?

• One option is to state my emotions. “I feel about X situation so-and-so”.
• Another option is to try and summarize things.
• Also, from time to time, to make promises without having 100% certainty of a situation. 90% might just be good enough.

Coming back to the phrase which opened this article, I once asked a person “So, what’s up with that?”. It was a long-thought question, I prepared for it. It helped defuse a situation, and it took both me and the receiver by surprise.

A question to help equalize the things is surely helpful.

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The word “passion” comes from suffering.

So, passion for work implies suffering.

What’s, to me, the most important criteria in evaluating work?

The passion.

It takes passion, willingness to sacrifice, and ability to focus on the long-term, persistence in order to be successful in work.

If you have passion, you’ll be able to:

• Focus on developing yourself;
• Check for errors;
• Motivate yourself to work;
• Even find pleasure in the results of your work.

No passion – no results, quite simple.

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In “Salman Rushdie Teaches Storytelling and Writing | MasterClass” there was, at some point, a focus on how people talk – if you write something, it will help imagining a real person talking.

To me, that’s rather difficult. I tend to talk like I write, and this empathetic exercise is rather difficult.

But it would be a nice thing to try, in the future.

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It might look to you that whenever you say “Freedom of choice”, it’s about the last moment: “Should I eat, right now, this unhealthy but tasty food?”, or “Should I stay late and have fun, or be a party pooper, but have a good night’s sleep?”. Things like that – the last moment, when you make the final decision.

“Oh, if only at time X I had chosen a different path …”.

But, to me, the freedom of choice is mostly not on short-term, but on long-term acts.

If at the end of the day you make a poor decision, there were some factors leading to that decision:

• Perhaps you slept poorly the previous night;
• Perhaps you ate something that day which you are aware generally is not good for you;
• Maybe you generally make poor decisions in the evening, but you keep ignoring the signs;
• (that’s tough!) How about that instead you train yourself in focusing on the long-term, you tend to want instant gratification; instead of working hard, you choose the easy path; instead of committing to the long-term, you focus on the “now”; that’s an important observation, which is mostly ignored – “what made me, at moment X, make the decision, based on habits I reinforced again, and again?”.

The most important observation of this blog post is that long-term decisions affect a lot of short-term decisions. If you’re aware of a poor habit and ignore it, you take some risks. Whenever the risks happen to actually lead to a bad situation, the problem is not only that at that specific moment you took a poor decision, but the fact that you had a long-term habit, which you kept on ignoring.

Most of the time, when people analyze a situation, they focus on just the last bit. If I take a poor grade on an exam, I’ll look at the time of the exam – “Oh, I took a C because I missed just the part which was chosen for the test”. How about you look at a more situation: “I could have slept better in the last year; I could have focused on reading more on the courses; I could have joined a learning group; I could have read extra materials on the subject; I could have written on the matter, so I would have made more associations”.

Why is focusing on the long-term helpful? Because it leads to better habits, and, to me, these are more important than sprints. You can sprint for one good grade on an exam, but it matters more if you can commit to a marathon of lifelong learning.

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