I have done Strength-based Startpreneur Mentoring, C-Suite Mentoring. "Weakness can be coached to average, but strength can be leveraged to the moon." — Laurence Endersen
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| Examples of Adjudicate in a sentence
“The student council was required to adjudicate any accusations of cheating.” “After years as a public defender he was ready for his promotion to adjudicate on the state supreme court.” |
… that today is National Croissant Day? Today we celebrate these delicious buttery, crescent-shaped rolls that are crispy on the outside and soft on the inside! To celebrate National Croissant Day, enjoy a delicious croissant with a generous helping of butter. Yum!
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“Education’s purpose is to replace an empty mind with an open one.”
— Malcolm S. Forbes
… that today is Backward Day? Today is the day to do everything backwards! Try writing or reading backwards. Wear your shirt with the back in the front. Walk or talk backwards. Play a board game backwards, from the finish line to the start. Have fun with it!
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“Things work out best for those who make the best of how things work out.”
— John Wooden
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Even the best of memories are only moments long.
If you’re going through a rough time, keep going until you reach the end.
If you’re going through hell, keep going. (Winston Churchill)
Before you ask for readers, write the article you wish you could read. Before you ask for the sale, create the product you wish you had.
Before you need support, be a supportive friend. Before you need love, be a loving partner.
Always give value before you ask for value.
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| “It’s called civilization. Women invented it, and every time you men blow it all to bits, we just invent it again.”
“Perhaps it’s impossible to wear an identity without becoming what you pretend to be.” – Orson Scott Card |
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| Examples of Juggernaut in a sentence
“The youngest candidate is a juggernaut, impressing voters and blowing away competitors in every debate.” “Harry Potter has turned into a global juggernaut, with the books having inspired movies, plays, theme parks, and any kind of merchandise you can think of.” |
… that today is Lopsided Basketball Game Day? In 1964, one Louisiana high school basketball team beat another 211 to 29, the most lopsided high school basketball game ever played. The teams shall remain nameless to protect the honor of the losing team. 😉
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“If the grass looks greener on the other side… Stop staring. Stop comparing. Stop complaining. Start watering the grass you’re standing on.”
— Angel Chernoff
| WORD OF THE DAY |
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| Examples of Nirvana in a sentence
“After a stressful year at work, the week at the spa was nirvana for her.” “When he started studying Buddhism, he was fascinated by the idea of achieving Nirvana.” |
“Success comes from keeping the ears open and the mouth closed” and “A man of words and not of deeds is like a garden full of weeds.”
“Hamilton’s besetting fear was that American democracy would be spoiled by demagogues who would mouth populist shibboleths to conceal their despotism.”
– Ron Chernow
European Parliament puts off vote on anti-CAA resolution
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/european-parliament-puts-off-vote-on-anti-caa-resolution/articleshow/73747176.cms?utm_campaign=andapp&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=native_share_tray
Download the TOI app now:
https://timesofindia.onelink.me/efRt/installtoi
via Foreign intervention: How the ‘boomerang effect’ impacts civilian life in the U.S. – Big Think
… that today is Mad Tea Party Day? On the birthday of Lewis Carroll, author of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, we celebrate life with a mad tea party! Carroll, whose real name was Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, was born on January 27, 1832, in Cheshire, England.
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“Some people believe holding on and hanging in there are signs of great strength. However, there are times when it takes much more strength to know when to let go and then do it.”
— Ann Landers
“Using order to deal with the disorderly, using calm to deal with the clamorous, is mastering the heart.”― Sun Tzu
“Move not unless you see an advantage; use not your troops unless there is something to be gained; fight not unless the position is critical.”― Sun Tzu
“The victorious army is victorious first and seeks battle later; the defeated army seeks battle first and seeks victory later.”― Sun Tzu
“If words of command are not clear and distinct, if orders are not thoroughly understood, the general is to blame. But if his orders are clear, and the soldiers nevertheless disobey, then it is the fault of their officers.”― Sun Tzu
“He wins his battles by making no mistakes.”― Sun Tzu
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via 5 Hit Business Trends to Keep an Eye on in 2020
More people are adopting a green lifestyle. Beyond Meat, maker of plant-based proteins, has increased its stock prices by more than three times since its IPO launch. But for consumers, the eco-conscious lifestyle doesn’t stop at vegetarian diets and organic hygiene products. Lunya, a popular women’s-clothing maker, constructs its products from natural fabrics and fibers, and its sleepwear and intimates lines use Pima cotton for durability and comfort. Using natural materials lowers the carbon footprint of their business, as well as that of the individual consumer.
According to Small Business Trends, when it comes to tapping new consumers in an already-crowded green market, “The answer may lie in supplying consumers with details — and authenticity.” It’s not enough to be green anymore; you have to help the customer understand what making eco-friendly choices means for you and them.
WHAT DO PEOPLE REALLY BELIEVE ABOUT CLIMATE CHANGE?
via “Mitigation of Shock, Singapore” shows a post-climate change apartment
Right now, visitors in Singapore have the chance to wander through a family’s apartment. The first thing they’ll see is a kayak resting against the exterior wall, and as guests enter the home, they’ll pass ponchos, snorkeling gear, and homemade fishing spears, the tips of which are fashioned from old circuit boards and held to a bamboo base with plastic strips.
Further inside, there’s a kitchen, that, though familiar at first glance, contains a few oddities: books entitled “Pets as Proteins” and “How to Cook in a Time of Scarcity,” ration cards on the counter, homemade burners made out of cans. The living area has been given over to food growing systems—fogponics structures and mealworm habitats—and through a window, a view of a flooded Singapore.
No one actually lives in this apartment, but it’s a glimpse into how humans might live in the second half of this century. Called “Mitigation of Shock, Singapore,” it’s an immersive installation by London-based design studio Superflux and part of the 2219: Futures Imagined exhibit at Singapore’s ArtScience Museum.
Superflux cofounders Anab Jain and Jon Ardern say they wanted to make climate change and its impacts feel more personal, and putting people in an apartment of a family making due with such hardships was one way to do it. “Not just thinking about big, global scale problems, but how does that impact day-to-day life?” Ardern says. “From our research, one of the big impacts is going to be on price and availability of food, so given that reality, we wanted to explore what might we sacrifice in our homes in order to make our access to food a little more robust.” Another detail in the kitchen: a piece of paper with a recipe for “wild pepper and roach stir fry.”
Jain and Ardern worked with experts like Benjamin Horton, chair of the Asian School of the Environment at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University, to understand the ways climate change will affect food supply and the city of Singapore in general, and spent months perfecting the food growing system, which actually works (after much experimentation to ensure soil health and crop growth). They could have used props or plastic plants, but that trial and error, Ardern says, helped immerse them in the project and informed the entire installation.
Other elements in the apartment, from handcrafted kitchen burners to bamboo knives, emphasize how in the future, we may have to be more resourceful. “We wanted to create tools from the detritus of the Anthropocene, so to speak, so you know, everything that we have, you’re going to have to transition to new things,” Jain says. This installation isn’t exactly a prediction, she notes, but it is one possible, evidence-based future.
It isn’t meant to be apocalyptic, either. It may show the end of the world as we currently know it, and highlight the challenges that are certainly in store in the future, but the apartment is also a depiction of family life and perseverance. “We’re talking about multispecies cohabitation,” Jain says. “We’re talking about humility and deep resourcefulness and imagination.” Ardern notes that there are “drawings on the wall from a happy child,” though at least one is a drawing of “everyday life in a flooded city.” Still, it’s proof that generations have survived.
“Mitigation of Shock, Singapore” builds on a prior exhibit from Superflux called “Mitigation of Shock, London,” which depicted a London apartment adapted to climate change-ravaged 2050—only 30 years in the future (The Singapore instillation is set a bit further in the future, but Ardern and Jain prefer to keep the specific year ambiguous). Ardern and Jain picked the initial 2050 date because that’s when their son, currently 8 years old, will be around the age they are now. “That was an emotional lens for us when we were making it,” Ardern says. “Hopefully some of that hope and some of our desire for a better world is visible and readable within that space.”
Visitors have had mixed reactions to the instillation. At the London exhibit, people got angry and upset by the depiction, Jain says, even though they intended to present a hopeful vision of the future. Visitors to the Singapore exhibit, which opened in November and is on view until April 5, 2020, have said the opposite: it’s too optimistic and that things will actually be much worse. (Jain notes that the Australian bushfires began after the exhibit opened, and that catastrophic blazes, worsened by climate change, may have made this apartment’s version of the future seem downright utopian).
Ultimately, Jain and Ardern want to show that there is hope in how we will adapt to a changing world, and that even though we don’t know what the future will hold, there will be some familiarity, like that sense of home and family structure. And above all else, this immersive exhibit may help people realize that they need to acknowledge that climate change is happening. “We wanted people to situate their lives in that space and imagine what it might be to live [in the future],” says Ardern. “There’s an uncanniness to it, but it’s not completely unrelatable.”
No matter what happens, keep trying. If you fail, fail better.
If shadows are all you see in front of you turn around to face the light.
Keep your face to the sunshine and you cannot see a shadow. (Helen Keller)
… that today is the birthday of the Quadruple Twist Lift? In 1977, the Soviet figure skating pair of Sergei Shakrai and Marine Tcherkasova became the first skaters to perform a quadruple twist lift during a competition in Helsinki, Finland. Trivia buffs: Shakhrai’s problems lifting his partner eventually resulted in them splitting up. By 1981, Cherkasova had grown so tall that Shakhrai could no longer lift her!
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“The mindless junk of your past crowds out opportunities and sets pointless limitations. Move out the junk, and you create room for the rest of your life. Ultimately, it’s not just a question of tidying your house; it’s a question of liberating your heart.”
— Merlin Mann
“If your opponent is of choleric temper, seek to irritate him. Pretend to be weak, that he may grow arrogant.”― Sun Tzu
“Leadership is a matter of intelligence, trustworthiness, humaneness, courage, and sternness.”― Sun Tzu
“If the enemy know not where he will be attacked, he must prepare in every quarter, and so be everywhere weak.”― Sun Tzu
“Be extremely subtle, even to the point of formlessness. Be extremely mysterious, even to the point of soundlessness. Thereby you can be the director of the opponent’s fate.”― Sun Tzu
“Those who win every battle are not really skillful—those who render others’ armies helpless without fighting are the best of all.”― Sun Tzu
via Stuart Oda: Are indoor vertical farms the future of agriculture? | TED Talk
By 2050, the global population is projected to reach 9.8 billion. How are we going to feed everyone? Investment-banker-turned-farmer Stuart Oda points to indoor vertical farming: growing food on tiered racks in a controlled, climate-proof environment. In a forward-looking talk, he explains how this method can maintain better safety standards, save money, use less water and help us provide for future generations.
This talk was presented at a TED Salon event given in partnership with Brightline Initiative. TED editors featured it among our selections on the home page. Read more about TED Salons.
via Sara Menker: A global food crisis may be less than a decade away | TED Talk
Sara Menker quit a career in commodities trading to figure out how the global value chain of agriculture works. Her discoveries have led to some startling predictions: “We could have a tipping point in global food and agriculture if surging demand surpasses the agricultural system’s structural capacity to produce food,” she says. “People could starve and governments may fall.” Menker’s models predict that this scenario could happen in a decade — that the world could be short 214 trillion calories per year by 2027. She offers a vision of this impossible world as well as some steps we can take today to avoid it.
This talk was presented at
via How to step out of the shop-spend-consume cycle |
This post is part of TED’s “How to Be a Better Human” series, each of which contains a piece of helpful advice from people in the TED community; browse through all the posts here.
A few years ago, Lucía González Schuett embarked on a “personal rollercoaster journey,” as she puts it in a TEDxHHL Talk. And it all started when she looked at something that most of us have: a junk drawer.
She was disturbed by what she found — most of the things there were broken, incomplete or imperfect, but she had felt compelled to hold onto them. She questioned every item, asking questions like: “Do I really need this? Does it add value? Is it worth the space that it takes up or the care it requires?”
And she made a radical decision: She vowed to go for a year without buying anything except for food.
Around the same time, she was going through a professional transition. She’d made a career in fast fashion, where her salary was partly based on commission — the more she could get people to spend, the more she earned. One of her responsibilities was to rotate the store’s contents so the merchandise would appear new to shoppers and they’d discover something they overlooked on a previous trip.
In 2018, González Schuett left the industry to go to business school and she chose to make it her no-buying year (which she discusses in a TEDxHECParis talk). Her experiences caused her to rethink consumption — on a personal and a societal level — and become aware of the invasive, ongoing pressures to acquire new stuff.
“The app I use to measure my performance when I go jogging is trying to tell me when it’s time for me to throw away the sneakers I’m wearing and buy a new pair,” says González Schuett, who is currently based in London. “The pillow I sleep on I recently found out has an expiration date.” She adds, “We collectively need to pause for a moment and wonder: Are we losing — or at least outsourcing — our very basic common sense to decide our needs by ourselves when it comes to consumption?”
It’s not realistic or feasible for most people to swear off shopping as she once did, and González Schuett gets that. She says, “It is possible for us to rethink our day-to-day behavior towards consumption, exercise the ability to appreciate things again, and eliminate that link between easy access and taking things for granted.”
She urges people to engage in what she calls a “scary yet extremely insightful exercise”: “getting over the want and becoming honest about the need.” In other words, she invites us to take an honest look at the things we want and we need and question whether we actually do.
There are many good reasons to regain control of your consumption. González Schuett suggests, “Maybe it’s for the environment, for the sustainability of future generations, for your personal finances, or for the sake of your peace of mind.”
To help you take back control, González Schuett shares these tips:
Let yourself run out of something before you re-buy or re-order. “Spend some time without it; in other words, try to miss it,” says González Schuett. “Because there’s so much to be learned from missing things. Plus, you’ll exponentially increase your short-term happiness once you get it again.”
Keep an item in your online shopping cart for a few days — or weeks — before buying it. You’ll reduce your chance of regretting an impulsive purchase when you find something better later, or realize you don’t actually need it at all.
Instead of immediately replacing something that’s broken, try fixing it first. It’s not always cheaper to buy something new, and you can support a local business or repair cafe by visiting them. You can also teach yourself some new skills. In her no-buying year, González Schuett learned to sew on replacement buttons, and she even watched a YouTube video to figure out how to repair her washing machine.
When you do buy, consider second-hand. By purchasing something that’s pre-owned, you’ll keep from adding to the sum total of things in circulation — since the thing you’ll buy is already out in the world — and you’ll also save money. When it comes to furniture, she points out that for people who live in cities, “we’re all moving around so frequently that second-hand items are more often than not hardly ever been used.”
Choose quality over quantity, especially when it comes to fashion. Try to pick things that are made to last, and when you are done, consider selling, donating or swapping them, instead of throwing them away.
Share what you have, and find others who will. Rather than buying a tool or gadget for a one-off project, “knock on your neighbor’s door when you need a screwdriver,” recommends González Schuett. And while you’re there, let them know what you have to lend, whether it’s a bike pump, snow blower or sewing machine. These relationships can benefit both of you. She says, “What a burden for both of you to each own both things and how enriching to go back to knowing your neighbors.”
Shift your mindset about stuff. As González Schuett puts it, “Consider yourself a custodian of things, rather than an owner.” When you think about it, you’ll realize that there are ways to enjoy things without owing them — take the library, for example.
She adds, “Ultimately, we know it isn’t the junk in our drawers that is going to make us happy but having the resources, the space and the time to dedicate to the things that truly matter.”
Watch her TEDxHHL talk:
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| “Success comes from keeping the ears open and the mouth closed” and “A man of words and not of deeds is like a garden full of weeds.”
“Hamilton’s besetting fear was that American democracy would be spoiled by demagogues who would mouth populist shibboleths to conceal their despotism.” – Ron Chernow |
via What’s the minimum information required to live well?
We’re all drowning in a sea of information. The average processing speed of a human brain is 60 bits per second, but collectively we generate 1.7 megabytes of data in the same amount of time. That’s about 30,000 times more data than a single person can ever be aware of, much less make sense of, and the asymmetry is only growing as the age of information takes full swing. Add to this increasing flow of data all of the information that has already been existing, and a shocking fact becomes clear: trying to orient yourself in the modern age is like trying to bail a sinking ship with a teaspoon, and we’re already underwater. If we want to survive and thrive as individuals and as a species, we’re going to need tools and techniques that help us swim to the surface and stay afloat within the flood.
Understanding our current informational environment, including having a plan for making sense of and navigating it, is going to be the most important skill in the 21st century. Just as with any other environmental pressure, the information flood is kickstarting a process of natural selection: those who have the skills to navigate the new ecosystem will come out on top, and those who are unable to cope will settle into the bottom of our socio-economic hierarchy. Not everyone will be able to orient themselves and stay afloat; many will get swept up in a sea of distractions, until they are adrift without useful skills or a clear grasp on their current reality, prey for the behavioral scientists at the large tech companies, addictive products, or the latest political fads. Those who are able to develop the skills to cope with the informational asymmetry will enjoy the spoils the latest technological and biological revolution, poised to thrive in the cyber-economy and able to direct the world and bring about their visions for the world, whether positive or negative.
To be happy, healthy, successful, or hell, to even be a good person, will come down to how you deal with the information overload. So how can we equip ourselves to adapt to our new environment?
Okay, so we’ve established that we need tools to help us sort information so it can serve as a tool for us rather than a tide that carries us out to sea. The question is how can you tell what is valuable or useless among the waves of information?
The first thing to take solace in is that we can sort. Not ALL of those incoming 1.7MB are going to be equally important to us; in fact, most of it will be completely useless and irrelevant to our goals. If we can somehow figure out what information is worth paying attention to, we can cherry-pick those bits that are truly impactful and avoid getting fire-hosed by irrelevancy. If you think of this filter as a question, it would be: is this relevant to me and my goals?
Secondly, even with a goal in mind, and a cherry-picked & sorted pile to search through, there is still too much stuff to wade through. The key will then be to hone your understanding of the world by identifying core principles for life and for how the world works. As quickly as possible, you should build your own internal framework of principles for understanding and making decisions in the world so you rely less and less on the random sea of information for determining what’s important and how you should make your choices. It’s like building yourself a SCUBA device for the flood. You will look for and compare patterns in the information you receive so you can build transferrable knowledge base and mental-models which will serve you in most situations. This filter as a question is: what’s the pattern here? does it fit with my internal model for how I should think and behave to achieve my goals?
To sum up, the two action items are to:
Let’s say a tree fell down in the Redwood forrest. This is a data point. So the first question is: do I care? Well, it depends. Pretend you were a shark in the ocean: there’s a reason sharks have an acute sense for blood in the water and not a highly-developed sense for sniffing out fallen trees, that data has a nothing to do with finding food to survive, so it’s useless. But, if I’m an ecologist studying levels of deforestation with the purpose of cataloguing tree-deaths in the California national parks, this fallen tree becomes very important. Value is in the eye of the beholder. Every bit of information is value-less until you introduce an application for that knowledge. That application, is a goal or set of goals.
We need goals to differentiate what’s a distraction, and what’s highly significant. To paraphrase Nir Eyal, a professor at Stanford Graduate School of business and specialist in habit formation and manipulating user behavior, the definition of a distraction goes like this:
“Traction is the process of moving towards your goals. Distraction is anything that is not leading you directly to your goals, or pulls your attention and actions away from your goals.”
This makes intuitive sense. When your goal is to have fun, TV is not a distraction. But when you’re trying to write a term paper, TV is a distraction. The usefulness of the exact same information input changes as your goals change.
So the first half of the information-era success equation is to have clear and compelling goals.
Okay so let’s say that your goal is to launch a rocket to the moon… that’s good and all, but where do you start? We have to find the pieces of information that matter the MOST. The ones that are value-dense. Value-dense information is often widely-applicable (universal), it’s a lot of utility packed into a simple principle, like a Swiss-Army knife. So how do we identify these Swiss-Army knives?
The answer is to start paying attention to reality and look for clues and patterns. We are lucky to be living in a reality with reliable and consistent behavior. Throwing things off a buildings causes those thing to fall to the ground at an accelerating rate, things don’t fall up as long as you are close enough to a body of large mass. You can run experiments to see what sorts of things you can build your rocket out of.
But running simple trial and error experiments to test every single case would take too long. You don’t have time to build a rocket out of Swiss cheese and try to launch it. The only option is to develop meta-understanding that will help you to know that the cheese rocket won’t work without going through the trouble of building it and watching it melt into a pile of oxidized lactose. We can sidestep the melted cheese by paying attention to patterns and identifying theories, and honing our principles.
Luckily, humans are pretty good at pattern matching…
We know this pattern quite well: 1 + 1 = 2. The law of addition. Mathematics is the perfect example of an abstraction layer that allows us to have a universal meta-understanding about how our reality works. It’s universal in the sense that we don’t need to check every possible pair of things that could be added to see if this pattern holds true, we can extrapolate the data we have so we can go into new situations armed with extra-information. The law of addition is highly useful and applicable in almost every field. It’s a simple piece of information that underlies our financial system, modern chemistry, and modern medicine. So by looking to universal patterns across situations and experiments, we can derive extremely simple and value dense principles from the insurmountable quintillions of bytes of data available to us. Our job is to find the “laws of addition” that relate to our goals.
Let’s return to the rocket, is there a formula or set of formulas that we can identify in the patterns of the world that will help us? Turns out there are: if you can know a few simple formulas and rules: the law of conservation of energy, Newton’s laws, and a few others… you can easily figure this out with a single formula:
This ultimate simplicity is all around us. Ph.D Astrophysicist Ethan Siegel writes about how it takes 26 fundamental constants, that combined with formulas, recreate all of our modern understanding of the physical universe.
So not only does our universe follow a consistent behavior pattern and cause and effect, but it also abides by another law: you can accurately describe the majority of behavior of reality in any field with an extremely small amount of information, through key, universal principles.
Some one line formula can suddenly be used to describe millions of phenomena that transpire around us each and every day. And what if you collected all of these formulas in one place? You’d have a cheat sheet. So what if we compiled cheat sheets for our goals? Success in the most important areas of our lives?
If you were to read the top ten of the most often recommended self-help books you would find that particular patterns emerge and themes across all of these books…
Boom. Just a few sentences for all the self-help in the world. By focusing on the underlying patterns, you’ve boiled down the universe’s insurmountable quantity of information to a few, easy to remember sentences.
Curating and compiling a set of life and success principles is one of the most underrated practices you can undertake.
It’s not hard to conjure examples of traditionally successful people who tout this approach: Elon Musk’s “first principles thinking”, Ray Dalio’s book Principles, Warren Buffet’s strict adherence to a set of key investment principles, all the way back to the 10 commandments. The most successful and influential humans have followed principles. But would you be able to procure a list of the top ten principles you follow in your life if someone asked?
The fact that the average individual can regurgitate knowledge on things as obscure as the names of every single member of Jersey Shore TV show, but not produce a list of the most important principles that rule the areas of life they care about is the perfect symptom of how disconnected all of us are in our newly information-rich environment.
The key to having a list is to start building one and not worry about being perfect or original, you just have to have one. You can start with someone else’s as a template and go from there. You can get them from analyzing the lives of your role models, reading books or articles or podcasts, even advice from your parents. The point is just to start a list and work on refining it.
I’ll give you the ROUGH state of two of my working lists as an example. One list for general success, another list for being a good person.
Each of these principles deserve an essay of their own that describes how the conclusions were drawn, their evidence, their application, and how they can improve your life, but for now I can be content with their introduction. But you could theoretically come up with principles for any question. Here are a few categories that might be particularly valuable to start collecting principles for…
Theoretically, if you had 10 principles summed up for each of these five categories, you’d be able to have the secret to a life well-lived in 50 sentences. The disclaimer is that none of these lists or principles are perfect or comprehensive, and they don’t have to be. Because even the best list is completely worthless without one crucial thing.
As exciting as it is to collect lists of principles for navigating the world, these lists are just a small piece of the puzzle. The man who knows everything and does not apply it is a fool.
Most of the principles above are just common sense. You wouldn’t have to go to the library or interview the most interesting people in the world to discern them.
Derek Sivers, the founder of CDBaby and all around awesome person has an amazing quote that goes something like this: “If more knowledge was the answer to success, we’d all be billionaires with perfect abs…”
The secrets to the universe are not secrets at all. Humans are just too lazy to apply and live by the knowledge they acquire. The battle is not against the universe, it’s with our daily impulses to be lazy and stay in our comfort zones that keep our societies in the dark ages and prevent us from living the lives we desire.
I’m not trying to discourage making lists of principles. If you haven’t collected a list of principles for the most important areas of your life (money, career, relationships) please try it, it could be one of the highest ROI activities you conduct. I’m just clarifying that having principles for living a successful life is not a sufficient condition for living successfully.
Once you have a working list you have to apply it to actually get anywhere. There’s no point in designing the perfect rocket trajectory on a whiteboard, if you don’t actually build it, and fly it to the moon.
“A good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan executed at some indefinite time in the future.” ― George Patton Jr.
This leads us into a separate conversation of tactics. What are the day to day practices you utilize to put your principles into action to achieve your goals in the real world and not just on paper.? How do you fight battle with yourself each and every day.
So let me end with a couple of simple exercises you can follow to get some value out of your list.
Stoic philosopher Seneca recommended taking a bit of wisdom, a quote, phrase, or passage and reflecting on it each and every day. This exercise copies that approach
If you’d prefer to review on a weekly basis, here’s a slightly modified version.
Schedule a consistent event in your calendar at some point in the week.
This is just one example of how you might bridge the gap between wisdom and its successful application so you can make better progress in today’s informational Wild West.
Hopefully this sort of practice would work to help you closer to living a life you might be proud of, rather than the one that others would have you live for their own purposes. I sometimes like to think what the world would look like if everyone followed a process like this. That thought keeps me going. Happy thriving!
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One last will
say goodbye
gone with the wind
a flickering candle on the table, a blueish complexion
not but a prayer
Copyright Dhananjay Parkhe 2020-2021 ©
There was a man named Mike
Who used to riding his bike
But during a break
He made a mistake
What a terrible day for Mike
Copyright Dhananjay Parkhe 2020-21©
… that today is A Room of One’s Own Day? Have a private place to enjoy silence and aloneness. Celebrate the birthday of Virginia Woolf, the English author who wrote A Room of One’s Own (1929), by sprucing up your room and creating a special place of your own.
~~~
“If you do not tell the truth about yourself you cannot tell it about other people.”
— Virginia Woolf
No matter what happens, keep trying. If you fail, fail better.
If shadows are all you see in front of you turn around to face the light.
Keep your face to the sunshine and you cannot see a shadow. (Helen Keller)
There once was a lass from capital.
She said, “See the great capitol!”
It was rather human,
But not quite perfume in
And she couldn’t resist the capitol.
My Signature – Better Still Better and My Poem “I am jAy”
I Am jAy
I am a speaker, author and mentor
I wonder what it will feel like to swim in the Universe
I hear the sound of the Stars and Meteors cheering my name
I see a Galaxy full of planets
I want to win a Sun/Moon medal
I am a speaker, author and mentor
I pretend I am in Olympic training camp
I feel proud
I touch the shiny gold medal
I worry that my friends won’t be able to make it to my swim meet
I cry about losing in my past life
I am a speaker, author and mentor
I understand how much my friends wanted me to Win
I say that when I win the gold, they will be there
I dream about my friends standing up and cheering for me
I try to help me get better Still Better every day
I hope my dreams come true in the life beyong life
I am a speaker, author and mentor
Copyright © Dhananjaya Parkhe 2020-21
You find so many people are mean
But you, you are mostly clean
I like the way you nuzzle.
You do it like a mizzle.
I like the way you mash.
Smash.
I like the way you spin.
Twin.
You find so many people are like a scooper
But you, you are mostly super
I love the way you wear your hair,
Spreading your style everywhere.
You’re like a style fountain.
Enough zazz for a whole mountain.
You find so many people are deplorable
But you, you are mostly adorable
You’re the perfect man.
No one brings me joy like you can.
You find so many people are mean
But you, you are mostly clean
Hero, clean and super,
Loving and adorable too,
Are the qualities of you
You find so many people are like a scooper
But you, you are mostly super
©Copyright . 2020-21 DhAnAnjAyA “jAy” PArkhe©
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The Great Quarantine Wall Of China The Wuhan-born coronavirus is spreading exponentially, and officials are still uncertain about how to contain it. So far the virus has killed at least 56 people in China, and more than 2,000 have been sickened worldwide. The virus has been found in Thailand, France, Japan, South Korea and Australia; new cases have cropped up in Hong Kong, Taiwan and the US. A big problem is the incubation period which can last up to two weeks. People carrying the virus, but not showing symptoms, can still infect others. Many believe local authorities have mishandled the crisis. Wuhan’s mayor estimated some five million people had left before travel out of the city was restricted. By Sunday the 50 million people of Hubei Province, including those in its capital, Wuhan, were on lockdown. Officials considered extending the Lunar New Year to delay the reopening of schools and offices, and people were encouraged to stay home. Also on Sunday the national government temporarily banned the wildlife trade, as China’s animal markets have been linked to epidemiological risks. Chinese tour groups were ordered to cease operations beginning Monday. Confusion and uncertainty seems to have extended to the US government’s efforts to evacuate American diplomats and citizens from China. The state department said Sunday it was arranging a flight to leave Wuhan Tuesday bound for San Francisco. A limited number of private citizens are supposed to be able to join diplomatic personnel on the flight, but no plan was announced about who would be given priority if not enough seats are available for all who want to leave.
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“Who wishes to fight must first count the cost” – Sun Tzu
“If ignorant both of your enemy and yourself, you are certain to be in peril.” – Sun Tzu
“One may know how to conquer without being able to do it.” – Sun Tzu
“The art of giving orders is not to try to rectify the minor blunders and not to be swayed by petty doubts.” – Sun Tzu
“The line between disorder and order lies in logistics.” – Sun Tzu
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Intimate, loving, and enduring relationships with our family and close friends will be among the sources of the deepest joy in our lives.”
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The toughest part of writing about caffeine is that everyone
