From 600+ conversations with the world’s leading thinkers.
Every failure has lessons it can give us- and knowing failure is possible and monitoring where you expect it to occur, allows you to divert your attention to the necessary observations and actions to carry out the positive.
Institutional investors are decidedly more process-oriented in their due diligence, with a quantitative focus, while their non-institutional counterparts generally have a more qualitative approach and require fewer data points in the course of their due diligence.
The 'Doomers' often anthropomorphize computers by attributing human characteristics to them. While this is an understandable tendency, it's essential to recognize that humans have evolved their competitive nature and occasional violent impulses from survival in a world marked by resource scarcity and competition.
Birds are not born with an innate genetically determined knowledge of constellations. What they do has been brilliantly shown in an experiment by Stephen Emlen.
If you want to grow, you need to go through something uncomfortable and come out the other end. If you want to grow, you have to go forward in progressive steps. It should always be a little bit uncomfortable because otherwise there's no growth.
Most people think, 'that's not me, I could never run a marathon!' That's precisely why you should do it – a marathon is a way of proving to yourself that you're better than you think- that you can go further- and endure more.
Human intelligence is, for want of a better phrase, a degree of magnitude greater than the intelligence of a Paramecium or, better, of a Chlamydomonas; but the difference is just quantitative and not qualitative.
Top leadership must take an active interest in projects. They should foster a culture where bad news is welcomed, not just good news. If a leader inadvertently suppresses bad news, it results in a dysfunctional governance structure.
If you fall flat on your face, at least you're moving forward. All you have to do is get back up and try again!
Our emotions are connected to our beliefs and opinions. Epictetus said what causes men suffering is not events, but their opinion about events. That piece of wisdom is very useful because it gives you some ability to have control over your emotions.
When I ask people to note down their desired earnings for the next week or year, about 95% choose figures they deem 'realistic'. They won't even dare to jot down their dream figures, held back by their internal reservations.
Intelligence is the ability to solve problems. For me intelligence is a property of life. Even the most humble unicellular living organism must be intelligent to solve the problems of everyday life.