I learned that if you work hard and creatively, you can have just about anything you want, but not everything you want. Maturity is the ability to reject good alternatives in order to pursue even better ones.” -Ray Dalio
Editor’s Note: Thanks to Amy Salo, who pointed me to this article on her blog.
Without a doubt, Bill Gates is a genius. The Microsoft co-founder dropped out of college at age 19 because he believed a computer should be on every desk and in every home.
You only put a lot of money and time into something when when you have relentless confidence in your abilities.
But there was another side of Gates — quite the opposite of his unshakable confidence. From the day he started Microsoft, he insisted on always having enough cash in the bank to keep the company alive for 12 months with no revenue coming in.
As a result, Gates erred on the side of caution.
“I always had to be careful that we wouldn’t hire too many people,” he said in a 2017 interview on “The Ellen DeGeneres Show.” “I was always worried because people who worked for me were older than me and had kids, and I always thought, ‘What if we don’t get paid? Will I be able to meet the payroll?’”
Original Article: https://hbr.org/2018/05/how-to-get-the-help-you-need
Summary.
We’re often reluctant to ask for help because of the social threats involved—uncertainty, risk of rejection, potential for diminished status, relinquishment of authority. But without support from others, it’s virtually impossible to advance in your career. And studies show that most people are...
Author’s note: For deeper thinkers, as in Harvard Business Review, see this month’s featured article.
Peter Drucker was a professor and consultant who is often called the inventor of modern management theory. He was an early observer of such widely-accepted management concepts as MBOs (management by objective), knowledge workers, outsourcing (“do what you do best and outsource the rest”) and planned obsolescence (he termed “planned abandonment).
