Editor’s Note: Clear, the author of “Atomic Habits” dives much more deeply and thoughtfully into my simple thoughts from this month’s blog regarding “dis and mis information”.
Original Post: https://jamesclear.com/why-facts-dont-change-minds
Like you, I’m sure, I love America, but the love has changed. I started out with the child version: America is the greatest and most powerful country on earth.
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 Here
Exerpt: "Many of us have an overwhelming need to rubberneck, to slow down when we pass a crash on the highway. This is odd, as most people don’t go out of their way to visit the morgue, just for kicks. And yet… I hope we’d agree that if people started staging car crashes on the side of the road to get attention, we’d be outraged."
Editor’s note: Brooks is a favorite of mine, conservative but open and reasonable. His books and articles have been featured here before. I’m currently reading “Second Mountain” and will let you know if that’s as good as I expect it to be. In this article, Brooks seems to be telling me one-on-one about my listening flaws. I hope you enjoy it.
Favorite excerpt: Don’t fear the pause. Most of us stop listening to a comment about halfway through so we can be ready with a response. In Japan, Murphy writes, businesspeople are more likely to hear the whole comment and then pause, sometimes eight seconds, before responding, which is twice as long a silence as American businesspeople conventionally tolerate.
By David Brooks
Opinion Columnist
Editor’s note: My dear friend and exemplar, Rich Clark, sent me this after reading last month’s blog about zero-sum people.
Editor’s note: My life has essentially been a (still) unending struggle to move from deficit to surplus thinking. I’m making progress.
