Author: Роман Петров — 786
The day that didn’t repeat
Popular culture demands that you live every day as if it were your last and turn an ordinary Tuesday into an event. Every day really is the only one of…
A Calling at the Intersection
Good work is often found at the intersection of four things: what a person finds interesting, what he is able to do well, what people will pay for, and what…
When There Are Too Many Men, or Too Many Women
Scarcity is the best marketer. — Modern aphorism The birth of a son can change a family budget twenty years before his wedding. In China, parents of boys in regions…
A market that is not quite a market
If you have to be a thing, there is one consolation — being an expensive thing, a very expensive one. — A. N. Ostrovsky, “Without a Dowry” In the evening…
Improving on Silence
Society rewards visibility and readily mistakes silence for an absence of thought. So the wish to speak often arrives before the content of the remark does. We talk to fill…
Not Competing with Biographies
Social conversation is often arranged as a quiet auction: someone else’s trip gets topped with a longer one, a purchase with a more expensive one, a hardship with a heavier…
Awkwardness Out Loud
Embarrassment gets worse when you have to feel it and hide it at the same time. Before speaking, a person monitors their voice, their hands, their breathing, and whether anyone…
A Dream With Bookkeeping
A dream is useful as a direction. A plan begins where a price appears. To turn a wish into a project, you need to find out: what specific result is…
Raise your hand
Many opportunities are not handed out automatically to the most deserving person. They go to whoever said they were ready. You can ask for a harder task, a promotion, a…
Not a Formula for a Person
The title “Love: Conditions Apply” should be read literally: formulas about relationships work only under a particular arrangement of choice, information and dependence. The book’s aim is more modest than…
A profession as a set of risks
The culture of vocation suggests finding the one job a person was meant for by nature. Choosing a profession in real life looks more like choosing a package of advantages,…
The Limits of Care
When you save a drowning man, make sure he doesn’t drown you too. — Folk wisdom Over the past few decades the word “boundaries” has moved off political maps and…
Thank You Without a Press Conference
A compliment can be answered with: Thank you. There is no need to prove the praise was undeserved: Oh, come on, it’s old, it was cheap, it came out by…
An Asymmetric Life
Everyone has their own combination of strengths, limits, opportunities and risks. There was no fair deal. One person talks easily and copes badly with uncertainty. Another learns fast and decides…
Traps for luck
Success stories are usually built around the hero’s effort and character. Luck, starting conditions and help from others make the plot less tidy and so often disappear in the edit.…
The traverse
Achievement culture likes straight lines: see the goal and walk to it without turning. On real terrain, between the two points, there can be a wall, a swamp, someone else’s…
Why economics belongs here
The word “economics” in a conversation about love raises an understandable suspicion. It is usually expected to bring an attempt to put a price on people, turn marriage into an…
Forgiveness: repair or subsidy?
It is easier to forgive an enemy than to forgive a friend. — William Blake Forgiveness enters the conversation already loaded with morality. It is rarely discussed as an operation…
Education as a Stock of Options
Society is used to treating a diploma as a report card on human quality: higher education promises intelligence and flexibility, its absence a narrow horizon. In fact education is valuable…
Delegate something other than a copy of yourself
Delegation is not handing unpleasant work to a person nobody remembered to give the context to. For someone else to carry out a task, he needs: the expected result; quality…