Category: Life lessons — 218
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…
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…
A Message for the Recipient
Business culture likes brevity, intellectual culture likes completeness. A good message does not choose between them in the abstract: it gives the particular recipient exactly the context needed to understand…
Defect or feature
The culture of self-acceptance likes turning every flaw into a hidden virtue. The formula is pleasant, but it sometimes prevents you from recognising a real defect and deciding whether it…
Hard does not mean right
In everyday morality, difficulty counts almost automatically as proof of value. A decision that came hard looks more honest, and suffering lends the choice some weight. But difficulty is a…
An Estimate for the Impossible
The word “impossible” often hides a more precise constraint. The psychologists Roger Buehler, Dale Griffin and Michael Ross asked people to estimate how long their own tasks would take —…
Labour without a table of ranks
Status culture splits work into prestigious mental labour and simple physical labour. Such a table says little about usefulness, responsibility and skill — but it explains nicely why some people…
Getting Acquainted Without an Interrogation
At a first meeting you want to work out quickly who is in front of you. Where the person grew up, what they do, what interests them, why they chose…
Roles and Face
The advice “be yourself” assumes there is one final version stored inside a person, and that presenting it honestly to the world is enough. Society demands this authenticity and punishes…
Your own goal
Society hands out ready-made routes: a good education, the right career, a place of your own, a family by the appointed date. Such a goal is convenient because it spares…
Stubbornness with a switch
Persistence is needed for almost any noticeable result. The first attempts are often poor, refusals outnumber agreements, and learning looks like a series of proofs of your own inexperience. In…
Learning from a Master Without Becoming a Copy
The culture of originality demands that you sound like yourself straight away and is suspicious of imitation. But learning almost always begins with repeating someone else’s form; the problem appears…
Let them finish
A culture of speed treats the good conversationalist as the one who understands fast and answers fast. So interrupting is easily disguised as quick-wittedness: the point is already clear, why…
The decision after cooling down
A strong emotion narrows the field of view. In anger you see the injustice and almost nothing of the consequences of your reply. Being in love shows you the virtues…
Candy and dinner
A small child takes the candy now instead of a good dinner tonight. An adult is formally capable of choosing otherwise. In practice, humanity built credit cards, same-day delivery and…