When your working life rewards you, it’s easy to ratchet up the complexity: homes, cars, travel, possessions etc.
I have found that all that complexity comes at the sake of your most fleeting asset: your time. Instead of building things, all of a sudden you’re dealing with minutiae and logistics. Instead of talking mostly to engineers, you’re talking mostly to non-engineers. The building stops…the business of managing self inflicted complexity begins.
It’s worth noting that the best players in the game (Buffett, Elon) have kept their life extremely basic, almost monastic/nomadic, as success ratcheted them ever higher.
I think it’s the biggest secret hiding in plain sight:
When the world upgrades your status, downgrade your complexity.
Two years ago, my mentee was diagnosed with cancer very young. It was sudden and unexpected. She was determined as heck though and filled with grit. Once things settled a little I offered her a project to work on to keep her distracted with NO timeline. 🧵 1/10
I spoke at an event where a man interrupted me and told me he learnt nothing from me and proceeded to explain that I may not know that the whales in Sri Lankan waters faced threats from shipping as they get hit and killed. I smiled. 1/2
1/ What’s the connection between public reactions to Sanath Nishantha’s death (celebrations, cheering, speaking of Karma etc), and impunity, lack of respect for the rule of law and the inability of people to obtain redress for abuse of power and rights violations? Quite a lot.
I grew up in a housing commission household with no wallpaper on it, my dad was a labourer & my uncles were gang members. My mother dropped out of school at 13, not surprising I wasn’t a kid full of self worth/confidence. I know I gained a lot of confidence & motivation from seeing Pacifica athletes that looked like my dad and uncles playing professionally. I wanted to be like them so I could buy mum a house with wallpaper on it.
Inspiration comes from a lot of things sir. In my humble opinion I believe the picture of Kolisi holding the Web Ellis cup is definitely doing that for some of those youth. ❤️🤲🏾
On June 28, 2009, the world-famous physicist Stephen Hawking threw a party at the University of Cambridge, complete with balloons, hors d'oeuvres and iced champagne. Everyone was invited but no one showed up. Hawking had expected as much, because he only sent out invitations after his party had concluded. It was, he said, “a welcome reception for future time travelers,” a tongue-in-cheek experiment to reinforce his 1992 conjecture that travel into the past is effectively impossible.