Ted Elverson

There is no way to happiness, happiness is the way.

[Ted Elverson @tedelverson]

"A man who procrastinates in his choosing will inevitably have his choice made for him by circumstances." - Hunter S. Thompson

[Ted Elverson @tedelverson]

"To be in your children's memories tomorrow, you have to be fully active and a part of their lives today." - Barbara Johnson

[Ted Elverson @tedelverson]

"Gratitude looks to the past and love to the present; fear, avarice, lust, envy, and ambition look ahead." - C.S. Lewis

[Ted Elverson @tedelverson]

"To offend a strong man, tell him a lie. To offend a weak man, tell him the truth." - Marcus Aurelius

[Ted Elverson @tedelverson]

We are programmed to prove we’re smart. Start proving you can make a difference." - Marshall Goldsmith

[Ted Elverson @tedelverson]

You have to learn to quit being right all the time, and quit being smart all the time, and quit thinking this is a contest about how smart you are and how right you are, and realize that you are here to make a positive difference in the world.

[Ted Elverson @tedelverson]

And being smart and being right is probably no longer the way to do that. See, when you’re in school, you take test after test, after test, after test. You have to prove you’re smart over and over. Thousands of times, you have to prove you’re smart. It’s very difficult to stop.

[Ted Elverson @tedelverson]

While you wait for perfect conditions, others are creating them."  - Shane Parrish

[Ted Elverson @tedelverson]

"Waiting for perfect conditions is how otherwise intelligent people keep themselves stuck. Two entrepreneurs spot the same opportunity. One builds elaborate plans; the other tests crude prototypes. The planner is still planning when the tester sells their company.

[Ted Elverson @tedelverson]

"Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.” - Leo Tolstoy

[Ted Elverson @tedelverson]

It’s all a gift happening in the background and giving us plenty to be grateful for each day." - Thomas Oppong

[Ted Elverson @tedelverson]

"Most of life is a quiet miracle. A lot of the good things happening for us go unnoticed. You just don’t see it because it’s always there. You expect your body to work. You expect the sun to rise. You expect people to care for you. But none of this is guaranteed.

[Ted Elverson @tedelverson]

No person will make you happy unless you decide to be happy. Your happiness will not come to you. It can only come from you.” — Ralph Marston

[Ted Elverson @tedelverson]

"A fundamental delusion of life is the idea that something or someone is out there — a rule, concept, a person, place, or thing — will magically make you happy. Happiness is a choice, not a result. Nothing will make you happy until you choose to be happy.

[Ted Elverson @tedelverson]

“To be a parent is to be Chief Designer of a product more advanced than any technology and more interesting than the greatest work of art. Do your job well." - Alain de Botton

[Billy Oppenheimer @bpoppenheimer]

After his second year at Michigan, Tom Brady wanted to transfer.

He wasn’t playing in games, and he was so low on the depth chart that he only got 2 reps in practice.

Brady met with his coach to express his frustration, “The other quarterbacks get all the reps.”

Coach replied,

“Brady, I want you to stop worrying about what all the other players on our team are doing. All you do is worry about what the starter is doing, what the second guy is doing, what everyone else is doing. You don’t worry about what you’re doing.”

Coach reminded him, “You came here to be the best. If you’re going to be the best, you have to beat out the best.”

And then he recommended that Brady meet Greg Harden, a counselor who worked in the athletic department.

Brady went to Harden’s office and whined, “I’m never going to get my chance. They’re only giving me 2 reps.”

Harden replied, “Just go out there and focus on doing the best you can with those 2 reps. Make them as perfect as you possibly can.”

“So that’s what I did,” Brady said. “They’d put me in for those 2 reps, man, I’d sprint out there like it was Super Bowl 39. ‘Let’s go boys! Here we go! What play we got?’”

“And I started to do really well with those 2 reps. Because I brought enthusiasm, I brought energy.”

Soon, he was getting 4 reps. Then 10, “and before you knew it,” Brady said, “with this new mindset that Greg had instilled in me—to focus on what you can control, to focus on what you’re getting, not what anyone else is getting, to treat every rep like it’s the Super Bowl—eventually, I became the starter.”

Takeaway 1:

Greg Harden telling Brady to focus on being great during his 2 reps reminded me of a piece of advice from the entrepreneur Mark Cuban.

“People come to me all the time and tell me they’re stuck,” Cuban explained. “They’re stuck in a job they don't like. They’re stuck working for a boss they don’t like. They're stuck on a team they don't like.”

“I just tell them, ‘Be great.’”

“The reality of life is that you can’t just always quit your job. You can’t just always go to your boss and say, ‘Give me the promotion, or I’m out of here.’” You can’t just always go to your coach and say, ‘Give me more reps, or I'm transferring.’

“So when you’re stuck, you’ve gotta find it within yourself to say, ‘Ok, this is where I am. And if I’m going to be here, I’m going to be great.’

Because if you’re great at your job, typically other people and companies find out, so it creates opportunities.”

Takeaway 2:

In the field of strategic management, there is a distinction made between “lead measures” and “lag measures.”

Lag measures are the results you’re trying to achieve: getting a promotion, winning a championship, being the starting quarterback. Lead measures are the actions that predictably drive those results. 

The core characteristic of a lead measure, the authors of “The 4 Disciplines of Execution” write, is that “a lead measure can be directly influenced by you.” To achieve your goals, they write (echoing what the Michigan Coach told Brady), “apply a disproportionate energy” to the things that are in your control.

Starting at Michigan and for the rest of his career, that’s what Brady did.

After he was selected by the New England Patriots with the 199th pick in the 2000 draft, Brady was asked: “Are you aware that [along with starting quarterback, Drew Bledsoe] there’s another quarterback here that they drafted last year?” 

Brady said he was aware of that, “and I know he’s a heck of a player. But I’ve always concerned myself just with the things I can control. I don’t put a lot of thinking into the other guys because I know I’m not at my best when I’m not just thinking about playing as well as I possibly can.”

- - -

“I never once in my life ever said I wanted to be the best of all time. Ever. I wanted to be the best I could be, period. I learned that in college. It didn’t matter what the other guys were doing. It didn’t. It mattered what I was doing.” — Tom Brady

[Ted Elverson @tedelverson]

"I always did something I was a little not ready to do. I think that's how you grow — when there's that moment of, 'Wow, I'm really not sure I can do this,' and you push through." - Marissa Mayer

[Ted Elverson @tedelverson]

The world is a museum of passion projects.” - John Collison

[Ted Elverson @tedelverson]

“As you become an adult, you realize that things around you weren't just always there; people made them happen. But only recently have I started to internalize how much tenacity *everything* requires. That hotel, that park, that railway.

[Ted Elverson @tedelverson]

"I think people tend to overestimate risk and underestimate opportunity. It's the opposite of what one would think; instead, the risks are probably not as big as you perceive, and the opportunities perhaps bigger than you perceive.” - Jeff Bezos