
Continue reading“However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results.”
Winston Churchill
Continue reading“However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results.”
Winston Churchill
Some of the best games out there are free and could be used with friends and family over FB Rooms (or Zoom).
If you have other suggestions – please let me know.
Continue readingI find the topic of decisions making to be a fascinating one.
In the past few years, I wrote about it several times and this is the post I keep returning as the ‘checklist’.
However, it’s great to have quick and simple rules that you can use.
Three rules to improve your decisions (that I ‘borrowed’ from @naval):
Also, it’s good to remember that
“It’s extremely hard to make good decisions in a poor environment.”
So do your best to improve the environment (e.g. company, friends) before taking important decisions.
The original tweet:
Have a great weekend.
“What It Takes: Lessons in the Pursuit of Excellence” is a book I enjoyed in the last two flights. It’s a classic entrepreneurship story and half of the book is talking about his path in starting, building and expanding Blackstone. The other half is composed of stories in his life.
Who is Stephen Schwarzman?
Well, he manages over $500 billion as the co-founder/CEO of Blackstone.
He also wants to teach readers “how to grow organizations, and do positive things, and how to help their careers”.
I felt through the book that there are some good lessons.
One lesson is around the same (more or less) rules that Buffet coined around:
A few little details make the book fun to read. For example, when he explained how Angela Merkel raised her hands to imitate a locust and how he mimics her. Another good one is when he tells of why he earned the nickname “Farmer Blackstone” in China. It is because he promised that the company’s stock price was like a seed that would grow in time.
I also liked this suggestion:
“There is nothing more interesting to people than their problems. Think about what others are dealing with, and try to come up with ideas to help them. Almost anyone, however senior or important, is receptive to good ideas provided you are thoughtful.”
In the past few years ( 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013) I’ve been summarizing the year both on sports events (running, biking, snowboarding, etc’) and on books.
This year is no different.
Let’s start with the books I’ve enjoyed most in 2019.
Psychologist and Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman reveals the actions we can take to overcome the biases. He talks in this podcast about the things that cripple our decision-making, damper our thinking, and limit our effectiveness.
First one, is thought provoking as you take it to your personal or professional life.
“I think changing behavior is extremely difficult. There are a few guidelines about how to do that, but anybody who’s very optimistic about changing behavior is just deluded.”
The second is about incentives and it’s putting more light to Charlie’s perceptions.
Continue readingI read a few years ago the Poor Charlie’s Almanack and found it to be a really great book for many areas in life. It’s also a long and heavy book so you might wish to get it it to your Kindle. Charles Munger is a brilliant thinker and it’s no surprise that the book is full of practical wisdom.
Some of the points I took and used many times:
Incentives – He talks about the incentives and how they are in the root of many systems. One of the more powerful statements is: “If you wish to see what people will do – look at their incentives”. It holds true both to people and to teams & companies.
Bias – How the human mind is closing itself after it ‘knows’ something. That might be really hard when you want to change your thoughts on a topic. You should embrace people who think differently and aren’t agree with you on every topic. It’s not easy but rewarding and will improve your decisions. Continue reading