The Tail End
By Tim Urban
“…1) Living in the same place as the people you love matters. I probably have 10X the time left with the people who live in my city as I do with the people who live somewhere else.
2) Priorities matter. Your remaining face time with any person depends largely on where that person falls on your list of life priorities. Make sure this list is set by you—not by unconscious inertia.
3) Quality time matters. If you’re in your last 10% of time with someone you love, keep that fact in the front of your mind when you’re with them and treat that time as what it actually is: precious.”
Aristotle’s 10 Rules for a Good Life
By Arthur C. Brooks
1. Name your fears and face them.
2. Know your appetites and control them.
3. Be neither a cheapskate nor a spendthrift.
4. Give as generously as you can.
5. Focus more on the transcendent; disregard the trivial.
6. True strength is a controlled temper.
7. Never lie, especially to yourself.
8. Stop struggling for your fair share.
9. Forgive others, and forbear their weaknesses.
10. Define your morality; live up to it, even in private.
“Patience is a byproduct of growth - we can bide our time when it is the time of our growth. There is no patience in
acquisition or in the pursuit of power and fame. Nothing is so impatient as the pursuit of a substitute for growth.”
- Eric Hoffer
"The family is the test of freedom; because the family is the only thing that the free man makes for himself and by himself."
– Gilbert K. Chesterton
“People think of success and failure as opposite things—that the more I succeed, the less I fail. But that’s really sort of a modern conception of success and failure. The fact of the matter is [that] failure is woven into the fabric of success. It’s not “How do you avoid failure?” That’s the wrong question. The right question is, “How do I fail, or how should I fail in ways that lead to the type of skill development and belief system that allow me to succeed long term?” It’s “How do we fail?”
[...]
Two individuals, everything else being equal—same education, same ability, same training, same everything. One of them goes at their craft or at their domain or at their career from a place of “I love to learn. I love to problem-solve. I go into depth with these things and … I’m not engaged in image management.” The second individual goes in, competing against other people, over-caring about what people think. Success is only defined by that which is palpable or tangible, like they’re playing for trophies. Then you fail—because if you’re … trying to get at the tail end of the curve, you’re going to fail—and you react with embarrassment. When we talk about the toxic emotions, embarrassment is—depends on the person—but it’s one of the two most painful psychological experiences a person can have."
- Dr. Gio Valiante
