I spoke with a friend about happenings in the world. My friend expressed his opinion and his judgments. He asked me mine. “I’ll wait for the made for TV documentary to come out,” I replied. I admit, I find many things happening in our world fascinating and curious. As dramatic as life can be, I enjoy looking for what others might have missed — seeing the other side of the story. Through it all I keep reminding myself that we’ll never truly know what happened, or didn’t, until many years into the future. My sanity and my clearer thinking appreciates my patience.

Consider this: every decision comes with a tradeoff that constant, great, or small. Now, imagine there is something about your life you want to change — visualize the end state. You already know that to get from where you are now to your end state you’ll need to make tradeoffs. Changes comes at a cost. You must give to get.Sometimes, the first step towards your goal can be a small step. The second step isn’t so bad either. As you approach step 3, 4, and on you notice the cost becomes greater. It’s snowballing you into your new and beautiful end state. Sometimes, the first step is quite dramatic. The second step is large too, but not as much as step 1. Steps 3, 4, and onwards become easier. A dramatic start and a whimpering end. You rarely see scenarios where the distance between each step is consistent and measured. When it comes to improving ourselves and our conditions, we can’t expect nature to offer us constant and measured steps. Nature loves a good show. HT to Khan Academy for the useful knowledge.

Think of the thing you’ve done a thousand times and you could likely do in your sleep. People might call you at an expert at that thing. You might be well regarded for your ability to execute that thing. You may even make bets at your ability to do that thing consistently well over and over again.Nonetheless, your ability to execute is a probability; not a guarantee. The gig that is your art and that is life is a lottery.

Perhaps it’s because quitters never start.Starters quit though. You could argue that strategic quitting is a “Starter’s” best skill.

Good post from Sam Altman.

I use ChatGPT to teach me the big ideas in fields like math and economics. I ask ChatGPT to create a learning plan, recommend books, and give me questions I can use to motivate discovery.At work, I am using the idea of the 5 factors that impact demand to help me understand why customers might leave or stay. Interdisciplinary learning! I am finding ways to articulate my ideas using algebra. I’ll find a way to use mathJax and post my thoughts here.I am getting excited about learning and using what I learn by focusing on the biggest ideas. The method is not mine; I learned it from the late Charlie Munger.

There are two markets.In market one, you get to choose between a fancy new and prestigious job or to keep the job you have now. The move seems easy. You’re making 70k a year and the new job pays you 140k. There aren’t a lot of jobs like that going around, and you love the fact that you received an offer. You are in demand, you take the job. In market two, you are in your new role and notice that supply of time to hang out with your family is low. It takes more effort, it costs more, to maintain relationships with friends and loved ones. You long for the days when it was easier.In market one, you made your decision based on the monetary value of a job. In market two, the value that appeared to matter most is effort and time. Where was money?There are always second order effects of decisions. And,Our perception of value changes like the weather.

In hospitality, a compensation is a gift (discount, credit, refund) given to a guest for bad service. Now, at work, I am creating a compensation model for clients who aren’t satisfied with our program. What’s disappointment worth?There are ways to calculate disappointment and the value of bad service. It’s cold and removes the humanity from the effort. Is that a bad thing?If you’re a consumer, you might say “hell yeah that’s a bad thing.” If you’re the service provider, you might think otherwise. I come to ultimate question: What is the compensation for? Compensation is for atoning and restoring the relationship to one of productivity and mutual benefit. It’s hard to quantify it. Instead, show how you’ve changed and demonstrate a commitment to continue changing and adapting. Your customer will forget about the 10% discount you gave them a year ago. They won’t forget how you showed up to serve them time after time.

If you’re going to take on a large and risky project, it’s helpful to know thyself. A simple tool to is a SWOT analysis.A SWOT analysis invites you to consider your strengths, weakness, opportunities and threats. At the same time, you also examine internal and external forces working upon you. You can use the analysis to close gaps on weaknesses, mitigate threats, or determine how to best seize opportunities. I recently did “personal SWOT” with my team as part of our performance review. Valuable discussions happened. I recommend it.

I love this quote from the late Charlie Munger’s USC commencement address: It’s such a simple idea. It’s the golden rule so to speak: You want to deliver to the world what you would buy if you were on the other end. There is no ethos, in my opinion, that is better for any lawyer or any other person to have. By and large the people who have this ethos win in life and they don’t win just money, not just honors. They win the respect, the deserved trust of the people they deal with, and there is huge pleasure in life to be obtained from getting deserved trust.Click here to watch the full thing.From Marcus Aurelius, to the Bible, to Charlie Munger — it seems our mission in life is to show up with a product, service, or idea that makes positive change for those we seek to serve.