Category Archives: Food For Thought

The Underdog

The many speak highly of you, but have you really any grounds for satisfaction with yourself if you are the kind of person the many understand? Seneca, Letter VII Seneca’s exhortation of Lucilius to avoid pandering to mass appeal has … Continue reading

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Transparency Erodes, Transparency Builds

Many, many businesses have been snuffed out, and continue to be snuffed out, as the information age matures.  Any industry or producer or provider who relied on a lack of information to succeed has, or will, fail.  People won’t simply … Continue reading

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On Decision Making

A decision without tradeoffs isn’t a decision. Zappos offers me free overnight shipping and a $10 discount after I’ve already ordered?  I don’t even have to think about it. Decision making requires you to confront tradeoffs.  When you learn to relish … Continue reading

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Hope and Fear

They’re not so different: The two of them march in unison like a prisoner and the escort he is handcuffed to.  Fear keeps pace with hope. . . . both belong to amind in suspense, to amind in a state … Continue reading

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A Hell of a Eulogy

Worrying about your legacy is ridiculous.  Fretting over how people you will never meet will come to judge your life is not only rewardless, it’s counter-productive.  It generally inhibits your ability  to focus on how the living, the people you … Continue reading

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How To Choose Friends

Friends are important.  They may have a bigger influence on the direction of your life than anything else.  So isn’t it strange that some of our closest friends just happen to be people we stood next to on the bus … Continue reading

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How To Lose 20 Years Of Your Life

Depending on whose numbers you believe, Americans watch between 2.7 (BLS) and 4.9 (Nielsen) hours of television per day. Per day. Let’s split the difference and call it four hours a day.  If you’re awake on average 16 hours a … Continue reading

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Three Tips To Help Convince People You’re Not A Serial Killer

We deal with a lot of higher level stuff here, like strategy and philosophy, but I want to bring it down for a post to offer some very practical, easy to implement, and essential life tips. Today, I want to … Continue reading

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Why The First “Follower” Is The Most Important

A great lesson on how movements start, explained in this video in under three minutes, by Derek Sivers: It’s the first follower that turns a lone nut into a leader.  When you find a lone nut doing something great, have … Continue reading

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A Plant Frequently Moved Never Grows Strong

A plant which is frequently moved never grows strong. People who spend their whole life traveling abroad end up having plenty of places where they can find hospitality but no real friendships. We place a big emphasis, and not wrongly, … Continue reading

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Don’t Waste It

There’s roughly 6 billion people on the planet who would trade places with you in an instant.  They wouldn’t even have to think twice. There’s an unlimited buffet in front of us, with anything we could possibly imagine, right there … Continue reading

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There Are No Shortcuts

If you searched for diet books right now on amazon, how many results do you think you’d get?  Diet books are pretty popular, remember.  Definitely more than a couple hundred, right?  I would have guessed a couple thousand.  I would … Continue reading

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Keeping It Real: People Want Sincerity, Not Honesty

For almost all of hip hop’s existence, rappers and artists were judged, at least to some degree, on how “real” they were. “Real”, of course, didn’t mean honest or sincere, but was specifically defined as having “the right type of … Continue reading

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The Purpose Of Life

I believe that the very purpose of life is to be happy. – Dalai Lama This quote has been dredged up again recently, floating around the internet for the last few weeks drawing criticism.  Many people, especially, it seems, minimalists, … Continue reading

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Choose Your Friends Wisely

Who has a bigger influence on the person you turn out to be: your parents or your friends? Since at least the days of Freud, psychologists believed parents were the overwhelming factor in how their children turned out.  But, it … Continue reading

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