I’ve interviewed and managed over 2,000 people.
Here are my 55 contrarian observations about humans.
A thread...
(1/x)
They never get past the perceived risk.
If your company doesn’t have one, you need to invent one.
It takes a follow-up meeting to have them retain any details.
(Though any firing that's a surprise means you screwed up as a boss.)
Someone walk hunched over? They likely have low self-confidence.
Someone have shifty eye movements? They’re probably shifty.
(If you find the person who started telling entrepreneurs to “ask for advice when you want money”, please connect me because I want to beat their ass.)
Explains a ton of self-centric behavior.
If you listen closely, they tell you through their speech and thought patterns.
That’s what makes them so dangerous.
No reason to feel bad about it.
Life is too short to deal with assholes or people that are frustrating.
You have to pay attention to their actions to get the truth.
Using it for evil is not.
(See Cialdini: Persuasion)
All starts with asking "why?" someone did something you don't understand.
They grow their decision-making ability all the time.
This means they have high potential.
Ex: Dad was volatile? The kid will be a peaceful dad.
So, watching someone teach a skill can tell you how to teach them.
You can tell mature people because they've learned it’s better to just let other people be wrong.
This also just looks like them following the herd.
Your mission to help people align their roles with their super powers.
Your must identify your weaknesses and craft a life/role that minimizes dependency on them.
5 years to a 20-something is big.
Nothing to a 50-year old.
They always slip up.
If you don't have any of those in common, find another candidate.
And you can double down on the interesting stuff.
We are a Frankenstein-like creation made of their good and bad characteristics.
Nobody here is their real self.
(Especially the people who are going to reply "Yes this is the real me!")
(This is also why two celebrity marriages almost always fail. You can't have two narcissists in a marriage that works!)
They teach kids how to speak concisely and how to identify BS.
Being smart in one thing doesn’t mean you’re smart in other things.
Of course, don't be prejudicial.
But, if someone has a bad reputation, there's often a reason you should find out before trusting them.
Humans adapt more often than not to them.
Good judgement requires intelligence.
Any hiring process should have an intelligence measurement in it.
It's essential for high performance, but grit without smarts and skills goes nowhere.
The highest ROI thing you can do for your kid's future?
Braces.
It’s a self-defense mechanism to make yourself valuable in a social group.
It usually ends up poorly.
If you spend time with those with faith in Tesla, crypto, eth, bitcoin or Elon -- it's immediately clear that religion hasn't actually gone anywhere.
As a leader, you have to encourage leaders to create diverse teams in terms of strengths, weaknesses and viewpoints.
Or it won't happen.
This trick will unconsciously make you spend less.
99% of readers will think you’re full of it.
And keep doing things like they always have.
If you liked this thread, you’ll love this thread about my biggest life mistakes. https://t.co/VWKYgxFNjV
Here are my 16 biggest life mistakes.
— Michael Girdley (@girdley) June 27, 2021
I am 46 years old.
I still feel young, but old enough to have real regrets.
To celebrate reaching 16,000 followers.. .a thread:
(1/n)
Acquisitions Anonymous (@acquanon)
A simple format where we look at two businesses for sale each week.
What comes out is all the important stuff left out of business school!
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I’m torn on how to approach the idea of luck. I’m the first to admit that I am one of the luckiest people on the planet. To be born into a prosperous American family in 1960 with smart parents is to start life on third base. The odds against my very existence are astronomical.
I’ve always felt that the luckiest people I know had a talent for recognizing circumstances, not of their own making, that were conducive to a favorable outcome and their ability to quickly take advantage of them.
In other words, dumb luck was just that, it required no awareness on the person’s part, whereas “smart” luck involved awareness followed by action before the circumstances changed.
So, was I “lucky” to be born when I was—nothing I had any control over—and that I came of age just as huge databases and computers were advancing to the point where I could use those tools to write “What Works on Wall Street?” Absolutely.
Was I lucky to start my stock market investments near the peak of interest rates which allowed me to spend the majority of my adult life in a falling rate environment? Yup.
Ironies of Luck https://t.co/5BPWGbAxFi
— Morgan Housel (@morganhousel) March 14, 2018
"Luck is the flip side of risk. They are mirrored cousins, driven by the same thing: You are one person in a 7 billion player game, and the accidental impact of other people\u2019s actions can be more consequential than your own."
I’ve always felt that the luckiest people I know had a talent for recognizing circumstances, not of their own making, that were conducive to a favorable outcome and their ability to quickly take advantage of them.
In other words, dumb luck was just that, it required no awareness on the person’s part, whereas “smart” luck involved awareness followed by action before the circumstances changed.
So, was I “lucky” to be born when I was—nothing I had any control over—and that I came of age just as huge databases and computers were advancing to the point where I could use those tools to write “What Works on Wall Street?” Absolutely.
Was I lucky to start my stock market investments near the peak of interest rates which allowed me to spend the majority of my adult life in a falling rate environment? Yup.
