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#1 Peter Principle: The Peter Principle says that we get promoted to the level of our incompetence. I believe most people don't know how to inspire other people so default to controlling others. Tim Harford covered this latest research of salespeople showing that: "The authors of the paper discovered that the best salespeople were more likely to be promoted, and that they were then terrible managers."
#2 Leisure: I've shifted a lot of my views on work this year from Andrew Taggart's writing on "Total Work" and have read extensively on the topic, but have yet to read the original text that influenced him. I'm reading Leisure: The Basis For Culture by Josef Pieper this week as Andrew is kicking off a six-week review of the essay in his newsletter. Join and follow along (P.S. I'll be releasing an in-depth interview with Andrew on the podcast in a couple of weeks).
#3 Perceptions: Great article arguing that we make consumer choices based on how we think others perceive us, whether it is true or not (The Approval Economy):
"It should come as no surprise that the most famous advertising campaigns of the last century all resemble one another; each one has succeeded by convincing people that others would see them as the people they wanted to be perceived as after purchasing the product."
#4 Distributed Truth: Essay from Eugene Wei on how mutual knowledge becomes common knowledge with examples from the #metoo movement and others.
#5 Get The Most Out Of College: I was a bit skeptical of this article, but it actually had some great advice. Here are the takeaways:
Where you go to college is overrated
Thinking about college as place to find mentors/inspiration is underrated
Learn how to tell stories (take humanities classes)
Use it as a place to see what fires you up: "..component of real contentment is figuring out what lights your emotional and intellectual fires"
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