Reserve judgment.
判断を控えよう。
Don’t make a judgment when you don’t have enough information.
When you think you have enough information to make a judgment, doubt your cognitive biases.
Even when you have enough information and are free from any cognitive biases, think twice about why you’re entitled to make a judgment. Sometimes making a judgment can be a bad judgment.
Only execution counts.
実行にのみ意義がある。
Making a plan makes you feel comfortable. Executing a plan makes you feel terrible.
That’s why many people take time to make a plan but never execute it. Their plan seems perfect on paper or in their brain, and they fall in love with it. But, at the very beginning of their execution phase, they notice that things in the real world are way different from what they thought in their plan. They would say, “Well, things shouldn’t be that way. Let me think again.” And they go back to planning.
Our plan is just a fantasy until we execute it. And there is no such thing as a perfect plan. Any plan has some kind of flaws, and only when we keep executing our plan, we can fix these flaws. If we go back to a planning phase—a fantasy world—we can’t change anything in the real world.
Stop living in a fantasy world. Make yourself uncomfortable by executing a plan. That’s the only way to change a fairy tale into a solid, actionable strategy.
Don’t always be giving.
いつも与え続けない。
Because there are greedy people who always gather to themselves and give nothing in return.
I once drew a sketch for a podcaster for free. After I emailed the data of the sketch, he ignored my email and didn’t give me a testimonial he promised to give. Six months later he emailed me and asked me to draw, assuming that I would do so for free again. Of course not.
Giving is a powerful and faithful act. If you do so with sincerity for a truthful person, it works for both of you. But the fact is, not everyone is trustworthy. Throughout our life, we keep learning a lesson from interacting with greedy people.
Have a better plan.
良い計画を持とう。
Whenever we do something, planning is important. Without a plan, we would get lost or lose sight of what’s next. But as long as we plan, we have to have a better plan.
In my middle twenties, I had a boss who liked to plan. He created a very detail schedule of all routine works that his subordinates (me included) do, and was proud of himself for doing so. The problem was that, his schedule was based upon the assumption that we had twenty business days per month.
Why was that a problem? When we had less than twenty business days in the month due to a long holiday period, his ‘perfect’ schedule didn’t work at all; it forced his subordinates (again, me included) to come to the office on weekends or holidays while he was relaxing at his home.
Once we start our own business, we can’t be stupid like him. We can’t be proud of ourselves for creating a schedule that wouldn’t work for us and people who help us.
Not everything goes as we plan. But it doesn’t mean that it’s okay to have a dysfunctional plan. As long as you plan, have a better plan.
Look into the unknown.
未知のものを調べよう。
Do I really want to make friends? The latest article by Eric Barker (@bakadesuyo), “This Is How To Make Friends As An Adult,” posed this question to me.
I used to have 400+ Facebook friends. Now it’s around 60 or so because I’ve unfriended most of them. I usually ignore a friend request. I rarely see my Facebook timeline because I’m not interested. I do have a LinkedIn account but only use it to log on to Lynda.com. I launched a social group at meetup.com, about 40 people joined the group, but have never held an event.
While I always do my best to maintain a good relationship with my best clients, I often avoid interacting with people at a personal level. I still don’t know why, and need to dig deeply into myself. I want to see how deep the rabbit hole goes. When we have a big question mark about something, that’s a sign of a turning point in our life.
