Here’s your weekly dose of timeless ideas to sharpen your mind, make smarter decisions, and live better.
Quotes
I.
Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; truth isn’t.
― Mark Twain
II.
Bad times have a scientific value. These are occasions a good learner would not miss.
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
III.
Doctors put drugs of which they know little into bodies of which they know less for diseases of which they know nothing at all.
― Voltaire
Ideas
I.
Because most people are more emotional than logical, they tend to overreact to short-term results; they give up and sell low when times are bad and buy too high when times are good. I find this is just as true for relationships as it is for investments—wise people stick with sound fundamentals through the ups and downs, while flighty people react emotionally to how things feel, jumping into things when they’re hot and abandoning them when they’re not.
Ray Dalio in Principles: Life and Work
II.
We fear death, we shudder at life’s instability, we grieve to see the flowers wilt again and again, and the leaves fall, and in our hearts we know that we, too, are transitory and will soon disappear. When artists create pictures and thinkers search for laws and formulate thoughts, it is in order to salvage something from the great dance of death, to make something last longer than we do.
Hermann Hesse in Narcissus and Goldmund
III.
Have you noticed that death alone awakens our feelings? How we love the friends who have just left us? How we admire those of our teachers who have ceased to speak, their mouths filled with earth! Then the expression of admiration springs forth naturally, that admiration they were perhaps expecting from us all their lives. But do you know why we are always more just and more generous toward the dead? The reason is simple. With them there is no obligation. They leave us free and we can take our time, fit the testimonial between a cocktail party and a nice little mistress, in our spare time, in short.
Albert Camus in The Fall
Articles Worth Reading
I.
This Japanese Shop Is 1,020 Years Old. It Knows a Bit About Surviving Crises
Ben Dooley and Hisako Ueno | The New York Times
If you look at the economics textbooks, enterprises are supposed to be maximizing profits, scaling up their size, market share and growth rate. But to survive for a millennium, a business cannot just chase profits. It has to have a higher purpose. Those kinds of core values, known as “kakun,” or family precepts, have guided many companies’ business decisions through the generations. They look after their employees, support the community and strive to make a product that inspires pride.
For Ichiwa, that means doing one thing and doing it well — a very Japanese approach to business. The company has declined many opportunities to expand, including, most recently, a request from Uber Eats to start online delivery. Mochi remains the only item on the menu, and if you want something to drink, you are politely offered the choice of roasted green tea.
II.
Paul Graham | PaulGraham.com
There are some kinds of work that you can’t do well without thinking differently from your peers. For these kinds of work, it’s not enough just to be correct. You need to say things no one else has realized yet. But this pattern isn’t universal. In fact, it doesn’t hold for most kinds of work. There’s room for a little novelty in most kinds of work, but in practice there’s a fairly sharp distinction between the kinds of work where it’s essential to be independent-minded, and the kinds where it’s not.
Independent-mindedness seems to be more a matter of nature than nurture. Which means if you pick the wrong type of work, you’re going to be unhappy. If you’re naturally independent-minded, you’re going to find it frustrating to be a middle manager. And if you’re naturally conventional-minded, you’re going to be sailing into a headwind if you try to do original research.
III.
4 major long-term psychological effects of continued remote work
Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic | Fast Company
Although scientific research has historically highlighted the benefits of remote working—including a boost in employee morale, health and well-being, and productivity—that was before the pandemic. The research assumed that working from home was a choice rather than a necessity and that organizations offered alternatives between telecommuting or coming to the office. But what happens when there is no choice and people who never worked from home are forced to do so? Can Zoom fully substitute for face-to-face contact, especially in the long term? What are the psychological consequences of continued remote work, and is there anything we can do to prepare for it?