Other Books Archives - Ben Rosenfeld

July 27, 2024July 24, 2024

“Red Notice” Quotes

I recently read “Red Notice: A True Story of High Finance, Murder and One Man’s Fight for Justice” by Bill Browder. Below are the quotes I found most interesting:

“Instead of 150 million Russians sharing the spoils of mass privatization, Russia wound up with twenty-two oligarchs owning 39 percent of the economy and everyone else living in poverty.” (87)

“Seventy years of communism had destroyed the work ethic of an entire nation. Millions of Russians had been sent to the gulags for showing the slightest hint of personal initiative. The Soviets severely penalized independent thinkers, so the natural self-preservation reaction was to do as little as possible and hope that nobody would notice you. This had been fed into the psyches of ordinary Russians from the moment they were on their mothers’ breasts.” (97)

“There’s a famous Russian proverb about this type of behavior.
One day, a poor villager happens upon a magic talking fish that is ready to grant him a single wish. Overjoyed, the villager weighs his options: “Maybe a castle? Or even better—a thousand bars of gold?
Why not a ship to sail the world?” As the villager is about to make his decision, the fish interrupts him to say that there is one important caveat: whatever the villager gets, his neighbor will receive two of the same. Without skipping a beat, the villager says, “In that case, please poke one of my eyes out.”” (116)

“This whole exercise was teaching me that Russian business culture is closer to that of a prison yard than anything else. In prison, all you have is your reputation. Your position is hard-earned and.it is not relinquished easily. When someone is crossing the yard coming for you, you cannot stand idly by. You have to kill him before he kills you. If you don’t, and if you manage to survive the attack, you’ll be deemed weak and before you know it, you will have lost your respect and become someone’s bitch. This is the calculus that every oligarch and every Russian politician goes through every day.” (125)

“What I’d completely missed was that the world is one big sea of liquidity. If the tide goes out in one place, then it goes out every-where. When big investors started to lose money in Asia, they began unloading risky securities from their portfolios everywhere else s the world and anything Russian was at the top of that list.” (132)

“Strangely, in the hedge fund business, if you’re down 30 percent or 40 percent your clients will withdraw all their money and you’ll be shut down in no time. However, when you’re down 90 percent, as the Hermitage Fund was in 1999, most clients said to themselves, “What the hell. Might as well hold on and ride it out to see if it recovers.”” (141)

“In Soviet times, the richest person in Russia was about six times richer than the poorest. However, by the year 2000 the richest person had become 250,000 times richer than the poorest person.” (156)

“Both of them had been adults during the Soviet era and had seen firsthand how capricious the government could be. If powerful people wanted you arrested, then you were ar-rested. The law didn’t matter. Sergei, on the other hand, was thirty-six years old and had come of age at a time when things had started to improve. He saw Russia not how it was but how he wanted it to be.
Because of this, he didn’t realize that Russia had no rule of law, it had a rule of men.
And those men were crooks.” (253)

“ I feel fear as much as the next person. But what I’ve discovered about fear is that no matter how scared I am at any particular moment, the feeling doesn’t last. After a time it subsides. As anyone who lives in a war zone or who has a dangerous job will tell you, your body doesn’t have the capacity to feel fear for an extended period. The more incidents you encounter, the more inured you become to them.” (375)

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July 26, 2024July 24, 2024

“Hidden Potential” Quotes

I recently read “Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things” by Adam Grant. Here’s the quotes I found most interesting. If you like them, buy the book.

“If they were singled out by their coaches, it was not for unusual aptitude but unusual motivation. That motivation wasn’t innate; it tended to begin with a coach or teacher who made learning fun.” (5)

“People who make major strides are rarely freaks of nature. They’re usually freaks of nurture.” (6)

“Personality is your predisposition-your basic instincts for how to think, feel, and act. Character is your capacity to prioritize your values over your instincts.
If personality is how you respond on a typical day, character is how you show up on a hard day.
Personality is not your destiny-it’s your tendency. Character skills enable you to transcend that tendency to be true to your principles.” (20)

“*If you’re aiming to improve your social and emotional intelligence, you’re probably better off paying attention to audio than visual cues. Research reveals that if you can hear the voice of a friend or stranger, closing your eyes doesn’t make you any less accurate in reading their emotions, We re con stantly misreading facial expressions and misinterpreting body language. The tone of voice is a more accurate, purer signal of what people are feeling.” (32)

“Surprisingly, we’re better off actively seeking out discomfort. Comfort in learning is a paradox. You can’t become truly comfortable with a skill until you’ve practiced it enough to master it. But practicing it before you master it is uncomfortable, so you often avoid it.” (33)

“Once people saw discomfort as a mark of growth, they were motivated to stretch behind their comfort zones.” (34)

“The best cure to feeling uncomfortable about making mistakes is to make more mistakes.” (40)

“If we wait until we feel ready to take on a new challenge, we might never pursue it all. There may not come a day when we wake up and suddenly feel prepared. We become prepared by taking the leap anyway.” (41)

“Growth is less about how hard you work than how well you learn.” (44)

“Being polite is withholding feedback to make someone feel good today. Being kind is being candid about how they can get better tomorrow.” (54)

“Instead of seeking feedback, you’re better off asking for advice. Feedback tends to focus on how well you did last time. Advice shifts attention to how you can do better next time.” (55)

“Tolerating flaws isn’t just something novices need to do—it’s part of becoming an expert and continuing to gain mastery. The more you grow, the better you know which flaws are acceptable.” (65)

“The real world is far more ambiguous. Once you leave the predictable, controllable cocoon of academic exams, the desire to find the “correct” answer can backfire.” (67)

“In their quest for flawless results, research suggests that perfectionists tend to get three things wrong. One: they obsess about details that don’t matter. They’re so busy finding the right solution to tiny problems – that they lack the discipline to find the right problems to solve. They can’t see the forest for the trees. Two: they avoid unfamiliar situations and difficult tasks that might lead to failure. That leaves them refining a narrow set of existing skills rather than working to develop new ones. Three: they berate themselves for making mistakes, which makes it harder to learn from them. They fail to realize that the purpose of reviewing your mistakes isn’t to shame your past self. It’s to educate your future self.” (67)

“traveling great distances depends on recognizing that perfection is a mirage-and learning to tolerate the right imperfections.” (68)

“Do your best is the wrong cure for perfectionism. It leaves the target too ambiguous to channel effort and gauge momentum. You’re not sure what you’re aiming for or whether you’ve made meaningful progress. The ideal foil for perfectionism is an objective that’s precise and challenging.” (73)

“if I wanted to get closer to right, it had to feel wrong.” (74)

“Eric likes to ask two questions: Did you make yourself better today? Did you make someone else better today? If the answer to either question is yes, it was a good day.” (74)

“It turns out that when people assess your skills, they put more weight on your peaks than on your troughs.” (75)

“People judge your potential from your best moments, not your worst. What if you gave yourself the same grace?” (75)

“My proudest moment, though, was when Eric told me I’d gotten further with less talent than any diver he’d coached.” (75)

“excellence is a higher standard: for me, that means aiming for a minimum lovable product.” (77)

“one of the best ways to gauge the value of other people’s judgments is to look for convergence between them. If one person raises a red flag, it might be idiosyncratic. If a dozen people independently have the same issue, it’s more likely to be an objective problem. You have inter-rater reliability.” (77)

“A great deal of research shows that perfectionists tend to define excellence on other people’s terms. This focus on creating a flawless image in the eyes of others is a risk factor for depression, anxiety, burnout, and other mental health challenges.” (79)

“Before releasing something into the world, it’s worth turning to one final judge: you. If this was the only work people saw of yours, would you be proud of it?” (80)

“One: Scaffolding generally comes from other people. It would never have occurred to me to ward off unwelcome images by playing Tetris-the idea came from people with relevant experience and expertise. When our circumstances threaten to overpower us, instead of only looking inward, we can turn outward to mentors, teachers, coaches, role models, or peers. The scaffolding they provide looks and feels different depending on the type of challenge we’re facing, but it has the same effect: giving us a foothold or a boost.
Two: Scaffolding is tailored to the obstacle in your path. When psychologists suggest Tetris, it’s because it has a specific benefit: it changes how your brain constructs mental imagery. Brain scans suggest that Tetris blocks intrusive images by activating our visual-spatial circuits-we’re too busy processing falling shapes to attend to the threat of unnerving images. Different kinds of games, like trivia, don’t reduce the flashbacks.
Tetris is effective scaffolding because it helps you bypass a particular challenge.
Three: Scaffolding comes at a pivotal point in time. It doesn’t do any good to play Tetris before you watch the movie-there’s no imagery yet to disrupt. The structure becomes useful after the disconcerting scene, and the critical period seems to be the next 24 hours. If you wait longer, the memory has already consolidated, so you need to first reactivate the memory of the scene before you turn to Tetris to block it.
Four: Scaffolding is temporary. It doesn’t take a lifetime of Tetris therapy to recover from a horror movie. Playing for just ten minutes is enough to interfere with memory consolidation and curtail flashbacks.
Once you’ve gotten the support you need, you’re no longer dependent on it—you can move forward without it.” (84-85)

“Continually varying the task and raising the bar made learning a joy.
“There was never a distinction between fun and hard work,” she tells me.
“I was like a sponge.” (89)

“We’re often told that if we want to develop our skills, we need to push ourselves through long hours of monotonous practice. But the best way to unlock hidden potential isn’t to suffer through the daily grind. It’s to transform the daily grind into a source of daily joy.” (89)

“Research demonstrates that people who are obsessed with their work put in longer hours yet fail to perform any better than their peers. They’re more likely to fall victim to both physical and emotional exhaustion. The monotony of deliberate practice puts them at risk for burnout-and for boreout. Yes, boreout is an actual term in psychology. Whereas burnout is the emotional exhaustion that accumulates when you’re overloaded, boreout is the emotional deadening you feel when you’re under-stimulated.” (90)

“Harmonious passion is taking joy in a process rather than feeling pressure to achieve an outcome. You’re no longer practicing under the specter of should. I should be studying. I’m supposed to practice. You’re drawn into a web of want. I feel like studying. I’m excited to practice.” (91)

“Deliberate play has become especially popular in sports. Extensive evidence shows that athletes who specialize early in a single sport tend to peak quickly and then flame out.” (93)

“In a small experiment in Brazil, sports psychologists compared deliberate play and deliberate practice as strategies for teaching basketball to young players. Some of the athletes spent over half their training time in deliberate practice. Their coaches took them through dribbling, passing, and shooting drills with regular feedback, with and without defenders.
The remaining athletes spent nearly three quarters of their training time in deliberate play. To develop their skills, their coaches designed games instead of drills. Sometimes players had a teammate who was allowed to pass but not shoot. Other times they played at a disadvantage—one against two, or three against four. Several months later, the psychologists tested the basketball intelligence and creativity of both groups, measuring their ability to move to open spots on the court and make passes that eluded defenders. It was deliberate play-not deliberate practice-that propelled significant improvement.
By fueling harmonious passion, deliberate play can prevent boreout and burnout. Although it might sound similar to gamification, deliberate play is fundamentally different. Gamification is often a gimmick-an attempt to add bells and whistles to a tedious task. The aim is to offer a dopamine rush that distracts from boredom or staves off exhaustion.
Sure, a leaderboard might motivate you to push through the pain, but it’s not enough to trick you into liking a routine you hate.” In deliberate play, you actually redesign the task itself to make it both motivating and developmental.” (94)

“Passion for one task can lead us to neglect the less exciting ones on our plate.” (96)

“Hundreds of experiments show that people improve faster when they alternate between different skills.” (99)

“It turns out that taking breaks has at least three benefits. First, time away from practice helps to sustain harmonious passion. Research indicates that even micro-breaks of five to ten minutes are enough to reduce fatigue and raise energy. It’s not just about preventing burnout: research reveals that when we work nights and weekends, our interest and enjoyment in our tasks drop.” (102)

“Relaxing is not a waste of time-it’s an investment in well-being.
Breaks are not a distraction-they’re a chance to reset attention and incubate ideas. Play is not a frivolous activity —it’s a source of joy and a path to mastery.” (103)

“A rut is not a sign that you’ve tanked. A plateau is not a cue that you’ve peaked. They’re signals that it may be time to turn around and find a new route. When you’re stuck, it’s usually because you’re heading in the wrong direction, you’re taking the wrong path, or you’re running out of fuel.” (107)

“When our performance stagnates, before it improves again, it declines.” (108)

“But the data showed the opposite: students who took their initial class with an expert ended up with poorer grades in the next class.
The pattern was robust across fields: students learned less from introductory classes taught by experts in every subject.” (115)

“As you get better and better at what you do, your ability to communicate your understanding or to help others learn that skill often gets worse and worse.” (115)

“It’s often said that those who can’t do, teach. It would be more accurate to say that those who can do, can’t teach the basics. A great deal of expert knowledge is tacit-it’s implicit, not explicit. The further you progress toward mastery, the less conscious awareness you often have of the fundamentals.” (116)

“Just as it’s unwise to seek rudimentary instruction from the most eminent experts, it’s a mistake to rely on a single guide. No one else knows your exact journey. But if you collect directions from multiple guides, they can sometimes combine to reveal routes you didn’t see. The more uncertain the path and the higher the peak, the greater the range of guides you’ll need. The challenge is to piece the various tips together into a route that works for you.”

“instead of asking to pick their brain, you ask them to retrace their route.” (118)

“Sometimes you end up stuck, and it’s not because you’re on the wrong path. It’s because your path is taking you in long circles toward the top, and you can’t even tell that you’re gaining ground. You’re not seeing enough progress to maintain your motivation.
There’s a name for that feeling: it’s called languishing. Languishing is a sense of stagnation and emptiness. The term was coined by a sociologist (Corey Keyes) and immortalized by a philosopher (Mariah Carey).
Languishing is the emotional experience of stalling. You may not be depressed or burned out, but you definitely feel blah.” (121)

“Languishing is the neglected middle child of mental health: the void between depression and flourishing.” (122)

“Of all the factors that have been studied, the strongest known force in daily motivation is a sense of progress. You can’t always find motivation by staring harder at the thing that isn’t working. Sometimes you can build momentum by taking a detour to a new destination.” (123)

“when we view hurdles as threats, we tend to back down and give up. When we treat barriers as challenges to conquer, we rise to the occasion.” (132)

“In one experiment, high schoolers earned higher report-card grades in multiple subjects-including math-after being randomly assigned to give advice to younger students on how to stay motivated and avoid procrastinating. In another, middle schoolers spent more time on homework after they were randomly assigned to give motivational advice to younger students-rather than receive motivational advice from expert teachers. And people who were struggling to save money, lose weight, control their tempers, and find jobs all came away more motivated after giving advice than receiving it.
This is different from the tutor effect, which highlights how we can learn through sharing the very knowledge that we want to acquire. The coach effect captures how we can marshal motivation by offering the encouragement to others that we need for ourselves. By reminding us of the tools we already possess, coaching others raises our expectations of ourselves.” (138)

“In trying times, our first instinct is to pick up the phone and ask for advice. We’re better off pausing to reflect on the advice we’ve provided in the past or calling someone in a similar situation and offering them some suggestions. We should listen to the advice we give to others—it’s usually the advice we need to take for ourselves.” (139)

“Being disrespected presents a particular barrier to growth and requires a particular kind of scaffolding to overcome.” (140)

“It’s more important to be good ancestors than dutiful descendants.
Too many people spend their lives being custodians of the past instead of stewards of the future. We worry about making our parents proud when we should be focused on making our children proud. The responsibility of each generation is not to please our predecessors—it’s to improve conditions for our successors.” (150)

“In the United States, if you ask people what career they respect the most, the most common answer is doctor. In Finland, the most admired profession is often teaching.” (160)

“Putting people in a group doesn’t automatically make them a team.” (183)

“When we select leaders, we don’t usually pick the person with the strongest leadership skills. We frequently choose the person who talks the most. It’s called the babble effect. Research shows that groups promote the people who command the most airtime-regardless of their aptitude and expertise. We mistake confidence for competence, certainty for credibility, and quantity for quality. We get stuck following people who dominate the discussion instead of those who elevate it.” (183)

“Research demonstrates that when organizations have cultures that prize results above relationships, if they have a leader who puts people first, they actually achieve greater performance gains.” (185)

“To unearth the hidden potential in teams, instead of brainstorming, we’re better off shifting to a process called brainwriting. The initial steps are solo. You start by asking everyone to generate ideas separately. Next, you pool them and share them anonymously among the group. To preserve independent judgment, each member evaluates them on their own. Only then does the team come together to select and refine the most promising options. By developing and assessing ideas individually before choosing and elaborating them, teams can surface and advance possibilities that might not get attention otherwise.” (189)

“My research shows that when you bring a suggestion to managers, if you don’t have a reputation for being prosocial and levelheaded, that can be enough to turn the tide against you.” (193)

“Managers know that if they bet on a bad idea, it might be a career-limiting move, but if they pass on a good idea, it’s unlikely anyone will ever find out. And even if managers are supportive of an idea, if they perceive leaders above them as opposed to it, they tend to see it as a losing proposition. All it takes is one gatekeeper to close off a new frontier.” (194)

“Weak leaders silence voice and shoot the messenger. Strong leaders welcome voice and thank the messenger. Great leaders build systems to amplify voice and elevate the messenger.” (196)

“It’s often said that talent sets the floor, but character sets the ceiling.” (206)

“Yet when we judge potential, we often focus on execution and ignore degree of difficulty. We inadvertently favor candidates who aced easy tasks and dismiss those who passed taxing trials. We don’t see the skills they’ve developed to overcome obstacles-especially the skills that don’t show up on a resume.” (209)

“Young people with grander dreams went further in school and climbed higher at work.” (225)

“In the spring, as I met my future classmates at events and online, I saw a pattern. Harvard seemed to attract two extremes of students: those who were sure they were a gift to the world, and those who feared they were the one mistake.” (227)

“Impostor syndrome says, “I don’t know what I’m doing. It’s only a matter of time until everyone finds out.”
Growth mindset says, “I don’t know what I’m doing yet. It’s only a matter of time until I figure it out.”” (230)

“Writing like I teach has been my compass ever since.” (232)

“Not long ago, it dawned on me that impostor syndrome is a paradox:

* Others believe in you

* You don’t believe in yourself

* Yet you believe yourself instead of them

If you doubt yourself, shouldn’t you also doubt your low opinion of yourself?” (232)

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July 25, 2024July 24, 2024

“Going Infinite” Quotes

I recently read “Going Infinite: The Rise and Fall of a New Tycoon” by Michael Lewis. Here’s the quotes I found most interesting:

“The interactions between the cards were too complicated to fully understand—at some point Garfield realized even he could not predict what might happen in his own game, which he liked. “The game is shallow if you know when you create it what the best play is,” he said. “There should exist within the game a scenario where it is impossible to determine a winning strategy.”” (31)

“The more Sam saw of academic life, the more it felt like one long canned talk, created mainly for narrow career purposes.” (39)

“Sam said, “There was very little evidence that they were doing much of anything to change the world. Or even thinking about how to have the most impact on the world.”” (39)

“He thought of himself as a thinking machine rather than a feeling one. He thought of himself as a person who thought his way to action.” (73)

“In their financial dealings with each other, the effective altruists were more ruthless than Russian oligarchs.” (98)

“Ramnik said, “The smartest minds of our generation are either buying or selling stocks or predicting if you’ll click on an add. This is the tragedy of our generation.” (122)

“Jump Trading-not a conventional venture capitalist-offered to buy a stake in FTX at a company valuation of $4 billion. “Sam said no, the fundraise is at twenty billion,” recalled Ramnik. Jump responded by saying that they’d be interested at that price if Sam could find others who were too—which told you that the value people assigned to new businesses was arbitrary.” (127)

“Selling a new business to a VC was apparently less like selling a sofa than it was like pitching a movie idea. The VCs’ eagerness to buy turned less on your hard numbers than on how excited they became about the story you told. It was as if they spent their day listening to stories and picking the ones they liked best. There was no rhyme or reason to their evaluations: English class all over again.” (127)

“In a single four-year term, a president, working with Congress, directed roughly $15 trillion in spending. And yet in 2016, the sum total of spending by all candidates on races for the presidency and Congress came to a mere $6.5 billion. “It just seems like there isn’t enough money in politics,” said Sam. “People are underdoing it. The weird thing is that Warren Buffett isn’t giving two billion dollars a year.”” (178)

“One day some historian of effective altruism will marvel at how easily it transformed itself. It turned its back on living people without bloodshed or even, really, much shouting. You might think that people who had sacrificed fame and fortune to save poor children in Africa would rebel at the idea of moving on from poor children in Africa to future children in another galaxy. They didn’t, not really— which tells you something about the role of ordinary human feeling in the movement. It didn’t matter. What mattered was the math. Effective altruism never got its emotional charge from the places that charged ordinary philanthropy. It was always fueled by a cool lust for the most logical way to lead a good life.” (189)

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July 24, 2024July 24, 2024

“You Can Negotiate Anything” Quotes

I recently read “You Can Negotiate Anything: The world’s best negotiator tells you how to get what you want” by Herb Cohen. Below are the quotes I found most interesting. If you like them, buy the book.

“In today’s world a wise boss always negotiates for the commitment of his employees. What is a boss? Someone with formal authority who attempts to get people to do voluntarily what must be done.” (18)

“You and I know that the best way to shaft a boss these days-to transform him into a shaftee with you being the shaftor—is to do precisely what he or she tells you to. When told what to do, you write it down and ask, “Is this what you want?” Then you proceed to comply, literally.
Two weeks later, your boss runs up to you and blurts,
“What happened?”
You reply, “I don’t know. I did exactly what you told me to do.”
We have a name for that in today’s world. We call that phenomenon “Malicious Obedience.” (18)

“You never want an employee to do exactly what you tell him to do. You want him to occasionally do what you don’t tell him to do … often what you can’t tell him to do, because many problems can’t be anticipated.” (19)

In every negotiation in which you’re involved—in every negotiation in which I’m involved—in fact, in every negotiation in the world (from a diplomatic geopolitical negotiation to the purchase of a home) —three crucial elements are always present:

Information. The other side seems to know more about you and your needs than you know about them and their needs.
Time. The other side doesn’t seem to be under the same kind of organizational pressure, time constraints, and restrictive deadlines you feel you’re under.
Power. The other side always seems to have more power and authority than you think you have.
(19)

“All power is based on perception. If you think you’ve got it, then you’ve got it. If you think you don’t have it, even if you have it, then you don’t have it. In short, you have more power if you believe you have power and view your life’s encounters as negotiations.” (20)

“1. Am I comfortable negotiating in this particular situation?

Will negotiating meet my needs?
Is the expenditure of energy and time on my part worth the benefits that I can receive as a result of this encounter?
Only if you, as a unique individual, can answer yes to all three of these questions should you proceed to negotiate.” (30)

“To begin with, don’t define yourself too narrowly. Don’t regard yourself as someone who wants to buy a refrigerator. Regard yourself as someone who wants to sell money. Money is the product that’s up for sale. The more people there are who want your money, the more your money will buy. How do you get people to bid for that money? You generate competition for it.” (31)

“In a fundamental sense, every negatotiation is for the satisfaction of needs. Sears presents you with a $489.95 asking price that meets its needs… but hwat about yours.” (32)

“You can also ask, “When is it going on sale?” or “Did I miss the sale?” The assumption is that, if it’s not currently on sale, it either will be or just was. There’s no earthly reason why you should be penalized for awkward timing.” (33)

“The key to making an ultimatum prevail is always the extent to which the other side makes an investment of time and energy.” (35)

“The success of a nibble is in direct proportion to the amount of time invested. No time investment, no dice. That’s why you should always induce the other side to invest in a situation. And that’s why your initial approach to a negotiation should always be collaborative, as though you’re hungry for help.” (39)

“In negotiation, dumb is often better than smart, inarticulate frequently better than articulate, and many times weakness can actually be strength. So train yourself occasionally to say,
“I don’t know,” “I don’t understand,” “You lost me some time ago,” or “Help me,” when these phrases suit your purposes.” (40)

“Moral don’t be too quick to “understand” or prove your intellect at the outset of an encounter. Watch your listen-talk ratio. Learn to ask questions, even when you think you might know the answers.
Furthermore, if you approach others asking for help, it tends to set the climate for a mutually beneficial relationship.
At the least, you’ll cause the other side to make an investment that ultimately accrues to your advantage.
Making the ultimatum stick
In some of the illustrations discussed earlier, ultimatums were used. Ultimatums are commonly employed, whether by a parent giving a child the “last and final proposal” regarding a curfew or by a union approaching the wire in collective bargaining.
For your ultimatum to succeed, it must meet four criteria:

Frosting on the cake. The other side must have no other choice or they must have such an investment that they can’t fold their cards and walk away. Therefore, an ultimatum must come at the end of a negotiation, never at the beginning.
You can’t frost a cake until you bake it.
Soft and palatable. The words used must never belittle or offend the other side. “Hard” ultimatums, such as “Take it or leave it!” or “It’s this or else!” are self-defeating. “Soft” ultimatums are palatable because they’re simply a statement of your reality. Example: “I certainly understand your pre-dicament. Your position is valid, but this is all I’ve got. Help me.”
A recipe that can’t be tampered with. It’s always wise • to back up your final position with some form of documentation or legitimacy. Example: “You deserve what you’re asking for. I wish I could give it to you, but this is all I have in my budget!” (43)

“in order to influence an outcome—in politics, poker, or nego-tiation-you must realistically analyze the other side’s posi-tion, as well as your own, in light of three ever-present tightly interrelated variables:

POWER
TIME
INFORMATION” (50)

“never enter a negotiation without options. If you do, the other side will treat you lightly, as in the needing-a-job and the selling-an-idea examples I just gave you.” (58)

“6. The power of the knowledge of “needs”
In all negotiations, there are two things being bargained for:

The specific issues and demands, which are stated openly.
The real needs of the other side, which are rarely verbalized.” (68)

“If you can establish a reasonable guess about what someone’s needs are, you can predict, with remarkable certainty, what will happen in any interaction.” (69)

“My point is this: If you have something difficult to negoti-ate-an emotional issue, or a concrete item that can be stated numerically, such as price, cost, interest rate, or salary-cope with it at the end of a negotiation, after the other side has made a hefty expenditure of energy and a substantial time investment.
What if the emotional issue or quantifiable item surfaces at the beginning of the negotiation? Acknowledge it, chat about it, but put it off till later—returning to it only after the other side has spent a lot of time with you. You’ll be surprised how the other side’s investment will cause them to become flexible at the end of the negotiation.” (73)

“If someone at Macy’s makes you feel good, important, or at least comfortable and understands your needs, you’ll identify with and favor Macy’s, even if Bloomingdale’s offers something that looks better. That’s why your ability to have others identify with you is crucial, whomever you’re dealing with and for whatever reason.” (76)

“Even if someone has the law on his side and theoretically can crush you, if you say, “You can do anything you want with me… but would it be the right thing?”” (80)

“ask the other party if it was fair and right. Not surprisingly, that question shakes up even the most worldly, self-seeking, and jaded.” (81)

“Logic, in and of itself, will rarely influence people. Most often logic doesn’t work.
If you want to persuade me to believe something, do some-thing, or buy something, you must rely on three factors:

I have to understand what you’re saying. It’s imperative that you put your reasons into analogies that relate to my experiences, my particular imprinting. In order to do this, you must enter my world. (That’s why it’s so hard for you to negotiate with someone who’s stupid or who you think is a lunatic.)
Your evidence must be so overwhelming that I can’t dispute it.
My believing you must meet my existing needs and desires.” (85)

“Moral: If you want to persuade people, show the immediate relevance and value of what you’re saying in terms of meeting their needs and desires.” (87)

“Therefore, in any negotiation expect most significant concession behavior and any settlement action to occur close to the deadline. That being the case, if I know your deadline and you don’t know mine, who has the advantage?” (92)

“In general, the reason we are at odds on an issue may stem from three areas of difference:

Experience. You and I do not see things as they are. We see things as we are.
Information
Role
(159)

“The answer may lie in finding out who’s important to the boss and getting those people to help you influence him.” (178)

“Even when you are right, shun all opportunities to humiliate people— at least in public. Remember this, not only for them, but for yourself as well.” (193)

“Anytime an idea, proposal, or request calls for a change in the current handling of affairs, it requires a personal oral presentation. Documents, letters, and phone calls may precede or follow such a meeting, but they are not persuasive in themselves.” (211)

“”What if the president of Mexico showed up? Would you have a room for him?”
“it señor …”
I blew a smoke ring toward the ceiling. “Well, he’s not coming, so I’ll take his room.”
Did I get a room? You bet, but I had to promise that if the president arrived, I would vacate immediately.” (228)

“If you do not want a policy or regulation to govern your situation, be prepared to demonstrate that the framers of this rule never intended it to cover your unique facts.” (230)

“You should never dress like a fashion plate when entering an IRS office. Don’t look like a bum, but also don’t resemble the front cover of Gentlemen’s Quarterly or Harper’s Bazaar.” (231)

“The person you deal with will feel comfortable with you, and riendly toward you, only if he or she can identify with you.” (231)

“Your name is called. Simultaneously, a designated auditor steps forward to greet you. At this point-and throughout the transaction-your attitude is one of pure “Help me!” You personalize yourself, coming across as a reasonable, likable friendly human being. Are you argumentative? To the contrary. Are you defensive? Absolutely not. You’re there to be cooperative. Butter wouldn’t melt in your mouth.” (231)

“If you are to negotiate effectively, the other party must not see you as a statistic, a thing, a commodity, or an article of com-merce. If you present yourself as a unique, vulnerable human being, there is greater likelihood that you will get what you want.” (240)

“This fact is implicit in the reputed comment of Samuel Adams, just prior to the American Revolution. During the planning of the Boston Massacre, Adams was reported to have said something to this effect: “There ought to be no fewer than three or four killed so we will have martyrs for the Revolution. However, there should be no more than twenty, because once you get beyond that number we no longer have martyrs, but simply a sewage problem.”” (240)

“Accordingly, to maximize your impact as a negotiator— no matter whom you are dealing with-you must personalize both yourself and the situation.” (241)

“It’s easy for people to shaft others if they don’t see them in personal terms.” (250)

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January 3, 2024December 26, 2023

“Courage Is Calling” Quotes

I recently read “Courage Is Calling: Fortune Favors The Brave” by Ryan Holiday. Below are the quotes I found most interesting. If you like them, buy the book here.

“”Be scared. You can’t help that,” William Faulkner put it. “But don’t be afraid.”

It’s an essential distinction. A scare is a temporary rush of a feeling. That can be forgiven. Fear is a state of being, and to allow it to rule is a disgrace.” (14)

“It’s been said that leaders are dealers in hope, but in a more practical sense, they are also slayers of fear.” (17)

“There are many who dare not kill themselves for fear of what the neighbors will say,” Cyril Connolly once joked.” (20)

“You can’t let fear rule. Because there has never been a person who did something that mattered without pissing people off.” (22)

“There are always more of them before they are counted.”

The obstacles, the enemies, the critics – they are not as numerous as you think. It’s an illusion they want you to believe.” (24)

“The leader’s job is to think about the unthinkable.” (28)

“The only inexcusable offense for an officer is to be surprised. To say, I didn’t think that would happen.” (28)

“The whole point is that it’s hard. The risk is a feature, not a bug.” (32)

“It’s not bad that this is happening to you. It’s good training.” (32)

“It’s when we imagine everything, when we catastrophize endlessly, that we are miserable and most afraid. When we focus on what we have to carry and do? We are too busy to worry, too busy working. “(36)

“No one can truly understand what it would be like to occupy a different time and place, with different assumptions, assumptions shared by everyone you’ve ever met and everything you’ve ever read.” (40)

“Xenophon said they could choose between two attitudes, one that said, “What is going to happen to me?” And the other that said, “What action am I going to take?”” (44)

“We like to think we can have an extraordinary life by making ordinary decisions, but it’s not true. It’s actually all the ordinary decisions – the safe ones, recommended by every expert, criticized by no one – that make us incredibly vulnerable in times of chaos and crisis.” (62)

“This independence, this fearlessness was the key to his greatness – as it is the key to most greatness.” (94)

“The world is asking you about your courage. Every minute of every day. Your enemies are asking you this question. Your obstacles are too. Because we need to know. Are you one of the cowards? Are you someone we can count on? Do you have what it takes?” (97)

“Seneca would say that he actually pitied people who have never experienced misfortune. “You have passed through life without an opponent,” he said. “No one can ever know what you are capable of, not even you.”” (97)

“The Greek word for this kind of courage was parrhesia. It was the speaking of truth to power. It was refusing to buy the lie or to play it false.” (111)

“Socrates was the classic parrhesiastes, a man who said what others were afraid to say to the people they were afraid to say it to.” (111)

“George Marshall cut through with a command: “Gentleman, don’t fight the problem! Decide it!” (114)

“McCain learned from his mother to welcome difficulties as “elements of an interesting life.” (128)

“There is no one, William James said, more miserable than the person “in whom nothing is habitual but indecision.” (129)

“You make a difference when you are brave. Because you make others brave in the process.” (139)

“It’s not my fault.” “It’s not my problem.” “Don’t blame me.” These are not phrases that can exist in your vocabulary. Not if you want to be great. Not unless you’re a coward.” (142)

“The willingness to accept responsibility for one’s own life,” Joan Didion observed, “is the source from which self-respect springs.” (142)

“General Erwin Rommel would write, “But one must differentiate between strategic or tactical boldness and a military gamble. A bold operatoin is one in which success is not a certainty but which in case of failure leaves one with sufficient forces in hand to cope with whatever situation may arise. A gamble, on the other hand, is an operation which can lead either to victory or to the complete destruction of one’s force. Situations can arise where even a gamble may be justified as, for instance, when in the normal course of events defeat is merely a matter of time, when the gaining of time is therefore pointless and the only chance lies in an operation of great risk.” (149)

“They will laugh at you. Losers have always gotten together in little groups and talked about winners.” (153)

“Reject the pessimistic view that we are at the mercy of forces beyond our control. Yes, you can do something. You must.” (164)

“Where there is only a choice between cowardice and violence,” Gandhi said, “I would advise violence.” (168)

“The expression popular with self-defense instructors: Violence is rarely the answer – but when it is, it’s the only answer.” (168)

“The bodlness, the gamble, the sheer tenacity and determination? They might not be the most educated, they might not be the most wealthy, some of them might well be leaving mistakes and failures behind them, but immigrants are by definition exhibiting a virtue we all admire. Tired? Meek? These are indefatigable warriors. They are the descendants fo pioneers and explorers. Where would we be without this kind of courage?

Who would not want it infused into their economy and culture? Who can’t learn something form this in our own cushier, safer lives?” (171)

“Continuing to do the same thing in the same way in the same place over and over is not just insanity, but eventually a form of cowardice.” (172)

“It takes courage to look at the averages and say, “I am not average.” To say, “Somebody will be the exception and it may as well be me.” (180)

“Steve Jobs said, “One way to remember who you are, is to remember who your heroes are.” (183)

“Seneca’s father wrote, “You had a brave man for a grandfather. See to it that you are braver.” (184)

“You can’t let this period (of a valley) make you bitter. You have to make sure it makes you better.” (213)

“Jackie Robinson said, “a life is meaningless except for its impact on other lives.” (219)

“That’s who we were put here for anyway. Our duty was never just to be the best ourselves, but to help others ealize their best.” (221)

“De Gaulle reflected, “Character is above all the ability to disregard insults or abandonment by one’s own people. One must be willing to lose everything. There is no such thing as half a risk.” (240)

“No one is saying they can’t eventually beat you, only that surrender is a choice. Quitting on your cause – that’s on you.” (256)

“To give in to fear is to deny the talents and skills that got you where you are in the first place. It’s to deprive yourself of the agency you were given at birth.” (272)

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