Edition #057
Hey friends, happy Sunday!
This week I was reminded of the parable about the blind men and the elephant.
It is a story about a group of blind men who had never come across an elephant before. They learn to conceptualise what an elephant is like by touching it.
Each blind man feels a different part of the elephant's body, but only one part. One touches the tusk, another the elephant's leg and so on.
They then describe what an elephant is like based on their limited experience, all describing a very different animal.
The men then come to suspect that the others are dishonest and come to blows.
The moral of this parable is that we tend to claim absolute truth based on our limited experiences and dismiss other people's limited experiences which may equally be true.
It's important to remember that we're all those blind men operating off of our limited experiences.
Ideas from me
I.
How do creative geniuses come up with great ideas? They work hard at it.
How do entrepreneurs build great companies? They work hard at it.
How do elite athletes win championships? They work hard at it.
II.
A fulfilling career requires 3 ingredients:
- Autonomy
- Competence
- Connection
III.
Often the most rewarding things in life operate like flywheels — they are really hard to get started but once they get going they become difficult to stop.
This applies to relationships, businesses, learning, and wealth, what else?
My Favourite Finds
How to build a brand: This thread does a great job at breaking down how to bootstrap an Ecommerce brand with very little money upfront.
The document culture of Amazon: Amazon start internal meetings by all reading a document written by whoever called the meeting. Everyone on the call spends the first 10+ minutes reading through the document making sure everyone is on the same page.
The document first approach eliminates pointless meetings and helps companies operate asynchronously because there is a higher barrier to scheduling meetings. The quality of those meetings should also be higher as everyone has the same information.
The power business writing guide: It's obvious that becoming a better writer is a critical skill to improve your career. But actually improving as a writer (when your aspirations are not to become a full-time writer) can be tricky. This guide from Sahil Bloom has a fantastic framework to improve your writing.
End note
If you enjoyed this edition of the Sunday Filter then I’d love it if you could share it with a few friends. You can send them over here to sign up or share it on Twitter.
This is the last Sunday Filter of the year, I hope you have a great festive season and I will see you in the new year!
- Stephen
p.p.s finally they added subtitles
