Rare and Powerful Skills
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We'll be tell a quick story, one that I think about quite a bit on his way to be sworn in as the most powerful man in the world, Franklin delano rose sevelle, had been lifted out of his car and Carried up the stairs. Frances perkins, who care pained with roseville and later became secretary of labor, said that the most remarkable thing about Frankland rose devots paralysis was how little its hydrates seem to bother him.

Rose bet once told her a quote, if you can't use your legs and they bring you milk when you wanted orange juice, you learn to say, that's all right, and you drink IT. So here is why I like that story, because I think this is a very useful and overlooked to skill, which is what the episode is about today. And that is accepting a certain degree of hassle and nonsense when reality demands IT, when the situation you are in demands that you have to accept hassle and nonsense and setback and pain and uncertainty that you accept IT.

That is an incredible skill that can do you a lot of good in life. IT is not an enjoyable skill to have, which makes IT overlooked in the world. But you realize how useful IT can be once you spot somebody who lacks at this skill, and they strugling to get through the day, they are upset by the smallest little hassle that they come across.

I was once on a flight with a CEO of a borge company. He let everybody on the flight know that that's who he was. Uh, and he lost his mind. After the flight changed gates twice, we had to switch gates twice, and he was ranting and raving in public in front of everybody into the gate agent.

And I wondered, I thought to myself, how did he make IT this far in life without the ability to deal with pedia oya outside of his control? I think the most likely answer is he was in denial over what he thinks is in his control. And he demanded unrealistic precision from subordinate who compensate by hiding bad news from him.

The ability to accept nonsense in hazle is such incredible skill. By the way, I came across that rose of elt story in a book by doors, current goodwin called no ordinary day. Of course, I found this quote in read wise, which is an ad that I ve been using for years to keep track of quotes and stories and highlights that I make in books.

This episode is broughty about my friends at read dwive. And if you have not tried that, I highly recommend that you do. If you are reader. Reader wise is the best by far tool that I have found to keep track of notes and highlights in books and things to read online.

If you go to read wise dot I O slash Morgan, that is read wise, that I O slash Morgan, you will not only get in extra thirty days for free to try read wise, but you will get the highlights that I have made in some of my books over the years. Go check IT out in this topic of finding overlooked skills in the world, I think, is really important, because like anything in life, most of the attention on the topic goes to what is attractive and obvious and sexy. And so when you're talking about skills and life, people talk about being charismatic, being persuasive, good technical ability, all important, of course.

But there are so many overlooked to skills that I think can take you very far in life. And that's what I want to talk about in today's episode. Let me share a couple of more with you. Are here we go, understanding how people justify their beliefs in a way that makes you respect their delusions. And A A very rare and useful skill is understanding that people you find to be deluded and wrong likely suffer from the same shortcomings that you do.

And that I do that all of us wilda ant, who is a great history, and he wrote his book, the lessons of history, that we should learn enough from history to respect each other's delusions, which is such a beautiful line, learn enough from history to respect each other, other's delusions. He explained, quote our knowledge of any past event is always incomplete, probably inaccurate, be clouded by ambivalent evidence and bias historians, and perhaps distorted by our own patriotic or religious partisanship. Most history is guessing, and the rest is prejudice.

I think this is true for a virtually any event that we're talking about in the economy and politics and business, whatever IT might be. And I think IT boils down to three points. Number one is that everybody is heavily influences by what they have experiences first hand, because what do you have experienced first hand is more persuasive than something that you read about.

Second hand. Second point is that even our understanding the first hand experience is sketchy at best, because we oversimplify what happened and what we saw and self justify our involvement in that. The third point is that those who didn't experience in event first hand have an even weaker grasp on reality, because they can Cherry pick the oversimplified, self justified arguments and data from people who have first hand experience.

So if i'm trying to learn about something that happened in the world that I did not take part in, I can just go find the explanations for from other people that are the most persuasive to me, as so everybody has delusions about how the world works. You do, I do. Everybody does.

I think IT make sense when you realize that we are all just prisoners to our past and products of our generation and the times that we live in. And we are influenced by who we've met and what we've experienced, most of which has been outside of our control and looks. Some people are more aware of their blind spots than others, but everybody has a friendly, held belief that an equally smart and informed person disagrees with. How appropriate, maybe that we are talking about this and putting this on this episode during this week of the presidential election, because there is no other spot that you see this more starkly with than in politics. When someone who was equally smart and informed as you are comes to the exact opposite conclusion that you do something good questions to ask to combat this reality.

And a very good and useful skill to have is asking, what have an ee experienced first hand, that leads me a little bit naive to how something works, or asking, which of my current views would I disagree with if I were born into a different country or to a different generation or raised by different parents? What do I desperately want to be true so much that I think this is true even when it's clearly not like where are my incentives taking me? That's a good question ask to.

And even Better skill, though, I think, is realizing that everybody else struggles with those questions and wince at the potential answers to those questions. And so you'll have to agree with other, other delusions, or you shouldn't put up with the damage that some of those deluded belief can cause, of course. But just accepting that everybody wants easy and comforting answers in a complex and painful world is a very rare and useful skill.

And number three, for our rare and unique skills, which is quitting while you are ahead, or at least before you have had too much commenting on how he'd lived to asian ninety seven, john I rockefellers doctor said that the oil tycoon quote gets up from the table while he's still a little bit hungry. It's one of those another rare skill and one that applies to so many things beyond eating. Of course, the temptation to exploit every drop of opportunity leads many people to push redlener lessons for more and more and more.

And they only discovered the limits of what's possible when they've gone too far, when the moments of decline is often unstable, they have gone past the point of no return and they're doing damage to themselves. Businesses that don't want to hold excess inventory push so hard for efficiency and their supply chains. And just in time, manufacturing is, I call IT, and they become strip of all shock absorbers.

They have no room for error. And then 2222 one， the pandemic hits and the supply team just crumbles all around them. They wanted so much efficiency, they could not leave opportunity on the table that I just ended up blowing up in their face.

You see the two with Young workers who are so eager for promotion, they push themselves until we've hit a burnout, when they physically cannot continue in their position and they quit, which often Marks the end of compounding their skills and their work relationships like they wanted to get ahead. So bad that they were only able to work in this career, in investment banking or law or medicine, whatever IT might be for a couple years. And the neighbor out people on social media do this too, in the relentless quest for engagement and comments and retweet and likes.

They push IT so hard that eventually the audience become sick of them happen so many times. I want name names, but you know who they are. In each case, there is so much value and saying, I could have had more, I could have earned more, I could have done more.

But this right here is good enough knowing when to get up from the table when you're stole a little bit hungry, so to speak, is such an important skill. But it's a rare skill because people don't like leaving opportunity on the table, and IT is counter intuitive to realize that you will likely end up with even more than those whose appetite for more is insatiable. At next one, what does this number four, respectfully interacting with people who you disagree with.

Another one of these is very important during this election week, right? Confirmation bias gets easier when people are more interconnected on social media, what you can connect with other people, but being connected also means that you will run into more people who disagree with you. But IT is Evans, who is this technology investor, has a wonderful quote that I love.

He says, the more the internet exposed people to new points of view, the anger people get that different views exist. Handling that chAllenge without digging the whole deeper is one of the twenty first centuries most important skills. If you are not blessed with perfect empathy, then the trick to opening your mind to those who disagree with you is to find people whose views on one topic you respect, because that checks the box in your head that says, this person is not totally crazy.

You respect this person and debate them on topics that you disagree about without the first step is is too easy to write somebody off before you've heard their full argument, find somebody who you generally respect and debate them on the certain topics that you disagree about. That's one of the best ways to learn how to respectfully interact with people who you disagree with. Our next one was this number five, the ability to have a ten minute conversation with anybody from any background.

What an amazing, rare and unique skill that is, isn't IT curse of handwriting was dropped from the nationwide core education curriculum in. Most people probably think that's fine because technology took its place. We don't need to write in cursive. I don't know if I can even write in regular of writing right now. I right anything outside of signing my name, which is a scribble, but technology also took the place of many face to face conversations.

And that has a deeper consequence than for going currently writing, sitting with somebody who you've never met, and looking them in the eye, and Carrying out a conversation which used to be so common that I was not considered a skill, is now a competitive advantage in the world where so much interaction takes place on social media and email and text to meet somebody face to face who you don't know, you don't know anything about that person. You be able to Carry on a pleasant conversation with them for ten minutes is an incredibly rare and important skill arts. Next one.

Number six, respecting luck as much as you respect risk. Both of those luck at risk are really the same thing. It's the idea that outcomes can be influenced by events that are outside of your control.

And so if risk is what happens when you make good decisions but end up with a bad outcome, luck is what happens when you make a bad or mediocre a decision but end up with a great outcome. They both happen because the world is too complex to allow a hundred percent of your actions dictate one hundred percent of your outcomes. Of course, that's always how it's been.

But risk is easy to pay attention to because IT gives you an intellectual out. When something doesn't go your way, you're going to say, oh, well, this was risky. This was risky.

Luck is like the opposite. IT is painful to think that some, or even maybe most, or even maybe all of your success was not caused by your actions. And so look is downplayed and ignored in a way that risk is not.

And so the ability to recognize that your wins might not signal that you did anything right, in the same way that your losses might not signal that you did anything wrong, is vital to learning something valuable from real world feedback. In the last point here, maybe the most important point of rare and unique skills is getting to the point, be brief, use as few words as possible to say what you need, and everybody will appreciate. IT martuin once said that kids provide the most interesting information because they tell you all that they know, and then they stop.

Adults lose the skill, and they false associate the number of words with the amount of insight. The longer the email, the longer the book, the more insight you think it's going to have. And of course, it's almost never the case after writing every sentence doesn't matter what you're writing in email, a memo, a text message, whatever IT is.

IT helps to ask yourself, would the readers still get my point if I deleted that line? Don't ask yourself, does that sentence make sense? There are lots of unnecessary sentences that still make sense.

But treating words like they cost you something is the right mindset. A writer once said that you should imagine that every word costs you a hundred dollars. And if you think about IT like that, you will be much more scarce with your words in a great way.

People who are bad at communicating ramble, good communicators leave out unnecessary details. Great communicators treat words as the scarcest commodity. It's a hell of a skill that's IT for this week's episode. Thanks again for listening. I will see next time.