Friday's Too Good Not To Share: October 2, 2020
Every Friday, I share other great content (with some added context) to dive into over the weekend.
I’m back on the horse after taking a day off. Simply put, I was tired and wrapped up in a big work project (come learn about it on Oct. 7th). But as James Clear says, when you break a streak, be sure to immediately get back on top of it the next day.
Here’s to starting again!
How To Say No, For The People Pleaser Who Always Says Yes
We can’t do it all nor should we try. Here are some tips on how to say no more often.
It can be tempting to say yes to things you just don't want to do. Might as well just get it done so nothing bad happens, right? But there's a high price for constantly aiming to make other people happy. "We suppress and repress who we are to please others," says Natalie Lue. She coaches people to curb their people-pleasing tendencies. When your top priority is to be liked all the time, you aren't in touch with what you need."You are going to find it very, very difficult to do what you need to do for you," Lue says.
Read more here.
The Timely Arrival and Urgent Ambition of Jonathan Majors
Big time Lovecraft Country fan here. Jonathan Majors is killing it in his role and I have a good feeling we’ll be seeing more of him in the coming years.
In Spike Lee’s Da 5 Bloods and HBO’s Lovecraft Country, Jonathan Majors emerged as one of Hollywood’s most charismatic new leading men—a brilliant Yale-trained Method actor with a timeless appeal. Now he’s channeling all his gifts into an urgent mission: bringing to life all the untold epics of Black America.
Read the full interview here. [GQ]
All The Kings Big Men
Who doesn’t love a good deep dive on Lebron James?? Lol. Yes, I am a fan of his and know his story front to back. Even still, this article provided a new perspective and stories for even the avid Bron fan.
James will compete this week in his 10th NBA Finals, cementing his standing as one of basketball’s living institutions. “It’s been like this for a very long time,” says Heat forward Jimmy Butler, who will guard James in the championship series. “If you wanna win, you’re going to have to go through a LeBron James–led team.” The triumph in that sort of constancy is the change it requires. The competitive landscape of the NBA is always shifting. For the better part of two decades, LeBron has managed to move with it, or at least to stomp with force enough to make tremors of his own. The only way to understand the nature of that progression is to see the game as LeBron does: as a playmaker first, in a league in which power forwards and centers—his natural pick-and-roll partners—are at risk of being phased out of the game entirely. The story of the NBA can be told through LeBron, but the story of LeBron can be fully understood only through the bigs he played with—the teammates who, with the right guidance, took a familiar play to new ends.
Read the full (long but good) article here. [The Ringer]
Billionaire investor Ray Dalio on capitalism’s crisis: The world is going to change ‘in shocking ways’ in the next five years
When Ray speaks, I listen. He’s providing warning (again) about the dangers the current trajectory of America’s capitalist system. We need to update our approach or our country will continue to burst at the seams.
Ray Dalio certainly is no radical idealist, but in his frequent writings and media appearances the veteran investor consistently calls for Americans to rewrite their longstanding contract with capitalism so that it is fairer and more generous to more people.
Otherwise, he predicts, life in the U.S. could become more difficult: mountainous debt that stunts economic growth; fewer opportunities for ordinary citizens to get ahead financially; and a worldwide lack of trust in the U.S. dollar that diminishes Americans’ purchasing power and could lower their standard of living.
“Capitalism and capitalists are good at increasing and producing productivity to increase the size of the economic pie,” he says.
Then Dalio stands this tenet on its head. Capitalists don’t divide the economic pie very well, he says, and so today the capitalist system, the foundation of the U.S. economy, is not working efficiently and effectively enough for all.
“Capitalism also produces large wealth gaps that produce opportunity gaps, which threaten the system,” Dalio says — a system that has been and still is key to the health and success of U.S. business, workers, government and investors alike.
Read his full interview here.
Leave today better than yesterday ✌️.
No music this weekend, I plan to get through this 2 part podcast on Sequoia Capital, the legendary VC firm that shaped Silicon Valley.
Part 1 (1 hr 45 mins).
Part 2 (1 hr 1 min)