“Lucky opportunities tend to be stumbled upon, not handed out.

If you’re waiting for someone to hand deliver an excellent opportunity to you, it’s unlikely to happen. But if you are exploring and moving—if you’re in the mix and engaged—then you’ll stumble upon many opportunities.

The active mind comes across a lot. Keep tilling the soil and you will occasionally unearth something wonderful.”

James Clear

The smartest people I’ve met:

They retrain their minds to enjoy being wrong.

They get a dopamine hit when proven wrong because they’re excited to be closer to the truth. The truth is addictive.

In contrast, if you refuse to lose a debate, your brain keeps running old firmware.

(I realized this after comparing humble versus tribalist people arguing on Twitter. Personally, to be comfortable being wrong, I needed to appreciate that being occasionally wrong doesn’t make me look dumb to people I admire. People judge you more on your trailing average of thoughts than on the last thing you said. And good friends don’t care either way.)

Julian Shapiro

People don’t have short attention spans:

• They finish 3 hour Joe Rogan episodes.
• They binge 14 hour shows.
• They have short consideration spans: They must be hooked quickly.

Point: Don’t fear making great, in-depth content. But, ensure your first minute is incredible.

(I realized this after noticing friends put up with bad TV shows. We’re really bad at abandoning shows. I went way too far into The Walking Dead.)

Source: Julian Shapiro

Insurance executive and entrepreneur Art Williams on motivation:

“Almost everybody can stay excited for 2 or 3 months. A few people can stay excited for 2 or 3 years. But a winner will stay excited for 30 years or however long it takes to win.”

Source: “Just Do It”

“Deconstruction creates knowledge. Recombination creates value.” – James Clear

What’s on the graph changes every quarter… but the fact that there is a cycle never changes…

Source: BJ Fogg

When you want to build a new habit, the #1 question to ask yourself is this:What will make this new habit hard for me to do?Your answer will always fall into one of five categories. The new habit might require –Too much time Too much money Too much physical effort Too much mental effortOr the new habit may require you to change your routine.I’ve put these five factors together in a model I call the Ability Chain.

The weakest link in the Ability Chain determines how difficult your new habit will be.If one link is weak (suppose you don’t have enough time), then the strength of the other four links doesn’t matter. Even with one weak link, the chain is not reliable.If you don’t strengthen the weak links, your new habit will be hard to do. And that means you’ll need to rely on motivation. The problem: Motivation is not reliable. It shifts day by day, even minute by minute.

Prior seniority and education of successful founders in Europe:

“It is not necessary to change a person in order to change their behavior.

Just change their environment.” – James Clear

Super apps. Mobile commerce has exploded over the last decade, thanks in part to a host of payment and checkout services that have made it easier for consumers to shop on their phones. On the back of this upswing, companies enabling payments (among others) are layering on additional money management features and services to drive growth and keep users around. Asia has been a hotbed for this trend, with a number of digital wallets here evolving into successful one-stop-shop super apps. We look at how super apps will be the dominant fintech strategy of the next decade.

Dear Son

The old adage of ‘get good grades, go to uni, get a job’ has received a bad rep in the past few decades. But I think that its short sighted to just discount this approach completely.

Some of the most learning and widest connections I’ve had in my career was working at growing and changing organisations, large and small.

Choose for growth, not just for money or title, and you’ll do just fine.

Love, Dad