In-network transactions are frictionless because the usual diligence is not necessary. You can use your network to get insider advice, trustworthy recommendations, profitable contracts and mutually beneficial deals, yet never write a single contract or issue a single invoice. It's all based on trust and the assumption of goodwill.
I knew it, of course, and it seems obvious. But it took me forever to internalize what it meant.
My hormones were telling me that there was something separate and other about them, something I absolutely positively had to have. It's hard to separate that from the messages I absorbed from the culture. Either way, it was incredibly overpowering, and that made me miss a lot of what was obvious.
I approached it in a stereotypically male way, as an economic transaction. This was bolstered by a lot of the "evolutionary" approaches I read about, which I now see as poorly supported but was exactly the kind of thing I wanted to believe and sounded like science.
I was perhaps 30 when it finally started to come together for me. And honestly I cannot tell how much of that is just due to the hormones subsiding a bit. I found myself a social group and started to date online. And that worked great: I was finally able to engage with women as people and found out that they were just like me.
It was also when I finally figured out what women were afraid of when it came to men. I knew I represented no threat and was baffled that they couldn't see that. But of course they can't see that.
The biggest single thing a dating man should know: not all men are rapists, but it only takes one to badly affect her for the rest of her life. Men often underestimate both the gravity of that trauma, and the strain of living with that threat at literally every moment of their lives. It's different from the threats that affect us men -- which are also very real and serious, but also very visible. Women carry a lot of burdens that men don't see.
Every time the subject of dating comes up I see HN is filled with men who don't get anything I'm saying here, and I struggle to convince them. It's frustrating because I think their lives could be so much better, but it starts by giving up some preconceptions that are so deep that they seem absolute and objective -- truths so basic you don't even recognize that an alternative could exist. It took me many miserable years to figure this out and I still don't think I've conveyed it well.
In my experience, the majority of the time, it is more profitable to pay attention to the context and situation in which you are operating, rather than trying to over-intellectualize too early.
To put it more positively and concretely: "Focus on your personal conduct, accumulate and apply wisdom to your situations, and observe more of your situation, keep adjusting/improving rather than floating in abstract theories."
In more striking terms: "You can't learn to swim by reading a textbook; it is only possible to jump in and 'figure it out' in real-time."
Also, university doesn't prepare you for life mostly, as it teaches over-intellectualization (bad default). Sometimes, I feel university gives you some really bad habits to unlearn as you progress further in life.
Practice, reflect, improve. Put it in a loop. That's life.
I didn't follow this advice and now I have a broken heart for the rest of my days.
May it be work, government on various levels, special interest groups, you name it. You are just a single member and in the big picture they focus on their agenda first and foremost. Sometimes I have the impression the larger the organization the worst and unfair that is. With age I somehow keep shifting my interest and company more and more closer to family and friends, meaning the smaller the circle the better I feel about it.
Related: How you dress matters. People evaluate you based on it. You can argue that they shouldn't. You may be right. But people still evaluate you based on how you dress, and so how you dress matters.
People who are senior to you got there because they have a superior ability to communicate, not because they have any competence. This will range from people who are so communicatively capable they can silvertongue their responses to utterly conceal incompetence/laziness to their own management to people who have slight competence but better communication and so get promoted over the most knowledgeable/experienced/capable in their domain.
Twenty years ago I thought these type of people were an aberration. I’ve come to realise that in fact, they are the majority in any business/corporate hierarchy.
Been battling a vicious cycle of boom and bust in all kinds of relationships (work, friends, love) where I go out of my way to get approval from the other party only for it not to be reciprocated and leading to burnout and eventual implosion of relationship. It stems from deeply rooted self worth issues and unhealthy strategies to overcome them.
2. The protestant work ethic is terrible and soul sucking. Hard work for hard work's sake is not rewarded. Generally, competency is not rewarded. From now on, I'm going to be ok doing the the minimum amount of required work and spending my extra time in better ways.
3. People are everything. Life is temporary. Invest time in the people you love while they're still with you.
Getting started with anything is the key to where ideas transform and refine.
You can't always have a perfect idea, you make it perfect along the way.
But most importantly, I’ve learned that when I leave this earth for a better home someday, the only thing I’ll take is what I gave away."
It's from a blog but it was touching for me
And the reverse of this is, you can set yourself apart by genuinely caring for everyone you meet, even if they can do nothing for you.
I really need to spend far more time curating the objects in my life.
Don’t let other people’s reliance upon artificial conventions dictate your decisions. People will fight to the death about the most asinine things because they fail to question the foundations or conventions on which they are fighting, as in a faulty premise. This is more common and devastating than it sounds forming the basis of social contagion. Worse, frequently this bad behavior is intentional because most people find security in social groups even when they know they underlying decisions in question are severely flawed. When these situations are encountered it’s best to question the obvious and if necessary remove yourself from the group.