Tools of Titans: Discipline Equals Freedom, the Canvas Strategy, and Systems

Tools of Titans --- Jocko Willink, US Navy SEAL commander Lesson one: true freedom is discipline. “Discipline = freedom.” To gain real freedom, you must set limits for yourself. Financial freedom, freedom over your time, freedom from disease and poverty—achieving these requires discipline. What we normally call “freedom” has two drawbacks: First, the “paradox of choice”: too many options leave you unsure what to choose and less happy. Second, “decision fatigue”: every decision consumes some willpower. You can exhaust yourself choosing without having done anything. If you are highly disciplined, with limits and routines that tell you what to do at every moment, you instead gain a sense of autonomy. Lesson two: take complete responsibility for everything in your world. People complain that their superiors do not provide enough support. Actually, that is your own failure. You did not educate or influence your superior properly, or help them understand why you need that support. You must take all the responsibility. Lesson three: humility enables progress. “Humility” and “humble” here do not mean being deferential to a boss. They mean listening to others, keeping an open mind, and continually learning. Self-assessment: observe yourself from a third-person perspective. This is the highest form of humility. While doing something, occasionally step outside yourself and watch in the third person: am I angry? Too emotional? Overreacting? ---- Bill Belichick, head coach of the NFL’s New England Patriots (a four-time Super Bowl champion coach) Lesson: the canvas strategy. You notice someone wants to paint, so you find them a canvas. You may contribute to the painting, but your role is to provide the canvas. The apprentice’s working logic: First, you are neither as capable nor as important as you imagine; Second, your lack of humility is a problem, and your character needs tempering; Third, what you learned at school and from books is outdated or simply wrong. You need insights from experts doing the work. The apprentice’s bargain: exchange respect and service for opportunity—not the chance to win credit and attention, but to learn through practice. 1. The key to the canvas strategy is helping others at work, clearing their path so they can do better work, then giving them the credit, too. 2. Its guiding principle is “be lesser, do more”: take a less prominent position and do more for others. 3. It has no expiration date. Even after you work independently, even when others use the canvas strategy with you, keep clearing the path for people. Arrogant people miss this: when you clear someone’s path, you also influence their direction. --- Scott Adams, creator of the Dilbert comic strip Lesson one: develop a system rather than fixating on small goals’ success or failure. Do things to develop a “system,” not simply to accomplish a particular goal. A “goal” rewards success and leaves failure as wasted effort. A “system” is something continually evolving—a skill or a relationship. You can undertake projects and cultivate habits for that system. What matters is not one event’s outcome but developing the system. Interest alone is insufficient. Developing a system requires many things that are not fun as well as those that are. “Interest” is overrated; breadth of vision is overlooked. Keep something “big” in mind rather than dwelling on short-term gains and minor losses. Lesson two: reach the top 25% in two or three fields. Whatever field you truly enjoy, work to reach its top 25%. Then add another field, developing each skill to the world’s top 25%. Few people have two such skills. Combining them in one endeavor could lead to remarkable achievements. ---- #得到 (Dedao) #萬維鋼精英日課 (Wan Weigang’s Elite Daily Lessons)