To paraphrase Lincoln telling a fable: A king asked his philosophers to present to him a sentence that would be true at all times in any situation both done and to come . The sentence they composed, “And this, too, shall pass away”
To paraphrase Lincoln telling a fable: A king asked his philosophers to present to him a sentence that would be true at all times in any situation both done and to come . The sentence they composed, “And this, too, shall pass away”
I thought these were good quotes for evaluating decisions and trying to learn from examples:
“If criticism dispenses praise or censure, it should seek to place itself as nearly as possibly at the same point of view as the person acting, that is to say, to collect all he knew and all the motives on which he acted, and, on the other hand, to leave out of consideration all that the person acting could not or did not know, and above all, the result.”
Von Clausewitz, Carl
“I will repeated this point again until I get hoarse: A mistake is not something to be determined after the fact but in light of the information until that point.”
Taleb, Nassim Nicholas
“-It’s unfortunate that this has happened.
No. It’s fortunate that this has happened and I’ve remained unharmed by it – not shattered by the present or frightened of the future. It could have happened to anyone. But not everyone could have remained unharmed by it. Does was what happened keep you from acting with justice, generosity, self-control, sanity, prudence, honesty, straightforwardness and all the qualities that allow a person’s nature to fulfill itself?”
Aurelius, Marcus
From an outsider’s point of view, the last few weeks have been very good to me. Stuff I touched has been all over – national papers, all the huge blogs and I got to work with some important people. The strategies I came up with are just starting to pay public dividends. Plus my phone won’t stop ringing.
But up close, it’s more complicated. I made a bunch of sloppy mistakes. I had to let someone else handle an important decision because I couldn’t find the words to justify my position. People have been sending shit back for corrections. I haven’t posted here much. My reading has been whatever. And I’ve been trying to write up this sort of ad/essay fusion thing and after four cracks at it, I’m about to hand it off to someone else because I just don’t think I have the chops.
It has been depressing, frankly. At first I was trying to use the stuff in the first paragraph to convince myself that the stuff in the second wasn’t so bad. But I don’t really get anything out of that either. Sometimes, I guess you have to admit to yourself that you’re not performing at the level you want to and that it’s going to take a lot more of this until you get there. I’m trying, now that I’m conscious of it, not to use a cathartic release like this post to make it easier to deal with. It’s not supposed to be easy. It’s supposed to suck.