Weekly Wisdom #301 - A key part of getting what you want

Specific Asks, 4-Hour Workweek, Career Lessons & Visualizing Compounding

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Happy Monday!

I was thinking a lot about this Tim Ferriss quote this week:

"Life punishes the vague wish and rewards the specific ask."

The point, in the context that I was listening to it—a recent podcast of his—was that there's usually little downside to asking for what you want.

And the alternative—not asking—is near guaranteed not to get you what you want.

And once I started thinking about all the areas where this applies, it turns out, it was pretty much everywhere: at work, in my personal life, in relationships; a lot of us don't ask for specifically what we want.

Why is that?

The fear of getting a concrete answer.

It's easier to leave the idea of a promotion as a vague hope than to ask for it and get turned down.

It's easier to deal with your friend's annoying quirks than ask them to do something about it and risk a fight.

But, most of the time, it won't get you what you want.

Other people don't think about us as much as we imagine and they can't read our minds.

So if we want something, we have to ask for it.

Have a great week!

Graham

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Links

📚 Book Notes: The 4-Hour Workweek - Tim Ferriss - The 4-Hour Workweek is the book I credit with getting me into entrepreneurship in the first place. The ideas of passive income, living a flexible lifestyle, and eliminating the non-essential has been a consistent theme in my life.

Perhaps even more remarkable, the content of the book is more relevant now than ever before, with more and more tools available for making the aims of the book a reality.

This one has been a bestseller since publishing for a reason. Everyone can learn something from this book.

📖 37 Pieces of Career Advice I Wish I'd Known Earlier - Ryan Holiday - A great piece, as always, from Ryan Holiday.

Some of my favorite pieces of advice:

Focus on effort, not outcomes.

The way to get things done is to get close to those who are at the center of things.

Always say less than necessary.

Learning is priceless.

Tweet of the Week

I always love great visualizations, and there are a bunch of cool ones related to investing and compounding in this thread:

Compounding Quality-->

@QCompounding

15 timeless investing principles, visualized:

1. Not investing is risky:

8:32 AM • Feb 11, 2024

1595

Retweets

10250

Likes

Read 107 replies

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