Clear Thinking - Shane Parrish

1. Emotions can multiply all your progress by zero.

2. Confidence doesn't make any bad outcomes any less likely or good outcomes more likely, it only blinds us to risk.

3. Self Accountability:

   1. Your honest judgements about yourself are more important than anyone elses. When you screw up, you should be strong enough to look yourself in the mirror and say "that was my fault. I need to do better".

   2. Shane was working on an important piece of software as part of the operation, which demanded long hours everyday and a very busy schedule. One day, his colleague mentioned that the code he was responsible for was due a few days ago. Shane responded by saying how busy he was and that it was out of his control. His colleague lashed out on him. Shane decided to spend the next few hours angrily writing up every task he did for the past few days to prove how busy he was. If only he spent those hours working on finishing the pending work instead!

4. How you speak to yourself can completely change your performance and confidence. You need to maintain a positive inner voice. During difficult moments, it's better to remind yourself of your past achievements, especially those harder than what you're going through right now.

5. The CEO of a large company was asked "If you could pick one trait that would predict how someone would turn out, what would it be?". He responded "how willing they are to change their mind about what they think they know". It's not important to look right in front of others. You should value being right. Shift your focus away from proving yourself.

6. Margin of Safety: All engineers building bridges keep capacity for more than what's required. Who knows, there might be a lot of traffic one day which could overwhelm the structure. In a similar fashion, we should always keep a margin of safety in our decisions.

7. Live with your decision before announcing it. Most of us like to announce things the moment it's happened. But sometimes it's like an email we regret sending, but can't undo. For most major announcements to the public, take a few nights to sleep over them.