Chris Williamson: The tether of doing everything at once

Modern Wisdom Podcast #365, 30. August 2021

Chris Williamson über die Benefits von „focussed work“

• „You can get done in six months of focussed work what would take three years of disparately focussed work.“

Über das Pareto-Prinzip auf Youtube

• „The Pareto distribution is a hell of a drug. It’s everywhere!“
• „If you want to be in the top five percent of anything, you get disproportionate returns to somebody who is in the top ten percent or the top twenty percent. Because it gets super competitive at the top, but the returns become exponential towards the top.“

Andere lassen sich auch ablenken!

• „This is something I’ve been saying for so long to myself, shouting it in my own ears but everyone else’s too, is like: Look, the vast majority of people cannot let go of the tether of doing everything at once. This means that consistency and a narrow focus is a competitive advantage. One of the reasons that you can really excel in your industry is because other people aren’t prepared to commit to this industry – because they have the same compulsion that you do as well. They have social engagements and a family and they want to spend money on a car but also on a house and they want to learn to be a good cook but they want to have six-pack abs and they want … pick whatever it is. Everybody else has this compulsion too.“
• Oliver Burkeman: „There’s real power in the willingness to invest the time in sticking to the one path and to go through that process of unoriginality to get to the originality on the other side.“