So much lunch

There's a great business quote that I, unfortunately, cannot remember the source of, but it's not from me. It goes something like this:

"We were always so worried that our competition was going to eat our lunch until we realized that there was so much lunch."

While competitive research certainly has a valuable place, instead of obsessing over every little detail of what our competition does, our time is often better spent obsessing over delivering an incredible product/service experience. When that is done successfully, we may find that our market is larger than we thought.

There will always be plenty of lunch for exceptional products and services.

Analysis paralysis and getting comfortable with ambiguity

What finally got me to start writing every day was becoming comfortable with ambiguity (not always knowing in advance what I would write about) and letting go of the idea of perfecting the writing (also known as analysis paralysis).

Don't overthink your creative work; get it out there.

Predictors of future success: passion, curiosity, and perseverance (grit)

Curiosity leads you to wonder, passion leads you to act, and grit keeps you curious and passionate long after the initial burst of interest or excitement.

What qualities are the greatest predictors of future success? According to Eric Schmidt, the former CEO of Google: “The combination of persistence and curiosity is a very good predictor of employee success in a knowledge economy.”

His thoughts pair nicely with now nearly 10-year-old talk. from Angela Lee Duckworth titled: Grit: The power of passion and perseverance. She studied kids and adults in a variety of challenging settings, and in every study, her question was, who is successful here and why? She described her findings this way: “In all those very different contexts, one characteristic emerged as a significant predictor of success. And it wasn't social intelligence. It wasn't good looks, physical health, and it wasn't IQ. It was grit.”

Interesting that one of the most successful commercial enterprises and an academic researcher came to a similar conclusion on what leads people to future success. Passion, curiosity, and perseverance (grit).