[#47] Happiness is the pursuit of excellence
Happiness is the pursuit of excellence, Handwriting shows who you are, Monitoring both processes and outcomes, Information changes systems
Today’s Insights
1. [Wisdom] Happiness is the pursuit of excellence
2. [Wisdom] Handwriting shows who you are
3. [Productivity] Both processes and outcomes should be monitored and evaluated
4. [Business] Information is what moves and changes systems
🐋 Happiness is the pursuit of excellence
1. In his book Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle defines what is a happy life.
2. Aristotle does not deny that pleasure is fun. Money, fame and food are great and contribute to our happiness.
3. But these things are not essential to a good life.
4. One might even suffer greatly and still live a virtuous life. When Aristotle speaks of a “happy” life, he means a fulfilled or flourishing life rather than a pleasurable one.
5. Such a virtuous life helps us find our place in the world. It is good simply because it suits our nature.
6. Everything we do should ultimately serve the best we can be: a human soul with a clear intellect and a noble character.
7. And for this, we need to pursue mesotes, that is a right mean between two extremes.
8. For example, courage is the right mean between cowardice and recklessness. And temperance is the right mean between gluttony and abstinence.
9. In conclusion, happiness is not just a feeling of pleasure. It is the pursuit of excellence.
- [Aristotle — How to live a good life], Ralph Ammer
🐋 Handwriting shows who you are
1. There's an academic discipline called graphology.
2. It's the study of deducing a person's personality from their handwriting.
3. It starts with the premise that handwriting reflects the inner world because when you write, your brain sends messages to the muscles of your hand and arm to create lines, curves, dots, etc.
4. Many great minds, including Confucius, Yi Huang, Aristotle, Einstein, Gustav Jung, Shakespeare, Goethe, and many others, believed that they can get to know a person through their handwriting.
5. It is said that handwriting of people with certain characteristics have something in common.
6. For example, the handwriting of people who have made a lot of money is said to have the following characteristics.
7. Some languages have an square shape in their alphabet. (For example, "ㅁ" in Korean.) In this case, the top right corner of the letter is rounded and the bottom right corner is closed.
8. These people are stubborn but flexible in their thinking at the same time.
9. Narrowly spaced letters. This is a characteristic of someone who has a strong belief in themselves. This is how Lee Byung-chul (the founder the Samsung Group), Henry Ford, and Rockefeller write.
10. Lengthen the horizontal and vertical lines of letters or put a sharp turn at the end. This is characteristic of people who are precise and persistent in their work.
- [필체를 바꾸면 인생이 바뀐다], a book of Dr. Bonjin Koo
🐋 Both processes and outcomes should be monitored and evaluated
1. An effective evaluation should include both 'leading indicators' and 'lagging indicators'.
2. “Lagging metrics” are the end results of your efforts, such as income, sales, commissions, weight loss, body fat percentage, or total cholesterol levels.
3. “Leading indicators” are the activities that create the end result. For example, in sales, a leading indicator is how many sales calls you've made.
4. You should monitor your leading indicators to track how well you're executing, and look at the results with your lagging indicators.
5. By evaluating the quality of your execution in this way, you'll get more immediate feedback and be able to improve in near real-time.
6. Being able to evaluate execution also allows you to pinpoint the reasons why you didn't meet your goals and take action.
7. Typically, individuals and organizations work hard to measure lagging metrics, but often neglect leading metrics. However, for comprehensive feedback and informed decisions, both leading and lagging metrics should be measured well.
- [The 12 Week Year], a book of Brian P. Moran & Michael Lennington
🐋 Information is what moves and changes systems
1. In the 1900s, food poisoning was a common occurrence, making it risky to travel to unfamiliar towns to eat.
2. Duncan Hines, a traveling salesman in the US, saw this problem often enough that he published a restaurant guide for travelers called Adventures in Good Eating.
3. The guide focused on recommending restaurants where travelers can safely enjoy a great meal while traveling.
4. Initially, we offered the guides as gifts to friends, but as demand grew, we started selling them.
5. Then restaurants started contacting him about getting listed. The idea was that being featured in the guide would bring in more customers, which in turn would boost sales.
6. Duncan offered restaurants the opportunity to be included in the guide if they pay a fee. He sends an inspector to conduct the restaurants and make a decision on inclusion. Restaurants that passed the due diligence were not only listed in the guide, but also given a sign to put by the door.
7. As this process spreads more widely, food safety has dramatically improved at restaurants across the country. What started as a fun project for Duncan has helped millions of people improve their health.
8. When information is shared differently, systems change.
- Sung's writing after reading [This Is Strategy: Make Better Plans], a book of Seth Godin
Folks are usually about as happy as they make their minds up to be.
- Abraham Lincoln, the 16th president of the United States