#72: make your soul grow
👋 Welcome to the 72nd issue of Out of Curiosity, a weekly newsletter promoting ideas to help get 1% better everyday.
My name is Reza, and every week, I go through nearly 100 pieces of content (from books and podcasts to newsletters and tweets), and bring you the best in this newsletter.
In this issue:
📚 High Output Management
🌱 Make your soul grow
🐌 Slow learning
👓 The secret of the best networker I ever met
📚 High Output Management
Focus on vital, measurable indicators of output. It becomes very difficult to distinguish between output and activity. Stressing output is the key to improving productivity, while looking to increase activity can result in just the opposite.
If you either enter the decision-making stage too early or wait too long, you won't derive the full benefit of open discussion. The criterion to follow is this: don't push for a decision prematurely.
The single most important task of a manager is to elicit peak performance from his subordinates. A manager has two ways to improve performance: training and motivation.
→ reza.so | 5-min read
🌱 Make your soul grow
In 2006, a high school english teacher asked students to write to a famous author & ask for advice. Kurt Vonnegut was the only one to respond.
Practice any art, music, singing, dancing, acting, drawing, painting, sculpting, poetry, fiction, essays, reportage, no matter how well or badly, not to get money and fame, but to experience becoming, to find out what's inside you, to make your soul grow.
Seriously! I mean starting right now, do art and do it for the rest of your lives. Draw a funny or nice picture of Ms. Lockwood, and give it to her. Dance home after school, and sing in the shower and on and on. Make a face in your mashed potatoes. Pretend you're Count Dracula.
→ Boing Boing | 3-min read
🐌 Slow learning
You have a right to…
Focus on direction, not destination
Immerse yourself completely in the journey and you will reach your final goal gradually.
Learn at your own pace
Find your rhythm, find your flow. Don’t compare yourself to others.
UnplugYou have the right to disconnect and move your attention towards what’s essential. Learn unplugged, far away from digital distractions.
Leave it unfinishedWe live in a super busy, multi-tasking, results-oriented society. Step away from your long to-do list and enjoy once in a while the beauty of an unstructured day.
→ Idler | 5-min read
👓 The secret of the best networker I ever met
This requires a tremendous amount of empathy — you have to genuinely love helping other people.
It requires patience, and a willingness to avoid a transactional mentality. After every conversation, this person updates their notes and scans the notes of every other person on the spreadsheet, looking for ways to make meaningful connections. It’s the only way to be sure they can consistently help at scale.
→ Sean Johnson | 5-min read
✨ One last thing…
Do not let one more day go by without honoring the vocation your soul calls you to pursue.
And don't pretend you don't know what it is. Of course you do. You can feel it in your stomach whenever you think about it; whenever you see another person doing it.
Life is so very short.
Do now what you yearn to do in your life. You do not have to "quit your day job" in order to do this. You may do so if you choose to, but you do not have to. Many people advance a vocation while holding down their "regular job." You can, too. Then ease into your vocation and turn it into your "regular job."
But you must give energy to your vocation starting today. I mean, today.👋 Until next week,
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