#27: less perfect
What's on my mind
It's one thing to stay committed to the quality of your output in everything you do.
To ensure it matches your definition of perfect.
It's another thing to keep shipping anyway.
To show up, and get the reps in.
Without skipping a round, regardless of how close to perfect it is.
To get to great, you must first meet average.
👋 Welcome to the 27th volume of Out of Curiosity, a weekly newsletter promoting ideas to help get 1% better everyday.
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:
📚 As a Man Thinketh (by James Allen)
🤔 Embracing being average
💭 The secrets of life in the words of Steve Jobs
👋 Fabrizio Rinaldi
📚 As a Man Thinketh (by James Allen)
Notes on vision setting, being vs. wanting, and aligning the internal with external:
He who cherishes a beautiful vision, a lofty ideal in his heart, will one day realize it.
Men do not attract that which they want, but that which they are.
A man is not rightly conditioned until he is a happy, healthy, and prosperous being; and happiness, health, and prosperity are the result of a harmonious adjustment of the inner with the outer, of the man with his surroundings.
🤔 Embracing being average
Are we better off embracing being ordinary rather than seeking perfection?
To put it another way, choosing {average and happy} over {successful and miserable}.
The pursuit of perfection, because of its unattainable nature, ends up being more destructive than it's worth.
I’m trying to become more comfortable with saying it doesn’t have to be 100 per cent all the time. I’ve had to unlearn a lot of traits.
Another upside to be being okay with being average: it opens up a wide array of interests to experiment with. You no longer need to labour over just one to excel at.
💭 The secrets of life in the words of Steve Jobs
It wasn't the first time I came across these words, but they're so on point, fundamental and worthy of being reminded of every day. The illustrations by Aaron made it even better!
The thing I would say is…When you grow up, you tend to get told that the world is the way it is, and your life is just to live your life inside of the world, try not to bash into walls too much, try to have a nice family life, have fun, save a little money… um but life, that’s a very limited life.
Life can be much broader. Once you discover one simple fact, and that is everything around you that you called life was made up by people that were no smarter than you.
You can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use. And, the minute you understand that you can poke life, and actually something would, you know if you push in and something would pop out the other side.
You can change it, you can mold it. That’s maybe the most important thing- is to shake off this erroneous notion that your life is just there and you are just gonna live in it… versus embrace it, change it, improve it and make your mark upon it. I think that’s very important, and however you learn that, once you learn it, you would want to change to make it better. Because it’s kinda messed up in a lot of ways. Once you learn that you will never be the same again.
📚 A line from a book that stuck with you
There are no gods in the universe, no nations, no money, no human rights, no laws and no justice outside the common imagination of human beings.
Sapiens (by Yuval Noah Harari)
📰 A newsletter you look forward to
🐦 A Twitter account to follow
🎧 A song you'd listen to all day on repeat
🤔 A question that's been on your mind lately
What should I do differently?
We take so many things for granted, and the older I get, the more I realize that most of my choices are born out of habit and automatism.
So I often ask myself what are the things I do that I should challenge, re-think, question.
👋 Follow Fabrizio
Final Thought
I came across this ever-growing list of crowdsourced icebreakers from the Art of Noticing newsletter. One of my favourites were:
If you did not have to sleep, how would you spend the extra 8 hours?
In another news, if you're following along on my weekly conversations with Nate, you can find the last one here 👉 #6: Solitude, showing up, and personal finances.
Have a great end to your week,
Reza 🍋