Competence over credentials. - James Clear

“Do not mistake a confident explanation for an accurate prediction.

An engineer can predict how much weight a steel bridge will hold and you can be quite sure reality will match their calculation. That's an accurate prediction.

Meanwhile, strongly held opinions about what will happen in markets or sports or politics have little predictive power. A lot of what you hear can be summarized as: confident, but inaccurate.”

(Inspired by a recent conversation with Morgan Housel.)

A brief guide to leadership:

• Always know the answer to, "What are we optimizing for?"
• Recruit. Recruit. Recruit.
• Never ask someone to do something you aren't willing to do yourself.
• Give away the credit. Take the blame.

One solution is to avoid making any single aspect of your identity an overwhelming portion of who you are. In the words of investor Paul Graham, “keep your identity small.” The more you let a single belief define you, the less capable you are of adapting when life challenges you. If you tie everything up in being the point guard or the partner at the firm or whatever else, then the loss of that facet of your life will wreck you. If you’re a vegan and then develop a health condition that forces you to change your diet, you’ll have an identity crisis on your hands. When you cling too tightly to one identity, you become brittle. Lose that one thing and you lose yourself.