When asked about his silence during meetings, Rockefeller often recited a poem: A wise old owl lived in an oak, The more he saw the less he spoke, Th… - Morgan Housel

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When asked about his silence during meetings, Rockefeller often recited a poem: A wise old owl lived in an oak,
The more he saw the less he spoke,
The less he spoke, the more he heard,
Why aren’t we all like that wise old bird? Rockefeller was a strange guy. But he figured out something that now applies to tens of millions of workers. Rockefeller’s job wasn’t to drill wells, load trains, or move barrels. It was to think and make good decisions. Rockefeller’s product — his deliverable — wasn’t what he did with his hands, or even his words. It was what he figured out inside his head. So that’s where

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Additional quotes by Morgan Housel

So rather than assuming long-term thinkers don’t have to deal with short-term nonsense, ask the question, “How can I endure a never-ending parade of nonsense?” Long-term thinking can be a deceptive safety blanket that people assume lets them bypass the painful and unpredictable short run. But it never does. It might be the opposite: The longer your time horizon, the more calamities and disasters you’ll experience. Baseball player Dan Quisenberry once said, “The future is much like the present, only longer.” Dealing with that reality requires a certain kind of alignment that’s easy to overlook.

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