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Embrace constraints “I don’t have enough time/money/people/experience.” Stop whining. Less is a good thing. Constraints are advantages in disguise. Limited resources force you to make do with what you’ve got. There’s no room for waste. And that forces you to be creative.
Rework
Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson
The internal debate about confidence calls to mind a well-known concept from the radio pioneer Ira Glass, which could be called the Taste/Talent Gap. All of us who do creative work . . . we get into it because we have good taste. But it’s like there’s a gap, that for the first couple years that you’re making stuff, what you’re making isn’t so good . . . It’s really not that great. It’s trying to be good, it has ambition to be good, but it’s not quite that good. But your taste—the thing that got you into the game—your taste is still killer, and your taste is good enough that you can tell that what you’re making is kind of a disappointment to you. It is in precisely this gap that ego can seem comforting. Who wants to look at themselves and their work and find that it does not measure up? And so here we might bluster our way through. Cover up hard truths with sheer force of personality and drive and passion. Or, we can face our shortcomings honestly and put the time in. We can let this humble us, see clearly where we are talented and where we need to improve, and then put in the work to bridge that gap. And we can set upon positive habits that will last a lifetime.
Ego Is the Enemy
Ryan Holiday
Acheson had arrived in time for as tumultuous a tour as any secretary of state ever endured, perhaps the single most difficult four-year stretch in the country’s history in terms of its foreign policy. Even as he was taking office, Chiang’s government was collapsing on the mainland, and the Generalissimo himself was fleeing to Taiwan. (Acheson was sworn in on the very day that Chiang left China for his new island home. “We passed, I coming in, Chiang going out,” Acheson later noted with mordant humor.) Things got even worse that fall. Within the space of a few weeks the Soviets tested their first atomic weapon and the Chinese Communists took power in Beijing, announcing the creation of their new government, anathema to a vast segment of the American populace. Both of these events not only signaled a changing global security balance but sent psychological shock waves through the American political system. The United States was no longer the only member of the atomic club, and at virtually the same time, China, a beloved country to millions of Americans because of the missionary outreach programs there, the country that was supposed to be our great ally in Asia, had gone Communist.
The Coldest Winter
David Halberstam
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