you've lost touch

If you can't talk freely with the most junior members of your organization, then you've lost touch. 

Jim Mattis

MATTIS, J. (2019). CALL SIGN CHAOS: Learning to lead. S.l.: RANDOM HOUSE. 51

our verbosity is a cover for insincerity or uncertainty

In that premortal council, when Jesus meekly volunteered, saying, “Here am I, send me,” it was one of those significant moments when a few words are preferred to many. Never has one individual offered, in so few words. To do so much for so many as did Jesus when he meekly proffered Himself as ransom for all of us, billions and billions of us!

By contrast, in our unnecessary multiplication of words, there is not only a lack of clarity but often an abundance of vanity. Sometimes, too, our verbosity is a cover for insincerity or uncertainty. If there could be more subtraction of self, there would be less multiplication of words.

Even As I Am by Neal A. Maxwell. 1982. Deseret Book Company.

reading is an honor

Reading is an honor and a gift from a warrior or historian who – a decade or a thousand decades ago – set aside time to write. He distilled a lifetime of campaigning in order to have a “conversation” with you. We have been fighting on this planet for ten thousand years; it would be idiotic and unethical not to take advantage of such accumulated experiences. If you haven’t read hundreds of books, you are functionally illiterate, and you will be incompetent, because your personal experiences alone aren’t broad enough to sustain you. Any commander who claims he is “too busy to read” is going to fill body bags with his troops as he learns the hard way. The consequences of incompetence in battle are final. History teaches that we face nothing new under the sun. 

Jim Mattis

MATTIS, J. (2019). CALL SIGN CHAOS: Learning to lead. S.l.: RANDOM HOUSE. 42

long, slow, tough work

I’ll tell you what leadership is. It’s persuasion and conciliation and education and patience. It’s long, slow, tough work. That’s the only kind of leadership I know.

 

Dwight G. Eisenhower

MATTIS, J. (2019). CALL SIGN CHAOS: Learning to lead. S.l.: RANDOM HOUSE. 19

too much to do

There will always be too much to do – and this realization is liberating. Today more than ever, there’s just no reason to assume any fit between the demands on your time – all the things you would like to do, or feel you ought to do – and the amount of time available. Thanks to capitalism, technology and human ambition, these demands keep increasing, while your capacities remain largely fixed. It follows that the attempt to “get on top of everything” is doomed. (Indeed, it’s worse than that – the more tasks you get done, the more you’ll generate.)

The upside is that you needn’t berate yourself for failing to do it all, since doing it all is structurally impossible. The only viable solution is to make a shift: from a life spent trying not to neglect anything, to one spent proactively and consciously choosing what to neglect, in favor of what matters most.

Oliver Burkeman

"Oliver Burkeman's last column: the eight secrets to a (fairly) fulfilled life" The Guardian. 9/4/2020