How to be more confident and not full of shit
How do you make a decision when you're not confident that it's the right one, or aren't confident that you'll be able to execute on the decision?
The first step is to realize that you'll rarely be 100% confident (and if you are that might be a red flag that you've overlooked something important) so you need some courage to take the leap. Because it's in the decisive moments that we must have the courage to act. Having courage does not mean you’re free of fear, but rather that you do the thing anyway.
Now courage and confidence don't just materialize out of thin air (well not for most of us at least). It's something you build by doing hard things and sticking to your commitments. You may be able to fake a confident appearance towards the outside world, but you can never fool yourself. Confidence is built by experience.
Yet confidence is ultimately about your self-talk, it's about the story you tell yourself about what you can and cannot do. What you say to yourself, consciously or otherwise, directly determines the level of confidence you feel about the thing you're about to do.
Your self-talk is a habit and you can change your habits by changing how you think about yourself in every moment. When you are overcome by self-doubt and negative emotions you can think about times in the past when you've overcome hard challenges and did things even though you were unsure if you'd be able to succeed. Everyone has, to some extent, done hard things, learned things they didn't know they'd be able to learn, achieved things they didn't think they'd be able to achieve. Use that to your advantage.
There's a process you can apply in order to move from a state of low confidence to a state of higher confidence, from a negative to a positive state of mind: You start by catching yourself in a negative state of mind (being mindful) and then you question whether what you are feeling or think is really true. By poking a hole in the negative thoughts you can then remind yourself of other times in which you've overcome similar obstacles, or have done hard things. You think about the times in which you really were confident. Then you show yourself that you can do the thing you're not sure about because you have done it before.
The key to overcoming negative emotions, in the moment, is to prepare yourself when you're feeling good by identifying the reasons why those feelings are true. Then you’ll be armed with real experiences and memories of why you are capable of overcoming challenges when you get into a negative state of mind or doubt yourself.
It's basically a confidence insurance. It's like saving money when things are going well so that you won't get ruined when disaster strikes.
Interesting things I've come across
Productivity Isn’t About Time Management. It’s About Attention Management.
Adam Grant argues that to be more productive we should try to manage our attention rather than our time. The idea is that it's our ability to direct our attention that determines how much important stuff we get done, rather than the amount of time we spend doing it. Although I agree with Adam that we really do need to manage our attention and that multitasking is a lie, I'd argue that good time management is still more fundamental to productivity. You can get stuff done even though your attention is scattered, but you can't invent more time than you have. Both Adam and I agree that productivity should be thought of as a way to achieve your goals, not an end in itself.
The Bus Ticket Theory of Genius by Paul Graham
There are people who collect old bus tickets. Like many collectors, they have an obsessive interest in the minutiae of what they collect. They can keep track of distinctions between different types of bus tickets that would be hard for the rest of us to remember. Because we don't care enough. What's the point of spending so much time thinking about old bus tickets?
When you look at the lives of people who've done great work, you see a consistent pattern. They often begin with a bus ticket collector's obsessive interest in something that would have seemed pointless to most of their contemporaries. One of the most striking features of Darwin's book about his voyage on the Beagle is the sheer depth of his interest in natural history. His curiosity seems infinite. Ditto for Ramanujan, sitting by the hour working out on his slate what happens to series.
The future of mind-machine interfaces
Lex Fridman discusses various amazing possibilities that could emerge as a result of the work Elon Musk is doing with Neuralink - basically putting a chip in your brain so you can interact with computers directly. It's not just about being able to play computer games without your hands but could be used to end pain as we know it and to make telepathy a reality. (Podcast version)
Lessons from thousands of startups
Michael Seibel is a Partner at Y Combinator - arguably the world's most well-known startup incubator/accelerator. He was the co-founder and CEO of Justin.tv, which eventually became Twitch.tv. In this episode, he shares his lessons from investing in thousands of startups, how he evaluates startup ideas and entrepreneurs, and what sets the best apart from the rest.
As always, stay safe out there.
/Phil