Book Byte #148 "Clear Thinking" by Shane Parrish

Turning Ordinary Moments into Extraordinary Results

📣 Curious Quote from the Author

“Results are a function of position. You don’t need to be smarter than others to outperform them if you can out-position them. Anyone looks like a genius when they’re in a good position, and even the smartest person looks like an idiot when they’re in a bad one.”

“What happens in ordinary moments determines your future.”

“Reacting without reasoning makes every situation worse. Whether big or small, these unforced errors consume significant time and energy just to get you back to where you were before.”

“Our desire to feel right overpowers our desire to be right.”

“Most people go through life assuming that we’re right about everything all the time and that people who don’t see things our way are wrong. We mistake how we want the world to be with how it actually is. The subject doesn’t matter: we’re right about politics, other people, our memories; you name it. We mistake what we believe for the true facts.

Of course, we can’t be right about everything all the time. Everyone makes mistakes or misremembers some things. But we still want to feel right all the time, and ideally get other people to reinforce that feeling. Hence, we channel inordinate amounts of energy to proving to others—or ourselves—that we’re right. When this happens, we’re less concerned with outcomes and more concerned with protecting our egos.”

“One reason the best in the world make consistently good decisions is they rarely find themselves forced into a decision by circumstances”

“Working with a master firsthand is the best education; it’s the surest way of raising the bar. Their excellence demands your excellence. But most of us aren’t lucky enough to have that opportunity. Still, not all is lost. If you don’t have the chance to work with a master directly, you can still surround yourself with people who have higher standards by reading about them and their work.”

📚 Cognition of the Book’s Big Idea:

By practicing mindfulness, you can learn to recognize and avoid falling into the traps of emotion, ego, conformity, and inertia. Increasing your self-awareness, self-control, and self-assurance improves your capacity for thinking. Customized strategies can address any residual issues.

Making wise decisions requires problem definition, creative problem-solving, careful evaluation, and learning. You can define and influence the future you want by living deliberately and intentionally when you tie all of these behaviors to your purpose and beliefs.

“Children develop self-confidence when they learn simple skills like pulling up a zipper, tying their shoes, or riding a bike. Eventually, that self-confidence evolves and propels them to develop more complex abilities as adults—for instance, writing software, painting murals, or cheering up a disheartened friend.”

“Our default behavior often makes things worse.”

“Rationality is wasted if you don’t know when to use it.”

🛠️Fixing the Tech Industry

Self-confidence is hard to hold for long periods of time. There will undoubtedly be problems that you will face that will destroy your self-confidence.

But if you can gauge where your self-confidence does come from, that would be acting on your strengths, and anyone who is able to do that will most likely succeed in their endeavors.

🤝Collaborate with others with this Social Media Prompt:

What can you do think clearer about the decisions you need to make?

---

My Software Stack: I use Skool for my Online Community Platform and ClickFunnels for my Landing Pages, Payments, and Email Sequencing. I use Substack for my Newsletter and Taskade for AI Note Taking/Second Brain/Project Management. I use my Personal Amazon Store for Tech and Book Recommendations.

Try out the "Think and Grow Rich Challenge" by Russell Brunson and Learn more about the First Self Help Author Napoleon Hill

---