TSS #031 - December 17th, 2023
perfidious pricing, upsetting social norms, and running toward roars
Good evening y’all,
Greetings from Waycross, GA—week 3 of the Funga tour.
I return home to Austin next Friday. I am very excited—gym, guitars…my own bed.
I was recently asked by a friend if travel, specifically work travel, is over or under-rated.
This season’s work travel has been great, but it has also been draining. My answer was “fairly rated.” More on this another time.
Until then, I hope you enjoy tonight’s Study!
on tipping (and perfidious pricing)
rish recently shared this piece by
. This led me down the rabbit hole, and I found these two gems.on the happiness and joy…of upsetting social norms
Oh, Derek Sivers. I love and admire his writing a lot. Here are two great pieces that I enjoyed (again) this weekend.
on running toward roars
"In Africa, lions hunt in packs. And when they go out to hunt, they take with them the oldest female of the pride. By this point, she’s old and [infirm] and toothless, can no longer catch her own prey, a little bit like me. But she has the deepest roar. And what the lionesses do—and it’s the lionesses who do the hunting—the lionesses position this old lion in the middle of a field facing the bush. The bush could be a mile away. And the prey are between the old lion and the bush, and all the lionesses hide in the bush. And when this old lady roars, the prey run away from the roar to their death. And so the concept is “go at the problem.” Go at what you perceive to be the problem. And what you’ll invariably find is [that] it’s a toothless old lady."
— Paul Assaiante, The Knowledge Project #183
(h/t Shane Parrish!)
passage i’ve been pondering
“My takeaway from this is that, as someone famous once said, there’s beauty in imperfection. I’d like to remember this more often, especially when I let the desire for a “high quality” product inch into the territory of perfectionism, which turns into procrastination, which turns into a recipe for angst and burnout when it happens too often.”
— Ali Abdaal, his latest newsletter
subsequent quote on courage
“Without courage we cannot practice any other virtue with consistency. We can’t be kind, true, merciful, generous, or honest.”
— Maya Angelou
As always, if you’ve made it this far, thank you.
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ML,
Dancin Tony in Jordan 2023