When to trust your intuition

Human intuition fails us in areas like statistics, probability theory, and comprehending exponential growth.  Multiple studies – including Nobel-prize winning studies – confirm how poor our intuition is in these areas.  But our intuition serves us very well when it comes to detecting danger.

This makes sense, considering it wasn’t always practical or predictive of success to grasp complex math so we could invest and compound the interest over many years.  But it has always been essential for life to recognize danger, even in ways we don’t consciously understand (microexpressions, eye gaze, body language, etc.).

The moral, and the invitation to improve critical thinking skills, is to drop your ego and your story about how you might be viewed, and obey visceral signals of danger.  When it comes to predicting possible futures, rely on data and not your “rational” intuitions.

What retirement really is

Many cultures value working hard for many years so we can enjoy the payoff when we’re done working.  But there are alternative ways to define work and retirement.

For me, “work” is an investment of energy that comes in multiple forms.  Investing time on income-generating activities or even leisure, serving others, creative endeavors, or human connection. I don’t intend to abandon working on these things the moment I stop trading my time for money.

I view retiring as what happens when you cease sacrificing today for an imaginary, possible future. We don’t know how long we have, but that’s not an excuse to empty your bank account. It’s an inspiration to “retire” a bit each day.

Not for everyone

There are very few category leaders like Google and Amazon. Some of the best business ideas focus on serving far fewer people MUCH better, instead of serving more people in a crowded market – or worse: “everyone”.

As Zig Ziglar put it, better to be a meaningful specific than a wandering generality.  There may only be 20,000 people in the world passionate about some bizarre niche, but a business that targets them is more likely to serve all 20,000.

This applies outside of a business context as well.  We can be truly genuine, and seek to serve humanity in our unique way.  Our authentic selves, however, will always end up being “not for everyone”.  And that’s okay. Embrace it.