Making progress is easy, actually
Keep your word. Act with integrity. Give more than you ask. Never steal, cheat, or lie. Do not ever dismiss anyone. What you reap will come back to you, but tenfold. II. If you want to be an outlier, by definition, you’ll have to be different from the crowd. III. You can avoid your problems, but you can’t escape the consequences of avoiding your problems. I. A beautiful reframe: II. This is so real: Imagine you’re tasked with building a machine that can teach a monkey to recite Shakespeare while standing on a pedestal. There are two obvious parts to this challenge: Building the pedestal. Teaching the monkey to recite Shakespeare. Most people would start by building the pedestal. It feels productive. You can measure progress. You can show it off. But it’s also irrelevant. The hard part—the part that will actually determine success—is teaching the monkey to speak. If you can’t solve that problem, the pedestal doesn’t matter. It’s a distraction disguised as progress. Yet people naturally
Making progress is easy, actually Home Posts Making progress is easy, actually Making progress is easy, actually The Monkey & The Pedastal Jay Yang May 25, 2025 3 Thoughts I. The world is much smaller than you might think. Keep your word. Act with integrity. Give more than you ask. Never steal, cheat, or lie. Do not ever dismiss anyone. What you reap will come back to you, but tenfold. II. If you want to be an outlier, by definition, you’ll have to be different from the crowd. III. You can avoid your problems, but you can’t escape the consequences of avoiding your problems. 2 Quotes I. A beaut
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