Johanna's readinglist.

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[johannatheresia]

Too many ideas are lost along the way to greatness. I feel that now that we all have smartphones, very few people carry around pen and paper. I’ve also found that writing notes on your phone doesn’t always do the trick. If you have no issue saving notes on your phone, great, but if you are more likely to actually write down ideas on a pad then get yourself a pad.

Ideas are a horrible thing to waste, so when you get one, write it down. You may think you will remember it, but you are guaranteed not to. You have ideas every second of every day. Good luck trying to keep track of all of them. Read it here.

[johannatheresia]

1) Stay wildly ambitious.  The current world is bubbling with opportunity for an ambitious person to find flowery, fulfilling success.  The specific direction may be unclear, but it’ll work itself out—just dive in somewhere.

2) Stop thinking that you’re special.  The fact is, right now, you’re not special.  You’re another completely inexperienced young person who doesn’t have all that much to offer yet.  You can become special by working really hard for a long time.

3) Ignore everyone else. Other people’s grass seeming greener is no new concept, but in today’s image crafting world, other people’s grass looks like a glorious meadow. The truth is that everyone else is just as indecisive, self-doubting, and frustrated as you are, and if you just do your thing, you’ll never have any reason to envy others. Read it here.

[johannatheresia]

Emphasize what you’re good at, but don’t waste time trying to correct weaknesses. If you’re stuck on something, take five seconds to ask a neighbour or phone up a friend who may know the answer. Start leveraging your network, and it could save you hours of stress and time. Read it here.

[johannatheresia]

Emotional intelligence trumps every other kind. Develop your interpersonal skills if you want to succeed in the workplace. Even people in the most technical professions have their careers torpedoed if they lack emotional intelligence. Read it here.

[johannatheresia]

We are generally inclined to pass judgment before we have a clear understanding of what or whom we are judging. When we meet new people, we judge them the second we meet them. We often judge food by its look or smell, before even tasting it. We judge everything we come in contact with regularly and we tend to do so in the first minute.

We do the same to our ideas. When an idea flashes, we automatically label it. It’s either good, bad, silly, dumb, ridiculous, great, etc. No matter how complex the idea, we judge it almost immediately. We will often label an idea as bad before fully considering all the possibilities that may result because of the idea. Some of the best ideas often seem bad at first glance. Read it here.

[johannatheresia]

In the modern world you are getting 25 hours of to-do’s thrown at you every 24 hours. Thinking that if you spend enough time you will “get everything done” is an illusion. You will never be “done.” The happiest people are not people who don’t have a care in the world. Those people are bored. Research shows the happiest people are busy — but don’t feel rushed. So you have to draw a line. You must decide what is important and what isn’t.  Read it here.

[johannatheresia]

People have said for centuries that you can build character by making yourself do things you don’t want to do, that by exerting self-discipline you can make yourself into a stronger person. That does appear to be correct. Read it here.

[johannatheresia]

„…if you love, every day, having the same coffee, don’t have it for a few days. Once you have it again, it’s going to be way more amazing than all of the ones that you would have had in the meantime… It’s not “give it up forever.” It’s “give it up for short periods of time, and I promise you you’re going to love it even more when you come back to it.” Read it here.

[johannatheresia]

At spare moments in the day, make it a point to contemplate the loss of whatever you value in life. It can make you realize, if only for a time, how lucky you are — how much you have to be thankful for, almost regardless of your circumstances… Read it here.

[johannatheresia]

Though you can accomplish more in life if you put your faith in others, doing so also leaves you vulnerable. This risk is the drawback of trust, and it leads many people to prefer self-reliance, an arrangement that seems more secure because the only person you have to count on is yourself. But can you really trust yourself more than others? Recent findings suggest that the answer is no. Read it here.

[johannatheresia]

The difference between successful people and very successful people is that very successful people say “no” to almost everything. And that’s what gives them the time to accomplish so much. Those at the top of their field work obsessively and relentlessly. Trying to do too many things is the path to mediocrity. Read it here.

[johannatheresia]

“Yes” creates opportunity. Saying yes a lot makes more things happen. First off, I’m not telling you to say yes to armed robbery or heroin. And what about regrets? Yes, we all occasionally say yes to dumb things and later regret them. But what do you learn when you look at the things most people regret before they die? For the most part the old saw is true: we regret the things we didn’t do more than the things we did. Read it here.

[johannatheresia]

The ceramics teacher announced on opening day that he was dividing the class into two groups. All those on the left side of the studio, he said, would be graded solely on the quantity of work they produced, all those on the right solely on its quality. His procedure was simple: on the final day of class he would bring in his bathroom scales and weigh the work of the "quantity" group: fifty pound of pots rated an "A", forty pounds a "B", and so on. Those being graded on "quality", however, needed to produce only one pot - albeit a perfect one - to get an "A".

Well, came grading time and a curious fact emerged: the works of highest quality were all produced by the group being graded for quantity. It seems that while the "quantity" group was busily churning out piles of work - and learning from their mistakes - the "quality" group had sat theorizing about perfection, and in the end had little more to show for their efforts than grandiose theories and a pile of dead clay. Buy the book here.

[johannatheresia]

What’s a scientifically validated way to get smarter, happier, healthier and calmer? Stop reading this right now and go for a walk. It’s that simple. Read it here.

[johannatheresia]

"But what if I fail?" You will. The answer to the what if question is, you will. A better question might be, "after I fail, what then?" Well, if you've chosen well, after you fail you will be one step closer to succeeding, you will be wiser and stronger and you almost certainly will be more respected by all of those that are afraid to try. Read it here.

[johannatheresia]

It's not enough to sit with a prospect and ask him what he wants. Once we know what we want, search finds it for us. No, we have to offer a menu, we have to curate choices, we have to dream for people who don't have the guts or time to dream for themselves.

This is frightening, because when you offer a menu, often people will get hung up on their status quo and just say "no." You can't get rejected when all you offer is an index, but getting your menu rejected is one of the symptoms that you're doing the hard work of making an impact. Read it here.

[johannatheresia]

You don’t even really need to be all that good to be a true creative: an author, or writer, or inventor, or whatever. All you need is to be willing to show up, make mistakes, find what works for you and what doesn’t, then get it out there into the world. Read it here.