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The secret to unlimited ideas
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There is one thing you need to do to have unlimited ideas. Simple. Easy. But it requires discipline and open mind. Observe. That’s it. Look, Jane Goodall was a lady with no formal education. She just loved animals. In 1960, she went with Louis Leakey, an anthropologist to Tanzania, to give him a hand. They studied chimpanzees’ behaviour. Not much equipment, no laboratory, no guidance. Just a notebook and a pair of binoculars. For a long time, she couldn’t get close to them, but her perseverance paid off. Slowly, she noticed details no one had documented. She observed behaviours that shattered long-standing beliefs, such as chimpanzees using tools, previously thought to be an exclusively human trait. Patience and the power of observation simply revolutionized wildlife research and our understanding and views of our closest relatives in the animal kingdom. Just by looking. Just by observing with the intention to learn. This is why I love to be surrounded by successful people making business. I take my popcorns and enjoy. I observe. I learn. Then, I even try the things that I learned. You can save years by doing that yourself. Observing with the intention to learn. Observing people’s behaviours, observing trends, observing investors, observing businesspeople. With open mind, without judging. Just observing. Then, geeks like me put those things into practice… If you want to observe something this weekend, you can take a look to what I’ve been doing in terms of Real Estate investing in this book. Real numbers, no bullsh*t. You can buy it below.
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Vicente Valencia
Weekly insights on how to perform when it matters | High-stakes decisions. Real situations. No BS. | 👇JOIN +2k readers 👇
Close to Pointe-Claire. Montreal, Canada. Circa 2011. A pen flies across the meeting room. Not metaphorically. A real pen. From the other side of the table. The guy receiving the missile activates his very sophisticated kung fu reflexes and leans to one side. Impact avoided. Silence. Everyone in the room freezes. Then he says: “Don’t get angry. If we don’t solve this now, things are going to get pretty bad for all of us. And in the blame game, nobody wins.” The meeting goes on. No more flying...
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Scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics did one of those experiments that sounds stupid… Not because you probably pay them with your taxes… But because you realise it explains half of the disasters in business. They took people to a forest. Then they gave them a simple instruction: “Walk in a straight line.” That’s it. No MBA. No strategy deck. No 147-page governance framework. Just walk straight. C’mon you can do it! Several participants were convinced they had done...