Only a few centuries ago, a mere second in cosmic time, we knew nothing of where or when we were. Oblivious to the rest of the cosmos, we inhabited a kind of prison, a tiny universe bounded by a nutshell.

How did we escape from the prison? It was the work of generations of searchers who took five simple rules to heart.

(1) Question authority. No idea is true just because someone says so, including me.

(2) Think for yourself. Question yourself. Don’t believe anything just because you want to. Believing something doesn’t make it so.

(3) Test ideas by the evidence gained from observation and experiment. If a favorite idea fails a well-designed test, it’s wrong. Get over it.

(4) Follow the evidence wherever it leads. If you have no evidence, reserve judgment.

And perhaps the most important rule of all…

(5) Remember: you could be wrong. Even the best scientists have been wrong about some things. Newton, Einstein, and every other great scientist in history — they all made mistakes. Of course they did. They were human.

Science is a way to keep from fooling ourselves, and each other.

A quote from the final episode of Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey which was very humbling and inspirational.

It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.

This is how I feel lately when it comes to people I’m working with. Trying to convince them things aren’t the way they think it is and they have to prepare to be more agile / flexible, so they can adapt to the ever changing situation that is life, work, etc. Instead of trying to think of every possible outcome and making a plan for it. Above quote reflects it nicely.

The world will never be stable again, but in the new normal you will see more and more volatility. You can’t bank on certainties, you have to be an expert on managing uncertainties.

For his full talk on the new normal head over to YouTube.

Perhaps life is not about finding happiness, but about recognizing happiness, being thankful with what we have.

If you wanna hire great people and have them stay working for you, you have to let them make a lot of decisions and you have to be run by ideas not hierarchy. The best ideas have to win, otherwise good people don’t stay.

People are being persuaded,
to spend money we don’t have
on things we don’t need
to create impressions that won’t last
on people we don’t care about.

To avoid criticism,
say nothing,
do nothing,
be nothing…

Humans are the only species that follow incompetent leaders.