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Quote by Anubhav Srivastava

“Motivational Gurus often ask people their 5-year goals, 10-year goals or even 20-year goals. Those who can’t answer that are considered aimless. We are given the illusion that we can plan out our entire life with extreme precision. You couldn’t be more wrong. Life is not a game of chess where you can plan all your moves ahead or have a backup move for everything. There are countless forces influencing what happens to you.”

Quote by Anubhav Srivastava

Book:UnLearn: A Practical Guide to Business and Life
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UnLearn: A Practical Guide to Business and Life

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Anubhav Srivastava

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“You may set out with the goal of becoming a billionaire or a Nobel Prize winning Scientist or Author within the next 20 years. But most of the times, life will throw a curve ball at you that may displace all your plans. Your business ventures that you thought would work out exceedingly well and become your stepping stone to becoming a billionaire may become a super flop and leave you with a huge debt instead. The miraculous scientific discoveries you intend to make to win the Nobel Prize may never come across your way. You may make discoveries that are not that important or someone else who is much better funded may beat you to it. You may experience a personal tragedy which leaves you extremely disadvantaged. You may experience unexpected immediate responsibilities that may throw you off course of your goal. For example, a serious medical condition or the death of a family member. The world may not reward your actions the way you expected. What happens to your twenty-year goal? Nothing, it goes down the drain.”

BusinessGoal SettingContrarian
Book:UnLearn: A Practical Guide to Business and Life
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“Why Long Term Goal Setting is Largely Pointless. Desires change, motivations change. What you wanted the most in high school is probably not what you wanted the most 10 years after that. In high school, being popular with the opposite sex and trying to look cool was probably the number one priority. After ten years, the number one priority is to probably get a good job or have a stable income. And if you have that, to find the right relationship for life. Twenty years after high school, it is probably to see your Kids do well in school and so on. Having a dream that you desire with the same extreme intensity as you desired it when you were 16 is possible but uncommon. Most of the times, you will realize that you probably don’t desire it after twenty or if you do, you probably don’t care AS much as you used to. How can a fire keep on raging once the fuel is burnt up? How can anything be accomplished if the burning desire to achieve it is no longer there after a long stretch of time? And there is nothing wrong with wanting something else after twenty years. That’s human nature. You don’t have to keep slogging on for something that you don’t care about. The point is this is why super long term individualistic goals can sometimes get vague and pointless because you may realize midway that you don’t even care about them anymore.”

BusinessGoal SettingContrarian
Book:UnLearn: A Practical Guide to Business and Life
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“Goal Setting is propagated by modern society as some kind of panacea or solution for overcoming any life obstacle. The problem is most of the popular advice that modern society gives you is either wrong or consists of half-truths at best. I reiterate, that as individuals, it is better NOT to set Goals that obsessively focus on the RESULTS you are going to achieve, especially in areas where the outcome is inherently unpredictable and out of your control. Those goals will only stress you out and do more harm than good in the long run.”

Goal SettingContrarian
Book:UnLearn: A Practical Guide to Business and Life
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“If a group or an organization can work like a machine with access to plenty of resources and has no bias towards negative emotions, goal setting can STILL be useful. As individuals though, our lives are highly unpredictable and we have a huge tendency towards being overly emotional about the result. The wrong result can put you into a deep depression, and the rare, “right result” inflate your ego far more than it is good for you, and eventually mess up your life anyway. Let me explain even further. A machine or a crane can work for far more hours, with far more power at a far more efficient pace than any human without getting tired, getting hungry, getting restless or feeling frustrated. Can a human do it? NO! Because we are built differently! The same kind of outcome driven goal setting that may work for organizations is usually a terrible idea for individuals. Here is what you should remember - If you are setting goals, especially goals where the results depend greatly on factors outside your control, the only ones you should set are the ones that focus on the ACTIONS you will take.”

Goal SettingContrarian
Book:UnLearn: A Practical Guide to Business and Life
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“Life often tricks you into believing that you can only be happy when you accomplish something. The problem is accomplishing some goals is not totally under your control and even if you accomplish them, sometimes they may not give you the happiness you think you will get. For example, you may achieve what you were looking for, but in the obsession for finding happiness in the future, you may very well ruin everything good that you have today including health, relationships and peace of mind. How can you anyway enjoy any of your "success" without those three things? So, stop believing that happiness lies at the end of the tunnel. Instead try to cultivate happiness in the process, regardless of the result. This way, whether you succeed or fail, everything will still be worth it. Here's a hard truth. Almost no one really cares about you, so make sure you start caring for yourself!”

Goal SettingContrarian
Book:UnLearn: A Practical Guide to Business and Life
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“Sometimes the solution we were looking for is right next to us and it is far simpler than we thought. But we make it more complex than it really is. Sometimes, we are so focused on looking so far away for a solution, that we ignore the appropriate solution that is right in front of us. If you have a goal and you encounter obstacles or walls, You don’t need to break every wall that comes your way!! Sometimes you can just walk around the wall. Some people wanting to keep banging their head against the wall, not knowing there is a way around it. Or maybe there is a door in the wall or maybe there is a way to climb. Be persistent, but be informed. Keep pushing on towards your goal but adapt if things aren’t working and look for the simplest solution (By simple I don’t mean illegal). You can tackle complex problems but remember, not every complex problem requires a complex solution.”

PersistenceContrarian
Book:UnLearn: A Practical Guide to Business and Life
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“Meanwhile the ceaseless requirements of the entertainment industry also threaten to deprive us other forms of critical style and of the means of appreciating them. To be called 'satirical' or 'ironic,' is now to be patronized in a different way. The satirist is the fast-talking cynic, and the ironist merely sarcastic or self-conscious and wised up. When a precious and irreplacable word like 'irony' has become a lazy synonym for 'anomie,' there is scant room for originality.”

IronySatireSarcasmCynicismContrarianContrarianismHitchens
Book:Letters to a Young Contrarian
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“CopyCats are Conformists — both conventional and predictable. They follow traditions and typically do what’s expected of them. Creatives are Contrarians — they’re not rude by default; they just know all traditions were once original; so why not make new ones?”

ConventionalRudePredictableOriginalConformistFollowTraditionsCopycatsContrarianCreatives
Book:CopyCat: How to Escape Status Quo Thinking and Lead the Field
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