" Imagine immensities, don’t compromise, and don’t waste time."
While reading Oliver Burkeman’s book ‘The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can’t Stand Positive Thinking,’ I couldn’t help but draw a parallel in the mindsets of successful entrepreneurs and today’s buyers in Toronto. The desire to move has the power to unseat us from business as usual, to upset the status quo — it carries with it a wisdom and a knowing that we have a choice. Considering what it might mean to lean into uncertainty and embrace it, Burkeman cites the work of psychologist Saras Sarasvathy, who studied the essential qualities that successful entrepreneurs share.
Burkeman writes: The most valuable skill of a successful entrepreneur (or toronto property buyer, I would say) “isn’t vision, desire or a steadfast insistence on destroying every barrier between yourself and some prize you’re obsessed with. Rather, it’s the ability to adopt an unconventional approach to learning: an improvisational flexibility not merely about which route to take towards some predetermined objective, but also a willingness to change the destination itself. This is a flexibility that might be squelched by rigid focus on any one goal.”
Just like the cook who scours the fridge for leftover ingredients, the foundation of your search is the “bird in hand” principle: “Start with your means. Don’t wait for the perfect opportunity. Start taking action, based on what you have readily available: what you are, what you know and who you know.”
A second is the “principle of affordable loss”: Don’t be guided by thoughts of how wonderful the rewards might be if you were spectacularly successful at any given next step. Instead, ask how big the loss would be if you failed. So long as it would be tolerable, that’s all you need to know. Take that next step, and see what happens.
From Fail Safe: Debbie Millman’s Advice on Courage and the Creative Life
The surprising psychology of how sticking to plans actually hinders success and happiness