Pavlos's Thoughts

Your opinion on your kid is of no import. It matters to nobody. Your kid’s opinion of you is everything that matters.

If you prepare your kids to do well in the world, they’ll live in an ugly world. You have to prepare your kids, everyone’s kids, to take it over.

Kids are smart people who lack experience. They’re not simple-minded. If they ask you a question, they mean it. Answer it properly. If it’s complicated, describe the complexity of it. If they ask why, answer the correct causal question. Don’t invent myths as barriers to learning. Do provide myths… as myths.

When it comes to performance there are two personality types. We’ll call them achievement focused and risk focused. These two types of people approach success and failure in almost opposite ways and it’s good to realize this and know which type you are, as well as recognize these categories in the other stakeholders of your projects.

Risk focused people see success as a bar that they have to reach.

The best example of a risk focused professional is an airline pilot. The pilot has to get the plane and the passengers to the destination airport, safely. That’s a complete success. Nobody is going to thank the pilot for flying further, higher, faster, visiting a new city on the way, or doing acrobatics. Rather, the pilot has to look out for everything that can go wrong during the flight and avoid or recover from that situation. They’re risk focused in the sense that they are constantly looking at risk, or potential failure, and try to avoid it.

Other examples of risk focused people are accountants, business managers of stable organizations, project managers, film producers, civil engineers, security and military officers, criminals, surgeons, mountaineers, and unfortunately many parents.

Achievement focused people assume a baseline level of success and strive to maximize value from there.

The purest achievement focused person is an artist. Every artist, once competent, will succeed in applying paint to canvas, delivering a song, or remembering their lines. Artists are not concerned with reaching this baseline but with how far they can go from there. Is it new? Is it inspiring? Is the audience ecstatic? Can it be better? Can the work or the artist push new boundaries? Artists are always focused on achievement, and by definition this focus always has to be ahead of what they can at any time reach.

Other examples of achievement focused roles are entrepreneurs, other growth-oriented managers, scientists, product managers, film directors, architects, most doctors, misfits and agitators, athletes, and all kids.

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