The CEO of Spotify, The Emotion Involved in Money, & a Mindset for Life

Ah, another week of 2020 in the books. Nothing horrible happened this week, but we still have three more months left so, buckle up.

Enough rambling, on to The Bookshelf!

Learn from the Legends

Daniel Ek — CEO & Founder of Spotify

“If you dare, then you have already gotten further ahead than 99% of all the others.”

Books he gives the most as gifts:

• Black Box Thinking: The Surprising Truth About Success by Matthew Syed
• The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
• The Minefield Girl by Sofia Ek (His Wife)
• Poor Charlie’s Almanac by Charles T. Munger

One Habit That Has Improved Your Life

• Daniel always takes at least two of his meetings as “walk and talk” meetings. This helps him stay focused, creative, and has great health benefits.

Bad Advice He Hears in His Field

“Good things come to those who wait.” Ek says if he would have listened to that, Spotify would still be just an idea.

On Money

Morgan Housel’s Psychology of Money has taught me a lot about the crazy financial decisions people make based solely on emotion. Housel says,

“Few people make financial decisions purely with a spreadsheet. They make them at the dinner table, or in a company meeting. Places where personal history, your own unique view of the world, ego, pride, marketing, and odd incentives are scrambled together into a narrative that works for you.”

This explains why sometimes you can’t understand why someone would spend their money the way they choose to. Every single person is telling themselves a story about what they’re doing and why they’re doing it, and that story makes sense to them.

The boyfriend who buys the ring for his girlfriend he can’t afford, the college graduate who leases a car at an insanely high price, or the parent buying gifts for their child, even though they can’t pay the bills. All those decisions are based on emotion, wanting to impress someone, wanting to look succesful, or wanting to make someone else happy.

Okay, enough looking outward. What are you using to make financial decisions? Data? Or emotions? A spreadsheet, or feelings? (I use YNAB. It’s an incredible budgetting software.)

Morgan Housel’s

On Introverts

One of the most difficult things for me since COVID has been Zoom meetings. I think most of them are pointless, but I also don’t like speaking up in meetings to begin with and Zoom has made that much harder.

I came across this article titled “Quiet People in Meetings Are Incredible” and think everyone needs to read it over and over again. Here’s a quick quote:

“To shut up is to listen. To listen is to change your life.”

On Writing

Writing is not my natural skill, video editing is, but I love to write. It’s been really hard to find the balance between becoming great at video editing while still practicing my writing, but this thread encouraged me to keep at it.

Writing…

• Changes the way you speak because it forces you to work on sentence structure
• Changes your vocabulary because you have to find the right words to fit your ideas
• Forces you to tighten up your logic and make sense of ideas, instead of leaving them ambiguous.

On Mindset

One of the hardest things I’ve battled in my personal life lately is not pigeonholing myself. As I mentioned earlier, I love to edit videos, but I don’t want to be “The Video Editing Guy.”

I came across this quote from Shane Parrish of Farnam Street that put into words what I’ve been trying to achieve.

“Think like a philosopher. Train and rest like an athlete. Take action like an entrepreneur.”

End Note

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As always, if you stumble across any interesting books, articles, or podcasts this week, send them my way. I love discovering new resources I wouldn’t have typically come across.

Have a productive week,

Dalton