Welcome back to the 1st Law Newsletter - Friday Edition.

In this email:

• The Ease of Flaking
• Respectable Incompetence
• Live boldly and study well

The Ease of Flaking

As technology further permeates our lives, have you noticed plans being cancelled at an increasing rate? I have. I feel as though technology has made it easier to both make and cancel plans. It is easy to say yes to something over text, and it is perhaps too easy to text someone last minute to cancel. I believe people would flake less if they had no option other than to call you to cancel. Better yet, if there were no way to get in contact with each other before the meetup, they would either have to follow through with the plans or stand you up... Texting makes it easy to cancel on the slightest whim.

Another con of being easy to reach digitally is in a professional setting, it is easy to add people to meetings with little consideration of how useful it is for them to be there. I personally take part in some meetings where my presence is not needed.

The solution: be hard to reach. Don't answer texts quickly, or when someone texts you, call them. In a professional setting, you can make yourself harder to reach by removing your phone number form your email signature. Not all jobs allow this, but if they did not provide you with a company phone, I would never put my personal number in my email signature.

Respectable Incompetence

This is a theory I heard from an old teacher of mine. Formally, it is called the Peter principle which observes that people in a hierarchy tend to rise to "a level of respective incompetence". Employees are promoted based on good performance. Eventually, they will be promoted to a position where the skills that got them there are no longer applicable, performance will decrease and the promotions will stop. Most often, people stagnate in their careers because they lack leadership and management skills. In the school system, a great teacher may not be a good principle. In tech, a great engineer may be a poor manager.

People do not desire the extra responsibilities that come with a promotion, they simply want the feeling of importance - measured by an increase in pay and sometimes a new fancy title. If you have mistakenly promoted someone to a level of respectable incompetence, a demotion is never a good idea. Their feeling of importance will be crushed and they will resent you for it. Instead, save face by promoting them again to a fancy new title that sounds even better, but is really just the old job they excelled in but with extra work, not new responsibilities.

Quote I Want To Share

“Live as if you were to die tomorrow, study as if you were to live forever.” - Erasmus

Live boldly, no one remembers the timid. When you are going to sleep, say to yourself 'that was it, life is over now. I lived this day to the fullest and did all that I could to bring love into the world and be a good human'. Then, when you wake up, you will feel blessed to have a new day.

Thanks for reading!

Lucas