How to deal with spontaneous people, intensity over everything, and more
Hey there,
Yesterday I was at a startup party and I met two awesome dudes: super smart, super funny, we talked the whole evening. On our way back home, one of them spontaneously proposed to go watch a movie the next day. He caught me off guard so I immediately said yes!
But when I woke up this morning, I had to cancel. I had too many things to do, but most importantly, I learned one thing over time: spontaneous people can be very toxic if you don't manage them early on.
They always come up with random plans and quickly take control over your time, without considering you in the process. And once you've let them take enough control, it's impossible to claim back your time back without going on a clash.
I'm a very introverted person, which means I can have the best time of my life when we go to a party with friends and I don't want it to end, but once it's over, I need to stay by myself for at least 3 days 😅
What I've come to learn over time (and many mistakes) is that if you want people to respect your need for personal space, you need to be very aggressive about it at the beginning of the relationship. You have to say no to everything. Just find a random excuse.
They will quickly get tired of asking, and go find another companion for random outings. At this stage, you have control over the relationship and you can start proposing stuff and slowly building a healthy and sustainable relationship.
That being said, these people are not intrinsically toxic, they just have a different perception of what friendship is. They need to be around people all the time. But if that's not you, that can turn into a toxic relationship.
I've been applying that strategy for the last 5 years and it's led to genuine, healthy and life-long friendships with people who I might have hated if it wasn't for this.
🤔 What I’m thinking about?
Intensity.
Naval Ravikant - the Twitter-tech-bubble guru - is a strong advocate for intensity:
work like a lion, not a cow: the lion is resting all day, but every once in a while he sees a gazelle and sprints to chase it. And then go back resting. Instead, the cow is lazily eating grass all day. We are not meant to work 9 to 5, 5 days a week. We are meant to sprint like a lion and then rest most of the time (cf the 4-hour workweek).
if you bleed a little bit every day, you're gonna die. Entrepreneurs bleed a lot - stress, overwork themselves - but eventually, they make it big and they stop bleeding.
This is kind of a controversial mindset. We are used to hearing about consistency, striving for balance, practising for 10,000 hours, etc
Shaan Puri shared his personal take on this, on the last MFM podcast (see link below). He's been going on a huge physic transformation, but still has some belly fat to lose. Unlike the usual "abs are made in the kitchen" shtick, his trainer said:
Intensity over everything!
If he keeps the same diet and eating habits, he can still get the results he wants by just cranking up the intensity by 10%!
And guess what? It's working!
Why? Because once he's putting that much intensity in his workouts, he doesn't want to ruin the effort with a shitty diet.
Now he's applying it to business as well.
Brainstorming the perfect strategy? No, no, no. Instead, let's just agree that we're putting the right intensity. The best plan will be whatever makes the effort more impactful.
Where can you apply this strategy?
🔗 My favourite links this week
🤯 reCaptcha is actually a data labelling platform! that's nuts...
🎙️ My First Million - on intensity over everything, but also on limiting beliefs and the crazy story of diamonds. Awesome as usual.
🧠 SmartNonsense sales page is amazing. I love the creativity of their business but also the mindset. Follow them on Instagram and Twitter, they're making dope videos.