Latest / the Daily Quote - Positive Daily Inspiration and Motivational Quote of the Day / Nassim Taleb - The world is dominated not by the median, not by the average, but by the extremes — the monsters on the tails

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Nassim Taleb - The world is dominated not by the median, not by the average, but by the extremes — the monsters on the tails · the Daily Quote - Positive Daily Inspiration and Motivational Quote of the Day

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  Dot com. Welcome to the Daily Quote, the
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  podcast designed to kick start your day in a positive way.
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  I'm our host, Andrew McGivern, and let's jump into today's
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  quote from Nassim Taleb, author of The Black Swan and one of the
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  most provocative thinkers on risk, probability and impact.
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  He once wrote the world is dominated not by the median, not
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  by the average, but by the extremes, the monsters on the
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  tails. Think about what Talib is saying
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  here. We're taught to focus on the
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  average, the median, the middle of the bell curve.
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  That's where most people are. So that's what matters, right?
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  Wrong. The world isn't shaped by the
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  average. It's shaped by the extremes, the
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  outliers. They're rare events that nobody
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  expects. One pandemic changes more about
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  how we work than 50 years of gradual improvement.
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  One breakthrough technology transforms an entire industry,
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  while 1000 incremental updates do almost nothing.
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  One exceptional employee creates more value than 10 average ones
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  combined, and one massive mistake can undo years of
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  careful, steady progress. Taleb calls these monsters on
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  the tails, the extreme events at the edges of the probability
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  distribution that have disproportionate impact.
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  Here's what this means for your goals.
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  Playing it safe and aiming for average won't get you far.
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  The median is comfortable, but it's not where impact lives.
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  Impact lives in the extremes. Extreme dedication.
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  Extreme risk, extreme innovation, extreme failure that
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  teaches you what works. If you want to make a real
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  difference in your career, your business, your life, you can't
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  optimize for average. You have to be willing to go to
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  the tails. So here's the question.
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  Are you playing it safe in the middle, or are you willing to go
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  to the extremes where real impact lives?
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  Because the world isn't dominated by average, it's
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  dominated by the monsters in the tails.
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  That's going to do it for today. I'm Anna McGivern, signing off
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  for now, but I'll be back tomorrow.
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  Same pod time, same pod station with another daily quote.