7 questions about adulthood I've been meaning to ask myself for the last year

via Drew Houston of Dropbox, in a post published on Business Insider

It's smart to be "systematic" about learning, Houston told Business Insider US editor in chief Alyson Shontell on an episode of Business Insider's podcast "Success! How I Did It."

He said:

"Whether it's just the fundamentals of business or things like public speaking or being more inspiring or being a better leader, these are all things you can get better at with practice. You should set your sights high in terms of what you aspire to do, but you also have to be patient.

"It's like playing an instrument. You're not going to be great as a public speaker, or you're not going to improve a lot in five days, but in five years, you might be really surprised at how much you can improve."

via Ramit Sethi, in a post published on GrowthLab

We all say we want "more," writes Sethi, but few of us actually know what "more" looks like. To get it, we first have to define it. For your answer to this question, he writes, it's better to get specific. Here's Sethi:

• When you woke up, what would your schedule be? What time would you wake up? What would your house look like? (Remember, this is a magic pill. Your life can be whatever you want — get creative!)

• What would you do for work? What would you do after work? How would you get home? Would you even have to go to the office?

• How much money would you make?What would you do MORE of and what would you do LESS of? What would you do with that money as the ultimate extravagance?

via NYC-based psychotherapist Katherine Schafler, in a post published on Thrive Global.

Schafler was writing about the "ambition trap" — the tendency for getting everything we want to make us unhappy.

"The more self-aware you are, the easier it'll be for you to distinguish between what you like, and what you actually want to acquire," she writes. "But how do we make that distinction? As human beings, we're so used to wanting more as a default mode. More food, more money, more friends, more sex, more stuff, more time, more attention. So how do we start wanting less?"

It starts with the questions posed above.