Take on the role before you can assume the role

Hey there.

I hope you've had a great week.

What I've made for you

Book notes—Modern Software Engineering: Doing What Works to Build Better Software Faster by Dave FarleyOverall a great book. At times, slightly repetitive, but I think that was to make it possible to pick up the book at any point.

Take on the role before you can assume the role

I realized that for IBM to become a great company it would have to act like a great company long before it ever became one.

— Thomas J. Watson

To be great, you have to act great. You don't wait until you are great to start acting like it.

You take on your desired role way before it's actually yours. That's how you get to deserve it.

This is very similar to changing identities to reinforce or implement habits. To run reguarly, you must become a runner—and identities bring values, ideas, and habits.

I heard Mike Tyson speaking of something similar, I think on the Lewis Howes podcast. He said: "To be the champ, you have to be the champ." (link)

You don't become the best without deserving it. And the best way to deserve it is to act as if you already have/are it—to assume the role before it's yours.I like Charlie Munger's quip about how you could find a good spouse: "Deserve one."

Richard Hamming, in his talk, You and Your Research said something similar:

The onus is on you to demonstrate greatness, and then you'll get the opportunities. It's not the other way around.

You have to demonstrate your ability to do something to be given the opportunity to do it.You have to take on the role before you can assume the role.

Quote

Today I leave you with not a quote, but a poem. Here is "If" by Rudyard Kipling:

If you can keep your head when all about you

Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

But make allowance for their doubting too;

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,

Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,

Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,

And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;

If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

And treat those two impostors just the same;

If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken

Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,

Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,

And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings

And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

And lose, and start again at your beginnings

And never breathe a word about your loss;

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew

To serve your turn long after they are gone,

And so hold on when there is nothing in you

Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,

Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,

If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,

If all men count with you, but none too much;

If you can fill the unforgiving minute

With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,

Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,

And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

Forward

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