Alejandro Arce — home Thinking in Public
No. 62 · Life

The hardest skill is seeing the truth

Line illustration: a scale balances a tangled knot on one side against a single straight line on the other.

The hardest skill to develop is removing your emotions so you can see the truth.

The emotion is noise. The truth underneath it is the only signal that matters. I am my own source of truth. I have my own feedback loop inside, and so does everyone else. The job is trusting it over the feeling of the moment.

Same skill, five rooms

01
Hiring: the truth about whether this person can do the job
02
Firing: the truth about whether the fit stopped working
03
Your flaws: the truth about what's broken
04
Your mistakes: the truth about what happened
05
Feedback loops: the truth sitting inside the results

Same skill — five different rooms to use it in

Discipline over emotion. Stay composed when everyone else loses their head.

If your emotions are in the way of the truth, you will never get ahead. So ask yourself: what's preoccupying your mind right now? Why? Answer both, then act on what's true.

See it straight. Then move.

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