Plus: Nap lingo | Thursday, October 20, 2022
| | | | | | | | | | | Axios Finish Line | | By Mike Allen, Erica Pandey and Jim VandeHei ·Oct 20, 2022 | | Oct 20, 2022 | | Axios CEO Jim VandeHei here with his weekly lessons on life, business and leadership. Send him your take: jim@axios.com. Or hit the whole team at finishline@axios.com. - Smart Brevity™ count: 448 words ... < 2 mins.
| | | | | | 1 big thing: Upside of downturns |  | | | Illustration: Lindsey Bailey/Axios | | | | During a bull market, most of us feel like financial geniuses, Jim writes. - And most of us feel wiser with our money when we have more of it.
Why it matters: The true test of a good business, or responsible personal budgeting, is what happens when you're smacked with a wobbly — or worse — economy. 🖼️ The big picture: Everyone from Bloomberg economists, who see a 100% chance of a recession, to Jeff Bezos, who tweeted this week that it's time to "batten down the hatches," thinks 2023 will be a very difficult year for the American and global economies. - Running a company, we constantly calibrate spending and risk based on economic conditions. All of us do this personally, too.
Here are a few lessons learned from past turmoil: - Don't let a crisis go to waste. Rahm Emanuel coined that concept during the financial crisis of 2008, just after President Obama's election. The idea is to exploit the unfortunate moment to clean up spending, or focus yourself on tough decisions that might be harder in boom times.
- Get the big things right. Tighter times focus the mind on what matters most and what will provide real value in the future. There's no better exercise than asking yourself this question, in good times and bad.
- Don't overreact. When COVID struck, we feared we'd be needing layoffs. So we initially sought and then scrapped plans to tap the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) in 2020. Truth is, I should have trusted our creativity and resilience. We ended up sharpening our focus and beating our goal that year.
- Buckle up before you crash. You don't need to overreact unless you wait too long. If there are small things to do while economic forecasters sort through the storm's severity, do them.
The bottom line: In business and personal finances, you'll find everything you do to brace for harder times was what you probably should've been doing all along. - Focus + wise decisions = profitable outcomes.
Share this story. |     | | | | | | A message from Axios | | Your friend's new daily habit | | |  | | | | Have you gotten smarter, faster from reading Axios? Share the newsletters you know and love with friends and family while winning free Axios swag! It just may be their new favorite daily habit. Share Axios today. | | | | | | 🛏️ Nap lingo |  | | | Illustration: Megan Robinson/Axios | | | | After reading our dispatch this week on nap power, Catherine Popper of Lincoln, Mass., emailed to tell us about a "nappetizer" (noun): the nap you take on the couch in front of the TV before you get up to take your nap. - When we wrote to get permission to use her letter, Catherine added that her best nappetizers "happen while watching Boston sports teams."
Go deeper: The power of naps | | | | | | Thanks to Amy Stern for copy editing Finish Line. |  | | Are you a fan of this email format? It's called Smart Brevity®. Over 300 orgs use it — in a tool called Axios HQ — to drive productivity with clearer workplace communications. | | | | | | Axios thanks our partners for supporting our newsletters. If you're interested in advertising, learn more here.
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