Never stop learning. Ever. (Location 160)
Tags: learning
“learn the macro from the micro.” (Location 326)
“If you have a 10-year plan of how to get [somewhere], you should ask: Why can’t you do this in 6 months?” (Location 342)
Tags: goals, planning
Note: The standard pace is for smucks
Success, however you define it, is achievable if you collect the right field-tested beliefs and habits. (Location 402)
Tags: success
“Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.” (Location 419)
Tags: sleep, quotes
information without emotion isn’t retained. (Location 455)
Tags: retention, stories
pop up like warm toast on a cold morning. (Location 472)
Tags: metaphor
“I can think” → Having good rules for decision-making, and having good questions you can ask yourself and others.
“I can wait” → Being able to plan long-term, play the long game, and not misallocate your resources.
“I can fast” → Being able to withstand difficulties and disaster. Training yourself to be uncommonly resilient and have a high pain tolerance. (Location 495)
Tags: favorite, resilience
“If you find yourself in a fair fight, you didn’t plan your mission properly.” (Location 3068)
Tags: planning, competition, quotes
“Not my circus. Not my monkeys.” (Location 3070)
Tags: quotes
EMPATHY ISN’T JUST GOOD FOR LIFE, IT’S GOOD FOR BUSINESS “As a builder, as an entrepreneur, how can you create something for someone else if you don’t have even enough glancing familiarity with them to imagine the world through their eyes?” (Location 3135)
Tags: empathy
“GOOD STORIES ALWAYS BEAT GOOD SPREADSHEETS” (Location 3153)
Tags: quotes, stories
“STRONG VIEWS, LOOSELY HELD” (Location 3225)
Tags: mindset
adapt in light of new information. (Location 3232)
Tags: change
“Life can be much broader, once you discover one simple fact, and that is that everything around you that you call ‘life’ was made up by people that were no smarter than you. (Location 3252)
Tags: favorite, life principles
“My goal is not to fail fast. My goal is to succeed over the long run. They are not the same thing.” (Location 3268)
Tags: failure, success
I am a big believer that if you have a very clear vision of where you want to go, then the rest of it is much easier. (Location 3306)
Tags: goals
“Even today, I still benefit from that because I don’t merge and bring things together and see everything as one big problem. (Location 3399)
Tags: problems
It’s not what you know, it’s what you do consistently. (Location 3436)
Tags: consistency
“HOW TO THRIVE IN AN UNKNOWABLE FUTURE? CHOOSE THE PLAN WITH THE MOST OPTIONS. THE BEST PLAN IS THE ONE THAT LETS YOU CHANGE YOUR PLANS.” (Location 3438)
Tags: planning
THE STANDARD PACE IS FOR CHUMPS (Location 3469)
Tags: goals
ONCE YOU HAVE SOME SUCCESS—IF IT’S NOT A “HELL, YES!” IT’S A “NO” (Location 3504)
Tags: decisiveness
if you can inject this life into your software, into the copy, into the whatever, you can connect with people.”’ (Location 3613)
Tags: product development
Improve a notification email from your business (e.g., subscription confirmation, order confirmation, whatever): (Location 3620)
Tags: product development
“letting the silence do the work”: “I really think a lot can be conveyed with a raised eyebrow.” (Location 3628)
Tags: silence
efficacy (doing the right things): (Location 3678)
Tags: focus, priotitise
What you do is more important than how you do everything else, and doing something well does not make it important. (Location 3696)
Tags: focus, priotitise
Being busy is a form of laziness—lazy thinking and indiscriminate action. Being busy is most often used as a guise for avoiding the few critically important but uncomfortable actions. (Location 3699)
Tags: execution
What you know doesn’t mean shit. What do you do consistently?” (Location 3876)
Tags: consistency
“Investing in yourself is the most important investment you’ll ever make in your life…. (Location 3882)
Tags: growth, learning
“If you let your learning lead to knowledge, you become a fool. If you let your learning lead to action, you become wealthy.” (Location 3885)
Tags: learning
chief of staff has told stories of Reid responding to an insult with “I’m perfectly willing to accept that” and moving on. (Location 4168)
Tags: insults, quotes
solve the simplest, easiest, and most valuable problem. (Location 4187)
Tags: value, simplification
“Never go to sleep without a request to your subconscious.”—Thomas Edison (Location 4210)
Tags: sleep
‘What do people agree merely by convention, and what is the truth?’ (Location 4302)
Tags: societal norms
“Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.” (Location 4619)
Tags: planning, quotes, challenges
confront the challenges of the real world, rather than resort to the protective womb of academia. (Location 4724)
Tags: university, college
Naval Ravikant (here) regularly credits Scott’s short blog post “The Day You Became a Better Writer” for improving his writing. (Location 4746)
Tags: toread, writing
Note: look at for writing
Scott believes there are six elements of humor: naughty, clever, cute, bizarre, mean, and recognizable. (Location 4751)
Tags: laughter
I would consider myself a world champion at avoiding stress at this point in dozens of different ways. A lot of it is just how you look at the world, but most of it is really the process of diversification. (Location 4880)
Tags: mindset
I always advise young people to become good public speakers (top 25%). (Location 4898)
Tags: public speaking
say, ‘At the end of the day, who cares? What’s the big deal? I’m here, I’m going to try my best, and I’m going to go home, and my family’s there…. (Location 4923)
Tags: dont care what other think
don’t be afraid to do something you’re not qualified to do.” (Location 5138)
Tags: comfort zone
“Success” need not be complicated. Just start with making 1,000 people extremely, extremely happy. (Location 5264)
Tags: success
Read Small Giants by Bo Burlingham for some fantastic examples of companies that choose to be the best rather than the biggest. (Location 5361)
Tags: toread
Prompts to Elicit Stories (Most Interviewers Are Weak at This) “Tell me about a time when …” “Tell me about the day [or moment or time] when …” “Tell me the story of … [how you came to major in X, how you met so-and-so, etc.]” “Tell me about the day you realized ___ …” “What were the steps that got you to ___ ?” “Describe the conversation when (Location 5467)
Tags: questions to ask
Follow-Up Questions When Something Interesting Comes Up, Perhaps in Passing “How did that make you feel?” “What do you make of that?” (Location 5477)
Tags: questions to ask
‘When you complain, nobody wants to help you,’ (Location 5615)
Tags: complaining
“His hypothesis is that everything breaks at roughly these points of 3 and 10 [multiples of 3 and powers of 10]. And by ‘everything,’ it means everything: how you handle payroll, how you schedule meetings, what kind of communications you use, how you do budgeting, who actually makes decisions. Every implicit and explicit part of the company just changes significantly when it triples. (Location 5666)
Tags: scaling a business
the job I was going to do hadn’t even been invented yet…. The interesting jobs are the ones that you make up. (Location 5708)
Tags: career
Think and Grow Rich, Who Moved My Cheese?, Blue Ocean Strategy, Invisible Selling Machine, The Richest Man in Babylon, and Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World. (Location 5796)
Tags: toread
Note: books to read
The Gary Halbert Letter (also The Boron Letters) and Ogilvy on Advertising. (Location 5853)
Tags: toread
Note: copy writing books
‘Remember who you are.’ (Location 5898)
If you want to lead, you have to first learn to follow. (Location 5960)
Tags: leadership
Make other people look good and you will do well. (Location 5995)
Tags: canvas strategy, career
Find canvases for other people to paint on. Be an anteambulo. Clear the path for the people above you and you will eventually create a path for yourself. (Location 5999)
Tags: career, canvas strategy
“Say little, do much.” (Location 6034)
Tags: execution, quotes
“Do you really want to engage with people who have infinite time on their hands?” (Location 6088)
Tags: time management
‘The biggest mistake you can make is to accept the norms of your time.’ (Location 6167)
Tags: societal norms
“‘It’s not about ideas, it’s about making ideas happen.’ (Location 6386)
Tags: execution
job skills travel has taught you: independence, flexibility, negotiation, planning, boldness, self-sufficiency, improvisation. (Location 6509)
Tags: travel, cv
“I talk to CEOs all the time, and I say, ‘Listen, the day before something is truly a breakthrough, it’s a crazy idea. If it wasn’t a crazy idea, it’s not a breakthrough; it’s an incremental improvement. So where inside of your companies are you trying crazy ideas?’” (Location 6517)
Tags: idea generation, ceo
“A day that ends well is one that started with exercise. (Location 6667)
Tags: favorite, exercise, health, quotes
Make commitments in a high-energy state so that you can’t back out when you’re in a low-energy state. (Location 6713)
Tags: energy
Intelligence Squared (Location 6755)
Note: podcast relating to debating
The Oxford Book of Aphorisms by John Gross because it contains the most brilliant one-liners in history. (Location 6769)
Tags: toread
Daily Rituals by Mason (Location 6770)
A long life is far from guaranteed. (Location 6824)
Tags: mortality
Aristotle’s golden mean. (Location 6861)
Note: read up on
“He who suffers before it is necessary suffers more than is necessary.” —Seneca (Location 7046)
Tags: worrying
“There is no way to happiness—happiness is the way.” (Location 7064)
Tags: happiness
“[At the end of life,] you can let a lot of the rules that govern our daily lives fly out the window. Because you realize that we’re walking around in systems in society, and much of what consumes most of our days is not some natural order. We’re all navigating some superstructure that we humans created.” (Location 7068)
Tags: newsletter, humans, systems, favorite, societal norms
To “fix” someone’s problem, you very often just need to empathically listen to them. (Location 7152)
Tags: listen
I’ve realized that people knowing you’re listening—valuing them, collectively—is more important than responding to everyone. (Location 7153)
Tags: listen
“If you’re looking for a formula for greatness, the closest we’ll ever get, I think, is this: Consistency driven by a deep love of the work.” (Location 7176)
Tags: career, consistency
Often I think the paradox is that accepting the requests you receive is at the expense of the quality of the very work—the reason for those requests in the first place—and (Location 7204)
the diaries of Henry David Thoreau. Speaking (Location 7211)
“Ours is a culture where we wear our ability to get by on very little sleep as a kind of badge of honor that symbolizes work ethic, or toughness, or some other virtue—but really, it’s a total profound failure of priorities and of self-respect.” (Location 7224)
Tags: favorite, culture, sleep
‘Write to please just one person,’ what he was really saying was write for yourself. Don’t try to please anyone but yourself…. The second you start doing it for an audience, you’ve lost the long game because creating something that is rewarding and sustainable over the long run requires, most of all, keeping yourself excited about it…. Trying to predict what [an audience will] be interested in and kind of pretzeling yourself to fit those expectations, you soon begin to begrudge it and become embittered—and it begins to show in the work. It always, always shows in the work when you resent it. And there’s really nothing less pleasurable to read than embittered writing.” (Location 7246)
Tags: writing
Out of more than 4,600 articles on Brain Pickings, what are Maria’s starting recommendations? “The Shortness of Life: Seneca on Busyness and the Art of Living Wide Rather Than Living Long” “How to Find Your Purpose and Do What You Love” “9 Learnings from 9 Years of Brain Pickings” Anything about Alan Watts: “Alan Watts has changed my life. I’ve written about him quite a bit.” (Location 7254)
‘Discipline equals freedom.’” TF: I interpret this to mean, among other things, that you can use positive constraints to increase perceived free will and results. (Location 7288)
Tags: discipline
something as simple as pre-scheduled workouts acts as scaffolding around which you can more effectively plan and execute your day. (Location 7292)
Tags: routine, exercise
Stay humble or get humbled.” (Location 7366)
Tags: humble
step back and observe.’ I realized that detaching yourself from the situation, so you can see what’s happening, is absolutely critical. (Location 7376)
Tags: detach
“The point of journalism is the truth. The point of journalism is not to improve society. There are things, there are facts, there are truths that actually feel regressive, but it doesn’t matter, because the point of journalism isn’t to make everything better. It’s to give people accurate information about how things are.” (Location 7445)
Tags: journalism
“You guys are programmed to succeed. The hardest thing you’re ever going to do in your life is fail at something, and if you don’t start failing at things, you will not live a full life. You’ll be living a cautious life on a path that you know is pretty much guaranteed to more or less work. That’s not getting the most out of this amazing world we live in. You have to do the hardest thing that you have not been prepared for in this school or any school: You have to be prepared to fail. That’s how you’re going to expand yourself and grow. As you work through that process of failure and learning, you will really deepen into the human being you’re capable of being.” (Location 7458)
Tags: push limits, failure
What would your 70-year-old self advise your current self? “The world is this continually unfolding set of possibilities and opportunities, and the tricky thing about life is, on the one hand having the courage to enter into things that are unfamiliar, but also having the wisdom to stop exploring when you’ve found something worth sticking around for. That is true of a place, of a person, of a vocation. Balancing those two things—the courage of exploring and the commitment to staying—and getting the ratio right is very hard. I think my 70-year-old self would say: ‘Be careful that you don’t err on one side or the other, because you have an ill-conceived idea of who you are.’” (Location 7466)
“THE SECRETS TO LIFE ARE HIDDEN BEHIND THE WORD ‘CLICHÉ.’” (Location 7759)
Tags: favorite, quotes
“On one level, wisdom is nothing more than the ability to take your own advice. It’s actually very easy to give people good advice. It’s very hard to follow the advice that you know is good…. If someone came to me with my list of problems, I would be able to sort that person out very easily.” (Location 7929)
Tags: wisdom
Mindfulness’ is just that quality of mind which allows you to pay attention to sights and sounds and sensations, and even thoughts themselves, without being lost in thought and without grasping at what is pleasant and pushing what is unpleasant away…. (Location 7966)
Tags: mindfulness
“Sam Harris guided meditations.” (Location 7976)
“Drugs and the Meaning of Life,” Sam wrote: (Location 7986)
Courage takes practice. It’s a skill you have to develop. (Location 8075)
Tags: courage
‘Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.’ (Location 8077)
Tags: push limits, courage
Conquering Fear = Defining Fear “Set aside a certain number of days, during which you shall be content with the scantiest and cheapest fare, with coarse and rough dress, saying to yourself the while: ‘Is this the condition that I feared?’” —Seneca (Location 8152)
Tags: stoicism, fear
“I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened.” —Mark Twain (Location 8173)
Tags: favorite, worrying
“The Zen mantra is ‘Sit, sit. Walk, walk. Don’t wobble.’ … It’s this idea that when I’m with a person, that’s total priority. Anything else is multitasking. No, no, no, no. The people-to-people, person-to-person trumps anything else. I have given my dedication to this. (Location 8216)
Tags: buddhism, multitasking
In a world of distraction, single-tasking is a superpower. (Location 8221)
Tags: favorite, multitasking
Memento mori—remember that you’re going to die. It’s a great way to remember to live. (Location 8231)
Tags: favorite, mortality
On TrueFilms.com, Kevin has reviewed the best documentaries he’s seen over decades. (Location 8264)
The counterpart book series, True Films 3.0, contains the 200 documentaries he feels you should see before you die, and it is available as a PDF on kk.org. Three (Location 8265)
“Our life is frittered away by detail…. Simplify, simplify…. A man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone.” (Location 8274)
Tags: life principles, simplification
Perfectionism leads to procrastination, which leads to paralysis. (Location 8332)
Tags: execution
Lying by Sam Harris. (Location 8349)
And I think ultimately, sometimes when we judge other people, it’s just a way to not look at ourselves; a way to feel superior or sanctimonious or whatever. My trauma therapist said every time you meet someone, just in your head say, ‘I love you’ before you have a conversation with them, and that conversation is going to go a lot better. (Location 8360)
Tags: dealing with others, judging others
Note: Imagine saying "I love you" before talking to someone
the way you do anything is the way you do everything.” (Location 8412)
Tags: consistency
“The difference between the people you admire and everybody else [is that the former are] the people who read.” (Location 8446)
Tags: reading
Joseph Campbell—The Power of Myth and The Hero with a Thousand Faces (Location 8451)
The Art of Learning [by Josh Waitzkin, here (Location 8456)
“I think you should try to slay dragons. I don’t care how big the opponent is. We read about and admire the people who did things that were basically considered to be impossible. That’s what makes the world a better place to live.” (Location 8464)
Tags: push limits, goals
DON’T ATTRIBUTE TO MALICE THAT WHICH CAN BE EXPLAINED OTHERWISE (Location 8475)
Tags: dealing with others, mindset, quotes
Bill Clinton who said that when dealing with anyone who’s upset, he always asks, ‘Has this person slept? Have they eaten? Is somebody else bugging them?’ He goes through this simple checklist…. (Location 8476)
Tags: dealing with others
the social media static (Location 8484)
Tags: quotes
Which philosophers would Alain suggest for practical living? Alain’s list overlaps nearly 100% with my own: Epicurus, Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, Plato, Michel de Montaigne, Arthur Schopenhauer, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Bertrand Russell. (Location 8492)
“Listening is about being present, not just being quiet.” (Location 8675)
Tags: listen
A QUESTION CAL SUGGESTS ASKING PEOPLE MORE OFTEN (Location 8676)
“What are some of the choices you’ve made that made you who you are?” (Location 8677)
Tags: questions to ask
NEED TO GET UNSTUCK? MAKE YOUR TASK LAUGHABLY SMALL (Location 8763)
Tags: execution
Even if you don’t consider yourself a writer (I never did), putting thoughts on paper is the best way to A) develop ideas, and B) review and improve your thinking. (Location 8912)
Tags: writing
Maxims and Reflections by Goethe: (Location 8957)
The Art of Asking: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Let People Help. I read it and upgraded my life in an afternoon of asking for help. (Location 8974)
Tags: toread
TWO WORDS FOR CONFLICT RESOLUTION “[My mentor’s] life advice to me, when I’m going into a conflict or a difficult situation with my parents or an argument with Neil [Gaiman, her husband] is, ‘Say less.’ That’s it. Just say less.” (Location 8991)
Tags: dealing with others
Honor those who seek the truth, beware of those who’ve found it’ [adapted from Voltaire]. A reminder that the path never ends and that absolutely nobody has this shit figured out.” (Location 9015)
Tags: quotes
“General fame is overrated. You want to be famous to 2,000 to 3,000 people you handpick.” I’m paraphrasing, but the gist is that you don’t need or want mainstream fame. It brings more liabilities than benefits. However, if you’re known and respected by 2–3K high-caliber people (e.g., the live TED audience), you can do anything and everything you want in life. It provides maximal upside and minimal downside. (Location 9029)
Tags: fame
“CONSENSUS” SHOULD SET OFF YOUR SPIDEY SENSE (Location 9037)
Tags: be different
10% of people will find a way to take anything personally. Expect it and treat it as math. (Location 9235)
Tags: dealing with others
that, I assume that 1% of my fans are completely batshit crazy, just like the general population, which helps me handle the far scarier stuff. (Location 9239)
Tags: dealing with others
“The most important trick to be happy is to realize that happiness is a choice that you make and a skill that you develop. You choose to be happy, and then you work at it. It’s just like building muscles.” (Location 9387)
Tags: choices, happiness
“The first rule of handling conflict is don’t hang around people who are constantly engaging in conflict…. (Location 9409)
Tags: social circle
“In any situation in life, you only have three options. You always have three options. You can change it, you can accept it, or you can leave it. What is not a good option is to sit around wishing you would change it but not changing it, wishing you would leave it but not leaving it, and not accepting it. It’s that struggle, that aversion, that is responsible for most of our misery. The phrase that I probably use the most to myself in my head is just one word: accept.” (Location 9414)
Tags: choices
“Desire is a contract you make with yourself to be unhappy until you get what you want. (Location 9464)
Tags: desires
“Free education is abundant, all over the Internet. It’s the desire to learn that’s scarce.” (Location 9486)
Tags: education
“My one repeated learning in life: ‘There are no adults.’ Everyone’s making it up as they go along. Figure it out yourself, and do it.” (Location 9494)
Tags: #newsletter, everyone is learning as they go
MONKEYS ON A SPINNING ROCK (Location 9497)
Tags: quotes
“The key in a restaurant, and the key in any kind of high-pressure situation, I think, is that 75% of success is staying calm and not losing your nerve. The rest you figure out, but once you lose your calm, everything else starts falling apart fast.” (Location 9593)
Tags: calm
Scriptnotes: This has come up with at least a half dozen guests. Legit advice from legit doers. (Location 9752)
What would you put on a billboard? “I’d put it in Times Square and it would say, ‘None of these companies care about you.’” (Location 9753)
Tags: consumerism
‘Write everything down because it’s all very fleeting.’ I would say, ‘Keep a journal,’ which I have but I would have been more meticulous. (Location 9776)
Tags: writing, journal
“And also, it’s not about being good; it’s about being great. (Location 9781)
Tags: goals
I came to realize that A) If you’re serious all the time, you’ll wear out before the truly serious stuff gets done; and B) if you don’t regularly appreciate the small wins, you will never appreciate the big wins. They’ll all fall through your fingers like sand as you obsess on the next week, the next to-do, the next thing to fix. This makes “success” a Pyrrhic victory at best. (Location 9794)
Tags: appreciate
Any quotes you live by or think of often? “Enough is as good as a feast.” (Location 9854)
Tags: desires, quotes
Josh Waitzkin (JOSHWAITZKIN.COM) was the basis for the book and movie Searching for Bobby Fischer. (Location 9881)
He minimizes input to maximize output, much like Rick Rubin. Josh says: “I cultivate empty space as a way of life for the creative process.” (Location 9890)
I often share exact under-the-hood details of how I’ve built the podcast, put together Kickstarter campaigns, etc. I do this because of two core beliefs. Belief #1—It’s rarely a zero-sum game (if someone wins, someone else must lose), and the more I help people with details, the more detailed help I receive. Belief #2—If it is competitive, I’m simply offering people the details of my game. My attention to detail will scare off half of the people who would have tried; 40% will try it and be worse than me; 10% will try it and be better than me, but … see Belief #1. That 10% will often reach out to teach me what they’ve learned, as they’re grateful for my own transparency. (Location 9911)
Tags: tim ferriss, community, sharing
“Oh, I think the little things are the big things. Because they’re a reflection. This may sound clichéd, but how you do anything is how you do everything.” (Location 9944)
Tags: consistency
moments…. I believe that when you’re not cultivating quality, you’re essentially cultivating sloppiness.” (Location 9948)
Tags: consistency
“The hero and the coward both feel the same thing, but the hero uses his fear, projects it onto his opponent, while the coward runs. It’s the same thing—fear—but it’s what you do with it that matters.” (Location 10027)
Tags: fear
“A person’s success in life can usually be measured by the number of uncomfortable conversations he or she is willing to have.” (Location 10037)
The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming….”). (Location 10040)
Tags: well phrased, courage
The big question I ask is, ‘When I had the opportunity, did I choose courage over comfort?’” (Location 10045)
Tags: comfort zone, courage
you can’t really earn trust over time with people without being somewhat vulnerable [first].” (Location 10062)
Tags: trust
‘Always tell the truth. It’s the easiest thing to remember.’ (Location 10123)
Tags: honesty
“Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.” —Mark Twain (Location 10152)
Tags: favorite, be different
Reality is largely negotiable. If you stress-test the boundaries and experiment with the “impossibles,” you’ll quickly discover that most limitations are a fragile collection of socially reinforced rules you can choose to break at any time. (Location 10154)
Tags: societal norms
Note: Reality is negotiable
#1—What if I did the opposite for 48 hours? (Location 10157)
#2—What do I spend a silly amount of money on? How might I scratch my own itch? (Location 10169)
Tags: idea generation
Where did I spend a disproportionate amount of my income? Where was I price insensitive? (Location 10174)
Tags: favorite, idea generation
#3—What would I do/have/be if I had $10 million? What’s my real TMI? (Location 10181)
Tags: goals
#4—What are the worst things that could happen? Could I get back here? (Location 10191)
#5—If I could only work 2 hours per week on my business, what would I do? (Location 10193)
Tags: priotitise
#6—What if I let them make decisions up to $100? $500? $1,000? (Location 10206)
#7—What’s the least crowded channel? (Location 10218)
Tags: idea generation
#8—What if I couldn’t pitch my product directly? (Location 10233)
#9—What if I created my own real-world MBA? (Location 10242)
#10—Do I need to make it back the way I lost it? (Location 10244)
Tags: money
#11—What if I could only subtract to solve problems? (Location 10256)
#12—What might I put in place to allow me to go off the grid for 4 to 8 weeks, with no phone or email? (Location 10266)
#13—Am I hunting antelope or field mice? (Location 10278)
Tags: focus, favorite, priotitise, quotes
U.S. House of Representatives, Newt Gingrich. I read about it in Buck Up, Suck Up … and Come Back When You Foul Up: 12 Winning Secrets from the War Room, written by James Carville and Paul Begala, (Location 10279)
A lion is fully capable of capturing, killing, and eating a field mouse. But it turns out that the energy required to do so exceeds the caloric content of the mouse itself. So a lion that spent its day hunting and eating field mice would slowly starve to death. A lion can’t live on field mice. A lion needs antelope. Antelope are big animals. They take more speed and strength to capture and kill, and once killed, they provide a feast for the lion and her pride. A lion can live a long and happy life on a diet of antelope. The distinction is important. Are you spending all your time and exhausting all your energy catching field mice? In the short term it might give you a nice, rewarding feeling. But in the long run you’re going to die. (Location 10287)
Tags: priotitise, anecdote
#14—Could it be that everything is fine and complete as is? (Location 10295)
happiness, you have to want what you already have. (Location 10303)
Tags: happiness
#15—What would this look like if it were easy? (Location 10304)
Tags: simplification
#16—How can I throw money at this problem? How can I “waste” money to improve the quality of my life? (Location 10308)
Tags: money
“If you’ve got enough money to solve the problem, you don’t have the problem.” (Location 10310)
Tags: money, quotes
In the beginning of your career, you spend time to earn money. Once you hit your stride in any capacity, you should spend money to earn time, as the latter is nonrenewable. It can be hard to make and maintain this gear shift, so the above question is in my regular journaling rotation. (Location 10311)
Tags: newsletter, money, time management
“Slow is smooth. Smooth is fast.” (Location 10321)
Tags: slow down
“In a blink of an eye, we’ll all be gone. 100 years compared to infinity is nothing. I talk to my sister all the time…. [I say,] ‘Girl, you better start having some fun. We’re gonna be gone in a minute. You’re gonna look back and say, “Shit, I should have been laughing, and now I’m dead.” (Location 10326)
Tags: mortality
‘Challenge all assumptions.’ The story that I accompanied that with was: There are five monkeys in a room, and there is a basket of bananas at the top of a ladder. The monkeys, of course, want to climb the ladder to get the bananas, but every time one tries, they are all sprayed with cold water. After a few times of being sprayed by cold water, the monkeys learn to not climb up the ladder to get the bananas…. [The experimenters then] take one monkey out and put a new monkey in, and the new monkey sees a banana. He thinks, ‘Hey, I am going to grab a banana,’ but when he tries to go up the ladder, the other monkeys grab him and pull him back…. [The experimenters eventually] systematically pull every monkey out, and now you have five new monkeys. Any time a new monkey comes in and tries to climb the ladder, they grab the monkey and pull it back, but none of the five have ever been sprayed by cold water.” (Location 10453)
Tags: societal norms, anecdote
Julia Cameron in The Artist’s Way. (Location 10497)
The Scriptnotes podcast by Craig Mazin and John August. (Location 10506)
“They tried to bury us. They didn’t know we were seeds.” —Mexican proverb (Location 10545)
Tags: metaphor
Jack Ma, founder of China’s Alibaba Group, is worth an estimated $20 to $30 billion, and he explains the secret of his success this way: “There were three reasons why we survived: We had no money, we had no technology, and we had no plan. Every dollar, we used very carefully.” (Location 10761)
“It’s good not to follow the herd. Go the other way. If everyone’s going that way, you go this other way. You’re gonna stumble, but you’re also gonna stumble upon an idea no one came up with…. (Location 10783)
Tags: be different
“That way, at least it’s a new frontier. I always found success by just going the opposite way. There was too much competition over there. If everyone’s trying to get through that one little door, you’re in the wrong place. (Location 10785)
Tags: be different
“So you’ve got to think bigger than that. There’s less competition up there. (Location 10789)
Tags: goals, competition
“Failure is not necessarily durable. Remember that the things that they fire you for when you are young are the same things that they give lifetime achievement awards for when you’re old.” (Location 10796)
Start with Why by Simon Sinek. (Location 10925)
Tags: toread
‘I’m going to tell you a secret in life: You never have to be upset about anything. Everything is for a purpose. (Location 10943)
Tags: challenges, mindset
That’s it. When things are going bad, don’t get all bummed out, don’t get startled, don’t get frustrated. No. Just look at the issue and say: “Good.” (Location 10968)
Tags: challenges
Accept reality, but focus on the solution. (Location 10971)
Take that issue, take that setback, take that problem, and turn it into something good. Go forward. (Location 10971)
Tags: challenges
“You must want to be a butterfly so badly, you are willing to give up being a caterpillar.” (Location 10985)
Tags: metaphor
On autopilot, I was using “good” from Jocko, inviting Mara to tea like Tara Brach, looking at the stars as BJ Miller and Ed Cooke would, and putting fear in line, just as Caroline Paul did atop the Golden Gate Bridge. (Location 11008)
When you think of the word “successful,” who’s the first person who comes to mind and why? ► What is something you believe that other people think is insane? ► What is the book (or books) you’ve given most as a gift? ► What is your favorite documentary or movie? ► What purchase of $100 or less has most positively impacted your life in the last 6 months? ► What are your morning rituals? What do the first 60 minutes of your day look like? ► What obsessions do you explore on the evenings or weekends? ► What topic would you speak about if you were asked to give a TED talk on something outside of your main area of expertise? ► What is the best or most worthwhile investment you’ve made? Could be an investment of money, time, energy, or other resource. How did you decide to make the investment? ► Do you have a quote you live your life by or think of often? ► What is the worst advice you see or hear being dispensed in your world? ► If you could have one gigantic billboard anywhere with anything on it, what would it say? ► What advice would you give to your 20-, 25-, or 30-year-old self? And please place where you were at the time, and what you were doing. ► How has a failure, or apparent failure, set you up for later success? Or, do you have a favorite failure of yours? ► What is something really weird or unsettling that happens to you on a regular basis? ► What have you changed your mind about in the last few years? Why? ► What do you believe is true, even though you can’t prove it? ► Any ask or request for my audience? Last parting words? THE MOST-GIFTED AND RECOMMENDED BOOKS OF ALL GUESTS This is what you’ve been asking me for! (Location 11065)
Tags: questions to ask
Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu (5 mentions) Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand (4) Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari (4) Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse (4) The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss (4) The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande (4) Dune by Frank Herbert (3) Influence by Robert Cialdini (3) Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert (3) Superintelligence by Nick Bostrom (3) Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman! by Richard P. Feynman (3) The 4-Hour Body by Tim Ferriss (3) The Bible (3) The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz (3) The War of Art by Steven Pressfield (3) Watchmen by Alan Moore (3) Zero to One by Peter Thiel with Blake Masters (3) Enjoy! (Location 11086)