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At Least Three Time Per Day At Scheduled Times, He Had To Ask Himself The Following Question: Am I Being Productive Or Just Active? Charney Captured The Essence Of This With Less-abstract Wording: Am I Inventing Things To Do To Avoid The Important? He Eliminated All Of The Activities He Used As Crutches And Began To Focus On Demonstrating Results Instead Of Showing Dedication. Dedication Is Often Just Meaningless Work In Disguise. Be Ruthless And Cut The Fat.

-Tim Ferriss

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Tim Ferriss

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At Least Three Time Per Day At Scheduled Times, He Had To Ask Himself The Following Question: Am I Being Productive Or Just Active? Charney Captured The Essence Of This With Less-abstract Wording: Am I Inventing Things To Do To Avoid The Important? He Eliminated All Of The Activities He Used As Crutches And Began To Focus On Demonstrating Results Instead Of Showing Dedication. Dedication Is Often Just Meaningless Work In Disguise. Be Ruthless And Cut The Fat.

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If We Define Risk As 'the Likelihood Of An Irreversible Negative Outcome,' Inaction Is The Greatest Risk Of All.

Many A False Step Was Made By Standing Still.

If Everyone Is Defining A Problem Or Solving It One Way And The Results Are Subpar, This Is The Time To Ask, What If I Did The Opposite? Don't Follow A Model That Doesn't Work. If The Recipe Sucks, It Doesn't Matter How Good A Cook You Are.

I'm Not Averse To Making A Lot Of Money. But Where Does That End? I Hang Out With People With Hundreds Of Millions Of Dollars. Is That The Standard By Which I Should Measure Myself? Where Does That Take You If You're In My Business? I Think It Takes You To Pretty Dark, Corrupt Places.

What's The Worst That Could Happen?

People Will Choose Unhappiness Over Uncertainty.

People Feel Personally Slighted If You Don't Respond To Them In 30 Seconds And Treat Email As Instant Messenger.

Being Called A Huckster And A Charlatan Started Several Years Ago, So That's Something I'm Accustomed To. In Most Cases, It Doesn't Bother Me.

The Bottom Line Is That You Only Have The Rights You Fight For.

Alternating Periods Of Activity And Rest Is Necessary To Survive, Let Alone Thrive. Capacity, Interest, And Mental Endurance All Wax And Wane. Plan Accordingly.

Luxury, To Me, Is Not Owning A Lot Of Stuff. Luxury, To Me, Is Feeling Unrushed.

The Fishing Is Best Where The Fewest Go. There Is Just Less Competition For Bigger Goals.

Short, Sweet, And To The Point. Clear Writing, And Therefore Clear Commands, Comes From Clear Thinking. Think Simple.

Don’t Follow A Model That Doesn't Work. If The Recipe Sucks, It Doesn't Matter How Good A Cook You Are.

Learn To Be Difficult When It Counts. In School As In Life, Having A Reputation For Being Assertive Will Help You Receive Preferential Treatment Without Having To Beg Or Fight For It Every Time.

Work Is An Activity That Is Financially-driven Or One That You'd Like To Do Less Of.

Do Not Overestimate The Competition And Underestimate Yourself. You Are Better Than You Think.

Self Confidence

The Best Results I Have Had In My Life; The Most Enjoyable Times, Have All Come From Asking The Simple Question: 'what Is The Worst That Could Happen?'

Personal Branding Is About Managing Your Name - Even If You Don't Own A Business - In A World Of Misinformation, Disinformation, And Semi-permanent Google Records. Going On A Date? Chances Are That Your "blind" Date Has Googled Your Name. Going To A Job Interview? Ditto.

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.

Someday Is A Dis-ease That Will Take Your Dreams To The Grave With You.

Never Check Email First Thing In The Morning. Instead, Complete Your Most Important Task Before 11:00 A.m. To Avoid Using Lunch Or Reading Email As A Postponement Excuse.

Fear Is Your Friend. It Is An Indicator. Sometimes It Shows You What You Shouldn't Do, More Often Than Not It Shows You What You Should Do.

Learn To Be Difficult When It Counts

I Have Scary Eyes. I Look Like The Guy In 'american History X,' Yes. I Remember Coming Home From School And Asking My Mum If I Could Get An Eye Transplant, And Of Course She Declined.

I'm Not A Big Believer In Long-term Planning And Far-off Goals. In Fact, I Generally Set 3-month And 6-month Dreamlines. The Variables Change Too Much And In-the-future Distance Becomes An Excuse For Postponing Action.

Focus On Being Productive Instead Of Busy.

Productive Work

Reality Is Negotiable.

Different Is Better When It Is More Effective Or More Fun.

If You Let Pride Stop You, You Will Hate Life

The First Thing I Would Do For Anyone Who's Trying To Lose Body Fat, For Instance, Would Be To Remove Foods From The House That He Or She Would Consume During Lapses Of Self-control.

You Think You're Fatigued, Therefore You Can't Exercise. In Fact, You Choose Not To Move, Therefore You Feel Fatigued.

When You Elevate The Heels More So Than You Elevate The Sole Of The Foot, You Trigger A Cascade Of Compensations In The Knees And Hips That Cause Tight Hip Flexors, And Then Those Hip Flexors Cause Lower-back Pain.

By Using Money As The Scapegoat And Work As Our All-consuming Routine, We Are Able To Conveniently Disallow Ourselves To Do Otherwise: 'john, I'd Love To Talk About The Gaping Void I Feel In My Life, The Hopelessness That Hits Me Like A Punch In The Eye Every Time I Start My Computer In The Morning, But I Have So Much Work To Do! I've Got At Least Three Hours Of Unimportant Email To Reply To Before Calling Prospects Who Said 'no' Yesterday. Gotta Run!

It's Very Easy To Confuse Confident Motion With Being Productive - And They're Not The Same Thing. Productive To Me Means Measurable Outcomes That Apply To My Most Important To-dos That Positively Affect My Life. That's It.

People Don't Want To Be Millionaires - They Want To Experience What They Believe Only Millions Can Buy.

At Its Core, I Don't View Facebook As A Social Network. I Think It Could Become The Driver's License Of The Internet. And Beyond That, It Can Become The Pipes And The Plumbing Upon What Most Of The Internet Is Built. I Think It's Very Well Positioned.

Avoid Results-by Volume Approach, Instead Focus On Few Critically Important But Uncomfortable Actions.

When You Try To Do Something Big Its Hard To Fail Completely.

Emphasize Strengths, Don't Fix Weaknesses.

In A Digital World, There Are Numerous Technologies That We Are Attached To That Create Infinite Interruption.

The Golden Years Become Lower-middle-class Life Revisited. That's A Bittersweet Ending.

Remember—boredom Is The Enemy, Not Some Abstract "failure.

The Goal Is Not To Simply Eliminate The Bad, Which Does Nothing More Than Leave You With A Vacuum, But To Pursue And Experience The Best In The World.

I Think About Willpower Almost Never. I Realize For Myself, Trying To Be More Disciplined Is Pretty Nebulous And It's Often A Slippery Target. For Me, I've Just Thought About Incentives.

Just Because You Are Embarrassed To Admit That You're Still Living The Consequences Of Bad Decisions Made 5, 10, 20 Years Ago Shouldn't Stop You From Making Good Decisions Now. If You Let Pride Stop You, You Will Hate Life 5, 10, And 20 Years From Now For The Same Reasons.

Every Time I Find Myself Stressed Out, It's Because I Do Things Primarily Driven By Growth.

For Most People, Life Would Be Boring Without Meaningful Work.

Lack Of Time Is Actually Lack Of Priorities.

4 Hour Work Week

Being Efficient Without Regard To Effectiveness Is The Default Mode Of The Universe.

Money Is Multiplied In Practical Value Depending On The Number Of W's You Control In Your Life: What You Do, When You Do It, Where You Do It, And With Whom You Do It.

4 Hour Work Week

The Way That You Become World-class Is... By Asking Good Questions.

Changing The World Doesn't Require Much Money. Again, Think In Terms Of Empowerment And Not Charity. How Much Were Gandhi's Teachers Paid? How Much Did It Cost To Give Dr. Martin Luther King The Books That Catalyzed His Mind And Actions?

I Didn't Even Like White Wine. Then I Tasted It And Bought A Case. It Was The First Case Of Any Wine I'd Ever Bought.

Information Is Useless If It Is Not Applied To Something Important Or If You Will Forget It Before You Have A Chance To Apply It.

With A Decrease In The Number Of Pirates, There Has Been An Increase In Global Warming Over The Same Period. Therefore, Global Warming Is Caused By A Lack Of Pirates. Even More Compelling: Somalia Has The Highest Number Of Pirates And The Lowest Carbon Emissions Of Any Country. Coincidence?

Carbon Emissions

At Least Three Time Per Day At Scheduled Times, He Had To Ask Himself The Following Question: Am I Being Productive Or Just Active? Charney Captured The Essence Of This With Less-abstract Wording: Am I Inventing Things To Do To Avoid The Important? He Eliminated All Of The Activities He Used As Crutches And Began To Focus On Demonstrating Results Instead Of Showing Dedication. Dedication Is Often Just Meaningless Work In Disguise. Be Ruthless And Cut The Fat.

Converting Your Own Passions Into A Job Is The Fastest Method For Eliminating Any Passion You Once Had.

For All Their Bitching About What’s Holding Them Back, Most People Have A Lot Of Trouble Coming Up With The Defined Dreams They’re Being Held From.

Resveratrol Is Fascinating Stuff. One Of The Best Sources Of Information About It Is The Immortality Institute. They Have A Forum Where Some People Are In The 500 Club, As They Call It. They've Been Taking 500 Milligrams For Years. It's A Really Great Source Of Data.

Most Inputs Are Useless And Time Is Wasted In Proportion To The Amount That Is Available.

I'm Prepared To Do Battle For A Dream That Is Worth Dreaming.

For All Of The Most Important Things, The Timing Always Sucks. Waiting For A Good Time To Quit Your Job? The Stars Will Never Align And The Traffic Lights Of Life Will Never All Be Green At The Same Time. The Universe Doesn't Conspire Against You, But It Doesn't Go Out Of Its Way To Line Up The Pins Either. Conditions Are Never Perfect. "someday" Is A Disease That Will Take Your Dreams To The Grave With You. Pro And Con Lists Are Just As Bad. If It's Important To You And You Want To Do It "eventually," Just Do It And Correct Course Along The Way.

If You See Distraction Externally, You End Up Creating An Internally Distracted State.

Personally, I Now Aim For One Month Of Overseas Relocation Or High-intensity Learning (tango, Fighting, Whatever) For Every Two Months Of Work Projects.

Think Big And Don't Listen To People Who Tell You It Can't Be Done. Life's Too Short To Think Small.

I'll Repeat Something You Might Consider Tattooing On Your Forehead: What We Fear Doing Most Is Usually What We Most Need To Do.

The Start Of The Day Is Often The Best Time To Get Things Done. This Is Somewhat Related To Willpower.

Focus On Impact, Not Approval. If You Believe You Can Change The World, Which I Hope You Do, Do What You Believe Is Right And Expect Resistance And Expect Attackers. Keep Calm And Carry On!

The Truth Is That Since The First Book, I Have Wanted To Emulate Benjamin Franklin And Put Together A Healthy, Wealthy And Wise Trilogy And So Healthy Was 'the 4-hour Body,' Wealthy Was 'the 4-hour Workweek' And Then Wise Is 'the 4-hour Chef.'

Luxury Is Feeling Unrushed. It Is Designing A Life That Allows You To Do What You Want With High Leverage, With Many Options, All While Feeling Unrushed.

If You Don't Have Time, You Don't Have Priorities.

Compile Your To-do List For Tomorrow No Later Than This Evening.

You And Your Friends Could Plan The Trip Of A Lifetime In 6-18 Months To Visit The Completed School, Teeming With Dozens Or Hundreds Of Students Who Greet You With Smiles And Thank You Letters. You'll Know It's Your School Because Your Names Will Be On The Door.

As Far As Income Goes, There Are Three Currencies In The World; Most People Ignore Two. The Three Currencies Are Time, Income And Mobility, In Descending Order Of Importance. Most People Focus Exclusively On Income.

I Always Point People To The Article '1,000 True Fans' By Kevin Kelly. If You Choose Your Thousand Ideal Customers Or Readers Properly And Find The Single Author Blog That Targets That Audience, You Never Have To Do Any More Marketing. You're Done. That Is A Lesson That Very Few Product Developers And Marketers Have Learned, And It's Unfortunate.

Requiring A Lot Of Time Does Not Make A Task Important.

Age Doesn't Matter. An Open Mind Does.

To Do The Impossible, You Need To Ignore The Popular.

There Is An Infinite Selection Of Things That I Could Test In Life, So I Generally Will Look For A Critical Mass Of Word That Comes Back To Me. At This Point I Have Hundreds Of Friends Who Are The Best At What They Do, Arguably Number One In The Country Or In The World. I Will Oftentimes Just Kind Of Throw A Volley Out To People, Ask Them What They're Obsessing On Or What They Find Interesting That's On The Fringe. If The Same Answer Comes Back A Few Times, I'm Like, "okay."

Slow Down And Remember This: Most Things Make No Difference. Being Busy Is A Form Of Mental Laziness-lazy Thinking And Indiscriminate Action.

Lacking An External Focus, The Mind Turns Inward On Itself And Creates Problems To Solve, Even If The Problems Are Undefined Or Unimportant. If You Find A Focus, An Ambitious Goal That Seems Impossible And Forces You To Grow, These Doubts Disappear.

Being Selective-doing Less-is The Path Of The Productive. Focus On The Important Few And Ignore The Rest.

Get Good At Being A Troublemaker And Saying Sorry When You Really Screw Up

The Book Is First And Foremost Something I Made For Myself.

It's Amazing How Someone's Iq Seems To Double As Soon As You Give Them Responsibility And Indicate That You Trust Them.

Just A Few Words On Time Management: Forget All About It.

The Downstream Effects Are Unknown. Do Your Best And Hope For The Best. If You're Improving The World-however You Define That-consider Your Job Well Done.

Everyone Is Going To Binge On A Diet, For Instance, So Plan For It, Schedule It, And Contain The Damage.

Doing Something Unimportant Well Does Not Make It Important.

For Uncommon Solutions, You Have To Look In Uncommon Places.

After Decades Of Hauling Telescopes Around In The Back Of Vans And Going Up To High Altitude Locations And So Forth, I Did Finally Build An Observatory, Here On Sonoma Mountain.

Ninety-nine Percent Of People Believe They Can't Do Great Things, So They Aim For Mediocrity.

Just As Modern Man Consumes Both Too Many Calories And Calories Of No Nutritional Value, Information Workers Eat Data Both In Excess And From The Wrong Sources.

The Reason I Was Successful In Launching My First Book With Bloggers Is This: I Assumed That I Should Spend As Much Time On A Blogger With A Million-person Readership As I Would Pitching An Editor Of A Publication With A Million Person Subscription-base.

An Entrepreneur Isn't Someone Who Owns A Business, It's Someone Who Makes Things Happen.

Make Things Happen

Most People Are Fast To Stop You Before You Get Started But Hesitate To Get In The Way If You're Moving.

A Person's Success In Life Can Usually Be Measured By The Number Of Uncomfortable Conversations He Or She Is Willing To Have.

If You Don't Have Time, The Truth Is, You Don't Have Priorities. Think Harder; Don't Work Harder.

Most People Are Good At A Handful Of Things And Utterly Miserable At Most.

I Encourage Active Skepticism - When People Are Being Skeptical Because They're Trying To Identify The Best Course Of Action. They're Trying To Identify The Next Step For Themselves Or Other People.

There Are A Lot Of Things That Can Be Learned From The Darker Corners Of Athletics. You Have Doctors Who View Bodybuilders As Cavalier Amateurs Of Science. And Then You Have The Bodybuilders Who View The Doctors As Too Conservative To Do Anything Interesting. So I've Tried To Become The Middleman For Putting Some Of Those Pieces Together.

Perfection Is An Impossible Destination

To Have An Uncommon Lifestyle, You Need To Develop The Uncommon Habit Of Making Decisions, Both For Yourself And For Others.

I Gauge Success In Years, Not Weeks. The Weekend Box-office Approach To Book Launches Is Short Sighted And Encourages Crappy Books.

What You Do Is Infinitely More Important Than How You Do It.

4 Hour Work Week

Role Models Who Push Us To Exceed Our Limits, Physical Training That Removes Our Spare Tires, And Risks That Expand Our Sphere Of Comfortable Action Are All Examples Of Eustress—stress That Is Healthful And The Stimulus For Growth.

Creating Demand Is Hard. Filling Demand Is Easier. Don't Create A Product, Then Seek Someone To Sell It To. Find A Market - Define Your Customers - Then Find Or Develop A Product For Them.

Pacifists Become Militants. Freedom Fighters Become Tyrants. Blessings Become Curses. Help Becomes Hindrance. More Becomes Less.

A Goal Without Real Consequences Is Wishful Thinking. Good Follow-through Doesn't Depend On The Right Intentions. It Depends On The Right Incentives.

Learn To Ask, "if This Is The Only Thing I Accomplish Today, Will I Be Satisfied With My Day?"

Companies That Start By Redesigning The Economics Of An Industry Often Finish By Redesigning The Whole Industry-and Owning It.

Three Ingredients Of Luxury Lifestyle Design Are Time, Income, And Mobility.

If You Are Insecure, Guess What? The Rest Of The World Is, Too.

Self Confidence

Sometimes You Need To Go On A Low-information Diet.

There Are Certain Things I Will Automate, But When It Comes To Quality Control, I Want To Keep A Very Close Eye.

The Biggest Misconception About Work Is That You Need To Spend The Majority Of Your Time Doing It.

You Can Enjoy Stargazing Just By Going Out And Learning A Couple Constellations With Your Kids.

One Of The Bigger Misconceptions Of Learning Is That Many Skills Take A Lifetime To Get World-class At, Or 10,000 Hours To Become World-class At.

It's Not Enough To Have The Right Answers. You Have To Have The Right Questions.

Massive Elimination Is The Most Important Step And The Most Neglected Step For Entrepreneurs.

Awareness, Even At A Subconscious Level, Beats Fancy Checklists Without It, Track Or You Will Fail.

If Only I Had More Money Is The Easiest Way To Postpone The Intense Self-examination And Decision-making Necessary To Create A Life Of Enjoyment - Now And Not Later.

But You Are The Average Of The Five People You Associate With Most, So Do Not Underestimate The Effects Of Your Pessimistic, Unambitious, Or Disorganized Friends. If Someone Isn't Making You Stronger, They're Making You Weaker.

Everything That Works In Sales Has Been Done Already. Just Keep Track Of The Crap That You Buy, Or The Awesome Stuff That You Buy, And Decide What Was The Trigger, And Then Just Sell To People Like You. It's Really That Easy - And That's What I Do.

There Are No Statues Erected To Critics.

Believe It Or Not, It Is Not Only Possible To Accomplish More By Doing Less, It Is Mandatory. Enter The World Of Elimination.

Excitement Is The More Practical Synonym For Happiness, And It Is Precisely What You Should Strive To Chase. It Is The Cure-all. When People Suggest You Follow Your "passion" Or Your "bliss," I Propose That They Are, In Fact, Referring To The Same Singular Concept: Excitement. This Brings Us Full Circle. The Question You Should Be Asking Isn't, "what Do I Want?" Or "what Are My Goals?" But "what Would Excite Me?"

If The Challenge We Face Doesn't Scare Us, Then It's Probably Not That Important.

Simplicity Requires Ruthlessness.

Being Able To Quit Things That Don't Work Is Integral To Being A Winner

The Manifesto Of The Dealmaker Is Simple: Reality Is Negotiable.

You Can Lose Money And Make It Back, You Can't Do That With Time.

People Frequently Fail When They Try To Do Everything At Once. They Approach A Massive Project And Quickly Get Discouraged. Taking Small, But High-value Steps Takes Less Time, And You Learn More In The Long Run.

The Best Way To Improve Mental Performance, Is To Improve Physical Performance

People Are Fond Of Using The Its Not What You Know, Its Who You Know Adage As An Excuse For Inaction, As If All Successful People Are Born With Powerful Friends. Nonsense.

I've Seen The Promised Land, And There Is Good News. You Can Have It All.

$1,000,000 In The Bank Isn't The Fantasy. The Fantasy Is The Lifestyle Of Complete Freedom It Supposedly Allows.

Writing Is Thought Crystalized On A Piece Of Paper, Which Can Then Be Reviewed.

Rather Than Spend My Life On Data Entry And Typing, I Also Take Photos On My Iphone Of Business Cards, Wine Labels, Menus, Or Anything I Want To Have Searchable On-the-run.

Relative Income Uses Two Variables: The Dollar And Time, Usually Hours.

It Is Far More Lucrative And Fun To Leverage Your Strengths Instead Of Attempting To Fix All The Chinks In Your Armor. The Choice Is Between Multiplication Of Results Using Strenths Or Incremental Improvement Fixing Weaknesses That Will, At Best, Become Mediocre. Focus On Better Use Of Your Best Weapons Instead Of Constant Repair.

Seemingly Unrelated [things] That Are In Fact Really Related, That's The Stuff I Like To Talk About. Like Dancing, Language Learning, Swimming, Three-pointers.

The Key To Having More Time Is Doing Less, And There Are Two Paths To Get There, Both Of Which Should Be Used Together: (1) Define A Short To-do List And (2) Define A Not-to-do List.

I Discourage Passive Skepticism, Which Is The Armchair Variety Where People Sit Back And Criticize Without Ever Subjecting Their Theories Or Themselves To Real Field Testing.

Tomorrow Becomes Never. No Matter How Small The Task, Take The First Step Now!

Most People Can Do Absolutely Awe-inspiring Things. Sometimes They Just Need A Little Nudge.

The Universe Doesn't Conspire Against You, But It Doesn't Go Out Of Its Way To Line Up The Pins Either. Conditions Are Never Perfect.

If You Take A Strong Stance And Have A Clear Opinion Or Statement On Any Subject Online, You're Going To Polarize People. And Without That Polarity, There's No Discussion. Discussion Is What I Want, Which Means That I'm Fine With The Consequences.

Having A Size 9 Foot Is Fantastic Because Almost All Of The Shoe Companies Do Their Prototyping In Size 9, So If You Visit A Place Like Nike Headquarters, You Can Try Every Sort Of Wacky, Out-there Model.

Excitement Is The More Practical Synonym For Happiness, And It Is Precisely What You Should Strive To Chase. It Is The Cure-all.

What We Fear Doing Most Is Usually What We Most Need To Do.

Nothing Can Match The Wonderment That Comes From Staring Up Into The Star-filled Canopy Above And Realizing That You Are A Part Of That Creation.

The Fishing Is Best Where The Fewest Go And The Collective Insecurity Of The World Makes It Easy For People To Hit Home Runs While Everyone Is Aiming For Base Hits.

I Think Time Management As A Label Encourages People To View Each 24-hour Period As A Slot In Which They Should Pack As Much As Possible.

The Decent Method You Follow Is Better Than The Perfect Method You Quit.

Don't Suffer Fools Or You'll Become One.

Fun Things Happen When You Earn Dollars, Live On Pesos, And Compensate In Rupees.

What Do You Want?' Is Too Imprecise To Produce A Meaningful And Actionable Answer.

The Brain Is Where Most People Really Screw Up.

I Was An All-american In Wrestling In High School, Was National Champion In Chinese Kickboxing In 1999 And Have Spent A Lot Of Time Around Professional Athletes, Which Includes My Eight-plus Years As Ceo Of A Sports Nutrition Company.

Slow Down And Remember This: Most Things Make No Difference.

To Make A Bestseller, There Are More Customers Than Just Your Customers: Selling To The End-user Is Just One Piece Of The Puzzle. In My Case, I Needed To First Sell Myself To The Publisher To Get Marketing Support And National Retail Distribution.

There Are Two Synergistic Approaches For Increasing Productivity That Are Inversions Of Each Other: 1. Limit Tasks To The Important To Shorten Work Time (80/20). 2. Shorten Work Time To Limit Tasks To The Important (parkinson's Law). The Best Solution Is To Use Both Together: Identify The Few Critical Tasks That Contribute Most To Income And Schedule Them With Very Short And Clear Deadlines.

I Do Not Equate Productivity To Happiness. For Most People, Happiness In Life Is A Massive Amount Of Achievement Plus A Massive Amount Of Appreciation. And You Need Both Of Those Things.

The Question You Should Be Asking Isn't, "what Do I Want?" Or "what Are My Goals?" But "what Would Excite Me?

Are You Better Off Than You Were One Year Ago, One Month Ago, Or One Week Ago? If Not, Things Will Not Improve By Themselves.

It Is Predicated On The Assumption That You Dislike What You Are Doing During The Most Physically Capable Years Of Your Life. This Is A Nonstarter—nothing Can Justify That Sacrifice.

Money Doesn't Change You; It Reveals Who You Are When You No Longer Have To Be Nice.

It Isn't Enough To Think Outside The Box. Thinking Is Passive. Get Used To Acting Outside The Box.

One Can Steal Ideas, But No One Can Steal Execution Or Passion.

Black And White

Doing Less Is Not Being Lazy. Don't Give In To A Culture That Values Personal Sacrifice Over Personal Productivity.

The Opposite Of Love Is Indifference, And The Opposite Of Happiness Is Boredom.

Happiness Can Be Bought With A Bottle Of Wine And Has Become Ambiguous Through Overuse.

Bottles Of Wine

Language Learning Deserves Special Mention. It Is, Bar None, The Best Thing You Can Do To Hone Clear Thinking.

If You Spend Your Time, Worth $20-25 Per Hour, Doing Something That Someone Else Will Do For $10 Per Hour, It's Simply A Poor Use Of Resources.

I Work Hard, But In Spurts.

Sports Just Happen To Be Excellent For Avoiding Foreign-language Stage Fright And Developing Lasting Friendships While Still Sounding Like Tarzan.

People Really Do Think They Have To Choose Between High Stress And High Reward Jobs, And Low Stress And Low Reward Jobs.

There Are Two Components That Are Fundamental To Enjoy Life And Feel Good About Yourself: Continual Learning And Service.

Uncertainty And The Prospect Of Failure Can Be Very Scary Noises In The Shadows. Most People Will Choose Unhappiness Over Uncertainty.

Unbeknownst To Most Fun-loving Bipeds, Not All Stress Is Bad. Indeed, The New Rich Don't Aim To Eliminate All Stress. Not In The Least.

People Who Avoid All Criticism Fail. It's Destructive Criticism We Need To Avoid, Not Criticism In All Forms.

There Is A Direct Correlation Between Am Increased Sphere Of Comfort And Getting What You Want.

Getting What You Want

I'm Often Asked How I Define "success." It's An Overused Term, But I Fundamentally View This Elusive Beast As A Combination Of Two Things - Achievement And Appreciation. One Isn't Enough: Achievement Without Appreciation Makes You Ambitious But Miserable. Appreciation Without Achievement Makes You Unambitious But Happy.

Which 20% Of Sources Are Causing 80% Of My Problems And Unhappiness? Which 20% Of Sources Are Resulting In 80% Of My Desired Outcomes And Happiness?

In Excess, Most Endeavors And Possessions Take On The Characteristics Of Their Opposite.

Characteristics

There Is Always More Information Than Attention

Becoming A Member Of The Nr Is Not Just About Working Smarter. It's About Building A System To Replace Yourself.

By Working Only When You Are Most Effective, Life Is Both More Productive And More Enjoyable. It's The Perfect Example Of Having Your Cake And Eating It, Too.

The Problem With New Year's Resolutions - And Resolutions To 'get In Better Shape' In General, Which Are Very Amorphous - Is That People Try To Adopt Too Many Behavioral Changes At Once. It Doesn't Work. I Don't Care If You're A World-class Ceo - You'll Quit.

Doing The Unrealistic Is Easier Than Doing The Realistic.

The Best Entrepreneurs I've Ever Met Are All Good Communicators. It's Perhaps One Of The Very Few Unifying Factors.

Effectiveness Is Doing The Things That Get You Closer To Your Goals. Efficiency Is Performing A Given Task (whether Important Or Not) In The Most Economical Manner Possible. Being Efficient Without Regard To Effectiveness Is The Default Mode Of The Universe.

People Are Smarter Than You Think. Give Them A Chance To Prove Themselves.

Resolve To Do One Thing Every Day That You Fear.

World Barista Champions Use The Aeropress To Make Coffee On The Folding Tray Tables Of Airplanes.

To Enjoy Life, You Don't Need Fancy Nonsense, But You Do Need To Control Your Time And Realize That Most Things Just Aren't As Serious As You Make Them Out To Be.

Slowing Down Doesn't Mean Accomplishing Less; It Means Cutting Out Counterproductive Distractions And The Perception Of Being Rushed.

I Think Willpower Is Very Valuable.

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