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The trick is people who are most productive tend to say no to things that are unimportant to them and focus on what they believe matters.
if I wanted to do my best work, I needed to do fewer things, and really focus on what mattered.
Focusing on what matters means saying no to things that don’t matter. Otherwise, your life becomes cluttered with distractions.
If you switch back and forth between multiple tasks, your brain works more slowly than it would if you focused on each activity for a period of time. Albert Einstein said: It's not that I'm so smart, it's just that I stay with problems longer.
To get great insights absolutely requires hard work, but it also requires space.
to make the most of your life, say no to things that don’t matter, work hard at what you love, and occasionally take time away from your core focus to rest so that your mind can be quiet for great insights to come.
Worrying, I’ve found, wastes energy and wastes time; it limits what you can accomplish. I try not to obsess on the past, but to learn from it. I try not to worry about the future, but to prepare for it. And while it’s difficult sometimes, I try to take pleasure in the moment, even when bad things happen.
The lesson to me is that you can focus on something going well, or something beautiful, or something interesting -- even amidst terrible times.
I try to put things into two buckets: one I can do something about and one I can’t. The things I can’t do anything about, I try to ignore.
Stoic Philosophy
For the problems you can impact and you want to alter, think about what you want to accomplish, and try to do that in a pragmatic way. You don’t have to change everything overnight.
when you make mistakes along the way, as I have at many points in my life, accept them as well. I’ve tried to learn from my mistakes. They’re experience – and they’re the sort of experience you won’t soon forget.
Winston Churchill said: Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.
What do I mean, then, by really dumb things? There are two classes: unrecoverable errors and denial.
Habits form when we’re young, and solidify before we know it. So forming the right habits early is critical, whether that means eating well, exercising, saving money or being honest.
feelings can flag problems that may be difficult to articulate.
Character is like a tree, and reputation like its shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing. - Abraham Lincoln
There are four basic principles that have worked well for me: Do what you think is right. Don't follow other people blindly. Be honest and keep your word. Admit your mistakes.
Real friends - people you trust, respect, laugh with, and can rely on - are a vitally important part of life.
As the expression goes: greed is a hole you can never fill
It’s only by loving, celebrating, and appreciating what makes you unique that you can fully enjoy your life, and truly love others. If you don’t love yourself, the results aren’t pleasant.
Taking care of yourself means finding a balance that works for you, then having the discipline to maintain that balance.
Grief can take care of itself, but to get the full value of a joy, you must have somebody to divide it with. -- Mark Twain
Our time on earth is limited, but you can extend your influence by helping those who will outlive you.
you can choose to let all the things that go wrong in life depress you. Or, you can accept that things will go wrong, try to laugh, and then look at what you can do. There’s a Japanese proverb that gets right to the point: We’re fools whether we dance or not -- so we might as well dance.
some people can laugh even amidst terrible times. The payoff is the physical act of laughing actually improves your mood.
keep Mark Twain in mind: The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.
Too often it is because they are always getting ready to live. Before they know it, time runs out.
live as if I was going to die in ten years and had no immediate financial needs. That’s great advice.
It’s said that to become an expert in a given activity requires about 10,000 hours of practice. At 40 hours a week (doing nothing else, which is extremely unlikely) it takes five years of solid work to master a subject.
While there’s nothing wrong with being well-paid, and we all love to receive praise for good work, prioritizing external rewards over the work itself is a failing strategy.
Those who live in the past tend to be unhappy. No matter how significant your past accomplishments may be, they won't keep you satisfied.
Problems are much easier to deal with when they’re still small than if you you’ve let them grow over time.
not everything that’s important can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.
It ain’t what we don’t know that gives us trouble, it’s what we know that just ain’t so.
you can’t become great at anything without a lot of repeated practice.
If you focus your brain on success and you practice seriously, you’ll slowly build the deep confidence you need to persevere in life. You’ll be ready for the obstacles the world throws at you -- or at least you’ll expect to encounter them.
Persistent curiosity, combined with sustained focus on reasonable goals, will change your life over time. If you love what you do and work very hard, persevere, and take small steps, you likely will be in a dramatically different place ten years from now.
Benjamin Franklin wrote: “You may delay, but time will not”.
