Life Is Short And So Is This Book

by Peter Atkins

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.

Focusing on what matters means saying no to things that don’t matter. Otherwise, your life becomes cluttered with distractions.

Albert Einstein said: It's not that I'm so smart, it's just that I stay with problems longer.

So 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.

If you can't sleep, then get up and do something instead of lying there worrying. It's the worry that gets you, not the lack of sleep. -Dale Carnegie

As Winston Churchill said: Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.

Do what you think is right. Don't follow other people blindly. Be honest and keep your word. Admit your mistakes.

I’ve found 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.

The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.

There are but three events in a man’s life: birth, life and death. He is not conscious of being born, he dies in pain, and he forgets to live. - Jean de la Bruyere

Alexander Graham Bell said: “When one door closes, another door opens; but we so often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door, that we do not see the ones which open for us.”

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. - Albert Einstein

I'm a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work, the more I have of it. - Thomas Jefferson

Life is short! As Benjamin Franklin wrote: “You may delay, but time will not”.