Life Is Short And So Is This Book

by Peter Atkins

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

A number of people I know claim to be great multi-taskers. The brain, however, doesn’t work that way; instead it focuses on one activity at a time. 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. Most of us do the opposite -- with predictable results.

They allow themselves to step away from the problem(s) on which they’re focused, so that insights can come to them in activities such as walking, or looking out on a beautiful scene.

if you don’t give yourself space from the problems on which you are working, you likely will be so worn down you won’t generate creative insights.

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

I can do something about and one I can’t.

Same concept - Stoicism : what you can control and what you can’t.

I’ve also noticed it helps to accept the world as it is -- not in the sense that you can’t change things (although that is sometimes the case), but in the sense that you need to see reality clearly before you can take effective action.

Accept that luck and bad luck aren’t evenly or fairly distributed, and you can’t do anything about that.

Over time, other people gained faith in my investing abilities, but it didn’t happen overnight. It wasn’t easy. And nothing I might have done early on would have changed that.

sometimes the most important thing to do is to not do anything really dumb.

This is true! Often the time and situation demands you to just be there, stand there, be a part of everything and just not fuck it up. It doesn’t require you to do marvels, just don’t FUCK UP!!!

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.

Small problems early on generally don’t just resolve themselves with time. And it’s impossible to change other adults’ personalities, no matter what you may wish.

Even if it’s inconvenient or painful, I’ve learned, I’m better off doing nothing when the only available choice has glaring issues.

Grief can take care of itself, but to get the full value of a joy, you must have somebody to divide it with.

We’re fools whether we dance or not -- so we might as well dance.

Assuming your basic life needs are being met, you can choose to be happy if you want

A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.

Part of knowing yourself means acknowledging what you genuinely want.

Ideally, you want a job you’d do even if you weren’t paid to do it. That’s not an economic reality for most of us, but it’s the right goal to shoot for. If you can get paid to do what you perceive as play, you have a great job.

“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.”

if you are one of those few who try to learn every day, it makes a huge difference over long periods of time.

Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.