Screw It, Let's Do It: Lessons In Life

by Richard Branson

The best lesson I learned was to just do it. It doesn’t matter what it is, or how hard it might seem, as the ancient Greek, Plato, said, ‘The beginning is the most important part of any work.’

Whatever your goal is you will never succeed unless you let go of your fears and fly.

often ask myself, is my work fun and does it make me happy? I believe that the answer to that matters more than fame or fortune. If something stops being fun, I ask why? If I can’t fix it, I stop doing it.

never just try to make money. Long-term success will never come if profit is the only aim.

Always beware if the risks are too random or too hard to predict, but remember, if you opt for a safe life, you will never know what it’s like to win.

have always made fast decisions and acted on my instinct.

I believe the one thing that helps you capture the moment is to have no regrets. Regrets weigh you down. They hold you back in the past when you should move on.

Money was for making things happen.

Even though I was taught to stand on my own feet, without my loyal family and friends I would be lost.

Respect is about how to treat everyone, not just those you want to impress.

Bill Gates – the world’s top charity donor – said his staff could spend two hours gazing into space, as long as their minds were working, and Albert Einstein came up with the theory of relativity in his head without paper or pen.

I don’t use my hands for my work,

believe we should all assess our lives from time to time. Have we reached our goals? Are there things we can weed out that we don’t need? I’m not talking about throwing away old shoes or broken chairs. I mean we need to lose our bad habits or lazy ways that hold us back and clutter our minds.

Just do it Think yes, not no Challenge yourself Have goals Have fun Make a difference Stand on your own feet Be loyal Live life to the full

At the moment, I am funding a dive off the coast of Egypt to survey the ancient city of Alexandria. My favourite books are Stalingrad by Antony Beevor and Wild Swans by Jung Chang.

But I still can’t use a laptop. People have given me a Blackberry and mobile phones, but I have always written everything down in school notebooks. It started when I found reading and writing hard at school and, to make up for that, built up a very good long-term memory. Now, I jot down key words in my notebooks and later, if I need to, I find a note and I can recall entire conversations. This has stood me in very good stead more than once when I have needed to prove something. But it’s not just conversations – I also jot down my own thoughts. Anything I see and hear can spark an idea in me. I note it down at once and often look back through old notebooks to gain fresh ideas or to see what I might have missed.