More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Read between
October 3, 2021 - April 11, 2022
Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect. —MARK TWAIN
Anyone who lives within their means suffers from a lack of imagination. —OSCAR WILDE,
this book is not about saving and will not recommend you abandon your daily glass of red wine for a million dollars 50 years from now. I’d rather have the wine. I won’t ask you to choose between enjoyment today or money later. I believe you can have both now. The goal is fun and profit.
The blind quest for cash is a fool’s errand.
I can’t give you a surefire formula for success, but I can give you a formula for failure: try to please everybody all the time. —HERBERT BAYARD SWOPE,
Everything popular is wrong. —OSCAR WILDE,
Different is better when it is more effective or more fun.
Don’t follow a model that doesn’t work.
Doing less meaningless work, so that you can focus on things of greater personal importance, is NOT laziness. This is hard for most to accept, because our culture tends to reward personal sacrifice instead of personal productivity.
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 all the pins either. Conditions are never perfect. “Someday” is a disease that will take your dreams to the grave with you.
People—whether parents, partners, or bosses—deny things on an emotional basis that they can learn to accept after the fact.
Most people are fast to stop you before you get started but hesitant to get in the way if you’re moving. Get good at being a troublemaker and saying sorry when you really screw up.
Too much, too many, and too often of what you want becomes what you don’t want. This is true of possessions and even time.
FEAR COMES IN many forms, and we usually don’t call it by its four-letter name. Fear itself is quite fear-inducing. Most intelligent people in the world dress it up as something else: optimistic denial.
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.
Don’t save it all for the end. There is every reason not to.
‘Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.’ You won’t believe what you can accomplish by attempting the impossible with the courage to repeatedly fail better.”
The existential vacuum manifests itself mainly in a state of boredom. —VIKTOR FRANKL,
1. Which 20% of sources are causing 80% of my problems and unhappiness? 2. Which 20% of sources are resulting in 80% of my desired outcomes and happiness?
Slow down and remember this: Most things make no difference. Being busy is a form of laziness—lazy thinking and indiscriminate action.
Parkinson’s Law dictates that a task will swell in (perceived) importance and complexity in relation to the time allotted for its completion.
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).
At least three times per day at scheduled times, he had to ask himself the following question: Am I being productive or just active?
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.
Exact numbers aren’t needed to realize that we spend too much time with those who poison us with pessimism, sloth, and low expectations of themselves and the world. It is often the case that you have to fire certain friends or retire from particular social circles to have the life you want. This isn’t being mean; it is being practical. Poisonous people do not deserve your time. To think otherwise is masochistic.
My contacts now know that I don’t respond to emergencies, so the emergencies somehow don’t exist or don’t come to me.
Problems, as a rule, solve themselves or disappear if you remove yourself as an information bottleneck and empower others.
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.
It’s amazing how someone’s IQ seems to double as soon as you give them responsibility and indicate that you trust them.
SET THE RULES in your favor: Limit access to your time, force people to define their requests before spending time with them, and batch routine menial tasks to prevent postponement of more important projects. Do not let people interrupt you. Find your focus and you’ll find your lifestyle.
People think it must be fun to be a super genius, but they don’t realize how hard it is to put up with all the idiots in the world. —CALVIN, from Calvin and Hobbes
It is said that if everyone is your customer, then no one is your customer.
Those who spend the least and ask for the most before ordering will do the same after the sale.
getting what you want often depends more on when you ask for it than how you ask for it.
MOST EXCUSES NOT to travel are exactly that—excuses. I’ve been there, so this isn’t a holier-than-thou sermon. I know too well that it’s easier to live with ourselves if we cite an external reason for inaction.
