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To establish anti-goals, look at your goals, but rather than think about this great outcome, invert the problem—flip it on its head: What are the worst possible outcomes that could result from your pursuit of these goals? What could lead to those worst possible outcomes occurring? What would you view as a Pyrrhic victory—winning the battle but losing the war? Using your answers to these questions, select one to three specific anti-goals for each long-term goal.
“You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.”
Systems are the daily actions that create forward progress. Leverage amplifies the output of a single unit of input. Combining the two ideas, high-leverage systems are the daily actions that create amplified, asymmetric forward progress.
Warren Buffett is known as the Oracle of Omaha for a reason. Over an investing career spanning more than seventy years, he has achieved compounded annual returns of over 20 percent, an astonishing feat over such a long time.
So what do the young soccer star and the old investing whiz have in common? Both focus their energy on a few key moments and ignore the rest. When they’re on, they deploy their energy in a concentrated, glorious burst. When they’re off, they wait, conserve, and position themselves slowly and strategically into locations that will be advantageous in future moments. They work smart—not hard.
you have the appropriate goals, anti-goals, and high-leverage systems, your focus on each type of wealth can exist on a dimmer switch rather than an on/off switch.
Consider the mentality of surfers riding a wave. They fully enjoy this wave, with the wisdom and awareness that there are always more waves coming. They know they don’t have to ride every single wave that comes their way. They are aware that patience and proper positioning are all that matters for when the next wave inevitably comes. They know the only way to live is by putting themselves out there in the water, because they can’t catch any waves sitting on the shore. You need to adopt the surfers’ mentality with respect to the seasons of your life. There will be seasons of growth and seasons
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At the end of each month, ask yourself three tactical questions: What really matters right now in my life, and are my goals still aligned with this? Assess the quality of your goals and ensure that they still serve as true north. Are my current high-leverage systems aligned with my goals? Assess the quality of your high-leverage systems and whether they create the appropriate momentum. Am I in danger of running afoul of my anti-goals? Assess the quality of your environment and decisions to evaluate any changes that need to be made.
At the end of each quarter, add these four questions to your regular ritual: What is creating energy right now?
What is draining energy right now?
Who are the boat anchors in my life? Boat anchors are people who hold you back from your potential. They literally create a drag on your life. Boat anchors are people who belittle, put down, or diminish your accomplishments, laugh at your ambition and tell you to be more realistic, harm the quality of your environment through negativity and pessimism, and make you feel bad by consistently showing off what they have.
What am I avoiding because of fear? The thing you fear the most is often the thing you most need to do. Fears, when avoided, become limiters on our progress. Recalibrate to get closer to your fears in the quarter ahead.
Before you continue, sit down and write a letter to your future self—ten years from now, five years from now, three years from now, whatever. Reflect on where you are and where you hope to be when you open the letter. Vividly imagine that desired future. The letter is your true north.
The years go by, as quickly as a wink Enjoy yourself, enjoy yourself, it’s later than you think —Guy Lombardo, “Enjoy Yourself (It’s Later Than You Think)”
you don’t get your children for eighteen years, you get them for about twelve or thirteen, if you’re lucky.
“Always remember,” she said, “everyone we love, they are on loan to us for a short period of time. They are gone in the blink of an eye.”
Time spent with your parents and siblings peaks in childhood and declines sharply after you reach age twenty.
If you have the luxury of choice, make sure you choose work—and coworkers—that you find meaningful and important.
Here are six key lessons for life: Family time is finite—cherish it. Children time is precious—be present. Friend time is limited—prioritize the real friends. Partner time is meaningful—never settle. Coworker time is significant—find energy. Alone time is abundant—love yourself.
“Despite not being at the end of your life, you may very well be nearing the end of your time with some of the most important people in your life.”[2]
“No matter how many times you do something, there will come a day when you do it for the last time.”[3] There will be a last time your kids want you to read them a bedtime story, a last time you’ll go for a long walk with your sibling, a last time you’ll hug your parents at a family gathering,
any moment might be our last. Everything is more beautiful because we’re doomed. You will never be lovelier than you are now. We will never be here again.
The concept of memento mori is a staple of Stoic philosophy, a reminder of the certainty and inescapability of death—of time’s inevitable victory over man. In recent years, memento mori has gained a bit of a cult following. The most hardcore use a memento mori calendar to track the passage of the weeks of life. The calendar is a large rectangle made up of tiny circles, fifty-two columns wide and eighty rows long. Each circle represents one week of life; each row represents one year. Followers shade in the circles for each week they have lived, and the calendar provides a stark reminder of the
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in 1927, when a Canadian engineer named Warren Marrison invented the quartz clock. The quartz clock uses the precise vibrations of a quartz crystal hit with an electrical current to track and measure time and remains the most common type of modern clock, over a hundred years later.
there is a cognitive switching cost to shifting your attention from one task to another. When your attention is shifted, there is a residue of it that remains with the prior task and impairs your cognitive performance on the new task. You may think your attention has fully shifted to the new task, but your brain has a lag.
the cultural propensity to “just check” on phone or email notifications: “If, like most, you rarely go more than 10–15 minutes without a just check, you have effectively put yourself in a persistent state of self-imposed cognitive handicap. The flip side, of course, is to imagine the relative cognitive enhancement that would follow by minimizing this effect.”[6]
the notion that not all time is equal has been around for thousands of years. The ancient Greeks had two different words for time: chronos and kairos. Chronos refers to sequential, quantitative time—the natural sequence and flow of equal parts of time. Kairos refers to a more fluctuating, qualitative time—the idea that certain moments are weightier than others, that not all time is the same. Kairos brings to life the notion that time does more than simply pass and flow, that it has substance, texture, and weight, but only if we are perceptive enough to recognize it (and capitalize on it).
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There are windows and moments of particular importance—kairos time—when energy can be invested with the greatest possible return.
the three core pillars of Time Wealth: Awareness: An understanding of the finite, impermanent nature of time Attention: The ability to direct your attention and focus on the things that matter (and ignore the rest) Control: The freedom to own your time and choose exactly how to spend it
if you went to Warren Buffett and asked him whether he’d trade a billion dollars for a billion seconds, he’d take the time over the money.”
“We are not given a short life but we make it short, and we are not ill-supplied but wasteful of it.” You know how important your time is, yet you ignore its passage and engage in low-value activities that pull you away from the things that really matter.
Your choice of how and when to deploy your limited attention determines the quality of your outcomes.
In the context of your life, concentrated attention is the dedicated, deep focus on the high-leverage projects, opportunities, people, and moments that truly matter. Attention is what allows you to get ahead, to stop running faster (more units of input) and start running smarter (higher output per unit of input).
the relationship between free time and happiness follows an inverse U-shape—meaning that both too little and too much free time lead to unhappiness.
“What is important is seldom urgent and what is urgent is seldom important.” We can define the urgent and important as follows: Urgent: A task that requires prompt attention Important: A task that advances your long-term values or goals
Parkinson’s law is the idea that work expands to fill the time allotted for its completion.
Close your eyes and take three deep breaths. Imagine you’re dead. You’re at your funeral. People are walking in, crying, hugging each other. Everyone sits down. Who is sitting in the front row? Imagine their faces. These people—your Front-Row People—are the ones who truly matter. Open your eyes and think about them. What are you doing to cherish the people who hold those special seats in your world? How are you letting those people know what they mean to you? Are you prioritizing time with them or letting it float by and disappear?
Social Wealth is built upon this foundation of depth—upon the strength of your ties to these few, cherished relationships. It is expanded through breadth—connection to extended circles of friends, communities, and cultures. Finally, it is secured through earned status, a durable form of social positioning that cannot be bought.
Conventional wisdom says one should focus on the journey, not the destination. I disagree. Focus on the people. When you surround yourself with inspiring people, the journeys become more beautiful, and the destinations become more brilliant. It’s impossible to sit where you are and plan the perfect journey. Focus on the company—the people you want to travel with—and the journey will reveal itself in due time. Nothing bad has ever come from surrounding oneself with inspiring, genuine, kind, positive-sum individuals.
Our earliest human ancestors with similar-size brains walked the earth about seven hundred thousand years ago.[1]
Anthropologist Robin Dunbar is most famous for his research-based determination of the number of stable social relationships a single person can maintain (the aptly named Dunbar’s number is 150). He also found that the strongest predictor of brain size across species is the size of the typical social group. The human brain is uniquely large relative to body size, which Dunbar attributes to the fact that our species is highly social. Put simply: You are social because you are human, and you are human because you are social.
The study has found that strong, healthy relationships are the best predictor of life satisfaction, far outpacing other hypothesized predictors, such as social class, wealth, fame, IQ, and genetics. Perhaps even more important, the study found that relationship satisfaction had a direct positive impact on physical health.
To reiterate that critical point: The single greatest predictor of physical health at age eighty was relationship satisfaction at age fifty. On the flip side, loneliness was found to be worse for one’s health than regular use of tobacco or alcohol.
The so-called Great Resignation of 2021, in which the United States experienced an unprecedented labor-market churn, is now being cheekily referred to as the Great Regret; a recent survey showed that about 80 percent of those who hopped from one job to another now regret the move.
For ten years, you are your child’s favorite person in the entire world. After that, children have other favorite people—best friends, girlfriends, boyfriends, partners, and, eventually, their own children. But during those ten years, you are everything to them.
The magic years should be a call to arms: wrestle with this tension, be there and appreciate that brutally short window of time you have with your kids.
Always remember: The days are long, but the years are short.
Apple founder Steve Jobs put it well: “Almost everything—all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure—these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked.”[11]
An old Buddhist parable echoes this sentiment. The Buddha asks his student, “If a person is struck by an arrow, is it painful?” The student nods yes. The Buddha asks, “If a person is struck by a second arrow, is that even more painful?” The student again nods yes. The Buddha then explains, “In life, we cannot always control the first arrow—the bad thing that happens. However, the second arrow is our reaction to the bad thing, and that second arrow is optional.”
Your Social Wealth is built across three core pillars: Depth: Connection to a small circle of people with deep, meaningful bonds Breadth: Connection to a larger circle of people for support and belonging beyond the self, either through individual relationships or through community, religious, spiritual, or cultural infrastructure Earned status: The lasting respect, admiration, and trust of your peers that you receive on the basis of earned, not acquired, status symbols
