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Success, however you define it, is achievable if you collect the right field-tested beliefs and habits.
Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse is recommended by many guests in this book.
When in doubt, work on the deficiencies you’re most embarrassed by.
“Flexibility” can be passive, whereas “mobility” requires that you can demonstrate strength throughout the entire range of motion, including the end ranges.
“If you don’t have cancer and you do a therapeutic fast 1 to 3 times per year, you could purge any precancerous cells that may be living in your body.”
There is also evidence to suggest—skipping the scientific detail—that fasts of 3 days or longer can effectively “reboot” your immune system via stem cell–based regeneration. Dom suggests a 5-day fast 2 to 3 times per year.
I now aim for a 3-day fast once per month and a 5- to 7-day fast once per quarter.
Magnesium daily.
If I had one go-to magnesium, it would be this magnesium citrate powder called Natural Calm.”
“All the problems I have in the daily world subside when I do [cold exposure]. Exposing myself to the worthy cold … it is a great cleaning purifying force.”
Simply make the last 30 to 60 seconds of your shower pure cold. Among others in this book, Naval Ravikant (here), Joshua Waitzkin (here), and I now do this.
“The quality of your questions determines the quality of your life.”
“If you’re over 40 and don’t smoke, there’s about a 70 to 80% chance you’ll die from one of four diseases: heart disease, cerebrovascular disease, cancer, or neurodegenerative disease.”
He is a proponent of magnesium supplementation. Our ability to buffer magnesium with healthy kidneys is very high. He takes 600 to 800 mg per day, alternating between mag sulfate and mag oxide. He
“The most important thing I’ve learned about nutrition is you need to deserve your carbs
the best thing to increase testosterone is to lower cortisol.
“To increase your pull-up numbers, start doing half the reps you’re capable of (e.g., sets of 4 if your personal best is 8) in repeated sets throughout the day. Simply accumulate reps with at least 15 minutes between sets, and adjust the daily volume to always feel fresh.”
“THROWING COMPRESSION SOCKS ON [POST-WORKOUT] IS A GAME-CHANGING EXPERIENCE.”
“Kids don’t do what you say. They do what they see. How you live your life is their example.”
“I would say to have no fear. I mean, you’ve got one chance here to do amazing things, and being afraid of being wrong or making a mistake or fumbling is just not how you do something of impact. You just have to be fearless.”
Honey + ACV: My go-to tranquilizer beverage is simple: 2 tablespoons of apple cider vinegar (I use Bragg brand) and 1 tablespoon honey, stirred into 1 cup of hot water.
Here are five things that I attempt to do every morning. Realistically, if I hit three out of five, I consider myself having won the morning. And if you win the morning, you win the day.
#1—Make Your Bed (<3 minutes)
“If you make your bed every morning, you will have accomplished the first task of the day. It will give you a small sense of pride, and it will encourage you to do another task and another and another. By the end of the day, that one task completed will have turned into many tasks completed. Making your bed will also reinforce the fact that little things in life matter.”
No matter how shitty your day is, no matter how catastrophic it might become, you can make your bed. And that gives you the feeling, at least it gives me the feeling, even in a disastrous day, that I’ve held on to the cliff ledge by a fingernail and I haven’t fallen. There is at least one thing I’ve controlled, there is something that has maintained one hand on the driver’s wheel of life.
#3—Do 5 to 10 Reps of Something (<1 minute)
Meditation allows me to step back and gain a “witness perspective” (as with psychedelics), so that I’m observing my thoughts instead of being tumbled by them. I can step out of the washing machine and calmly look inside it.
“If you set your goals ridiculously high and it’s a failure, you will fail above everyone else’s success.” —James Cameron
I think that as you survey the challenges in your lives, it’s just: Which of those did you assign yourself, and which of those are you doing to please someone else? Your inbox is a to-do list to which anyone in the world can add an action item.
“Experience often deeply embeds the assumptions that need to be questioned in the first place.
“Life can be much broader, once you discover one simple fact, and that is that everything around you that you call ‘life’ was made up by people that were no smarter than you. And you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use. Once you learn that, you’ll never be the same again.”
Arnold is a huge chess fan and plays daily. He rotates through different partners and keeps annual score cards.
I am a big believer that if you have a very clear vision of where you want to go, then the rest of it is much easier.
Derek has read, reviewed, and rank-ordered 200+ books at sivers.org/books.
ONCE YOU HAVE SOME SUCCESS—IF IT’S NOT A “HELL, YES!” IT’S A “NO”
I believe you shouldn’t start a business unless people are asking you to.
Personally, I suck at efficiency (doing things quickly). To compensate and cope, here’s my 8-step process for maximizing efficacy (doing the right things):
Wake up at least 1 hour before you have to be at a computer screen. Email is the mind-killer.
Make a cup of tea (I like pu-erh) and sit down with a pen/pencil and paper.
Write down the 3 to 5 things—and no more—that are making you the most anx...
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“If this were the only thing I accomplished today, would I be satisfied with my day?” “Will moving this forward make all the other to-dos unimportant or easier to knock off later?” Put another way: “What, if done, will make all of the rest easier or irrelevant?”
Being busy is a form of laziness—lazy thinking and indiscriminate action. Being busy is most often used as a guise for avoiding the few critically important but uncomfortable actions.
“getting upset won’t help things.”
“It’s a belief: Life is always happening for us, not to us. It’s our job to find out where the benefit is. If we do, life is magnificent.”
“Losers react, leaders anticipate.”
As Tony recounted, Buffett told him, “Investing in yourself is the most important investment you’ll ever make in your life…. There’s no financial investment that’ll ever match it, because if you develop more skill, more ability, more insight, more capacity, that’s what’s going to really provide economic freedom…. It’s those skill sets that really make that happen.”
“If you let your learning lead to knowledge, you become a fool. If you let your learning lead to action, you become wealthy.”
“The quality of your life is the quality of your questions.”
There are many tools that I’ve seen Tony use over the years, several of which I’ve adopted for myself, including:
Cold-water plunge (I use a quick cold shower, which could be just 30 to 60 seconds)
