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Tony follows this with breathing exercises. He does 3...
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Alternative: “Breath walking.” This is vintage Tony, but I still use it quite often when traveling. Simply walk for a few minutes, using a breathing cycle of 4 short inhales through the nose, then 4 short exhales through the mouth.
Capping the downside: “Every single one of those [people] is obsessed with not losing money.
Say, ‘How do I get no risk and get huge rewards?’ and because you ask a question continuously and you believe [there’s an] answer, you get it.”
“They absolutely, beyond a shadow of a doubt, know they’re going to be wrong
Aside from The Autobiography of Malcolm X, Casey’s favorite book is The Second World War by John Keegan.
“You realize that you will never be the best-looking person in the room. You’ll never be the smartest person in the room. You’ll never be the most educated, the most well-versed. You can never compete on those levels. But what you can always compete on, the true egalitarian aspect to success, is hard work. You can always work harder than the next guy.”
“What is the ultimate quantification of success? For me, it’s not how much time you spend doing what you love. It’s how little time you spend doing what you hate.
The Fog of War (Errol Morris)—Many guests recommend this. It’s incredible and has an unbelievable 98% average on Rotten Tomatoes.
“Once we get those muddy, maddening, confusing thoughts [nebulous worries, jitters, and preoccupations] on the page, we face our day with clearer eyes.”
Reid also read Carl von Clausewitz and Sun Tzu as a boy, which informed his strategic thinking.
Reid recommends studying Ludwig Wittgenstein, about whom he’s taught a course at Oxford. “One of the bedrocks of modern analytic philosophy is to think of [language] … if you’re trying to talk to someone else about some problem, and you’re trying to make progress, how do you make language as positive an instrument as possible? What are the ways that language can work, and what are the ways that language doesn’t work?”
have come to learn that part of the business strategy is to solve the simplest, easiest, and most valuable problem. And actually, in fact, part of doing strategy is to solve the easiest problem, so part of the reason why you work on software and bits is that atoms [physical products] are actually very difficult.”
“Never go to sleep without a request to your subconscious.”—Thomas Edison
So if you’re planning to do something with your life, if you have a 10-year plan of how to get there, you should ask: Why can’t you do this in 6 months?
“Breakfast is one more decision I don’t make, so it’s a frozen banana, hemp powder, almond milk, a dried plum, and some walnuts in the blender.”
You should taste the food as you go, which a surprisingly small number of people do; and B) salt and olive oil actually are cheating and they’re secret weapons and they always work.”
Goals: Setting and Achieving Them on Schedule, How to Stay Motivated, and Secrets of Closing the Sale by Zig Ziglar: “Zig is your grandfather and my grandfather. He’s Tony Robbins’s grandfather. None of us would be here if it weren’t for Zig.”
Diversification works in almost every area of your life to reduce your stress.”
If you want an average, successful life, it doesn’t take much planning. Just stay out of trouble, go to school, and apply for jobs you might like. But if you want something extraordinary, you have two paths: 1) Become the best at one specific thing. 2) Become very good (top 25%) at two or more things. The first strategy is difficult to the point of near impossibility. Few people will ever play in the NBA or make a platinum album. I don’t recommend anyone even try. The second strategy is fairly easy. Everyone has at least a few areas in which they could be in the top 25% with some effort. In my
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Shaun and I both love and recommend Andre’s autobiography, Open.
SPECIALIZATION IS FOR INSECTS
Both Chase and Derek Sivers (here) are big fans of the book Show Your Work by Austin Kleon.
Hardcore History. Tip: Start with “Wrath of the Khans.”
“If I’ve learned anything from podcasting, it’s don’t be afraid to do something you’re not qualified to do.”
‘Don’t stress about it, it’s all going to work out in the end.’
Ramit and I are both obsessed with checklists and love a book by Atul Gawande titled The Checklist Manifesto. I have this book on a shelf in my living room, cover out, as a constant reminder.
“Five days a week, I read my goals before I go to sleep and when I wake up. There are 10 goals around health, family, business, etc., with expiration dates, and I update them every 6 months.”
Increase the speed of your track/mouse pad. Go into Settings or Systems Preferences and double your current speed. This takes less than 30 seconds to do.
Maybe it’s coming up with ideas to hand over to your boss. ► Find people, thinkers, up-and-comers to introduce to each other. Cross wires to create new sparks. ► Find what nobody else wants to do and do it. ► Find inefficiencies and waste and redundancies. Identify leaks and patches to free up resources for new areas. ► Produce more than everyone else and give your ideas away.
who isn’t a billionaire and a billionaire…. He said, ‘The biggest mistake you can make is to accept the norms of your time.’
Neil and I, and many other writers, use “TK” as a placeholder for things we need to research later (e.g., “He was TK years old at the time.”). This is common practice, as almost no English words have TK in them
“Be open to whatever comes next.”—John Cage
Sometimes you need to stop doing things you love in order to nurture the one thing that matters most.”
Walden by Henry David Thoreau
Vagabonding is about looking for adventure in normal life, and normal life within adventure.
In this way, we end up spending (as Thoreau put it) “the best part of one’s life earning money in order to enjoy a questionable liberty during the least valuable part of it.”
Vagabonding is about gaining the courage to loosen your grip on the so-called certainties of this world. Vagabonding is about refusing to exile travel to some other, seemingly more appropriate time of your life.
Even if the practical reality of travel is still months or years away, vagabonding begins the moment you stop making excuses, start saving money, and begin to look at maps with the narcotic tingle of possibility. From here, the reality of vagabonding comes into sharper focus as you adjust your worldview and begin to embrace the exhilarating uncertainty that true travel promises.
Quitting—whether a job or a habit—means taking a turn so as to be sure you’re still moving in the direction of your dreams.”
In this way, quitting should never be seen as the end of something grudging and unpleasant. Rather, it’s a vital step in beginning something new and wonderful.
The world’s biggest problems are the world’s biggest business opportunities.”
Still struggling with a sense of purpose or mission? Roughly half a dozen people in this book (e.g., Robert Rodriguez) have suggested the book Start with Why by Simon Sinek.
Law 7: If you can’t win, change the rules.
Law 8: If you can’t change the rules, then ignore them.
Law 17: The best way to predict the future is to create it yourself.
Law 26: If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it.
“A day that ends well is one that started with exercise.
Schedule (and, if possible, pay for) things in advance to prevent yourself from backing out.
“Discipline equals freedom.” —Jocko Willink
