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If you’re not failing, you’re not pushing your limits, and if you’re not pushing your limits, you’re not maximizing your potential.
people are happiest when they can be themselves.
To be effective you must not let your need to be right be more important than your need to find out what’s true.
People interested in making the best possible decisions are rarely confident that they have the best answers.
it’s pointless when people get angry with each other when they disagree because most disagreements aren’t threats as much as opportunities for learning.
to ensure that the people I cared most about would be okay without me, and to savor life with them in the years I had left.
A carpenter who derives his deepest satisfaction from working with wood can easily have a life as good or better than the president of the United States.
Don’t mistake opinions for facts.
when choosing which movie to watch or what book to read, are you drawn to proven classics or the newest big thing?
This is interesting, what would you chose?
it is smarter to choose the great over the new.
“When you ask someone whether something is true and they tell you that it’s not totally true, it’s probably by-and-large true.”
You can significantly improve your track record if you only make the bets that you are most confident will pay off.
Anything is possible. It’s the probabilities that matter.
“Any damn fool can make it complex. It takes a genius to make it simple.”
I’d rather have fewer bets (ideally uncorrelated ones) in which I am highly confident than more bets I’m less confident in,
Conflict in the pursuit of excellence is a terrific thing.
Money is a byproduct of excellence, not a goal.
The essential difference between a culture of people with shared values (which is a great thing) and a cult (which is a terrible thing) is the extent to which there is independent thinking.
Like a parent with adult children, I want you all to be strong, independent thinkers who will do well without me.
It is a fundamental law of nature that you get stronger only by doing difficult things.
While concealing the truth might make people happier in the short run, it won’t make them smarter or more trusting in the long run.
People who are one way on the inside and another on the outside become conflicted and often lose touch with their own values. It’s difficult for them to be happy and almost impossible for them to be their best.
Having nothing to hide relieves stress and builds trust.
when mistakes and weaknesses are hidden, unhealthy character is rewarded instead.
it is initially very difficult for most people to deal with uncomfortable realities.
most people will operate in a way that maximizes the amount of money they will get and that minimizes the amount of work they have to do to get it.
if you look back on yourself a year ago and aren’t shocked by how stupid you were, you haven’t learned much.
it was okay to make mistakes and unacceptable not to learn from them.
By avoiding conflicts one avoids resolving differences.
those who change their minds are the biggest winners because they learned something,
Don’t have anything to do with closed-minded people.
If you can’t successfully do something, don’t think you can tell others how it should be done.
everyone has opinions and they are often bad.
there is an overabundance of confidently expressed bad opinions.
It’s more important to do big things well than to do the small things perfectly.
Don’t hold opinions about things you don’t know anything about.
Ultimately, power will rule. This is true of any system. For example, it has repeatedly been shown that systems of government have only worked when those with the power value the principles behind the system more than they value their own personal objectives. When people have both enough power to undermine a system and a desire to get what they want that is greater than their desire to maintain the system, the system will fail. For that reason the power supporting the principles must be given only to people who value the principled way of operating more than their individual interests (or the
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hire the kind of people you want to share a long-term mission with.
Someone who doesn’t have much can be more generous giving a little than a rich person giving a lot.
not on whether they’re doing it your way but on whether they’re doing it in a good way.
most everyone thinks that what they did, and what they are doing, is much more important than it really is.
Giving people the opportunity to struggle rather than giving them the things they are struggling for will make them stronger.
Prioritization can be a trap if it causes you to ignore the problems around you.
Every key person should have at least one person who can replace him or her.
in order to treat people appropriately you must treat them differently.
Giving in not only compromises your values, it telegraphs that the rules of the game have changed and opens you up to more of the same.
being maximally effective is the most important thing a “leader” must do.
It is also more important to have good challengers than good followers.
One thing that leaders should not do, in my opinion, is be manipulative.
Common sense isn’t actually all that common—be explicit.
