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August 13 - August 21, 2022
More than 80% of the interviewees have some form of daily mindfulness or meditation practice
Rave reviews of the books Sapiens, Poor Charlie’s Almanack, Influence, and Man’s Search for Meaning, among others
Nearly everyone has done some form of “spec” work (completing projects on their own time and dime, then submitting them to prospective buyers)
Almost every guest has been able to take obvious “weaknesses” and turn them into huge competitive advantages
Success, however you define it, is achievable if you collect the right field-tested beliefs and habits. Someone
The superheroes you have in your mind (idols, icons, titans, billionaires, etc.) are nearly all walking flaws who’ve maximized 1 or 2 strengths.
“You’re not responsible for the hand of cards you were dealt. You’re responsible for maxing out what you were given.”
Christopher Sommer
“If you are depressed, you are living in the past. If you are anxious, you are living in the future. If you are at peace, you are living in the present.” —Lao Tzu
“My work isn’t done tonight. My work was done 3 months ago, and I just have to show up.”
“What am I continuing to do myself that I’m not good at?” Improve it, eliminate it, or delegate it.
“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.”
When you answer “I am grateful for . . . ,” I recommend considering four different categories. Otherwise, you will go on autopilot and repeat the same items day after day (e.g., “my healthy family,” “my loving dog,” etc.).
During working hours or school hours, randomly identify two people who walk past you or who are standing or sitting around you. Secretly wish for them to be happy. Just think to yourself, “I wish for this person to be happy, and I wish for that person to be happy.” That is the entire practice. Don’t do anything; don’t say anything; just think. This is entirely a thinking exercise.
Where can you create a “red team” in your life to stress-test your most treasured beliefs? (See Samy Kamkar, page 427; Stan McChrystal, page 435; and Jocko Willink, page 412.)
“If [more] information was the answer, then we’d all be billionaires with perfect abs.”
Derek Sivers
“Invest that little bit of time to make it a little bit more human or—depending on your brand—a little funnier, a little more different, or a little more whatever. It’ll be worth it, and that’s my challenge.”
How Proust Can Change Your Life.
https://www.amazon.com/How-Proust-Change-Your-Life/dp/0679779159/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=how+proust+can+change+your+life&qid=1660752035&sprefix=how+proust%2Caps%2C134&sr=8-1
highly recommend reading “The CEO of Automattic on Holding ‘Auditions’ to Build a Strong Team” from the April 2014 issue of the Harvard Business Review (find it on hbr.org).
idea is simple. Stop interviewing, do auditions instead. Work with the company for 3-8 weeks. Get paid, do real work.
“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.”
Tony Robbins
“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.”
Buffet said this to Tony Robbins when Tony asked him "what is your all time best investment"
“If you let your learning lead to knowledge, you become a fool. If you let your learning lead to ...
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Jim Rohn
“If you let your learning lead to knowledge, you become a fool. If you let your learning lead to ...
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John Rohn
Sometimes, you think you have to figure out your life’s purpose, but you really just need some macadamia nuts and a cold fucking shower.
Ferriss himself
there a common saying, or some public pronouncement, that you can disprove by making art about it? By doing a test? What makes you angry?
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.”
Sample Lists for James’s “Daily 10” Practice
It's an interesting practice. Every day you write 10 business ideas. Can't come up with 10? Write 20 (idea is keep the bar LOW).
10 old ideas I can make new 10 ridiculous things I would invent (e.g., the smart toilet) 10 books I can write (The Choose Yourself Guide to an Alternative Education, etc). 10 business ideas for Google/Amazon/Twitter/etc. 10 people I can send ideas to 10 podcast ideas or videos I can shoot (e.g., Lunch with James, a video podcast where I just have lunch with people over Skype and we chat) 10 industries where I can remove the middleman 10 things I disagree with that everyone else assumes is religion (college, home ownership, voting, doctors, etc.) 10 ways to take old posts of mine and make books
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Haven’t Found Your Overarching, Single Purpose? Maybe You Don’t Have To. “Forget purpose. It’s okay to be happy without one. The quest for a single purpose has ruined many lives.”
James Altucher
When you launch a new product, the first question to ask yourself is not “How is this new product better than the competition?” but “First what?” In other words, what category is this new product first in? Charles Schwab didn’t open a better brokerage firm. He opened the first discount broker.
I have recommended Kevin Kelly’s “1,000 True Fans” to literally millions of people. Many guests in this book have done the same. “If you only read one article on marketing, make it this one” is my common wording. Here’s a highly simplified synopsis: “Success” need not be complicated. Just start with making 1,000 people extremely, extremely happy.
“Most people to this day think of them as so radically different from each other. But I want to posit a different way to look at it. It comes from what I think is a fundamental misunderstanding of art on the part of most people. Because they think of art as learning to draw or learning a certain kind of self-expression. But in fact, what artists do is they learn to see.”
as Jerry Colonna, executive coach to some of the biggest tech stars in Silicon Valley, would ask: “How are you complicit in creating the conditions you say you don’t want?”
Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman! by Richard P. Feynman:
Red Blossom Tea Company: Tung Ting dark roast oolong,
“A problem is a terrible thing to waste.”
Peter Diamandis
One of the books he recommends for cultivating dealmaking ability is actually a children’s book and a 10-minute read: Stone Soup. “It’s
One of my favorite time-management essays is “Maker’s Schedule, Manager’s Schedule” by Paul Graham of Y Combinator fame.
“Ours is a culture where we wear our ability to get by on very little sleep as a kind of badge of honor that symbolizes work ethic, or toughness, or some other virtue—but really, it’s a total profound failure of priorities and of self-respect.”
On the Shortness of Life by Seneca.
This is why I use Uber or pseudonyms for any car service pickups around the world. By using a made-up name for your car reservation, if you see a placard with your real name on it, you know it’s a set-up. If you become successful—or simply appear successful on the Internet—and travel a lot overseas, this is not paranoia.
Around age 35 to 40, as you get up to battalion level, which is about 600 people, suddenly, you’re going to have to lead it a different way, and what you’re really going to have to do is develop people. The advice I’d give to anyone young is it’s really about developing people who are going to do the work.
Stanley McChrystal
Unless you are going to go do the task yourself, then the development time you spend on the people who are going to do that task, whether they are going to lead people doing it or whether they are actually going to do it, every minute you spend on that is leveraged, is exponential return.”
Stanley McChrystal
“An analogy I use is, if you’re going out for dinner, it’s going to take you a couple of hours. You spend 5 minutes working out where to go for dinner. It seems reasonable to spend 5% of your time on how to spend the remaining 95%. If you did that with your career, that would be 4,000 hours, or 2 working years. And actually, I think that’s a pretty legitimate thing to do—spending that length of time trying to work out how should you be spending the rest of your life.”
Will Macaskill
In a world of distraction, single-tasking is a superpower.
“The moment that you feel that, just possibly, you’re walking down the street naked, exposing too much of your heart and your mind and what exists on the inside, showing too much of yourself. That’s the moment you may be starting to get it right.”
We Learn Nothing, which I loved so much that I reached out to Tim,
The book has an excerpt from the book that I loved. Very funny and insightful. Author Tim Kreider.
“Trying to get everyone to like you is a sign of mediocrity. You’ll avoid the tough decisions, and you’ll avoid confronting the people who need to be confronted.”—Colin Powell
Life “In any situation in life, you only have three options. You always have three options. You can change it, you can accept it, or you can leave it. What is not a good option is to sit around wishing you would change it but not changing it, wishing you would leave it but not leaving it, and not accepting it. It’s that struggle, that aversion, that is responsible for most of our misery. The phrase that I probably use the most to myself in my head is just one word: accept.”
Naval ravikant
“Desire is a contract you make with yourself to be unhappy until you get what you want.” I don’t think most of us realize that’s what it is. I think we go about desiring things all day long, and then wondering why we’re unhappy. So, I like to stay aware of that because then I can choose my desires very carefully.
Naval
