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“I didn’t survive, I prepared.” Nelson Mandela’s answer when Tony asked him, “Sir, how did you survive all those years in prison?”
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.”
“If you let your learning lead to knowledge, you become a fool. If you let your learning lead to action, you become wealthy.”
To fix this, he encourages you to “prime” your state first. The biochemistry will help you proactively tell yourself an enabling story. Only then do you think on strategy, as you’ll see the options instead of dead ends.
“Is this really a problem I need to think my way out of? Or is it possible I just need to fix my biochemistry?” I’ve wasted a lot of time journaling on “problems” when I just needed to eat breakfast sooner, do 10 push-ups, or get an extra hour of sleep. 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.
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.”
“If you would not be forgotten as soon as you are dead and rotten, either write things worth reading, or do things worth writing.”
“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.
‘You can’t be afraid to show your scars.’ That’s who you are, and he said you have to continue to stay true to that.
“Once we get those muddy, maddening, confusing thoughts [nebulous worries, jitters, and preoccupations] on the page, we face our day with clearer eyes.”
Morning pages don’t need to solve your problems. They simply need to get them out of your head, where they’ll otherwise bounce around all day like a bullet ricocheting inside your skull. Could bitching and moaning on paper for 5 minutes each morning change your life? As crazy as it seems, I believe the answer is yes.
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?” TF: One of my all-time favorite quotes from dear Ludwig is: “The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.” (Die Grenzen meiner Sprache bedeuten die Grenzen meiner
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“Never go to sleep without a request to your subconscious.”
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?
“It’s always the hard part that creates value.” “You are more powerful than you think you are. Act accordingly.”
“If you think hard about one’s life, most people spend most of their time on defense, in reactive mode, in playing with the cards they got instead of moving to a different table with different cards. Instead of seeking to change other people, they are willing to be changed.
people are plastic in the positive sense: flexible and able to grow. I think almost everything is made, not born, and that makes people uncomfortable because it puts them on the hook,
Because if I hadn’t had those bumps, I wouldn’t be me, and I’m glad I’m me.”
“We all have, let’s say, two or three dozen massive pain points in our lives that everyone can relate to. I try to basically write about those, and then I try to write about how I attempted to recover from them.”
If you can’t get 10 good ideas, get 20 ideas.
The World Doesn’t Need Your Explanation. On Saying “No”:
MBA—$30K per year Commit to spending $2,500 per month on testing different “muses” intended to be sources of automated income. See The 4-Hour Workweek or Google “muse examples Ferriss” as a starting point.
Commit, within financial reason, to action instead of theory. Learn to confront the challenges of the real world, rather than resort to the protective womb of academia. You can control most of the risks, and you can’t imagine the rewards.
“Losers have goals. Winners have systems.”
“Writing is a skill that requires practice. So the first part of my system involves practicing on a regular basis. I didn’t know what I was practicing for, exactly, and that’s what makes it a system and not a goal. I was moving from a place with low odds (being an out-of-practice writer) to a place of good odds (a well-practiced writer with higher visibility).
“My 30-year-old self wouldn’t have access to medical marijuana, so I’d have a limited canvas with which to paint. I’ve always made it a top priority since I was a teenager—and had tons of stress-related medical problems—to make that job one: to learn how to not have stress. I would consider myself a world champion at avoiding stress at this point in dozens of different ways. A lot of it is just how you look at the world, but most of it is really the process of diversification.
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.
“In the world of ideas, to name something is to own it. If you can name an issue, you can own the issue.” —Thomas L. Friedman
“Creativity is an infinite resource. The more you spend,the more you have.” This was Chase paraphrasing a quote from Maya Angelou and discussing how creativity and meditation are similar.
Asking the right dumb question is often the smartest thing you can do.”
right? If you spend your time focusing on the things that are wrong, and that’s what you express and project to people you know, you don’t become a source of growth for people, you become a source of destruction for people.
the job I was going to do hadn’t even been invented yet. . . . The interesting jobs are the ones that you make up.
‘What context does this person even have, and have I provided appropriate context?’
“Money is a great servant but a horrible master.”
“I don’t understand. Can you explain that to me?”
Find canvases for other people to paint on. Be an anteambulo. Clear the path for the people above you and you will eventually create a path for yourself.
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.
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 (except that pesky Atkins), making it easy to use Control-F when it’s time to batch-research or fact-check.
“Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming ‘Wow! What a Ride!’”—Hunter S. Thompson, The Proud Highway: Saga of a Desperate Southern Gentleman, 1955–1967
Truth is, young creative minds don’t need more ideas, they need to take more responsibility with the ideas they’ve already got.”
purchasing a package vacation to find a simpler life is kind of like using a mirror to see what you look like when you aren’t looking into the mirror.
Because they never worked for their freedom, their travel experiences have no personal reference—no connection to the rest of their lives. They are spending plenty of time and money on the road, but they never spent enough of themselves to begin with. Thus, their experience of travel has a diminished sense of value.
“Which would have advanced the most at the end of a month,” he posited, “the boy who had made his own jackknife from the ore which he had dug and smelted, reading as much as would be necessary for this—or the boy who had . . . received a Rodgers’ penknife from his father? Which would be most likely to cut his fingers?”
Work is when you confront the problems you might otherwise be tempted to run away from. Work is how you settle your financial and emotional debts—so that your travels are not an escape from your real life, but a discovery of your real life.
‘Why do I believe this is important?’ It’s, ‘Look how far I’ve taken it so far.’ It’s a matter of reminding yourself what your purpose in life is, right? What you’re here for.
when you’re going 10% bigger, you’re competing against everybody. Everybody’s trying to go 10% bigger. When you’re trying to go 10 times bigger, you’re there by yourself.
Law 2: When given a choice . . . take both. Law 3: Multiple projects lead to multiple successes. Law 6: When forced to compromise, ask for more. Law 7: If you can’t win, change the rules. Law 8: If you can’t change the rules, then ignore them. Law 11: “No” simply means begin again at one level higher. Law 13: When in doubt: THINK. Law 16: The faster you move, the slower time passes, the longer you live. Law 17: The best way to predict the future is to create it yourself. (adopted from Alan Kay) Law 19: You get what you incentivize. Law 22: The day before something is a breakthrough, it’s a
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“A day that ends well is one that started with exercise.
Make commitments in a high-energy state so that you can’t back out when you’re in a low-energy state.
For lifelong night owls like me, it’s nice to know that when you get started each day seems to matter less than learning how to get started consistently, however your crazy ass can manage it.
