The Art of the Good Life: 52 Surprising Shortcuts to Happiness, Wealth, and Success

by Rolf Dobelli

Yet we still behave like naïve fair-weather pilots: we overestimate the role of the set-up and systematically underestimate the role of correction.

The most common misunderstanding I encounter is that the good life is a stable state or condition. Wrong. The good life is only achieved through constant readjustment.

People who self-correct early on have an advantage over those who spend ages fiddling with the perfect set-up and crossing their fingers that their plans will work out. There’s no such thing as the ideal training.

many technologies seem at first glance to be saving us time and money, this saving vanishes into thin air as soon as you do a full cost analysis.

As long as I keep the downside at bay, the upside will take care of itself.

Concentrating on the downside instead of the upside is a valuable intellectual tool. Greek, Roman and medieval thinkers even had a name for this approach: negative theology—the negative path, the way of renunciation, of omission, of reduction. The basic idea is that you can’t say what God is, you can only say what God isn’t. Or, in our terms, you can’t say what a good life guarantees; you can only say what a good life prevents—but you can say that for sure.

But when we ask what factors have a significant negative impact on the good life—which factors jeopardize it—we can pinpoint them exactly: alcoholism, drug addiction, chronic stress, noise, a lengthy commute, a job you despise, unemployment, a dysfunctional marriage, stupidly high expectations, poverty, debt and financial dependence, loneliness, spending too much time with moaning Minnies, overreliance on external validation, constant self-comparisons with others, thinking like a victim, self-loathing, chronic sleep deprivation, depression, anxiety, rage and envy. You don’t need science to tell you that. You can see it for yourself—in your own mind, in friends, in your community. The downside is always more concrete than the upside. The downside is like granite—hard, tangible, solid. Whereas the upside is like air.

It’s not what you add that enriches your life—it’s what you omit.

Because our emotions are so unreliable, a good rule of thumb is to take them less seriously—especially the negative ones. The Greek philosophers called this ability to block things out ataraxia, a term meaning serenity, peace of mind, equanimity, composure or imperturbability.

Restrict authenticity to keeping your promises and acting according to your principles. The rest is nobody else’s business.

I’d prefer to systematically turn down most requests and risk unpopularity than the other way around.

A single outstanding skill trumps a thousand mediocre ones. Every hour invested into your circle of competence is worth a thousand spent elsewhere.

investors take advantage of long timespans; stockbrokers don’t.

Perseverance, tenacity and long-term thinking are highly valuable yet underrated virtues.

your focus should always be on the activity, the work, the input—not on the success, the result, the output.

Your emotional response to changes in your prestige, reputation and appearance are much too highly attuned; or, to put it another way, you’re still in Stone Age mode.

“When you get old, you have the reputation you deserve.”

“Social media,” says David Brooks, “creates a culture in which people turn into little brand managers, using Facebook, Twitter, text messages, and Instagram to create a falsely upbeat, slightly overexuberant external self.”

Let go of liking and being liked.

treat external praise and censure with friendly, composed disinterest.

Motivation for personal change must come from within. Neither external pressure nor rational argument will work.

“Avoid situations in which you have to change other people.”

wise people want to avoid other people who are just total rat poison, and there are a lot of them.”

we remember most clearly the peak of an episode, i.e., the moment of greatest intensity, and the end. Hardly anything else filters through into our memories.

In short, we overvalue memory and undervalue the experienced moment.

‘If a person gave your body to any stranger he met on his way, you would certainly be angry. And do you feel no shame in handing over your own mind to be confused and mystified by anyone who happens to verbally attack you?’

Be critical, strict and careful when it comes to your intake of information—no less critical, strict and careful than you are with your food or medication.

Avoid ideologies and dogmas at all cost—especially if you’re sympathetic to them. Ideologies are guaranteed to be wrong. They narrow your worldview and prompt you to make appalling decisions. I don’t know of a single dogmatist with anything approaching a good life.

In short, ninety percent of all the material and intellectual things put into the world are bullshit.

if you’re not sure whether something is bullshit, it’s bullshit.