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Books make for great friends, because the best thinkers of the last few thousand years tell you their nuggets of wisdom. [8]
Set and enforce an aspirational personal hourly rate. If fixing a problem will save less than your hourly rate, ignore it. If outsourcing a task will cost less than your hourly rate, outsource it.
When you’re finally wealthy, you’ll realize it wasn’t what you were seeking in the first place. But that is for another day. [11]
Intentions don’t matter. Actions do. That’s why being ethical is hard.
Value your time at an hourly rate, and ruthlessly spend to save time at that rate. You will never be worth more than you think you’re worth.
I’ll start at the beginning, but I’ll move fast. If it’s not interesting, I’ll just start flipping ahead, skimming, or speed reading. If it doesn’t grab my attention within the first chapter in a meaningful, positive way, I’ll either drop the book or skip ahead a few chapters. I don’t believe in delayed gratification when there are an infinite number of books out there to read. There are so many great books. The number of books completed is a vanity metric. As you know more, you leave more books unfinished. Focus on new concepts with predictive power.
What can I do for the next sixty days to become a clearer, more independent thinker? Read the greats in math, science, and philosophy. Ignore your contemporaries and news. Avoid tribal identification. Put truth above social approval. [11] Study logic and math, because once you’ve mastered them, you won’t fear any book.
Another way to do this is to read originals and read classics. If you’re interested in evolution, read Charles Darwin. Don’t begin with Richard Dawkins (even though I think he’s great). Read him later; read Darwin first.
On the other hand, we’re also taught from a young age to finish your books. Books are sacred—when you go to school and you’re assigned to read a book, you have to finish the book. Over time, we forget how to read books. Everyone I know is stuck on some book. I’m sure you’re stuck on something right now—it’s page 332, you can’t go any further, but you know you should finish the book. So what do you do? You give up reading books for a while.
For me, giving up reading was a tragedy. I grew up on books, then I switched to blogs, then I switched to Twitter and Facebook, and I realized I wasn’t actually learning anything. I was just taking little dopamine snacks all day long. I was getting my little 140-character burst of dopamine. I would Tweet, then look to see who retweeted my Tweet. It’s a fun and wonderful thing, but it’s a game I was playing. I realized I had to go back to reading books. [6] I knew it was a very hard problem because my brain had now been trained to spend time on Facebook, Twitter, and these other bite-sized
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The more you judge, the more you separate yourself. You’ll feel good for an instant, because you feel good about yourself, thinking you’re better than someone. Later, you’re going to feel lonely. Then, you see negativity everywhere. The world just reflects your own feelings back at you. [77]
