How to Live: 27 conflicting answers and one weird conclusion

by Derek Sivers

Create predicaments. Get into trouble. Being desperate leads to creative solutions.

If you’re prepared for endless failures, you’ll never think of yourself as a failure.

Your growth zone is your failure zone.

This is how we make progress. What fails is forgotten. What works is called innovation.

Your only constant habit will be looking for what else to change.

Stay behind the scenes and quietly pull the strings.

All bad things in life come from extremes.

Emotionally unstable: prone to dangerous, impulsive behavior.

When you’re balanced, you’re unlikely to get stressed.

Balance time with others and time alone.

Balance input and output, consumption and creation, stability and adventure, body and spirit. Your opposing needs become each other’s remedy.

The best tool for a balanced life is the clock.

Schedule preventative health checkups.

Balance your knowledge. Read books on core subjects you know nothing about.

Balance your response to situations. Do you tend to change yourself, change the environment, or change nothing and leave?

You could die happy at any time.

Balancing everything is how to live.