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You can dream, you can think positively, you can plan and set goals, but unless you act, nothing will materialize.

Specialists get paid well, while those who know a little about many things make good conversation at parties.

If you want to paint like Leonardo da Vinci, first you need to learn to think like him. Because where the mind goes, everything else will eventually follow.

I consider myself to be an enlightened trader. First, I recognize that I have both the builder and the wrecking ball within me. But, I choose to feed the builder and starve the wrecking ball.

If you’ve mentioned your idea, people will try to protect your feelings.

When you hear a request, it’s your job to understand the motivations which led to it. You do that by digging around the question to find the root cause

The Mom Test:
1. Talk about their life instead of your idea.
2. Ask about specifics in the past instead of generics or opinions about the future.
3. Talk less and listen more.

It's called the The Mom Test because it leads to questions that even your mom can't lie to you about.

Lasting companies know how to reinvent themselves.

You've got to be like a butterfly and have a metamorphosis.

Dual legacy: Building innovative products and building a lasting company.

Chapter 3 - Summary Part 2
- The Four Laws of Behavior Change are a simple set of rules we can use to build better habits. They are (1) make it obvious, (2) make it attractive, (3) make it easy, and (4) make it satisfying.

Chapter 3 Summary
- A habit is a behavior that has been repeated enough times to become automatic.
- The ultimate purpose of habits is to solve the problems of life with as little energy and effort as possible.
- Any habit can be broken down into a feedback loop that involves four steps: cue, craving, response, and reward.

Building habits in the present allow you to do more of what you want in the future.

Habits do not restrict freedom. They create it. In fact, the people who don’t have their habits handled are often the ones with the least amount of freedom.

Building habits in the present allows you to do more of what you want in the future.

Behaviors followed by satisfying consequences tend to be repeated and those that produce unpleasant consequences are less likely to be repeated.

Chapter 2 - Summary - Part 2
- Becoming the best version of yourself requires you to continuously edit your beliefs, and to upgrade and expand your identity.
- The real reason habits matter is not because they can get you better results (although they can do that), but because they can change your beliefs about yourself.

Chapter 2 - Summary (Part - 1)
- There are three levels of change: outcome change, process change, and identity change.
- The most effective way to change your habits is to focus not on what you want to achieve, but on who you wish to become.
- Your identity emerges out of your habits. Every action is a vote for the type of person you wish to become.

Putting this all together, you can see that habits are the path to changing your identity. The most practical way to change who you are is to change what you do.

Each time you write a page, you are a writer.
Each time you practice the violin, you are a musician.
Each time you start a workout, you are an athlete.

The more pride you have in a particular aspect of your identity, the more motivated you will be to maintain the habits associated with it.

Improvements are only temporary until they become part of who you are.

Eg. The goal is not to read a book, the goal is to become a reader.

Many people begin the process of changing their habits by focusing on what they want to achieve. This leads us to outcome-based habits. The alternative is to build identity-based habits. With this approach, we start by focusing on who we wish to become.

Chapter 1 - Summary
- Habits are the compound interest of self-improvement. Getting 1 percent better every day counts for a lot in the long-run.
- Small changes often appear to make no difference until you cross a critical threshold. The most powerful outcomes of any compounding process are delayed. You need to be patient.
- If you want better results, then forget about setting goals. Focus on your system instead.

atomic habits — a regular practice or routine that is not only small and easy to do, but also the source of incredible power; a component of the system of compound growth.

- Winners and losers have the same goals
- Achieving a goal is only a momentary change
- Goals restrict your happiness
- Goals are at odds with long-term progress

Goals are about the results you want to achieve. Systems are about the processes that lead to those results.

Mastery requires patience.

"When nothing seems to help, I go and look at a stonecutter hammering away at his rock, perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred and first blow it will split in two, and I know it was not that last blow that did it—but all that had gone before."

- Jacob Riis

If you find yourself struggling to build a good habit or break a bad one, it is not because you have lost your ability to improve. It is often because you have not yet crossed the Plateau of Latent Potential