Tribe of Mentors: Short Life Advice from the Best in the World - By Timothy Ferriss
Date read: 2017-12-27How strongly I recommend it: 10/10
(See my list of 150+ books, for more.)
Go to the Amazon page for details and reviews.
Fantastic book filled with great advice from over 130 of the best performers in the world. I've been a long-time listener of the Tim Ferriss Show podcast and it's profoundly changede my life for the better. I recommond this book and his podcast to anyone, young and old, interested in self-improvement and a happier, more fulfilling life in general.
Contents:
- QUESTION #1: What is the book (or books) you’ve given most as a gift, and why? Or what are one to three books that have greatly influenced your life?
- QUESTION #2: What purchase of $100 or less has most positively impacted your life in the last six months (or in recent memory)?
- QUESTION #3: How has a failure, or apparent failure, set you up for later success? Do you have a "favorite failure" of yours?
- QUESTION #4: If you could have a gigantic billboard anywhere with anything on it - metaphorically speaking, getting a message out to millions or billions - what would it say and why? It could be a few words or a paragraph.
- QUESTION #5: What is one of the best or most worthwhile investments you've made? (Could be an investment of money, time, energy, etc.)
- QUESTION #6: What is an unusual habit or an absurd thing that you love?
- QUESTION #7: In the last five years, what new belief, or behavior, or habit has most improved your life?
- QUESTION #8: What advice would you give to a smart, driven college student about to enter the "real world"? What advice should they ignore?
- QUESTION #9: What are bad recommendations you hear in your profession or area of expertise?
- QUESTION #10: In the last five years, what have you become better at saying no to (distractions, invitations, etc.)? What new realizations and/or approaches helped? Any other tips?
- QUESTION #11: When you feel overwhelmed or unfocused, or have lost your focus temporarily, what do you do? (If helpful: What questions do you ask yourself?)
- INSPIRING QUOTES
- CLOSING THOUGHTS BY TIM FERRISS
My Notes
If you’d like to see all of the recommended books in one place, including a list of the top 20 most recommended from this book and Tools of Titans, you can find all the goodies at tim.blog/booklist.
The Master Key System by Charles F. Haanel. I have read hundreds of personal development books, but this is the one that clearly showed me how to visualize, contemplate, and focus on what it was I truly wanted. Two more are Viktor E. Frankl’s incredible Man’s Search for Meaning and David McRaney’s You Are Not So Smart. Both books are absolutely essential to me in order to keep my perspectives correct in a changing world. -Terry Crews
Sam Barondes’ book Making Sense of People has had a big impact on my thinking, and I sometimes give a copy to people in the midst of hiring someone or even deciding whether to get engaged. -Graham Duncan
Leadership on the Line by Ronald A. Heifetz and Marty Linsky, because it is the most honest book I have ever read on leadership, and you can tell that by the book’s subtitle, Staying Alive Through the Dangers of Leading. It’s deeply honest, and a book that I give to everyone, so they know exactly what they’re letting themselves in for if they choose to be a leader. -Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks
I gave one to an adult, it would be Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl. -Jimmy Fallon
One of my favorite books that I often give is Meditations by Marcus Aurelius. He still had the presence of mind to write one of my favorite quotes, “People look for retreats for themselves, in the country, by the coast, or in the hills. There is nowhere that a person can find a more peaceful and trouble-free retreat than in his own mind...So constantly give yourself this retreat, and renew yourself.” -Arianna Huffington
For new parents, I love the Positive Discipline series by Jane Nelsen (empowering for kids and parents) and the Touchpoints series by T. Berry Brazelton (you really can’t guide your children if you don’t understand what’s happening developmentally). And Lead Yourself First by Kethledge and Erwin. -Brené Brown
The Happiest Baby on the Block by Harvey Karp. If you want to be a hands-on parent and also have some version of a career, this book is gold. I usually send it with another book called The Sleepeasy Solution, written by Jennifer Waldburger and Jill Spivack. -Ashton Kutcher
Black Box Thinking: The Surprising Truth About Success, by Matthew Syed. Since reading this book, I’ve literally incorporated this approach to problem-solving into every day. I’ve always encouraged those around me not to be scared of failure because I believe it’s the most valuable learning tool. -Daniel Ek
Map and Territory and How to Actually Change Your Mind by Eliezer Yudkowsky. These two books are hands-down the best insight into modern-day rational thinking I’ve ever read, written by (in my opinion) one of the greatest minds of our time. Yudkowsky manages to explain highly complex philosophical and scientific concepts to the reader in a remarkably entertaining and palatable way. I came away feeling like I’d finally found the tools with which to understand both myself and the world around me. These two books are actually parts one and two of a six-part collection called Rationality: From AI to Zombies, sourced from Yudkowsky’s blog posts from the site LessWrong.com over the last decade. -Liv Boeree
Awaken the Giant Within by Tony Robbins and City of Thieves by Benioff. This book is just a joy. Fiction has a real utility, and it’s one I think high achievers sometimes forget, and that is: fictions stirs you up inside, unsettles you, forces you to engage with that which isn’t easily solved. This book does all that and delights along the way. -Brian Koppelman
If you just want to forget about the future and lose yourself in the book that forever changed how narrative nonfiction is written, read In Cold Blood by Truman Capote. -Sam Harris
Mastery by George Leonard. I first read this book 20 years ago, after reading Leonard’s Esquire article, the seed from which the book grew. Leonard wrote the book to share lessons from becoming an Aikido master teacher, despite starting practice at the advanced age of 47. -Terry Laughlin
Poor Charlie’s Almanack is a good start. It describes how to make good decisions in any situation with a relatively limited mental toolkit: the big, enduring ideas of the fundamental academic disciplines. -Drew Houston
The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz. It is a quick read, just 140 pages or so, and it’s the simplicity that makes the book so powerful. Anytime I have a friend who wants to embark on the journey of introspection, that’s always where I start. -Daniel Negreanu
The Brain.fm app has been life-changing, too. Really helps me to focus on my work. -Turia Pitt
I’m a bit of a pen geek. I recently found an erasable pen—the FriXion by Pilot in blue. It writes so smoothly, and being able to erase it gives me a sense of power and delight. I often use the pen with a “smart” notebook (like the Rocketbook Everlast smart notebook) that can be reused. -Laura R. Walker
The Nasaline nasal irrigator. It’s a big plastic syringe, like a turkey baster. It gets filled with saline solution. I usually use it in the tub or shower. You squirt water up one nostril and it comes out the other nostril, and then repeat back and forth. Typically, you use one cup of water and one spoon of this solution, but I do two cups. It not only clears out all the mucus, but if you do it every day, or a couple of times a day, it shrinks the inner lining of your sinuses so that you have more space and a better capacity to breathe. -Rick Rubin
The iMask Sleep Eye Mask is an absolute blessing to have on tour; I carry it with me wherever I go. -Steve Aoki
What I learned from this design disaster was that I had attempted to treat the symptom of a problem instead of its cause. From that point forward in my career, I was careful to differentiate between problems that can be fixed with new equipment and problems that should be fixed by other means. Later in my career, I have observed that people want the magic new thing more than they want improved management to fix problems. Managers need to carefully determine the areas in their business where new technology is the right choice and other areas where a back-to-basics management approach may be more effective. -Temple Grandin
My billboard would say this: “Busy is a decision.” Here’s why: Of the many, many excuses people use to rationalize why they can’t do something, the excuse “I am too busy” is not only the most inauthentic, it is also the laziest. I don’t believe in “too busy.” Like I said, busy is a decision. We do the things we want to do, period. If we say we are too busy, it is shorthand for “not important enough.” It means you would rather be doing something else that you consider more important. That “thing” could be sleep, it could be sex, or it could be watching Game of Thrones. If we use busy as an excuse for not doing something what we are really, really saying is that it’s not a priority. Simply put: You don’t find the time to do something; you make the time to do things. We are now living in a society that sees busy as a badge. It has become cultural cachet to use the excuse “I am too busy,” as a reason for not doing anything we don’t feel like doing. The problem is this: if you let yourself off the hook for not doing something for any reason, you won’t ever do it. If you want to do something, you can’t let being busy stand in the way, even if you are busy. Make the time to do the things you want to do and then do them. -Debbie Millman
“Desire is a contract that you make with yourself to be unhappy until you get what you want.” Happiness, or at least peace, is the sense that nothing is missing in this moment. No desires running amok. It’s okay to have a desire. But pick a big one and pick it carefully. Drop the small ones. -Naval Ravikant
“It’s not how well you play the game, it’s deciding what game you want to play.”—Kwame Appiah -Graham Duncan
“If you can conceive of it, it’s probably wrong.” Meditation has taught me that most of the ideas, opinions, rules, and fixed systems I have in my mind aren’t the real truth. They’re the residues of past experiences that I haven’t let go of. What I’ve learned is that my soul doesn’t speak in thoughts at all—it speaks in feelings, images, and clues. -Soman Chainani
“You can be a juicy ripe peach and there’ll still be someone who doesn’t like peaches.” -Dita Von Teese
“Be so good that they can’t ignore you” is the motto I live by. I start afresh with each project. I forget who I am and my past laurels. It keeps me grounded and makes me work harder. -Richa Chadha
“Learn more, know less.” -Neil Strauss
“No one owes you anything.” We live in a world that’s rampant with entitlement, with many people believing that they deserve to be given more. My parents raised me to be self-sufficient, and impressed upon me that the only person you can really depend on in life is you. If you want something, you work for it. You don’t expect it to be given. If others help you out along the way, that’s fantastic, but it’s not a given. I believe that the key to self-sufficiency is breaking free of the mindset that someone, somewhere, owes you something or will come to your rescue. -Amelia Boone
“Things are never as good or as bad as they seem.” -Andrew Ross Sorkin
“If you think you are too small to be effective, you have never been in the dark with a mosquito.”—Betty Reese
“Life does not ask what we want. It presents us with options.”—Thomas Sowell
“Watch what people are cynical about, and one can often discover what they lack.”—George S. Patton
“There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.”—Peter Drucker
“It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit.”—Harry Truman
“Don’t worry about people stealing an idea. If it’s original, you will have to ram it down their throats.”—Howard H. Aiken -Jason Fried
“Burnout is not the price you have to pay for success.” -Arianna Huffington
“Always ask: What am I missing? And listen to the answer.” -Strauss Zelnick
“Discipline equals freedom.” Everyone wants freedom. We want to be physically free and mentally free. We want to be financially free and we want more free time. But where does that freedom come from? How do we get it? The answer is the opposite of freedom. The answer is discipline. You want more free time? Follow a more disciplined time-management system. You want financial freedom? Implement long-term financial discipline in your life. Do you want to be physically free to move how you want, and to be free from many health issues caused by poor lifestyle choices? Then you have to have the discipline to eat healthy food and consistently work out. We all want freedom. Discipline is the only way to get it. -Jocko Willink
Problem identification is always a sound investment of time, money, and energy. Einstein said, “If I had an hour to solve a problem, I’d spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and five minutes thinking about solutions.” It feels uncomfortable to spend time and resources trying to figure out exactly what the problem is—we want to jump to fixing way too fast. -Brené Brown
In 2016, I started doing New Month Resolutions [as opposed to New Year Resolutions]. Here’s some of what I did:
July: Daily reading
August: No TV or movies
September: No dairy
October: No gluten
November: Daily meditation
December: No news or social media feeds -Ryan Shea
I feel like a lot of people in Silicon Valley serialize their lives. They think, “First I’ll do college. Then I’ll do a startup. Then I’ll make money. Then I’ll do X.” There’s some truth in that [approach], but most of the most important stuff has to be parallel-processed, like your relationships and your health, because you can’t make up the time by doing more of it later. You can’t neglect your wife for four years and then say, “Okay, now it’s my wife years.” Relationships don’t work that way, and neither does your health or your fitness...Figuring out a system, so that the stuff you need to do all the time happens, even while you might be placing disproportionate focus on one thing, is pretty important. Otherwise, you’ll be setting yourself up to be lonely and unhealthy in your future. -Ben Silbermann
Today my obsession for the very best pens (Muji 0.38mm gel pens and Pilot Juice Up 0.4 mm gel pens) and notebooks (Leuchtturm1917 Medium Hardcover) is an echo of those hot summer days I spent in my uncle’s office supply store. -Ann Miura-Ko
My biggest shift came after listening to a successful CEO talk about his philosophy for hiring people. When his company grew and he ran out of time to interview people himself, he had his employees rate new candidates on a 1–10 scale. The only stipulation was they couldn’t choose 7. It immediately dawned on me how many invitations I was receiving that I would rate as a 7—speeches, weddings, coffees, even dates. If I thought something was a 7, there was a good chance I felt obligated to do it. But if I have to decide between a 6 or an 8, it’s a lot easier to quickly determine whether or not I should even consider it. -Kyle Maynard
I’ve found the Enneagram to be incredibly helpful. At first glance it’s a personality typing tool like Myers-Briggs. There are nine Enneagram “types” and every person has one dominant type. But I’ve found it to be much more useful and predictive of how people actually behave. -Drew Houston
Asking myself the question, “When I’m old, how much would I be willing to pay to travel back in time and relive the moment that I’m experiencing right now?” If that moment is something like rocking my six-month-old daughter to sleep while she hugs me, then the answer is anything: I’d literally pay all the money I’d have in the bank at, say, age 70 to get a chance to relive that moment. This simple question just puts things in perspective and makes you grateful for the experience you’re having right now versus being lost in thoughts about the past or the future. -Muneeb Ali
I was persuaded to adopt a low-carb approach to eating when I read Gary Taubes’ book Why We Get Fat. I read that book, and overnight, I changed just about everything about the way I eat. -Gretchen Rubin
I don’t have a gratitude, peace, or forgiveness practice, which are super popular in America right now. I see this as turning away from a truth that is trying to get your attention, and forcing a lie. My analogy is that this is like putting a Band-Aid over a wound so you don’t have to look at it. Which is a problem because that wound, if you continue to not deal with it, will ultimately start to fester. Instead, I turn toward my discomfort and try to have an honest relationship with it by engaging in this fear practice. I focus on my discomfort, fear, sadness, anger, or anything else that seems unpleasant—all of it—and that effort not only affords me insights but, even though you’d never expect it, also thoroughly and amazingly sets me free. -Kristen Ulmer
Intelligence is like following a GPS route right into a body of water until you drown. Wisdom looks at the route but, when it takes a turn into the ocean, decides not to follow it, then finds a new, better way. Wisdom reigns supreme. -Terry Crews
These are questions I tell my students to ask themselves as they set out on their path in the “real” world: Am I spending enough time on looking for, finding, and working toward winning a great job? Am I constantly refining and improving my skills? What can I continue to get better and more competitive at? Do I believe that I am working harder than everyone else? If not, what else can I be doing? What are the people who are competing with me doing that I am not doing? Am I doing everything I can—every single day—to stay in “career shape”? If not, what else should I be doing? -Debbie Millman
If you are struggling to figure out where you are headed in life or what you are passionate about, pay attention to activities, ideas, and areas where you love the process, not just the results or the outcome. We are drawn to tasks where we can receive validation through results, but I’ve learned that true fulfillment comes from love of the process. Look for something where you love the process, and the results will follow. -Amelia Boone
They should ignore any advice from anyone who purports to tell them what the future will look like. No one knows. Interrogate the information shared with you by others, and use it as a way to make up your own mind, not a path to follow. -Anna Holmes
Persistence matters more than talent. The student with straight As is irrelevant if the student sitting next to him with Bs has more passion. -Andrew Ross Sorkin
Always try to find people who disagree with you, who can honestly and productively play devil’s advocate. Challenge yourself to truly listen to people who have differing ideas and opinions than you do. Stay out of political bubbles and echo chambers as much as possible. Feel good about really hearing those who disagree with you. Try to change your mind about one thing every day. -Annie Duke
Focus on your writing skills. It’s the one thing I’ve found that really helps people stand out. More and more communication is written today. Get great at presenting yourself with words, and words alone, and you’ll be far ahead of most. -Jason Fried
First, become a superstar, all-pro listener. How? Work on it. It does not come naturally. Read up on it. Practice it. Have a mentor grade you on it. Second: Read. Read. Read. Read. In short, the best student wins, whether at age 21 or 51 or 101. -Tom Peters
Don’t try to find your passion. Instead master some skill, interest, or knowledge that others find valuable. It almost doesn’t matter what it is at the start. You don’t have to love it, you just have to be the best at it. Once you master it, you’ll be rewarded with new opportunities that will allow you to move away from tasks you dislike and toward those that you enjoy. If you continue to optimize your mastery, you’ll eventually arrive at your passion. -Kevin Kelly
When 99 percent of your life is your work, either you are really bad at what you do or you are completely off balance with the rest of your life; neither is something to be proud of. Anytime you see someone preaching, remember that this is smoke and mirrors. -Jérôme Jarre
Be in a hurry to learn, not in a hurry to get validation. In a team environment, you will make a much better impression if it seems like you’re not at all worried about yourself. It’s okay to actually be worried about yourself—everyone is—just don’t seem like it. If you resist asking for too much, you will often get more. -Evan Williams
Many of us have bought into the cliché “pursue your passion.” For many, that is terrible advice. In your 20s, you may not really know what your best skills and opportunities are. It’s much better to pursue learning, personal discipline, growth. And to seek out connections with people across the planet. For a while, it’s just fine to follow and support someone else’s dream. In so doing, you will be building valuable relationships, valuable knowledge. And at some point your passion will come and whisper in your ear, “I’m ready.” -Chris Anderson
If you’re searching for wisdom, try to find it from people who’ve done it more than from people who teach it. Ask a lot of questions. -Rick Rubin
A piece of advice would be to seek out mentors constantly and without shame (and mentor others). This requires adhering to the above point, of course, but it highlights a vulnerability and asymmetry. Always be a student and always be a teacher. As for advice to ignore: Too often, I hear people effectively given advice that is consistent with sunk cost fallacies. I certainly heard it a lot. “You’ve spent X years learning Y, you can’t just up and leave and now do Z,” they say. I think this is flawed advice because it weighs too heavily the time behind you, which can’t be changed, and largely discounts the time in front of you, which is completely malleable. -Peter Attia
Work harder than everyone else. Of course, that is easy when you love your job. But you might not love your first, or second, or even third job. That doesn’t matter. Work harder than everyone else. In order to get the job you love or start the company you want, you have to build your résumé, your reputation, and your bank account. The best way to do that: Outwork them all. -Jocko Willink
Nobody really knows what the world and the job market will look like in 2040, hence nobody knows what to teach young people today. Consequently, it is likely that most of what you currently learn at school will be irrelevant by the time you are 40. So what should you focus on? My best advice is to focus on personal resilience and emotional intelligence. Traditionally, life has been divided into two main parts: a period of learning followed by a period of working. In the first part of life you built a stable identity and acquired personal and professional skills; in the second part of life you relied on your identity and skills to navigate the world, earn a living, and contribute to society. By 2040, this traditional model will become obsolete, and the only way for humans to stay in the game will be to keep learning throughout their lives and to reinvent themselves again and again. The world of 2040 will be a very different world from today, and an extremely hectic world. The pace of change is likely to accelerate even further. So people will need the ability to learn all the time and to reinvent themselves repeatedly—even at age 60. So don’t trust the adults too much. In the past, it was a safe bet to trust adults, because they knew the world quite well, and the world changed slowly. But the 21st century is going to be different. Whatever the adults have learned about economics, politics, or relationships may be outdated. Similarly, don’t trust technology too much. You must make technology serve you, instead of you serving it. If you aren’t careful, technology will start dictating your aims and enslaving you to its agenda. -Yuval Noah Harari
“Work hard to beat the competition.” The truth is that competition is the opposite of creativity. The truth is that you need the success of everyone in your field in order to achieve your own success. You work hard because you’re inspired to, not because you have to. Work becomes fun, and you have energy for days because this life is not a “young man’s game.” It is an “inspired person’s game.” -Terry Crews
“This worked for me in my career, so do it my way.” The best advice I have seen comes from people who don’t try to tell me the answer . . . instead they give me a new approach to thinking about the question so that I can solve it better on my own. Everyone has their own journey. People who offer great advice understand that their goal is to help someone on their unique journey. People who offer bad advice are trying to relive their old glories. -Mike Maples Jr.
Too often, aspiring artists put pressure on themselves to make their creative work their only source of income. In my experience, it’s a road to misery. If art is your sole source of income, then there’s unrelenting pressure on that art, and mercenary pressure is the enemy of the creative elves inside you trying to get the work done. Having another stream of income drains the pressure on your creative engine. -Soman Chainani
“Resting is weakness.” So many athletes have gotten into the mindset that more is better, which sets you up for burnout, injury, overtraining, and adrenal fatigue issues. While this mindset is common with athletes, it’s applicable to high achievers in all areas of life. Growth and gains come from periods of rest, yet “rest” has become a four-letter word for high performers, and that needs to change. -Amelia Boone
If you put ten people in a room and they have to choose an ice cream flavor, they’re gonna arrive at vanilla. There is always constant pressure to conform. But originality only happens on the edges of reality. And working on that line is always dangerous because it’s only a short step to disconnected insanity. So resist temptations and advice to play to the middle. The best work always comes from pushing the edge. -Darren Aronofsky
I hear constantly, “If you want to be the best, you need to do what the best are doing.” In the sport of CrossFit, this couldn’t be further from the truth. I see so many people mimicking the training of some of the top-ranked competitors. If you want to get better in the sport, you need to work on your specific weaknesses, not those of someone who is successful. -Mathew Fraser
“Find an area of expertise.” It’s so weird when I hear this. Just learn how to learn. Then you can always figure out the next thing that you will need to know. -Adam Fisher
When you start out doing something, you’re likely charting uncharted territory, and it’s good to ask a lot of questions from people in the industry and to learn from them. Remember, though, when people give you advice, they’re giving you advice based on their particular skills, experiences, and perspectives. So know that when you get expert advice, it’s often people telling you about their journey, and every journey is different. Every person who goes on these journeys takes a different path. It’s not, “Well, when you get to the corner, make a left.” In fact, if you’re on the exact same path, something’s wrong. It’s not meant to be the same path. You need to tune in to yourself to know what works for you. -Rick Rubin
A piece of bad advice: “Protect yourself from stress and your life will be better.” Protection from stress serves only to erode my capacity [to handle it]. Stress exposure is the stimulus for all growth, and growth actually occurs during episodes of recovery. Avoiding stress, I have learned, will never provide the capacity that life demands of me. -Jim Loehr
Confidence is highly overrated. Courage is more important than confidence. When you are operating out of courage, you are saying that no matter how you feel about yourself or your opportunities or the outcome, you are going to take a risk and take a step toward what you want. You are not waiting for the confidence to mysteriously arrive. I now believe that confidence is achieved through repeated success at any endeavor. The more you practice doing something, the better you will get at it, and your confidence will grow over time. -Debbie Millman
I’ve gotten better at telling my brain “no” when it wants to relate to conversation with a “bigger” story. What I mean is, somebody might be telling me a story about an experience they had, while I have a related story that sounds even bigger or more dramatic than theirs. Rather than wait for a moment to jump in with mine, I’ll just let that desire go and ask them more questions about their experience. What I’ve discovered is incredible: the loss of the opportunity to possibly impress someone is far outweighed by what I learn when I ask more questions. There is always something else to their story that will amaze you. Don’t expect that what they start with is as exciting as it will get. Ask and encourage them to say more! -Jon Call
Saying no to always having to be right, feeling the need to argue every point, and responding to every criticism. If anything, the pendulum has probably swung too far in the other direction, at times approaching apathy. When you stop caring about being right in the eyes of everyone—versus being right in your own eyes and the eyes of those who matter to you—it’s amazing how little you care to waste energy trying to convince people of your view. -Peter Attia
I ask myself “what would be the worst thing” about that outcome not going the way I want? -Graham Duncan
I get paid to read and comment on the news for a living, and I still wake up every morning completely overwhelmed by all that’s going on. I can feel my blood pressure go up as I try to figure out what to focus on first. The way I manage it is to remember that the world will go on if I don’t read everything. Newspapers will publish again the next day. I will always be better off consuming a smaller amount of high-quality information than trying to consume it all. I think that lesson can apply to a lot of things. For instance, you’re better off spending quality time with one friend on a given night than trying to run around and see everyone. -Tommy Vietor
“People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on. But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully. I’m actually as proud of the things we haven’t done as the things I have done. Innovation is saying no to 1,000 things.” –Steve Jobs Co-founder and former CEO of Apple
“I can’t give you a surefire formula for success, but I can give you a formula for failure: try to please everybody all the time.” –Herbert Bayard Swope American editor and journalist, first recipient of the Pulitzer Prize
“One should use common words to say uncommon things.” –Arthur Schopenhauer Renowned 19th-century German philosopher
“Learning to ignore things is one of the great paths to inner peace.” –Robert J. Sawyer Hugo and Nebula Award–winning science fiction writer
“What gets measured gets managed.” –Peter Drucker Considered “the founder of modern management,” author of The Effective Executive
“The first rule of any technology used in a business is that automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency. The second is that automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency.” –Bill Gates Co-founder of Microsoft
“Perfection is not when there is no more to add, but no more to take away.” –Antoine de Saint-Exupéry French writer, author of The Little Prince
“Service to others is the rent you pay for your room here on earth.” –Muhammad Ali Legendary American professional boxer and activist
“If you don’t make mistakes, you’re not working on hard enough problems. And that’s a big mistake.” –Frank Wilczek American theoretical physicist, Nobel Prize winner
"Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise, instead, seek what they sought." -Matsuo Basho Japanese poet of the Edo period
"The things you own end up owning you." -Chuck Palahniuk American author, best known for Fight Club
“Talk less, listen more.” –Brené Brown Research professor, author of Daring Greatly
“It had long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them. They went out and happened to things.” –Leonardo da Vinci Italian Renaissance polymath, painter of the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper
“To handle yourself, use your head; to handle others, use your heart.” –Eleanor Roosevelt Longest-serving First Lady of the United States, diplomat, and activist
“Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” –Sun Tzu Chinese military strategist and author of The Art of War
“You can do so much in ten minutes’ time. Ten minutes, once gone, are gone for good. Divide your life into ten-minute units and sacrifice as few of them as possible in meaningless activity.” –Ingvar Kamprad Swedish business magnate, founder of IKEA
“There will come a time when you believe everything is finished. That will be the beginning.” –Louis L’Amour Widely popular American Western novelist and short-story writer, author of more than 100 works
“Be the silence that listens.” –Tara Brach Teacher of meditation and emotional healing, author of Radical Acceptance
“LOVE THE PAIN.”
Based on everything I’ve seen, a simple recipe can work: focus on what’s in front of you, design great days to create a great life, and try not to make the same mistake twice. That’s it. Stop hitting net balls and try something else, perhaps even the opposite. If you really want extra credit, try not to be a dick, and you’ll be a Voltron-level superstar.
The secret to winning any game lies in not trying too hard.
Feeling as though you are trying too hard indicates that your priorities, technique, focus, or mindfulness is off. Take it as a cue to reset, not to double down. And take comfort in the fact that, whenever in doubt, the answer is probably hidden in plain sight. What would this look like if it were easy? In a world where nobody really knows anything, you have the incredible freedom to continually reinvent yourself and forge new paths, no matter how strange. Embrace your weird self. There is no one right answer . . . only better questions.