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"The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources."
-- Albert Einstein
Creative minds are rarely tidy. We don’t have an «imagination» we have a memory. Creativity is subtraction.
"Good artists copy; great artists steal."
-- Steve Jobs & others
"Those who do not want to imitate anything, produce nothing."
-- Salvador Dali
"To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk."
-- Thomas Edison
"The ability to see order in chaos is called creativity."
-- Simon Sinek
"Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative."
-- Oscar Wilde
"A pile of rocks ceases to be a rock when somebody contemplates it with the idea of a cathedral in mind."
-- Antoine St. Exupery
"One’s mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions."
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes
"I know quite certainly that I myself have no special talent. Curiosity, obsession and dogged endurance, combined with self-criticism, have brought me to my ideas."
-- Albert Einstein
"The way to get good ideas is to get lots of ideas and throw the bad ones away."
-- Linus Pauling
Best ideas come from the market, not from you. Changes in the environment unlock opportunities.
Creativity is a muscle. Without new experiences, it atroffiates. Ideas born out of free time, play and boredom. Ignorance is a blessing, gives you freedom to think about stuff. Conventional people living conventional lives lead to conventional ideas.
"I begin with an idea and then it becomes something else."
-- Pablo Picasso
"Name the greatest of all inventors. Accident."
-- Mark Twain
"We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them." (...)
"The mind that opens to a new idea never returns to its original size."
-- Albert Einstein
"I cultivate empty space as a way of life for the creative process."
-- Josh Waitzkin
"The secret to doing good research is always to be a little underemployed. You waste years by not being able to waste hours."
-- Amos Tversky
"Using creativity to solve problems cannot be taught, and it’s ultimately what free markets pay for." (...)
"A busy calendar and a busy mind will destroy your ability to create anything great."
-- Naval Ravikant
"Separate the processes of creation from improving. You can’t write and edit, or sculpt and polish, or make and analyze at the same time. If you do, the editor stops the creator. While you invent, don’t select. While you sketch, don’t inspect. While you write the first draft, don’t reflect. At the start, the creator mind must be unleashed from judgement."
-- Kevin Kelly
"Nearly every man who develops an idea works it up to the point where it looks impossible, and then he gets discouraged. That’s not the place to become discouraged."
-- Thomas Edison
"If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas."
-- George Bernard Shaw
Ask peers. Managers will regret more a false positive than a false negative.
However the right idea not executed is worth nothing and a mediocre one well executed can be worth much. So focus on transforming yourself into the kind of person who can bring them to life.
"New ideas pass through three periods: 1) It can’t be done; 2) It probably can be done, but it’s not worth doing; 3) I knew it was a good idea all along!"
-- Arthur C. Clarke
"Ideas by themselves are roughly worthless. There’s no market for them. There’s no place where one can go and buy an idea. Describing your idea in detail doesn’t mean other people will copy it. First they’ll have to be convinced it’s a good idea. If you ever tried to change anyone else’s mind you know by now how hard that is. Not even founders themselves can predict how well their own ideas will do. And even if people are convinced your idea is a good idea, they’ll still have to compare it to the existing idea they are already working on and see which one they’re more likely to do well with."
"Creativity and critical thinking: In subordinate position it gets you labelled a dreamer, a weirdo, or an idiot. In executive position, visionary, maverick, multidisciplinary thinker, etc. You can only truly creative in a position with autonomy, so you either climb the ladder or start your own thing."
-- HN_dilemma
"No grand idea was ever born in a conference, but a lot of foolish ideas have died there."
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald
"If at first, the idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for it."
-- Albert Einstein
"An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all."
-- Oscar Wilde
"We often refuse to accept an idea merely because the tone of voice in which it has been expressed is unsympathetic to us."
-- Friedrich Nietzche
"Almost all really new ideas have a certain aspect of foolishness when they are just produced."
-- Alfred North Whitehead
"A new idea is delicate. It can be killed by a sneer or a yawn; it can be stabbed to death by a quip and worried to death by a frown on the right man’s brow."
-- Ovid
"There is one thing stronger than all the armies in the world, and that is an idea whose time has come."
-- Victor Hugo
"Nothing is more dangerous than an idea when it is the only one you have."
-- Emile Chartier
"There are no facts, only interpretations."
-- Friedrich Nietzsche
Analysis is an art, not a science. The main problem with analysis is our human tendency to think that what we see is all there is, without realizing that what we see is being filtered.
I don’t trust words. I even question actions. But I never doubt patterns.
"Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts."
-- Albert Einstein
"Statistics are like bikinis. What they reveal is suggestive, but what they conceal is vital."
-- Aaron Levenstein
"Believe only half of what you see and nothing that you hear."
-- Edgar Allan Poe
"Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth."
-- Marcus Aurelius
"What Susie says of Sally says more about Susie than of Sally."
"Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?"
-- George Carlin
"Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect."
-- Mark Twain
"We don’t look at what we look, but at what we are."
-- Fernando Pessoa
"Don’t tell me what you value. Show me your budget, and I’ll tell you what you value."
-- Joe Biden quoting his father
"The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend."
-- Robertson Davies
"The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it."
-- George Bernard Shaw
"To doubt everything or to believe everything are two equally convenient solutions; both dispense the necessity of reflection."
-- Henri Poincaré
- Prefer stats than narratives. We have two kinds of forecasters: The ones who don’t know and the ones who don’t know they don’t know.
- There’s always a good reason and a real reason.
- Look for something that doesn’t make sense. That’s where the gold mine is: «It doesn’t make sense, the price is going down!». The world makes sense, just not the model. Some X factor is hidden. Don’t try to make sense of the world. It’s too complicated. Instead watch investors attempting to make sense of it. They’re the ones that will make the assets price move. (Adam Robinson)
- Randomness: most facts are a «tell» but some are just random.
- Skepticism is a great servant and a terrible master.
- There’s truth on group stereotypes. Group opinions self correct themselves.
- We tend to think that the people who agree with us are really smart.
- Create a hypothesis, a yet-to-be-proven theory. Then seek ways to invalidate this hypothesis, to prove that your idea is wrong. This is what scientists do. This is exactly the opposite of what most people do. They come up with an idea, and then they seek corroboration and proof that their idea is a good one. They practice “confirmation bias.” They only look for confirmation of the validity of the idea, and they simultaneously reject all input or information that is inconsistent with what they have already decided to believe.
- Pay attention to negative cues: what should have happened but did not.
- «Chekov bottle»: If something is described in a previous chapter, it means it will be important for the action in a future chapter.
- Best way to deal with confirmation bias: You need to search out disconfirming evidence. Confirmation bias is our tendency to cherry pick information which confirms pre-existing beliefs or ideas. Too much info is the main cause of it: you’ll always find confirmation to your pre-existing beliefs. As a consequence, we tend to see more evidence which enforces our worldview. Confirmatory data is taken seriously, while disconfirmatory data is treated with scepticism. To constantly evaluate our worldview would be exhausting, so we prefer to strengthen it. confirmation bias: As music unfolds, the brain constantly updates its estimates of when new beats will occur, and takes satisfaction in matching a mental beat with a real-in-the-world one.
- Nothing is as simple at seems at first, or as hopeless as it seems in the middle, or as finished as it seems in the end.
- Nothing is as good or as bad as it seems.
- Bragging razor: if someone brags assume half. if someone downplays double it.
"Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar."
-- Sigmund Freud
"The most important question: «What do you need to see to change your view?»"
-- Adam Robinson
"The most valuable insights are both general and surprising. Ordinarily, the best that people can do is one without the other: either surprising without being general (e.g. gossip), or general without being surprising (e.g. cliches)." (...)
"That’s the thing about counterintuitive ideas, they contradict your intuitions. Of course your first impulse is to ignore them."
-- Paul Graham
"When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure."
-- Goodhart’s Law
"I conceive that the great part of the miseries of mankind are brought upon them by false estimates they have made of the value of things."
-- Benjamin Franklin
"Things which are different in order to be different are seldom better, but that which is made to be better is almost always different." -- Dieter Rams
"Experiment and theory often show remarkable agreement when performed in the same laboratory"
-- Daniel Bershader
"The hardest thing to explain is the glaringly evident that everyone has decided not to see."
-- Ayn Rand
"I look for ways of changing my mind. I never allow myself to have an opinion on anything that I don’t know the other side’s argument better than they do."
-- Chalie Munger
"What the human being is best at doing is interpreting all new information so that their prior conclusions remain intact."
-- Warren Buffett
"You always get exaggerated notions of things you don’t know anything about."
-- Albert Camus
"I am both worse and better than you thought."
-- Sylvia Plath
"An unfamiliar city is a fine thing. That’s the time and place when you can suppose that all of the people you meet are nice."
-- Louis Céline
"It is easier for the world to accept a simple lie than a complex truth."
-- Alexis de Tocqueville
"The truth is rarely pure and never simple."
-- Oscar Wilde
"There are 3 truths: my truth, your truth, and the truth."
-- Unknown
Truth does not mind to be questioned. A lie does not like being challenged.
In a world of propaganda, the truth is always a conspiracy. If you tell the truth you don’t need to reharse anything.
"We are each entitled to our own opinion, but no one is entitled to his own facts."
-- Patrick Moynihan
"Who’s talking the truth doesn’t need a lot of words."
-- Unknown
"The truth does not require your participation in order to exist. Bullshit does."
-- Terence McKenna
"The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off."
-- Gloria Steinem
"No one is more hated than he who speaks the truth."
-- Plato
"The further a society drifts from the truth the more it will hate those who speak it."
-- George Horwell
"Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened."
-- Winston Churchill
"A lie has speed but truth has endurance."
-- Edgar J. Mohn
"A lie has many variations, the truth none."
-- Unknown
"Exactitude is not truth."
-- Henry Matisse
"The best way to get a correct answer on the internet is to post an obviously wrong answer and wait for someone to correct you."
-- Kevin Kelly
The closer you are to the truth, the more silent you become inside."
-- Naval Ravikant
"Tell the truth and run."
-- Unknown
"All battles are won or lost before they are ever fought."
-- Sun Tzu
You can’t predict but you can prepare for the highly probable scenarios.
"If your goal does not have a schedule, it is a dream."
-- Kevin Kelly
"The best way to predict the future is to invent it."
-- Alan Kay
"If I had 9 hours to chop down a tree, I’d spend the first six sharpening my ax."
-- Abraham Lincoln
"He who fails to plan is planning to fail."
-- Winston Churchill
"Hope is not a strategy."
-- Vince Lombardi
"If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will get you there."
-- Lewis Carroll
"The movie might be good or bad but in the end we’ll finish eating pizza."
-- Unknown
"Someone is sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago."
-- Warren Buffett
"No one ever wrote a plan to be fat, lazy or stupid. That’s what happens when you don’t have a plan."
-- Larry Winget
"What you think is your problem is not your problem, your strategy is."
-- Dan Munro
"Divide each difficulty into as many parts as is feasible and necessary to resolve it."
-- Descartes
Start with a vision. Then look for actionable steps.
Hints:
- Plans are only a starting point. Choose a plan with options. A plan is only useful if it can survive reality. And a future filled with unknowns is everyone’s reality. Too detailed plans (or too general plans) are not useful and a waste of time. The most important part of every plan is to plan on the plan not going according to plan.
- Don’t sabotage them when they get tedious or too difficult.
- Actions aligned with goals.
- Quality is the best business plan.
"Vision is the art of seeing what is invisible to others."
-- Johnathan Swift
"A strategy has a single, well defined focus. A strategy lays out a path to be followed. A strategy is made up of parts (tactics). Each of a strategy’s parts pushes towards the defined focus. A strategy is either intentionally formed or emerges naturally."
-- Geoffrey P. Chamberlain
"Strategy requires thought; tactics require observation."
-- Max Euwe
"I always worked until I had something done and I always stopped when I knew what was going to happen next. That way I could be sure of going on the next day."
-- Ernest Hemingway
"You make plans and god laughs."
-- Unknown
"Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth."
-- Mike Tyson
"The wise warrior avoids the battle."
-- Sun Tzu
"The question isn’t who is going to let me; it’s who is going to stop me."
-- Ayn Rand
"May your choices reflect your choices, not your fears."
-- Nelson Mandela
You are evaluated by your decisions. Getting 80% good decisions is exponentially better than 70%.
We think we make choices but our choices are influenced by others. We pick what is familiar.
"A well defined problem seeks its own solution."
-- Mike Brundant
"I am not a product of my circumstances. I am a product of my decisions."
-- Stephen Cove
"The heart decides. The head rationalizes."
-- Naval Ravikant
"Opportunity cost is how intelligent people assess things."
-- Charlie Munger
"A mistake repeated more than once is a decision."
-- Paulo Coelho
"The world doesn’t have the luxury of waiting for complete answers before it takes action."
-- Daniel Gilber
Fast decisions are a competitive advantage but most people get paralyzed by over thinking. If you don’t decide timely somebody will do it for you.
Hints:
- Default to no. (Steve Jobs)
- ’Hell yes or no’. Say no to things you aren’t really excited about doing. (Derek Sivers)
- No to any decision that requires a calculator or computer. (Warren Buffett)
- With two equally difficult paths, choose the one more painful in the sort term. Pain avoidance is creating an illusion of equality. (Naval Ravikant)
- Choose the one that may produce most serendipity down the line.
- Is the decision reversible or irreversible? If it is reversible, make it fast and without perfect information. If is irreversible, slow down and ensure that you understand the problem. (Jeff Bezos)
- Optimal decisions occur with 70% of the information. Anything less and you’ll probably make a bad decision. Anything more and you’re probably wasting time on something that is unlikely to change the outcome. (Jeff Bezos)
"Economics teaches you that making a choice means giving up something."
-- Russ Roberts
"While we are reasoning concerning life, life is gone."
-- David Hume
"More is lost by indecision than wrong decision."
-- Cicero
"Don’t ever respond to a solicitation or a proposal on the phone. The urgency is a disguise."
-- Kevin Kelly
"In the small matters trust the mind, in the large ones the heart."
-- Sigmund Freud
"Enough is a decision, not an amount."
-- Alison Faulkner
"The boldest measures are the safest."
-- Horatio Nelson
"If you have to take it or leave it, leave it."
-- Mike O’Neill
"The cost of being wrong is less than the cost of doing nothing."
-- Seth Godin
"If there’s no alternative, there’s no problem."
-- James Burnham
"To beat the bureaucracy, make your problem their problem."
-- Marshall L. Smith
"All models are wrong but some are useful."
-- George Box
A mental model is a functional tool. If you don’t understand its limitations, you don’t understand the model. The practical question is how limited do they have to be to not be useful.
"A model which took account of all the variation of reality would be of no more use than a map at the scale of one to one."
-- Joan Robinson
"Scientists generally agree that no theory is one hundred percent correct. Thus, the real test of knowledge is not truth, but utility. Science gives us power. The more useful that power, the better the science."
-- Yuval Noah Harari
"The basic trouble, you see, is that people think that «right» and «wrong» are absolute; that everything that isn’t perfectly and completely right is totally and equally wrong."
-- Isaac Asimov
"A year from now, you will wish you had started today."
-- Karen Lamb
Just start.
Stop making resolutions and start making something. Time is the most precious thing you own.
"The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step."
-- Lao Tzu
"You don’t have to be great to start, but you have to start to be great."
-- Zig Ziglar
"If everybody contemplates the infinite instead of fixing the drains, many of us will die of cholera."
-- John Rich
"Do not wait to strike till the iron is hot; but make it hot by striking."
-- Yeats
"You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take."
-- Wayne Gretzky
"The most difficult is the decision to act, the rest is just tenacity."
-- Andrea Earhart
"Did you know you can’t steer a boat that isn’t moving? Just like a life."
-- Paul Lutus
"Go and do the things you can’t. That is how you get to do them."
-- Pablo Picasso
"Action expresses priorities."
-- Mahatma Gandhi
"The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is right now."
-- Unknown
"About 99% of the time, the right time is right now."
-- Kevin Kelly
"Hesitation is always easy, rarely useful."
-- Prof. Quirrel
"The best thing you can do is the right thing, the second best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing."
-- Winston Churchill
"A good plan, violently executed now, is better than a perfect plan next week."
-- General George Patton
"While we wait for life, life passes."
-- Seneca
"Patience is not passive; on the contrary, it is active; it is concentrated strength."
-- Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton
"The more something threatens your identity, the more you will avoid it."
-- Mark Manson
We fear releasing something unimportant, so you don’t release anything at all. Inadequacy of results makes us realize that we are not as good as we think we are and creates anxiety. We distract ourselves because we are not willing to face up with what bothers us. We procrastinate in order to remove that anxiety. When hope disappears, so does action.
How to defeat procrastination?
Hints:
- What gets measured gets done.
- Don’t wait for the perfect occasion, a good occasion is a safer bet. You will languish if you stop for a long time and paralysis is worse than bad timing. At some point, the pain of not doing it becomes greater than the pain of doing it. Pressed by circumstances, we feel unusually energized and focused (the panic monster).
- However, never mistake action for motion. You must think like a man of action, and act like a man of thought. So make a plan. Any plan will do.
"One of the counterintuitive things that I’ve learned is that procrastination is often a side-effect of perfectionism."
-- HN_bane
"If opportunity doesn’t knock, build a door."
-- Milton Berle
"Speed is useful only if you are running in the right direction."
-- Joel Barker
"I’m a slow walker but I never walk back."
-- Abraham Lincoln
"Most people overestimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what they can do in ten years."
-- Bill Gates
"Start as close to the end as possible."
-- Kurt Vonnegu
Direction is more important than velocity. Even if we can’t choose the starting point, often, we can choose the direction.
When possible, position yourself for victory by bringing the target closer. Location is better than space amount so trade space for time.
"Moving in a direction opposite to what we are doing right now where we are not successful will guarantee success."
Only fools rush into a situation. By committing too quickly you lose your maneuverability.
"Far better an approximate answer to the right question, which is often vague, than an exact answer to the wrong question, which can always be made precise."
-- John Tukey
"No matter how great the talent or efforts, some things just take time. You can’t produce a baby in one month by getting nine women pregnant."
-- Warren Buffett
"A woodpecker can tap twenty times on a thousand trees and get nowhere, but stay busy. Or he can tap twenty-thousand times on one tree and get dinner."
-- Seth Godin
"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 1000 things."
-- Steve Jobs
First the essential. Then the details.
Focusing is an art. Time itself is not your limitation: attention is.
Busy imply out of control. Lack of time is lack of priorities.
Hints:
- Always look where you want to go, not where you don’t want to go.
"Doing something well does not make it important. I think this is one of the most common problems with a lot of time-management or productivity advice; they focus on how to do things quickly. The vast majority of things that people do quickly should not be done at all."
-- Tim Ferriss
"Strike the shepherd and the sheep will scatter."
-- Robert Greene (42nd law of power)
"You can do anything, but not everything."
-- David Allen
"When everything is a priority nothing is a priority. Attempting to maximize competing variables is a recipe for disaster. Picking one variable, and relentlessly focusing on it, which is an effective strategy, diverges from the norm. It’s hard to compete with businesses who have correctly identified the right variables to maximize or minimize."
-- Charlie Munger
"A man with a watch knows what time it is. A man with two watches is never sure."
-- Unknown
"I want to know God’s thoughts; the rest are details."
-- Albert Einstein
"Learn what is to be taken seriously and laugh at the rest."
-- Hermann Hesse
"You only have to do a very few things right in your life so long as you don’t do too many things wrong."
-- Warren Buffett
"As the biggest library if it is in disorder is not as useful as a small but well-arranged one, so you may accumulate a vast amount of knowledge but it will be of far less value to you than a much smaller amount if you have not thought it over for yourself."
-- Arthur Schopenhauer
"I will have to remember «I’m here today to cross the swamp, not to fight all the alligators."
-- Rosamund and Benjamin Zander (Art of possibility)
"A wealth of information creates a poverty of attention."
-- Herbert Simon
"If you want a well, only dig in one place."
-- Unknown
"Learn to be indifferent to what makes no difference."
-- Marcus Aurelius
"As few as you can, as many as you must."
-- John Stuart Mill
Getting a lot of unnecessary things done is not productivity, it’s stupidity.
Saying yes to everything is a quick road to mediocrity. Productivity is about attention management. Do less to achieve more. You don’t need to optimise everything. 20% of your effort will give you 80% of output and it may be more than enough.
Hints:
- Protect your time like your money. Protect your hours of real work. Take advantage of early hours in the day.
- Focus on one to three outcomes per day (include one important but not urgent task) and tackle the most important one in the morning. Leverage is built on the notion that small, well-focused actions can sometimes produce significant, enduring improvements if they are applied in the right place.
- 80/20 is fractal: If 20% of the effort creates 80% of the value, 20% of the 20% of the effort makes 80% of 80% of the value. So 4% of the work you do may create 64% of the benefits!
- Ruthless cut all the activities in your workday that aren’t producing value.
- Always work with a specific purpose in mind. Set specific, measurable, realistic and time-based goals.
- Mind the process, not the results. For example, “finish report” might turn into “write report for 45 uninterrupted minutes.”
- Learn to focus and being fully present on what you are doing now.
- Work by layers: from functional to excellency.
- Do things in batch. Interruption and switching between tasks costs too much. Reduce decision making on small tasks to a minimum and do it quickly and in bulk.
- When a task will take you less than two minutes, just do it.
- Buy yourself time: delegate. Only operate from strengths: outsource your weaknesses. Focus on what you’re naturally good at and what you enjoy the most.
- To get anything done quickly, ask a busy person to do it.
"My life is better when I’m spontaneous after I’ve done my most important thing. Being spontaneous before that, that’s where it becomes a distraction and does me harm."
-- Gary Keller
"Don’t make 100 decisions when one will do."
-- Peter Drucker
"Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion."
-- C. Northcote Parkinson
"The price of productivity is creativity." (...)
"If you’re not spending your time doing what you want, and you’re not earning, and you’re not learning - what the heck are you doing?" (...)
"Nothing will make you more productive than owning your time. Nothing will make you less productive than selling it." (...)
"Say no: ’It doesn’t feel right to me.’ No more explanations are needed."
-- Naval Ravikant
"You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink."
-- Unknown
Disorder is not a mistake; it’s our default. Order is always artificial and temporary.
Control what you can: what you’re primed by, who you are around, the ideas and problems you focus on. Ignore the rest.
Consuming information gives the control freak an illusion of control. He doesn’t want to acknowledge that the universe doesn’t make sense and he doesn’t trust himself to handle disorder in a situation that will get out of his league or skillset.
"If things seem under control, you’re just not going fast enough."
-- Mario Andretti (F1 pilot)
"One’s real life is often the life that one does not lead."
-- Oscar Wilde
"If you change the way you look at things, the thing you look at change"
-- Wayne Dyer
"Sometimes people don’t want to hear the truth because they don’t want their illusions destroyed."
-- Friedrich Nietzsche
"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler."
-- Albert Einstein
Life is a balancing act. Most things are not binary.
The dose makes the poison: things in excess become their opposite. The hardest skill is knowing when to stop.
"Do not go past the mark you aimed for; in victory, learn when to stop."
-- Robert Greene (47th law of power)
Balance is not about spending the same amount of time focused on every area of your life either. It’s about making progress in all areas of your life and ensuring that you improve just a little bit each day in your health, wealth, relationships and personal growth.
Hints:
- Don’t try to make your job your whole life. Don’t try to make your art your sole income.
- There are two approaches to improving yourself: 1) The self-improvement junkie. 2) The self-improvement tourists. (Mark Manson)
"Life is a balance between holding on and letting go."
-- Rumi
Overcompensate. Some people get passion from something they struggled with.
"However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results."
-- Winston Churchill
"At Berkshire there has never been a master plan. Anyone who wanted to do it, we fired because it takes on a life of its own and doesn’t cover new reality. We want people taking into account new information."
-- Charlie Munger
"Life is more like tetris than chess."
-- Tor Blair
Plans are not static.
Switch strategies a few times to get where you want to go. If problems shift faster than your rate of adaptation you loose.
"I am a man of fixed and unbending principles, the first of which is to be flexible at all times."
-- Everett Dirksen
"One should not be too straightforward. Go & see the forest. The straight trees are cut down, the crooked ones are left standing."
-- Kautilya
"The most important thing to do if you find yourself in a hole is to stop digging."
-- Warren Buffett
"The directions to get you anywhere include a few turns:
Sometimes you need to say YES to everything and be open to growth;
Sometimes you need to say NO to everything and focus.
It’s scary to make those direction choices but fear is a great road sign."
-- Derek Sivers (paraphrased)
"What got you here won’t get you there."
-- Marshall Goldsmith
"Whatever space and time mean, place and occasion mean more."
-- Aldo van Eyck
"The best way, perhaps the only way, to change others is to become an example." (...)
"Everybody wants to change others. Nobody wants to be changed." (...)
"People think they can’t change themselves, but they can. People think they can change others, but they can’t." (...)
"Sometimes it’s easier to change the world than to change people’s minds."
-- Naval Ravikant
Listen to predict a collapse.
"When things break, it’s not the actual breaking that prevents them from getting back together again. It’s because a little piece gets lost - the two remaining ends couldn’t fit together even if they wanted to. The whole shape has changed."
-- John Green
"Don’t readily ascribe to malice what can be more easily ascribed to incompetence."
-- James Akre
Adapt instead of reacting. An opportunity is taking an unwanted job.
"When the winds of change blow, some people build walls while others build windmills."
-- Unknown
"If I don’t have red, I use blue."
-- Pablo Picasso
"Change is inevitable, it’s our job to exploit it." -- Eli Goldratt
"It is much easier to change how you think by changing your behavior, than it is to change your behavior by changing how you think. Act out the change you seek."
-- Kevin Kelly
There are limits on change. Willpower is finite and change requires attention. However, small changes in a complex system can cause large changes.
"Preach the need for change, but never reform too much at once."
-- Robert Greene (45th law of power)
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man."
-- George Bernard Shaw
"You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a model that makes the existing model obsolete."
-- Buckminster Fuller
"The secret of change is to focus all your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new."
-- Socrates
"Give me a lever long enough, and a place to stand, and I will move the earth."
-- Archimedes
"Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake."
-- Napoleon Bonaparte
Leverage is a force multiplier.
Strategy is about winning before the battle begins, tactics are about striking at weakness.
Leverage your target weaknesses to raise your chances of winning.
Use methods like unpredictability, charming or mirroring. Even deceiving, some opponents may require special tools.
"The most basic idea of strategy is the application of strength against weakness. Or if you prefer, strength applied to the most promising opportunity. A good strategy doesn’t just draw on existing strength; it creates strength. Rumelt’s definition of strategy as creating strength is particularly important. You don’t deplete yourself as you execute your strategy. You choose tactics that reinforce and build strength as they are deployed."
-- Richard Rumelt
"You are strong only where you were broken." (...)
"It’s hard to defeat a high-morale defender with an unlimited supply line." (...)
"Leverage converts knowledge into power." (...)
"Fortunes require leverage. Business leverage comes from capital, people and products with no marginal cost of replication (code and media). Capital means money. To raise money, apply your specific knowledge, with accountability and show resulting good judgment. Labor means people working for you. It’s the oldest and most fought-over form of leverage. Labor leverage will impress your parents, but don’t waste your life chasing it. Capital and labor are permissioned leverage. Everyone is chasing capital, but someone has to give it to you. Everyone is trying to lead, but someone has to follow you. Code and media are permissionless leverage. They’re the leverage behind the newly rich. You can create software and media that works for you while you sleep. An army of robots is freely available - it’s just packed in data centers for heat and space efficiency. Use it."
-- Naval Ravikant
Hints:
- If you control the overall direction and framing of the battle, anything they do will play into your hands.
- Divide and conquer.
- Beware of counter-attacking: the problems created by an audacious move can be disguised, even remedied, by more and greater audacity.
- Any change require injecting more energy than is extracted by the system.
- Once you step into a fight that is not of your own choosing, you lose all initiative.
"Make others dependent on you: hope has a good memory, gratitude a bad one. More is to be got from dependence than from courtesy."
-- Balthasar Gracian
"We catch more flies with honey than vinegar." -- Unknown
"To combat an adversary, become their friend."
-- Kevin Kelly
Charm the enemy to find their weaknesses. Then exploit them.
Hints:
- People’s need for validation and recognition, is the best kind of weakness to exploit. To persuade up, focus on interests; to persuade down focus on emotions.
- Use absence and bait to attract people. It will become a challenge for them to win your affections. The ability to make others come to you is a weapon far more powerful than any tool of aggression. use it with moderation.
- Instead of killing it, charm the snake to fight the other ones. Listen actively and maintain rapport. First they have to trust you. Keep your word and prove your worth, the new guy has always to prove himself.
"Make other people come to you: use bait if necessary."
"Use absence to increase respect and honor."
"Use selective honesty and generosity to disarm your victim."
"Play a sucker to catch a sucker: seem dumber than your mark."
"Pose as a friend, work as a spy."
"Work on the hearts and minds of others."
"Discover each man’s thumbscrew."
"Court attention at all cost."
"Play to people’s fantasies."
"Create compelling spectacles."
"Stir up waters to catch fish."
-- Robert Greene (laws of power)
"I’ve never fooled anyone. I’ve let people fool themselves. They didn’t bother to find out who and what I was. Instead they would invent a character for me. I wouldn’t argue with them. They were obviously loving somebody I wasn’t."
-- Marilyn Monroe
"The moment a magician says, «now we begin» you’re already screwed!"
-- Brian Brushwood
"Treating a person to a meal never fails, and is so easy to do. It’s powerful with old friends and a great way to make new friends." (...)
"Compliment people behind their back. It’ll come back to you."
-- Kevin Kelly
"Lies are often much more plausible, more appealing to reason, than reality, since the liar has the great advantage of knowing beforehand what the audience wishes or expects to hear."
-- Hannah Arendt
"A man is not deceived by others, he deceives himself."
-- Goethe
"Appear weak when you are strong and strong when you are weak."
-- Sun Tzu
If we play by the rules too strictly, we are crushed by those around us who are not so foolish. Fair players on shady markets usually don’t do well on the short term.
By seeming stronger than you are, perhaps through an occasional act that is reckless and bold, you can deter the enemy from attacking you. However deceiving is not lying. Lying is like a nuclear bomb, the effects will be there for a long time. Disappointment destroys trust.
"The senses do not deceive; it is the judgment that deceives."
-- Goethe
"Conceal your intention."
"Say less than necessary."
"Keep others in suspended terror: cultivate an air of unpredictability."
"Assume formlessness."
-- Robert Greene (laws of power)
"One thing I learned at 3 AM: everyone lied to survive. Truth is a luxury we day-people take for granted."
-- James Altucher
"I’m not upset that you lied to me. I’m upset that from now on I can’t believe on you."
-- Friedrich Nietzsche
"It’s the nature of truth that once you see it, you can’t unsee it." (...)
"If it hurts to hear, look for the truth in it. If it comforts to hear it, look for the lie in it."
-- Naval Ravikant
"Honesty is a very expensive gift, don’t expect it from cheap people."
-- Warren Buffett
*"Never tell the truth to people who are not worthy of it." (...)
*"If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything." (...)
"A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes."
-- Mark Twain
"When you have something to say, silence is a lie."
-- Jordan Peterson
"The evil that men do lives after them; The good is often interred with their bones."
-- Julius Caesar
"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself - and you are the easiest person to fool."
-- Richard Feynman
"They muddy the water, to make it seem deep."
-- Friedrich Nietzsche
"Have more than you show, speak less than you know."
-- William Shakespeare
Hints:
- It’s hard to cheat an honest opponent.
- Don’t attribute to malice what you can attribute to incompetence or busyness. So never be mean to anybody that can hurt you by doing nothing.
- The only time you enjoy hearing a lie is when you already know the truth.
- The only thing worth praying is truth.
- If you are in a subordinate position, unpredictability reduces trust.
- Teach no one your tricks or they will be used against you.
- There are 2 rules in life. nr. one: never give out all the information.
"Any sufficiently advanced negligence is indistinguishable from malice."
-- Deb Chachra
Sometimes people dont want to hear the truth because they don’t want their illusions destroyed."
-- Friedrich Nietzsche
"Disarm and infuriate with the mirror effect."
-- Robert Greene
Reciprocation is the foundation on which we have evolved: our ancestors learned to share their food and their skills in an honored network of obligation. We feel obliged to repay favors we have received. We feel obliged to make a concession to someone who has made a concession to us.
"Being pacifist in face of wolves is the source of endless tragedy."
"To successfully change a status quo maintained by a minority you only need to unite the majority. How? Make a non-violent revolution: low risk will make more people to participate."
-- Srdja Popovic
The only successful changes are those coming from within.
"You cannot find peace by avoiding life."
-- Virginia Woolf
"Everything will be ok in the end. If it’s not ok, it’s not the end."
-- Unknown
"If you’re going to try, go all the way. Otherwise, don’t even start."
-- Charles Bukowski
Starting is fun but success belongs to finishers. Going halfway is a waste.
When the end finally comes, it comes quickly. Nothing ends poetically. It ends and we turn it into poetry. All that blood was never once beautiful. It was just red.
"Only put off until tomorrow what you are willing to die having left undone."
-- Pablo Picasso
"Crush your enemy totally."
-- Robert Greene (15th law of power)
"Ultimately the only peace and security you can hope for from your enemies is their disappearance."
"You finished ahead of time, that means you forgot something."
"All endings are also beginnings. We just don’t know it at the time."
-- Mitch Albom
"There are lots of overnight tragedies. There are rarely overnight miracles."
-- Unknown
"Maintain reserves. A man should not employ all his capacity and power at once and on every occasion. Even in knowledge there should be a rearguard, so that your resources are doubled. One must always have something to resort to when there is fear of a defeat."
-- Balthasar Gracian
"Winning isn’t everything, but wanting to win is."
-- Vince Lombardi
It’s not just about winning. The way you win sets you up for the next round.
Winning is not the end of the road; it’s just a stop along the way.
"Win through your actions, never through argument."
’Make your accomplishments seem effortless."
-- Robert Greene (9th and 30th laws of power)
"You only find out who is swimming naked when the tide goes out."
-- Warren Buffett
"You might be winning but you’re not growing, and growing might be the most important form of winning."
-- Jordan Peterson
"The war will be ended by the exhaustion of nations rather than the victories of armies."
-- Winston Churchill
"To fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy’s resistance without fighting."
-- Sun Tzu
"Never attempt to win by force what can be won by deception."
-- Niccoló Machiavelli
"You don’t win by predicting the future; you win by getting the odds right."
-- Will Bonner
"No poor bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making other bastards die for their country."
-- George Smith Patton
"We prefer to see winners as naturally talented rather then hard working. Because if it were reversed, what would that inply to us?" -- Naval Ravikant
"If winning becomes too important in a game, change the rules to make it more fun. Changing rules can become the new game."
-- Kevin Kelly
"It only hurts when you don’t have time to prepare for the fall."
-- Tony Hawk
"Waiting is painful. Forgetting is painful. But not knowing which to do is the worst kind of suffering."
-- Paulo Coelho
Accept loss. Surrender conceals great power: lulling the enemy into complacency, it gives you time to recoup, time to undermine, time for revenge.
In order to come back you have to go away. Use this opportunity to re-create yourself. If you didn’t quit anything you would be still playing with toddlers. Every story has an end, but in life every end is just a new beginning. Surrendering to constant reinvention.
"Close some doors today. Not because of pride, incapacity or arrogance, but simply because they lead you nowhere."
-- Paulo Coelho
"When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves."
-- Victor Frankl
"Once the game is over, the king and the pawn go back in the same box."
-- Unknown
"In all things — except love — start with the exit strategy. Prepare for the ending. Almost anything is easier to get into than out of."
-- Kevin Kelly
"Only the weak are cruel. Gentleness can only be expected from the strong."
-- Leo Buscaglia
"Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. -- Isaac Asimov*
"When someone is kicking your ass, at least you know that you are out in front."
-- Donald Bartel
"The only way out of the labyrinth of suffering is to forgive."
-- John Green
Hatred is a curse that does not affect the hated. It only poisons the hater. Release a grudge as if it was a poison.
Forgiveness is a process of release so the opposite is a decision to hold onto something. By refusing to forgive someone, we get to cast ourselves as victims, as underdogs, as injured parties. Most important, we get to preserve our status in the conflict — usually, as the person who’s “right.” In reality, we only keep the suffering alive for ourselves. We are the ones we end up punishing.
"To heal a wound you must stop scratching it."
-- Paulo Coelho
"People find it far easier to forgive others for being wrong than being right."
-- J.K. Rowling
"Life has become immeasurably better since I have been forced to stop taking it seriously."
-- Hunter S. Thompson
"If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself. What isn’t part of ourselves doesn’t disturb us."
-- Hermann Hesse
However people who forgive easily are taken for granted.
"Once you had put the pieces back together, even though you may look intact, you were never quite the same as you’d been before the fall."
-- Jodi Picoult
"An eye for an eye will only make the whole world blind."
-- Mahatma Gandhi
"The greatest revenge is success."
-- Frank Sinatra
"Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves."
-- Confucius