The Art of the Good Life: 52 Surprising Shortcuts to Happiness, Wealth and Success by Rolf Dobelli (Part 4)

Managing Expectations (The Less You Expect, the Happier You’ll Be). Our brains are an expectation machine. Expectations are built without us knowing as well, on a subconscious level. Do not have excessively high expectations of certain events. If your expectations regarding income rise faster than your income, you will be disappointed. Besides feeding yourself, you don’t have to do anything else. There are very few true necessities in life. Learn to erase supposed ‘necessities’ from your life. It is good to have desires, but do not be shackled by them. Not all your desires will be fulfilled. Your preferences are sometimes out of your control. Try not to have expectations of others, as they are beyond your control. To live a good life, draw distinctions between necessities, desires and expectations. You need to keep them separate. Managing your expectations is part of a good life.

Research confirms that expectations have a profound impact on happiness, and that unrealistic expectations are among the most effective killjoys. – Rolf Dobelli

Sturgeon’s Law (How to Tune your bullshit detector). Sturgeon’s Law states that 90% of everything is crap, regardless of what field you are in. To re-phrase, 90% of intellectual things are bullshit. Knowing this is good, as you can filter what you see, hear or read without feeling guilty. Concentrate on being selective in your absorption of content. In life, you will come across a lot of trash, but you need to be able to tune those out. It is easier said than done. Recognize the difference between ideas and good ideas. If you’re not sure whether something is bullshit, it’s bullshit.

In Praise of Modesty (The Less Self-Important You Are, the Better Your Life will be). Even great people will be forgotten in 4 generations or so. The problem with humans are that we are too attached to a sense of self-esteem. Our ego is too big. To live a good life, avoid being too full of yourself. Avoid standing upon your ego too much. Focus on your work and do not brag. The self-serving bias afflicts those who have a big ego in life. They may also over-estimate their abilities in life.

In a hundred or two hundred years at the most, hardly anybody will know who Bill Gates, Donald Trump or Angela Merkel were. And as for the two of us – you, dear reader, and me – a few decades after we’re gone nobody will spare us a second thought. – Rolf Dobelli

Inner Success (Why Your Input is more important than your output). Magazines sometimes produce a list of the most successful and powerful people in the world. Modern societies highlight material success a lot. Why are there no lists for people who are the most satisfied? Definitions of success depends on the product of their time. Don’t follow others blindly. Material success is 100% a matter of chance. True success is inner success. Once you have achieved tranquillity of the soul, you will be able to put up with slings and arrows. You can control your input, but not your output. Inner success is more stable than external success. Take stock of your accomplishments at the end of each day. People desire external gain as it gives them internal gain.

Success is a peace of mind, which is a direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you made the effort to do your best to become the best that you are capable of becoming. – John Wooden

Afterword. The good life is no easy task. Instead of relying on intuition, one should be aware of the biases/heuristics that the mind is susceptible to. Intellectual tools are more important than money. If your friend is not leading a good life, you will know it instantly. This book has provided insights on Stoicism. Throughout this book, I have quoted Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett. This book combines the principles of modern psychology, Stoicism and the philosophy of value investing.

 

 

Five Amazing Benefits of Being Kind by William Wan

The Singapore Kindness Movement was founded in 1997 with the aim of building a kinder and more gracious society

There are 5 amazing benefits of being kind. They are:
1) Personal Happiness
2) Happy Families
3) Good Health
4) Success at Work
5) Kindness Begets Kindness

What is Kindness? It is about benefitting others without expecting anything in return. This is graciousness in action. Make a positive difference in someone else’s life. You can do simple things like hold a door for someone. Compassionate people who exhibit altruistic acts of service tend to have better life satisfaction and health. Doing nice things for people leads to a significant increase in people’s positive moods.

Personal Happiness. When you are kind towards others, dopamine, is released. This makes you feel good. Be kind and you will happy, be happy and you will be kind. Doing good over time will tend to lead to a friendly and joyful personality. This, in turn, makes you more attractive to others. Doing good deeds is also associated with better relationship satisfaction. Helping others bestows a sense of satisfaction. Learn to acknowledge your colleagues in your workplace.

If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion. – Dalai Lama

Today, give a stranger one of your smiles. It might be the only sunshine he sees all day. – H. Jackson Brown Jr.

Happy Families. Small acts of service are a way of showing affection for your partner. Kindness should start from the home. Talk about kindness in your dinner table. Write cards or notes of appreciation.

Strength of character may be learned at work, but beauty of character is learned at home. – Henry Drummond

Being considerate of others will take you children further in life than any college degree. – Marian Wright Edelman

Good Health. Being kind to others has mental benefits, due to the production of dopamine and endorphins. Your body produces oxytocin, the bonding hormone. This hormone protects your hear by lowering the blood pressure.

Success at Work. Kindness can create a healthier and more effective workforce. This helps to boost productivity. Employees who are happier then to go the extra mile and tend to be more engaged in their work. The work place culture indeed matters. Teamwork also becomes more fun and the work environment is more pleasant and welcoming.

Kindness Begets Kindness. We can make our society a better place. When we enjoy others act of kindness, we feel good and feel inspired to pass it on. Learn to put yourself in someone else’s shoes. Understand their needs and desires. Do good, without expecting anything in return.

The very nature of kindness is to spread. If you are kind to others, today they will be kind to you, and tomorrow to somebody else. – Sri Chinmoy

Remember there’s no such thing as a small act of kindness. Every act creates a ripple with no logical end. – Scott Adams

 

How To Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big Kind of the Story of My Life By Scott Adams (Part 2)

Managing your Attitude. You do better work and enjoy life when your attitude is good. If you do not let your environment affect you, it will be a superpower. Do not let environment factors affect you. Tired people tend to be grumpy. Learn to raise your energy and elevate your attitude. Increase your ratio of happy to disturbing thoughts. Learn to daydream of wonderful things. Imagination will keep you going. Avoid sad movies, books, people etc. Consume feel-good entertainment. Exercise, nutrition and sleep are good to cure bad moods. Work on projects that might change the world. It is very liberating as well. Your imagined success will keep you happy. You will fail sometime, but you will learn. Smiling will make you feel better even if it is fake. Fake it until you make it. Acting confident will also make you more confident. It is a chicken and egg problem. If you are feeling down, try to smile at strangers as this will perk you up after a while. Smiling makes you more attractive to others. If you are not comfortable with smiling, hang around those who are funny. Walk away from the soul suckers. Scott has been good at scrabble, pool, tennis and ping pong. Simply through insane hours of practice, he became good at them. These are minor successes in your life. If you know how many hours it will take to be good at something, you won’t bail out so easily. Winning feels great and it energizes him. Pick the delusion that works. Our brains cannot fully comprehend reality. Very often, reality depends on the observer and can be flawed. We do not fully understand the environment around us. It is important to pick your way of the world and stick to it. This is why people believe in superstition. If the illusion is motivating, it is good enough as it increases your energy in life. If you imagine your book will be read by millions, it serves as a form of motivation.

Your attitude affects everything you do in your quest for success and happiness. A positive attitude is an important tool. It’s important to get it right. – Scott Adams

Don’t worry if your idea is a long shot. That’s not what matters right now. Today you want to daydream of your idea being a huge success so you can enjoy the feeling. Let your ideas for the future fuel your energy today. No matter what you want to do in life, higher energy will help you get there. – Scott Adams

I’ve come to believe that success at anything has a spillover effect on other things. You can take advantage of that effect by becoming good at things that require nothing but practice. – Scott Adams

Once you become good at a few unimportant things, such as hobbies or sports, the habit of success stays with you on more important quests. When you have tasted success, you want more. – Scott Adams

I’m better than 99% of the world in each of those games because I put in more practice time than 99% of the world. – Scott Adams

A great strategy for success in life is to become good at something, anything, and let that feeling propel you to new and better victories. Success can be habit-forming –  Scott Adams

Free yourself from the shackles of an oppressive reality. What’s real to you is what you imagine and what you feel. If you manage your illusions wisely, you might get what you want, but you won’t necessarily understand why it worked. – Scott Adams

It’s Already Working. You want to hang out with people who want to succeed. If you turn professional, it can help unlock your talent. Fake it until it becomes real. When you are placed in a manager position, you start acting like one.

Your decision to read this book is confirmation that you are a person of action who has a desire to be more effective. I’m reinforcing that thought to help lock it in. – Scott Adams

My Pinkie Goes Nuts. His pinkie started having spasms after drawing too much. The doctor suggested that he quit his day job and comics. He had to overcome ‘focal dystonia’. However, he had hope that the situation will improve. He was determined to be the first one to beat the illness. He tried all kind of treatments to cure the illness. Nothing seemed to work and it was getting worse. By conditioning his brain through repetitive exercise, he gradually solved the problem. In 2004, the problem re-surfaced. Scott found a tablet and started drawing. He started drawing on a program called Wacom. Wacom is much easier to use than paper and pen.

My Speaking Career. Scott was invited to give a speech at an organization. He charged the organization $5000. He kept increasing the price, but there was still increasing demand. Learn to overprice your services and see what happened.

It’s a cliché that who you know is helpful for success. What is less obvious is that you don’t need to know CEOs and billionaires. Sometimes you just need a friend who knows different things than you do. And you can always find one of those. – Scott Adams

My Voice Problem Gets a Name. He lost his voice in 2005. 2 separate ideas on the Internet gave an idea on what his condition was. Was the pinkie problem related to the voice problem. He also had spasmodic dysphonia. However, there was no cure for it. You must always believe you can overcome your problems.

The Voice Solution That Didn’t Work. Scott took Botox injections for a few months but soon after it didn’t work.

Recognizing your talents and knowing when to quit. How do you combine your skills to form something great? Observe what you liked to do before you turned 10. Scott loved to doodle in class. Some people are wired for certain preferences in life. To be an expert, one needs to spend 10,000 hours of disciplined practice. Another clue to talent involves tolerance for risk. For instance, the author shared humorous comics to his teachers in school. It was worth the risk. Your risk profile might predict my future. Childhood obsessions and tolerance for risk. Bail out quickly if something doesn’t work. This might conflict with what you have learnt, which is to never give up and overcome obstacles. The author left his email address on his comics so that others could provide feedback on how improve the comics. If you have the X factor early on, it will be more likely to catch on. The X factor may be that the public views it negatively at first. It has to inspire excitement. Watch what customers do about your idea or product and not what they say about it. If your product excites no one, then it’s not worth.

There’s a strong connection between what interests you and what you’re good at. – Scott Adams

People are naturally drawn to the things they feel comfortable doing, and comfort is a marker for talent. – Scott Adams

But my unscientific observation is that people are born wired for certain preferences. Those preferences drive behavior, and that’s what can make a person willing to practice a skill. – Scott Adams

Where there is a tolerance for risk, there is often talent. – Scott Adams

The smartest system for discerning your best path to success involves trying lots of different things – sampling, if you will. – Scott Adams

Should you pursue a career that uses your knowledge of photography and software, or something that uses your public-speaking skills and your gift for writing? There‘s no way to be completely sure which path will be more fruitful. – Scott Adams

Overcoming obstacles is normally an unavoidable part of the process. But you also need to know when to quit. Persistence is useful, but there’s no point in being an idiot about it. – Scott Adams

The pattern I noticed was this: Things that will someday work out well start out well. Things that will never work start out bad and stay that way. – Scott Adams

Don’t be fooled by the opinions of friends and family. They’re all liars. – Scott Adams

Is Practice your thing? Scott was able to coach a kid at 3 on how to hit a tennis ball through repetition. There are kids who like to be alone and practice themselves. There are people who don’t get bored of practicing. Do not practice something that has no economic value (like spinning a book). Craft a life plan based on your natural inclinations. The thing should have economic value as well. You won’t be a concert pianist or an NBA player. You don’t do well in other more creative professions. For those, every class is different.

My observation is that some people are born with a natural impulse to practice things and some people find mindless repetition without immediate reward to be a form of torture. Whichever camp you’re in, it probably won’t change. – Scott Adams

If you don’t like to practice, don’t waste time on a strategy that requires it. You simply need to pick a life strategy that rewards novelty seeking more than mindless repetition. – Scott Adams

Practicing is not living. But when you build your skills through an ever-changing sequence of experiences, you’re alive. – Scott Adams

There’s no denying the importance of practice. The hard part is figuring out what to practice. – Scott Adams

Managing Your Odds for Success. Pick a good system until luck finds you. It helps if you read books about success. There is no formula for success. Every skill you acquire doubles your odds of success. You don’t need to reach world-class standards. For example, if you are good public speaker + you know powerpoint = good chance of managing your own firm. Good + Good > Excellent. The more skills you have, the better your chances at success. Simplicity trumps accuracy. Trick your brain into thinking that having more skills will be beneficial. Scott made use of the Internet very early. Read the topics that interests you only. Do not spend too much time reading bad news as it will affect your mood. Read to broaden your exposure. Read as a source of energy. Not everyone is rationale. Steve Jobs was not rational in his pricing but people still paid for it. A working knowledge of psychology always helps.

Your market value can be increased by being good (not extraordinary) at more than one skill. – Scott Adams

Successwise, you’re better off being good at two complementary skills than being excellent at one. – Scott Adams

The Success Formula: Every Skill You Acquire Doubles Your Odds of Success. – Scott Adams

If I told you that taking a class in Web site design during your evenings might double your odds of career success, the thought would increase the odds that you would act. – Scott Adams

When it comes to skills, quantity often beats quality. – Scott Adams

When I combined my meager business skills with my bad art skills and my fairly ordinary writing talent, the mixture was powerful. – Scott Adams

None of my skills are world-class, but when my mediocre skills are combined, they become a powerful market force. – Scott Adams

Another huge advantage of learning as much as you can in different fields is that the more concepts you understand, the easier it is to learn new ones. – Scott Adams

The Knowledge Formula: The More you Know, the More you Can Know. – Scott Adams

A smarter approach is to think of learning as a system in which you continually expose yourself to new topics, primarily the ones you find interesting. – Scott Adams

But I do think a working knowledge of psychology is essential to your success – both personally and professionally. – Scott Adams

The Math of Success. You need to figure out the odds. Are you clear about the odds in your life? Scott kept losing to his friend in tennis. He kept losing to a friend despite his standard of tennis was improving. Scott couldn’t manage the killer shots. Learn to find the blind spots in your life. He learnt to avoid the low-percentage tennis shots. See the world as math and not magic. When you fail, there is usually some pattern that caused it. Learn to figure out what is that pattern. It is important to keep brushing up on your skillset. There is a list of skills which everyone should be good at. They are 1) Public speaking; 2) Psychology; 3) Business writing; 4) Accounting; 5) Design; 6) Conversation; 7) Overcoming shyness; 8) Second language; 9) Golf; 10) Proper grammar; 11) Persuasion; 12) Technology; 13) Proper voice technique. Public speaking à He went for the Dale Carnegie course. During the course, there would be no criticism or corrections. Only positive reinforcement was allowed. Scott volunteered to go first. Everytime you spoke, you received compliments. Learn to be positive. People don’t have an accurate view of our potential. Psychology à most businesses require some knowledge of psychology. It is embedded in everything we do. Salespeople like to manipulate others by using psychology. It pays off if you use psychology in your decision making. A compliment from someone can help you in a long way. The author wanted to turn Dilbert into a feature film. Scott’s second restaurant failed as well. People like to compare your new work with your old work. If it doesn’t match up, you will receive criticism. One shouldn’t compare Dilbert with the Simpsons. They are so different in every aspect. Without Simpsons, Dilbert might have reached a new level. Learn about psychology and cognitive traps. Learn to know what you are vulnerable against. Make psychology your lifelong study. There are over 30 biases that the human mind is susceptible to. Scott did learn about hypnotists. Reasons are one of the factors in which people use to make their decisions. Sometimes, no reasons are necessary and people are irrational. Business writing à Learn to write with clarity and persuasiveness. There was some technique to this. Business writing is all about getting to the chase and getting to the point. Use direct instead of the passive voice. Passive writing adds up and causes reader fatigue. Use clean writing to be persuasive. Accounting à it is the language of business. Learn to create a cash flow projection. Design à We are all expected to know some form of designing. Design is rule based. Everything should conform to a few basic templates. Use the L-shaped layout. Leave one quadrant less busy than the right. Learn a few design tricks if you can. Conversation à Most people are skilled at this. Conversations can occur for many reasons What’s your name? Where do you live? Do you have a family? What do you do for a living? Do you have any hobbies/sports? Do you have any travel plans? Humor is not a good way to meet someone new. Ask people personal questions. Learn to fake social confidence. Look for something in common. Ask questions and don’t complain too much. Let others talk and change topic when you get stuck. Make the other party feel good. Smile and keep your body language open. If you are attractive, you shouldn’t talk too much. Be a master of short stories. It is good to have a backlog of stories in your bag. Learn to tell a funny story. Prepare before sharing a good story. Keep it brief. Fill in the story with characters. Pick stories that readers can relate to. Have a twist in the tale. Avoid topics like food, TV show plots, dreams and medical stories. Overcoming shyness à Some people are more naturally shy than others. Imagine that you are acting instead of interacting. Act like someone else. Fake your way past your shyness. Find out who are the thing people and the people people. You can learn it too. Always think that you can overcome your shyness. Learn to exercise your ego. Suppressing shyness takes practice. The more you put yourself in embarrassing situations, the easier it will become. Second language à It can open up your job opportunities. It is a huge competitive advantage. Golf à It is a good way for men to bond. It is a fairly universal activity. Golf is like a vacation for the mind. It is extraordinary. Golf is a great competitive advantage too. Golf is a great topic as well. Proper Grammar à If your grammar sucks, people will notice. Persuasion à you will use this very often. Keep reading books on persuasion. Some words are more persuasive than others. Use the word ‘because’. ‘Would you mind?’ tends to be well received. ‘I’m not interested.’ Is very good to shut the other party up. There is no need to offer a reason. ‘I don’t do that.’ is a very good conversation ender. ‘I have a Rule’. ‘I just wanted to clarify’. ‘Is there anything you can do for me?’. This is just between you and me. Not everyone is completely decisive. People respond to your energy levels. It is contagious. The craziest person is usually in control. Crazy + Confident people work. Is Persuasion the same as manipulation? No, not really. Technology (Hobby Level) à One needs to understand how the Internet works. Master it at a hobby level. It helps to have different vocal strategies. Learn to speak with proper breath control, tone, and mouth strategies. A commanding voice is highly correlated with success. Your body language etc will show your management potential. Women loved his professional voice. Learn to use a low voice. Breathe from the bottom of your lungs. Your belly button should be the one that is expanding and contracting as you breathe. Pick a tone. Penetrate noisy areas by using a high pitched voice. Posture is important as well. Use silence to substitute the ‘ums’ and ‘uhs’.

You can’t directly control luck, but you can move from a game with low odds of success to a game with better odds. – Scott Adams

The most important is the transformative power of praise versus the corrosive impact of criticism. – Scott Adams

If you see something that impresses you, a decent respect to humanity insists you voice your praise. – Scott Adams

Don’t assume you know how much potential you have. Sometimes the only way to know what you can do is to test yourself. – Scott Adams

You’ve heard the old saying that knowledge is power. But knowledge of psychology is the purest form of that power. – Scott Adams

Accounting is part of the vocabulary of business, and if you don’t understand it on a concept level, the world will be a confusing place. – Scott Adams

You can pay others to do your accounting and cash-flow projections, but that only works if you can check their work in a meaningful way. – Scott Adams

The technique (talking to strangers) is laughably simple and 100% effective. All you do is introduce yourself and ask questions until you find a point of mutual interest. – Scott Adams

I would go so far as to say that 99% of the general public love talking about themselves. – Scott Adams

If you’re unattractive – and this is my area of expertise – your conversation skills (with a stranger) will be especially important. – Scott Adams

But as with swimming, we can learn to overcome shyness with a little practice. – Scott Adams

If you’re a woman looking to increase your buying power in the dating pool, golf is a great competitive advantage. And you might enjoy it too! – Scott Adams

Being a good persuader is like having a magic power. – Scott Adams

Life is messy and you’re going to be right only sometimes. You’ll do everyone in your life a favor by acting decisively, though, even if you have doubts on the inside. – Scott Adams

Pattern Recognition. Continually look for patterns in life. Measure your chances of success. Successful people. Learn to imitate the successful people. The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People are rather good. 1. Be Proactive; 2. Begin with the end in mind, 3. Put first things first, 4. Think win-win, 5. Seek first to understand then be understood, 6. Synergize, 7. Sharpen the saw by learning. The author came up with a list as well, here goes. 1. Lack of fear of embarrassment, 2. Education (the right kind), 3. Exercise. A lack of fear of embarrassment is what allows one to be proactive. Learn how to handle failure. You improve your psychological bravery. People with the right kind of education have almost no risk of unemployment. Good health is a baseline requirement for success. Sick people can’t get much done. Work brings extra energy and vitality. Learn to exercise 5 to 7 days a week. Success is a learnable skill.

I believe exercise makes people smarter, psychologically braver, more creative, more energetic, and more influential. – Scott Adams

Physical fitness and daily exercise are correlated with success in business and in life. – Scott Adams

How To Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big Kind of the Story of My Life By Scott Adams (Part 1)

Introduction. This book is about a guy who failed his way to success. It wasn’t entirely due to luck. The author pursued a strategy of managing opportunities. Make luck easier to find you. This book is not about dispensing advice. ‘Money distorts truth like a hippo in a thong.’ Advice is not one size fits all anyway. This book is about personal experiences. Learn to narrow your choices. People can’t filter fact from fiction well. Develop a system to sort truth from fiction. The six filters for truth are: 1) Personal experience; 2) Experience of people you know; 3) Experts; 4) Scientific studies; 5) Common sense; 6) Pattern recognition. Consistency is your best bet. Many people do not have smart friends to help them out. He created Dilbert. Profit is a good benchmark for success in a business. Use pattern recognition and trial and observation to succeed.

Goals are for losers’; ‘Your mind isn’t magic. It’s a moist computer program.’; ‘The most important metric to track is your personal energy’; ‘Every skill you acquire doubles your odds of success.’; ‘Happiness is health plus freedom.’; ‘Luck can be managed, sort of.’; ‘Conquer shyness by being a huge phony (in a good way)’; ‘Fitness is the lever that moves the world.’; ‘Simplicity transforms ordinary into amazing. – Scott Adams

The Time I was Crazy. In 2005, the doctors diagnosed him with being crazy. He was behaving crazy. He had lost ability to chat with humans. His grandpa was also a little crazy in the past. He had to stutter in his speech. It was a social nightmare to say the least. Loneliness was debilitating and affects your body the same way aging does. Humans need to be heard. His quality of life was dropping because of loneliness. The author was slated to give a talk to thousands despite his ailment.

Sometimes, the only real difference between crazy people and artists is that artists write down what they imagine seeing. -Scott Adams

The Day of the Talk. He couldn’t conduct small talk well. He soaked in the energy from the crowd. He has created a unique relationship with failure. You can always learn from failing. He has a long history of profiting from failure. He failed to succeed in the corporate environment. He nailed the speech and later sought to cure his problems of speaking normally off-stage as well.

Experts say public speaking is one of the most terrifying things a person can do. – Scott Adams

I invite failure. I survive it. I appreciate it. And then I mug the shit out of it. – Scott Adams

Passion Is Bullshit. Successful people tell you to follow your passion. You should never make a loan to someone who is following his passion. For example, to a sports enthusiast. You want to offer a loan to the boring guy, without passion but generate profits. You want the grinder. Successful people want to offer advice and be humble. Therefore, most of the time, they offer passion as a reason. Passion gives people hope and feels more accessible. It seems like the people’s talent. This is bullshit. Passion is a by-product of knowing you will be good at something. Sometimes, talent plays a larger role than passion. Most success stem from desire, luck, hard work, determination and appetite for risk. Energy is good. Passion is bullshit.

It’s easy to passionate about things that are working out, and that distorts our impression of the importance of passion. – Scott Adams

The business ventures that didn’t work out – and that would be most of them – slowly drained my passion as they failed. The few that worked became more exciting as they succeeded. – Scott Adams

In hindsight, it looks as if the projects I was most passionate about were also the ones that worked. But objectively, my passion level moved with my success. Success caused passion more than passion caused success. – Scott Adams

We humans tend to enjoy doing things we are good at, while not enjoying things we suck at. We’re also fairly good at predicting what we might be good at before we try. – Scott Adams

Some of my many failures in summary form. You want to be steeped to your eyebrows in failure. Failure is where success likes to hide in plain sight. Success takes effort. It keeps lazy people out of the game. Ramp up your energy levels. Failure is a tool, not an outcome. Failure is a resource that can be managed. Success is accessible, even if you fail 95% of the time. Some of his failures are listed below. Velcro Rosin Bag Invention. Partake in things which you have a natural advantage. The author also partook in learning computer programming. He took 1 year to work at it. The technology in the modern world was advancing too fast and he couldn’t keep up. He wrote a computer program to track the ‘psychic’ ability of users. All his computer ideas failed. He was working at a bank. He worked at Crocker National Bank for 8 years till he reached lower management. He learnt a great deal of banking, finance, technology etc. After that, he worked at Pacific bell for another 8 years. He wrote a program for file transfers as well. He started a crackpot idea website too. Google bought Youtube for $1.65 billion and the shareholders made a fortune. He tried to create something like YouTube, it didn’t work out. Timing is often the biggest component of success. Scott created a technology to make home deliveries more practical. The author bought Webvan stock, which eventually went bust. There is no such thing as useful information that comes from company’s management. He started earning royalties from Dilbert but didn’t have time to research. The money he placed with investment managers lost money as well. The author also tried to start a restaurant and create nutritious foods.

Everything you want out of life is in that huge, bubbling vat of failure. The trick is to get the good stuff out. – Scott Adams

If success were easy, everyone would do it. It takes effort. That fact works to your advantage because it keeps lazy people out of the game. – Scott Adams

What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger. – Friedrich Nietzsche

I want failures to make me stronger, of course, but I also want to become smarter, more talented, better networked, healthier, and more energized. – Scott Adams

Good ideas have no value because the world already has too many of them. The market rewards execution, not ideas. From that point on, I concentrated on ideas I could execute. I was already failing towards success, but I didn’t yet know it. – Scott Adams

And since timing is often hard to get right unless you are psychic, it makes sense to try different things until you get the timing right by luck. – Scott Adams

I have to say the richness of the whole restaurant experience was totally worth the money. I was in a position to afford the losses without altering my lifestyle, so I don’t regret any of it. – Scott Adams

My Absolute Favorite Spectacular Failure. Most failures involve bad luck, ignorance, and sometimes ordinary stupidity. He went for an interview in a snowstorm and didn’t bring a jacket. He didn’t wear a suit and tie as well. His engine died on his way home. He got out of the car and started running. However, the air was extremely chilling and he lost feelings in this hands. His legs were failing as well. The author detested snow at that moment. A travelling shoe salesman saw him and saved him. He eventually sold the car and flew to California. He left NY for California.

Thank you, failure. I no longer fear death when I go outdoors. – Scott Adams

Goals vs Systems. Scott was 21 years old when he flew to California. He wore his suit on the flight. He spoke to a CEO of a company that made screws. One should have a system instead of a goal. Keep looking for better options. At long as you are not learning, you should think about moving. This businessman didn’t care about loyalty. Appearance matters a lot. The people who use systems tend to fair better. Devise a system to succeed. A system is something you do on a more regular basis. Systems have no deadlines. Most successful people follow systems but not goals. Try to improve your odds of getting lucky. Warren Buffett has a system that works. The system is to buy undervalued companies and hold them forever, until something major changes. A spectacular system beats passion every time.

Every time he got a new job, he immediately started looking for a better one. For him, job seeking was not something one did when necessary. It was an ongoing process. This makes perfect sense if you do the math. Chances are the best job for you won’t become available at precisely the time you declare yourself ready. Your best bets, he explained, was to always be looking for the better deal. – Scott Adams

In the exercise realm, running a marathon in under 4 hours is a goal, but exercising daily is a system. In business, making a million dollars is a goal, but being a serial entrepreneur is a system. – Scott Adams

My System. When he was six, he chanced upon the Peanuts comics. He spent hours working on them. However, he never became good at it. However, he never gave up. He got rejected by the Famous Artists School for Young People because he was too young at that time. His dad persuaded him to pursue a career in the postal service. His mum decided that he should be a lawyer. However, he had to fund his college education. He pursued economics as it would be a good prelaw degree. Scott accepted Hartwick College in New York. He received a partial scholarship for Hartwick College. He contracted mononucleosis. He was sick, however, he wanted to work hard and so his grades improved along the way. Scott did not follow his dad’s instructions to work for the Postal Service. Scott decided to create and run a company. He landed himself at a big bank and took as many classes as possible to learn about a business. All this while, he started to pick up business acumen. Create something that has value. His competitively edge was creativity. This was a solution that allows luck to find you. Create something that the public wants and reproduce it. Being system-oriented allows you to be more resistant to giving up.

In time I started to understand something called the odds. Some things were, by their very nature, likely, and some were not. – Scott Adams

I learned by observation that people who pursued extraordinarily unlikely goals were overly optimistic at best, delusional at worst, and just plain stupid most of the time. – Scott Adams

I was the kind of person who needed a job that made other people happy, ideally with a side benefit of making me rich and famous too. And for that I needed a system. – Scott Adams

I wanted the product to be something that was easy to reproduce in unlimited quantities. I didn’t want to sell my time, at least not directly, because that model has an upward limit. – Scott Adams

I wanted to create, invent, write, or otherwise concoct something widely desired that would be easy to reproduce. – Scott Adams

The world offers so many alternatives that you need a quick filter to eliminate some options and pay attention to others. Whatever your plan, focus is always important. – Scott Adams

My Corporate Career Fizzled. He walked into Crocker National Banker and wanted to be a bank teller. His plan was to start from the bottom. However, he did perform well at it. Scott has a do-it-wrong-then-fix-it personality. Due to his inability to keep track of people’s transactions, he was unfit for the job. He could either get fired or promoted. He wrote a letter of suggestions on how to improve the bank. He asked to join the management training program instead, like a management associate program. Luckily, Scott was granted an interview with the senior vice president. The suggestions gave an idea of his potential. In total, Scott spent 8 years in the bank. He took on multiple jobs in the bank. There was a headcount freeze at the top and he couldn’t get promoted. It was not due to his incompetence. Pacific Bell hired him. An acquirer took over his previous bank and hired many people. 60% of the time, Scott was trying to look busy. Scott declared the workplace a hazard as there were many smokers. It was at this time that Scott completed his MBA. Similar to the previous bank, the company were not promoting white males anymore. Scott worked at Pacific Bell for 8 years as well. His affirmation was ‘I, Scott Adam, will be a famous cartoonist.’ He practiced art every morning before heading to work.

Deciding VS Wanting. After you decide, take action. Wishing starts in the mind and generally stays there. If you decide to be successful, you need to pay the price. Sacrifice sometime in your life to pursue your aim. Successful people pursue success. They need a system.

If you want success, figure out the price, then pay it. – Anonymous

The Selfishness Illusion. There are 3 kinds of people when it comes to generosity. They are selfish, stupid or to cause a burden on others. Your best option is to be selfish. Successful people don’t burden the world. Don’t be the petty selfish kind. Rather, be the important kind of selfish. Spend time on fitness, eating right, pursuing your career and spend time with family and friends. If you ignore your health, you become stupid. We have been told that it is better to give than receive. The problem with this is that it is short term and may harm yourself in the long run. Humans are easily influenced by those we talk to. This is known as peer pressure, modelling or imitating. Generous people should take care of themselves first. Being selfish means you take a long term view of things. Once your needs are taken care of, will you look towards the world. Success changes you to be less selfish.

If you pursue your selfish objectives, and you do it well, someday your focus will turn outward. It’s an extraordinary feeling. I hope you can experience it. – Scott Adams

The Energy Metric. There is an opportunity cost whenever you choose to do something as you will have to forgo something else. To achieve more, maximize your personal energy by eating right, exercising, avoid excessive stress, getting enough sleep etc. The quality of your work will improve etc. Find something exciting to wake up to and look forward to. How you behave and your mood affects those around you. Learn to be a very positive person and stay happy. It will affect the social lives of those around you. Have calm, focused energy. Scott exercised on most weekday evenings and had the side projects which could set him free. Blogging exercises Scott and charges him up. Everyone has their own activities which can be an energy booster. Shopping is exhausting to him. Capitalism inspires people to work hard and to take risks. Match mental state to activity. For example, if you are creative in the mornings, then start writing things. At 6am, I’m a creator, by 2pm, he is a copier. The creative juices usually flow in the easy mornings or late evenings. In the evening, he does the mechanical tasks etc. It is a match of energy level with a mindless task. If you don’t have a flexible schedule, try to plan your time to do something outside of work. He woke up at 4am to start his comics. Simplifiers vs Optimizers. The simplifier will look for the easy way to do something, although it may not be the best. The optimizer will look for the best solution, even if it is more complex. His wife is an optimizer. He is a simplifier. If you have detailed plans, you are more likely to fail. Optimizing can be stressful and exhausting. If a task requires communication, simplifying it would be the better option. If it an individual task, you might go for the optimizer mode, provided you can control the variables involved. For Dilbert, Scott used little art in the background. Dilbert was meant to be simple in design. One way is to simplify first, and then try to optimize later. Simplification frees up time, which is a valuable resource. Scott is an entrepreneur, author and cartoonist in a normal 40 hour work week. Maximize your personal energy. Sitting position. Sit with good posture with both feet on the floor. Your brain will tell you that it is time to get into serious work. Don’t work in the same position as when you relax. Do not use the bed for work. The way you sit makes a difference to your productivity. Tidiness is an important factor as well. Some people don’t mind chaos and mess. Some people work better when it is neat and clean. The author feels more energy after tidying up actually. A big obstacle is not knowing what your career plans require. Flash research is research under a minute in google. Sometimes, people have already asked similar questions before. Don’t be an asshole. You know an asshole when you see one. It includes selfishness, arrogance, mean-spiritedness etc. Examples include bragging, dominating conversation, cheating, lying, honesty. Asshole behavior is an addiction. Some people like doing it. Make taking care of yourself your number 1 priority. Economics is your second biggest priority, especially your job and investments. If you can’t get this right, you will be a burden to your family. When these 2 are taken care of, your friends, family and lovers are next. The next ring is your community, country and the world.The problem is that life is not so easy. Your priorities will overlap and conflict. Right choices should charge you up and make you more motivated. It will feel right. If it feels unhealthy and draining, it’s probably wrong. Meaningful work can be energizing.

Once all of my personal needs were met, my thoughts automatically turned to how I could make the world a better plan…It just happened on its own. – Scott Adams

Apparently humans are wired to take care of their own needs first, then family, tribe, country, and the world, roughly in that order. – Scott Adams

This book is another example of something that gets my energy up. I like to think that someone might read this collection of ideas and find a few thoughts that help. That possibility is tremendously motivating for me. – Scott Adams

Ideally, you want to manage your personal energy for the long term and the big picture. Having one more cocktail at midnight might be an energy boost at the time, but you pay for it double the next day. – Scott Adams

When you start asking questions, you often discover that there’s a simple solution, a Web site that handles it, or a professional who takes care of it for a reasonable fee. – Scott Adams

If you piss off your people around you, it may haunt you and be very distracting at the end. – Scott Adams

I would define an asshole as anyone who chooses to make the lives of others less pleasant for reasons that don’t appear productive or necessary. – Scott Adams

Your self-interest is best served by being a reasonable person whenever you can muster it. – Scott Adams

The next rings are your local community, your country, and the world, in that order. Don’t bother trying to fix the world until you get the inner circles of your priorities under control. – Scott Adams

If your boss routinely asks you to work overtime for no good reason other than to claw through piles of brain-deadening administrative work, you probably need to look for a new job. – Scott Adams

Quitter by Jon Acuff (Part 2)

Falling in Like With a Job You Don’t Love. In the past, I was obsessed over quitting my job. Later on, people encouraged me to quit because of my dreams. Quitting your day job is not fulfilling the American dream. People assume your dream is more lucrative. However, writing doesn’t pay well. Dreams rarely pay well at the start. Your dream needs time to incubate. It takes very long indeed. Without incubation time, it will die. Keeping at a day job allowed my dream to have incubation time. What you do in one area of your life will affect the other areas too. Your work attitude tends to follow you home too. Remember why you work. I work to support my family. When you chase your dreams, sometimes you become selfish in your ways. Look for parallels. Starbucks is going to teach you accounting, marketing etc. You can learn from any job you have. Learn to start small and work from there. Look for purpose. Ask how can your day job benefit your dream job and vice versa. How can your chase for your dream job positively affect your day job? People was my purpose. Every dream involves people. You can definitely find purpose in your day job. Do not ever steal from work. This means working on your personal goals while at work. You are supposed to do work in your job description. One way to overcome this is to work very hard in your weekday evenings on your dream so you won’t feel pressed for time. Another way is to take on more assignments at work. Your employers didn’t pay you to work on your dream during working hours. Be honest and diligent with your day job hours. Think of your job as your adversary, not your advocate is a screwed up way of thinking. Protect the way you look at your boss and your company. The next wrong way is to demand that your job meet the needs of your dream. You are not entitled to anything.

The truth is, we need to learn to fall in like with a job we don’t live because it’s actually the best way to set up your dream for success. – Jon Acuff

Bad employees make horrible dreamers. You can’t loaf on your day job all week and then expect to magically throw the switch on the weekend and hustle on your dream. The things you do on your day job tend to follow you home. – Jon Acuff

We get really focused on our own stuff and our own dreams and we lose sight of the many, many reasons it is critical that you do great work at your day job. – Jon Acuff

The romantic way too look at it is that my dream job bled over into my day job. The candid way to look at it is that I was stealing from work. When you do your dream on work time, that’s stealing from your employer. – Jon Acuff

Wait on the Main Stage. We have to get on the main stage. It can be very nervous to speak on the main stage. To many, speaking at a lab is a failure. However, we all need to speak on the side before moving to the main stage. Plans are important, however, do not plan too much. Plans always change and they are fluid. The problem are that plans are too vague and no detailed steps are necessary. It’s like soccer, you can’t plan for everything as every moment is different. There are too many variables in life. You will not be able to script every detail. You do not need a plan. You need passion to drive you forward. The second thing you need is practice. You must show up every day and make it a habit. Just keep practising and practising. The conditions of your dream will change all the time. We like to see the underdog defeat the best. It is like David and Goliath. When you are small, nobody likes and respects you. Developing our dream job is more about hard work rather than grand moments in life. Start small and go along the way. We all need the gift of invisibility at the start. It’s harder to take risks when many people are watching you. Anonymity is the best because you have nothing to lose. You are a free man. Cherish it while it is still around.

Focus on your passion first. Your passion will always fuel your plan. Rarely will a plan fuel a passion. It will contribute. It will shape it. It will most certainly help it. – Jon Acuff

There Will Be Hustle. I have never taken blogging seriously. Things worked out because I hustled. Our desire to complicate matters is because we are lazy and fearful. Hustle is not hard. Sometimes, you will have to do the things you don’t enjoy. Dreams start in the morning. When you wake up, this is the best time to hustle. You don’t have excuses in the morning. One tends to have less excuses in the morning. When you start on your dreams in the morning, it will leave you happier throughout the day. As you grow older, you waste less time. It will force you to prioritize. The clue is to do more of the things you love and less of the things you like. Chasing your dreams isn’t all rosy and shit. The more you practice, the better you become. There is a lot of practice involved. Put quantity before quality. You have to learn 3 things about people. They won’t pay for what they can get for free. You will have to differentiate the product before they will pay. You have to weigh the long-term benefits of doing something for free. If there is a bigger gain from you not charging at speaking events, then don’t charge. Free pays dividends towards expertise. Doing stuff for free improves your exposure. Competition can be a big motivator but it is not a good measurement tool. If you feel you are better than your competitor, then you will get complacent. If you realize how much your opponent is better than you, you will get discouraged. Try not to measure your dream against someone else’s dream. Blog stats could be one potential measure. Your message must stay true to yourself. The best measure is the amount of work you have put in. This is the factor which you can control. Measure the number of days which you woke up early.

I love the title Quitter but still think that a core element holding this entire book together is a need to hustle. To push harder than the other person. To dream further. To work longer and faster. – Jon Acuff

Hustle is not hard. If you write your blog every day, at the end of the year you will have more readers than when you started. If you get up early and work on your dream two hours more than somebody else, your dream will progress faster. – Jon Acuff

The reality is that when you get busy doing the things that matter to you, you actually have more time to do the things you love and less time to do the things you like. – Jon Acuff

Learn to Be Successful at Success. You do not become an overnight celebrity. Do not misinterpret what success looked like for a dream. Success is the Bermuda Triangle of dreams. There are challenges associated with success too. Another problem is that we get arrogant. Overconfidence is scary. Do not let success kill your dream. Learn to define what is ‘enough’. You can send future emails to yourself. Write yourself a letter in the future. Success will often tell you that it is never enough and that you should strive even more. Define your enough. It is important not to burn out. You must always invest in relationships or they will die. Burn your dream bright but do not burnout. Please understand that the land of later is a myth. Kids do not believe in later. There will always be trade-offs. It is important to spend time with your family and kids too. Don’t turn your platform into a prison. Learn to have multi-generation dreams. Build a legacy that is bigger than individuals’ lives and actions. If you have a dream, share it with others. Do not take on opportunities which are not linked to your dream. Avoid saying yes to the wrong things.

Quit Your Day Job. I left my day job. My boss expected it. How do you know you’re really ready to leave? Learn to fill up this scorecard. 1) You have worked hard on your dream for more than a month/ a few months. Please understand that not everyone needs to quit their day job. The author had 6 reasons for quitting his day job. They are 1) He had somewhere to land. Next, the opportunity fit our opportunity filter. The author tested the dream before he quit. It is important to practice what you want to do with your life. I had a support network. We could afford to move. God seemed cool with our dream. It is important to establish some important ground rules. Share the rules and others hold you accountable. Make a list of risks that might appear after you leave your day job. Friendships might take long to form. In addition, you might be required to travel more. Money could be an issue too. You might need to pay rent for a home. We really can’t have two different versions of ourselves ‘work me’ and ‘life me’. To some extent, your work defines you. You think your job just funds the rest of your life. This cheapens the value of work. Some people think work is never meant to be fulfilling. There will always be hard and difficult moments at work. However, you have to do things you don’t necessarily enjoy at times. However, work can be fun sometimes. A menial task has meaning too.

You can’t spend 40 hours a week doing something and think it won’t impact you. You can’t spend half of your waking hours somewhere and think it doesn’t affect you. You can’t make a perfectly clean break between your life inside and outside work. – Jon Acuff

You can fake that you love your job for months, maybe even years, convincing everyone you work with that you care about the company, the business or the job. But your apathy for a job always comes out eventually. – Jon Acuff

If you quit your job without understanding why you’re quitting, you’ll just jump from job to job to job. You’ll become a serial quitter like I was. The things you didn’t like at the job before will show up in your next job. And the next. The common denominator in every bad job you’ve quit is you. – Jon Acuff

Screw Work, Let’s Play by John Williams

How to do what you love and get paid for it

The book will show you how to get paid to do what you like. Create an ideal life in the present now. Happiness leads to better success. There are 10 secrets to obey closely by. Secret 1: How to work out what you really want. Secret 2: How to choose what to do next. Secret 3: How to get started right now. Secret 4: How to guarantee your success. Secret 5: How to play for profit. Secret 6: How to play the fame game and win. Secret 7: How to create an irresistible offer. Secret 8: How to win your first paycheque. Secret 9: How to play full time. Secret 10: How to play your way to the rich life. There are 21 myths you need to understand. The author has interviewed many people for this book. Join the play revolution. It is possible to make money from the things you do. Nowadays, people value freedom and want to stretch themselves. The image of an entrepreneur is more fun now. The internet has allowed many to create online businesses. The play ethic encourages to be more spontaneous and fun. Play isn’t a selfish thought. Nowadays, people with a developed right brain wins. Work will are easy to do will be outsourced nowadays. Times are unpredictable. Start what you want to do right now. It really plays to have fun. Happiness leads to successful outcomes, more than the other way around. Good jobs have the following characteristics: autonomy, meaning and variety. Choose the right things to play. You must get into the flow of things. The problem is that many people are doing the wrong work. We have done work that is based on previous generations say are good. You should find a job that suits your personality and strengths. Try and each your first playcheque before you quit. Be a creator, and not someone passive anymore. Sometimes, you can work anywhere you want. You can even change countries to run your business from. Players must put creativity and fun first. Players are multi-faceted. Learn to respond to the world around you. Be actively engaged in the world. Never stop exploring and never stop learning. However, it is also necessary to know what the market needs and wants. You must solve real world problems in order to make money. Work is never effortless. Seek full expression of yourself. Scrap your career plan as things change too fast. Learn to live in the present. You can’t compete with someone who loves what they do. I wanted to get paid to play. Set your own hours. Now, I am a different portfolio of many different acts. The book will give you an idea of how to make every minute count.

But I’ve found out that the more I focus on what I enjoy doing even when it’s not immediately obvious how I’ll make money, the more successful I am. – John Williams

If you limit your choices to what seems possible or reasonable, you disconnect yourself from what you truly want, and all that is left is a compromise. – Robert Fritz

One of the most valuable things you can ever do is to get to know what you do and don’t enjoy doing. And it can also be one of the most difficult things to do. – John Williams

A scanner is someone who loves to learn and explore new things but gets bored easily. Scanners are more about breadth than depth. – John Williams

When you are truly in play, when you are following the unfolding path of what provides you engagement, expression, excitement and curiosity in the world, then your work is simply a natural expression of who you are and who you are becoming. – John Williams

How to work out what you really really want? You must know what play feels like. People usually see work as something they must do. What would work that feels like play look like? Ask ‘what do you want’ first. Your progress will be tremendous if you like what you do. Write down ideas in a notebook that excite you wherever you go. The first of 21 myths are (1) If it’s important, you’ll remember it. This is not true in reality. Always carry a notebook around with you. Pay attention to every detail. See exactly what draws your attention. Follow every lead, act on your hunches. Myth 2: The answer to my work search is in some magical new thing I have never tried before. Most times, you will actually realize that you are doing what you like, just that it cannot be considered work. Take a year off to discover. What would you do for a year? Write down all you would do if you had a year off for yourself. Pretend money is not an issue. Look back at your career, recall your happy moments. Who is your career hero? Brian Eno had a very varied career. Who do you envy? Envy is good. It shows you something which you need but don’t currently have. What do you find difficult stopping? For a player, you can bring all the skills you have onboard and don’t need to focus on one label. Are you a Scanner? A scanner is someone who has many varied interests. Entrepreneurs turn out to be often scanners. By owning your own business, you can do whatever you like. Craft a life that suits you. Write down a few different 1 years off you can take and imagine the different possibilities. You can have what you really want but you need to be flexible about it. You must visualize the exact experience you want to have. Don’t worry about what others think of you. You don’t need long expensive training as well. Work at its deepest level is play. Make minor adjustments in your life first, but start with doing what you like.

Where the needs of the world and your talents cross, there lies your vocation. – Aristotle

If you’ve been stuck for a long time on what to do next in your work, and you can afford some time for experimentation, it’s worth choosing almost anything you’re really keen to do and having a play with it for a few weeks. – John Williams

How to choose what to do next? Paul McCartney contemplated between being a coil winder or a musician. His dad kept persuading him to get a proper job. It requires courage. Myth 5: Doing what you love is selfish. Do not hold back as you are short-changing the human race. Don’t hold back. Even if your work isn’t good, it might inspire others. Your play must meet a need that people have.Learn to help others. ‘Pleasure + Engagement + Meaning = Happiness’. Pleasure means enjoying positive emotions from tasks and relationships. Engagement is getting lost in a task which is play. Meaning is using your strengths to serve a greater good. You need all three to be happy. Look back at your work, when did you stand out? Write it down. Increase your frequency. How to enter a flow state? You can go for personality profiling. Wealth Dynamics is one such system. There are 8 different profiles: 1) Creator; 2) Star; 3) Supporter; 4) Deal maker; 5) Trader; 6) Accumulator; 7) Lord; 8) Mechanic. Which profile are you? Do not try to be an all-rounder. Instead, work on your strengths. Hire people with complementary skills and to fill in where you are lacking at. You must be aware of your talents. Some people are good at flirting. It’s a skill. The sweet spot is when talent, skill and passion mean. Skills are important because it is not easy to compete with the veterans. You must try to apply skills from your previous work. There is always the love vs money balancing act. There are far too many people stuck in lousy jobs. How to avoid starving? The problem with arts is that there is too much supply and not enough demand. Get creative about how to distribute your product. Get someone to promote your work. Do not be afraid that your work will be rejected. ‘The facts are always friendly.’ Carl Rogers. What do you value more? Try and network to get to know more people. Experiment to figure out what you truly want. Get others to describe your strengths.

Successful people apparently have fewer thoughts; they don’t engage in endless deliberation. Perhaps this is because the research shows that over-thinking makes you miserable and unmotivated. – John Williams

People who strive for something significant, whether it’s learning a new craft or raising moral children, are far happier than those who don’t have strong dreams or aspirations. Find a happy person and you will find a project. – John Williams

Begin somewhere; you cannot build a reputation on what you intend to do. – Liz Smith

How to get started right now? It’s trial and error. Try and see if it works. Sam Bompas and Henry Parr have embraced play. They have experimented with food. Pitch for something and try to make it work later. Myth 6: I can’t start anything until I know exactly where I’m heading. Things move too fast and are unpredictable. Pick an interesting project and go for it. Pursue projects that are important to you. There are problems with goals. Myth 7: Once my life is the way I want it to be, then I’ll be happy. How you choose to live life everyday matters. Your happiness will create your success. Start on a project straightaway. Thinking is overrated. If you can’t solve a problem, overthinking might not help if you don’t have new inputs. How to pick a play project? It should last for from a few weeks to a few months. The point is to get into motion. Listen to your gut feeling and do it now. The skills you learn will come in handy again next time. Make sure that it is enjoyable to do. If you’re stuck in career paralysis, any project will help you. Don’t worry about making money. If you’re self-employed, pursue a project that is close to your heart and in line with your strategy. Read about leaders in the new field of work. Go to networking sessions and get your hand on any experience you can get. Myth 8: I should go and research this all day on the internet. There is no need to research excessively. Try to speak to someone knowledgeable instead. Track down the smart people. Think big start small. Break it down into smaller parts. Start with a short novel or a blog. Explore about business opportunities on the blog. Turn your home into a gallery. Launch a regular event. Talk to random people and use meetup.com. Write down a larger objective of your project. Get your idea and evolve it. Commit to your play project. Create something and share it with the world. Give yourself some deadlines too. Record the feedback that you have received. Have some direction. Having a mission is attractive. When you’re playing, even if you can’t make money, it will feel good.

If you’re changing somebody else’s baby’s diapers that feels like work. But if it’s your own kid, that doesn’t feel like work. – Derek Sivers

The fact is that motivation often comes after you start something, not before. – John Williams

How to guarantee your success? Simply do not stop. It is always risky in business. Setbacks are painful. Setbacks are there to see whether you will give up. Our thoughts can become self-fulfilling prophecies. A positive outlook on life is the key. Tackle your negative thoughts and doubts. Your head might be filled with negative voices. This is your ‘top dog’. Your top dog is not your voice of reason. Think of the supportive alternative to the top dog. The key is habit. Learn to hang out with supportive people. Build your support team. Your support team should consist of 4 to 5 people. Myth 9: People who are successful don’t need support. Learn to manage your fear. It is important to deal with your fear. Whatever scares you, go do it. Do not always play it safe. Don’t stop. Keep fine tuning your play project so that you can make money. Don’t simply throw away your play project unnecessarily. Take total responsibility of your life and don’t blame others. Ask people for what you need. Learn to have uncomfortable conversations with yourself. There is no need to ask for permission. Don’t ask ‘how’, ask ‘who’ instead. Look back at how you overcame challenges. Steal the strategies of others, not the content. Myth 10: Famous people are just different from me. Use the Millionaire Test. ‘If I were already a millionaire, would I do this thing I am considering right now?’ It is important to do things even when you don’t feel like doing them. If you don’t have big blocks of time to spare, do little and do often. Learn to manage time in micro-blocks. Do not feel overwhelmed. Do things to reduce your overwhelm. How to manage your brilliant ideas? Store your new ideas so that you can refer to them again. Ideas have a half-life and it pays off to work on them immediately. Ideally, work on your project a little each morning. Do give yourself some creative idling time as well. Try to take a nap as well.

How to play for profit… and purpose? This chapter will show you how to actually get paid. Never give up too quickly. How do you get paid to enjoy what you’re doing? You must solve a problem. People pay to get rid of their pain. It should alleviate some form of discomfort. Offer something that is on people’s to-do lists. You have to solve an existing problem. Link your current field with life. Sometimes, people are interested in what they want. Write down the problems you think people have. Look for the pain that people are experiencing currently. Write down your clients’ desire and the obstacle that they are currently facing. What challenges have you struggled with in your life?

How to play the fame game – and win. You must be known for something at least. Play out your ideas on a global stage. Start with a blog or a meetup group. Share your ideas with people and garner feedback. Test and see what happens. Myth 11: I must keep my good idea secret otherwise someone will steal it. There are very few ideas out there. Execution is what matters. Try not to keep it secret for too long. Step 1: Pimp your project. Learn to brand yourself. Don’t blend in, do something big instead. Humor is a great tool to use throughout your work. You need to market yourself and show how you are different from the rest. Use what you have learned. Marketing won’t help you if you’re mediocre. Never underestimate the power of a good story. Start a movement. People are generally attracted to those who are passionate. Step 2: Choose your channel of communication. Authenticity and integrity are very important. Which channel do you want to use?. Email is one form, where people can subscribe to your posts. Blogging is a great way to build ideas. Simply chronicle your journey and blog about it. Writing in your own authentic voice makes you unique. Tumblr is better for images. You can even blog about your life. Make use of free services on the net. Print on demand sites like Lulu and Blurb work as well. You can run your own radio or tv show too. It just takes one afternoon and is very simple indeed. Step 3: Who are your kind of people? Who would you love to sell your services to? Find a niche and a group of small people who find you irresistible. People prefer specialists. Step 4: Start the conversation. Step 5: The art of seduction, or how to turn your fans into customers. Think from your customer’s perspective. ‘Enter the conversation already going on in your customer’s head’.

How to create an irresistible offer? What will you offer to people? The Money gym is an interesting concept. You need to find something that people really want. How do you deliver your product or service? Learn to provide a service to individuals. If you possess a skill, it is much easier. However, there is a disadvantage in selling your own time. People in the annual rich lists do not sell their time. Combine your service offering and offer people a package. It is possible to work 6 months and then travel 6 months if you are a free lance worker. Find a supporting income stream that is enjoyable. Attend conferences and networking events. How to make passive income? It is thrilling to be able to do so. The internet is one of the lowest risk passive income you can generate. Use the internet as a vehicle to sell your expertise. These are known as information products. You need a large number of people to talk about your product. Another way is to interview people for free. The power of knowing the problem. Even if you don’t know enough in the topic, you can hire people to write for you. You can sell ebooks through your website. You can organize teleclass etc. You can also promote other people’s products. Very few people can make money from their blogs. A membership programme is a good way to earn money too. This allows you to have a deeper connection with the customer. You can take your work and produce an e-book on it.

The secret of living is to find people who will pay you money to do what you would pay to do – if you had the money. – Sarah Caldwell

How to win your first playcheque? Money makes play sustainable and can keep you going. Myth 12: You can’t get paid for doing what you love. If you choose the right path, you will enjoy the journey. It is also possible to ask for a new job scope to revamp your career etc. You can also consider working part-time. Let your enthusiasm win the job. Your first playcheque will be your landmark. If possible, try to achieve this without quitting your job yet. Myth 13: All my friends have said they would buy what I’m offering, so I must be on the right track. It is not sufficient as you must really collect the money from them. When you’re new, you can do some work for free. Later on, charge a token sum. Charging a small amount also guarantees that people will show up. Myth 14: I can’t possibly charge for what I’m doing yet – I need to read more books and take more courses and workshops. Don’t use that as excuses not to start. Run a campaign. Learn to focus. Success takes a while. Gather feedback from others and fine tune your product. If you want something, show focus and enthusiasm. Myth 15: I can’t talk to anyone until I have some fancy business cards printed and my website launched. Business cards are over-rated anyway. Celebrate your first paycheque.

Don’t be too quick to jump from the work that’s currently providing your income: better to gain momentum first while still being paid elsewhere. Being stressed about money is not a state conducive to playfulness –  John Williams

How to play full time? How do you play full time? You need some word of mouth recommendations. What you do must excite people and your friends alike. Do not let your friends do favours for you. Find 10 people who will rave about it. You need to find 10 people who truly truly love it. If not, seek a rethink. Others will tell you whether they like it. In ordinary jobs, you can’t say I don’t like that task, so I’m not doing it. You should shape the product for yourself. Try to avoid recruitment agencies. You should always try and create your own role. Join networking events to get noticed. When you seek out your ideal job, your enthusiasm shines. Go freestyle. This book says that self-employment is less risky. Some businesses can perform well in downturns. You don’t need a new idea. You just need to do things better than others. An online business is easy to start. Launch one project at a time only. Learn to focus on your type of projects. Collaborate with others. Hire people to make up for your weaknesses. You don’t need a very long business plan. Do your sums properly. Please do your market research. If you switch fields, you will take a while to get used to it

How to play your way to the rich life? The richer you want, the more impact it should create on others. Most entrepreneurs don’t care about the money at all. Appreciate the rich moments in life. Is it about the freedom to travel? Travel using your laptop like Chris Guillebeau. Is your rich life about free time? Is your rich life about the power to change the world? If so, set up a social enterprise. Start your play fund to manage your money. Remove your internal blocks. Change your perception about sales being tacky. There are no prizes for being a starving entrepreneur. Your closest friends have a big impact on you. Charge exactly what you’re worth. Sometimes, lowering prices might cheapen your product. Learn about supply and demand. Sometimes, the bandwagon changes due to regulation etc. That is the time to make more money. P is for Product – Sell the right thing. R is for Right People. I is for Increasing Trust. C is for Communicating value. E is for Expect it. If people say it’s too expensive, it’s because they haven’t seen enough value in it. Choose a rich strategy.

Scott Adams quotes 26 to 50

26. A person with a flexible schedule and average resources will be happier than a rich person who has everything except a flexible schedule.
27. In my experience, any form of exercise that requires willpower is unsustainable. To stay fit in the long run you need to limit your exercise to whatever level doesn’t feel like work, just as kids do.
28. It’s a cliché that who you know is helpful for success. What is less obvious is that you don’t need to know CEOs and billionaires. Sometimes you just need a friend who knows different things than you do. And you can always find one of those.
29. The smartest system for discerning your best path to success involves trying lots of different things – sampling, if you will.
30. Apparently humans are wired to take care of their own needs first, then family, tribe, country, and the world, roughly in that order.
31. I learned by observation that people who pursued extraordinarily unlikely goals were overly optimistic, delusional at worst, and just plain stupid most of the time.
32. In the exercise realm, running a marathon in under 4 hours is a goal, but exercising daily is a system. In business, making a million dollars is a goal, but being a social entrepreneur is a system.
33. And since timing is often hard to get right unless you are psychic, it makes sense to try different things until you get the timing right by luck.
34. Once all of my personal needs were met, my thoughts automatically turned to how I could make the world a better place…it just happened on its own.
35. This book is another example of something that gets my energy up. I like to think that someone might read this collection of ideas and find a few thoughts that help. That possibility is tremendously motivating for me.
36. Your attitude affects everything you do in your quest for success and happiness. A positive attitude is an important tool. It’s important to get it right.
37. But my scientific observation is that people are born wired for certain preferences. Those preferences drive behavior, and that’s what can make a person willing to practice a skill.
38. There’s a strong connection between what interests you and what you’re good at.
39. Overcoming obstacles is normally an unavoidable part of the process. But you also need to know when to quit. Persistence is useful, but there’s no point in being an idiot about it.
40. By any definition, what I’m doing is work, but because I can control the timing of it on this particular day, it doesn’t feel like work. I’ve transformed work into pleasure simply by having control over when I do it.
41. I find it useful to daydream that the future will be better than today, by far. I like to imagine a future that is spectacular and breathtaking. Simply imagining a better future hacks your brain chemistry and provides you with the sensation of happiness today.
42. If you’re unattractive – and this is my area of expertise – your conversation skills (with a stranger) will become especially important.
43. In the long run, any system that depends on your willpower will fail. Or worse, some other part of your life will suffer as you focus your limited stockpile of willpower on fitness.
44. I have to say the richness of the whole restaurant experience was totally worth the money. I was in a position to afford the losses without altering my lifestyle, so I don’t regret any of it.
45. I wanted the product to be something that was easy to reproduce in unlimited quantities. I didn’t want to sell my time, at least not directly, because that model has an upward limit. I wanted to create, invent, write, or otherwise concoct something widely desired that would be easy to reproduce.
46. Ideally, you want to manage your personal energy for the long term and the big picture. Having one more cocktail at midnight might be an energy boost at the time, but you pay for it double the next day.
47. Don’t worry if your idea is a long shot. That’s not what matters right now. Today you want to daydream of your idea being a huge success so you can enjoy the feeling. Let your ideas for the future fuel your energy today. No matter what you want to do in life, higher energy will help you get there.
48. A smarter approach is to think of learning as a system in which you continually expose yourself to new topics, primarily the ones you find interesting.
49. Humor raises your energy, and that can reverberate into everything you do at school, at work, or in your personal life. The boost of energy will even make you more willing to exercise, and that will raise your overall energy even more.
50. You need to control the order and timing of things to be happy. It’s important to look at happiness in terms of timing because timing is easier to control than resources.

Scott Adams quotes 1 to 25

Quotes are extracted from ‘How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big’

1. Beware of advice about successful people and their methods. For starters, no two situations are alike. Your dreams of creating a dry-cleaning empire won’t be helped by knowing that Thomas Edison liked to take naps. Secondly, biographers never have access to the internal thoughts of successful people.
2. When I was a commercial loan officer for a large bank, my boss taught us that you should never make a loan to someone who is following his passion. For example, you don’t want to give money to a sports enthusiast who is starting a sports store to pursue his passion for all things sporty. That guy is a bad bet, passion and all. He’s in business for the wrong reason.
3. My boss, who had been a commercial lender for over 30 years, said that the best loan customer is someone who has no passion whatsoever, just a desire to work hard at something that looks good on a spreadsheet.
4. For most people, it’s easy to be passionate about things that are working out, and that distorts our impression of the importance of passion… The ones that didn’t work out—and that would be most of them—slowly drained my passion as they failed. The few that worked became more exciting as they succeeded.
5. In hindsight, it looks as if the projects that I was most passionate about were also the ones that worked. But objectively, my passion level moved with my success. Success caused passion more than passion caused success. So forget about passion. And while you’re at it, forget about goals, too.
6. A CEO of a company that made screws offered me some career advice. He said that every time he got a new job, he immediately started looking for a better one. For him, job seeking was not something one did when necessary. It was a continuing process.
7. This makes perfect sense if you do the math. Chances are that the best job for you won’t become available at precisely the time you declare yourself ready. Your best bet, he explained, was to always be looking for a better deal. The better deal has its own schedule. I believe the way he explained it is that your job is not your job; your job is to find a better job. This was my first exposure to the idea that one should have a system instead of a goal. The system was to continually look for better options.
8. As for my own system, when I graduated from college, I outlined my entrepreneurial plan. The idea was to create something that had value and—this next part is the key—I wanted the product to be something that was easy to reproduce in unlimited quantities. I didn’t want to sell my time, at least not directly, because that model has an upward limit. And I didn’t want to build my own automobile factory, for example, because cars are not easy to reproduce. I wanted to create, invent, write, or otherwise concoct something widely desired that would be easy to reproduce.
9. If you drill down on any success story, you always discover that luck was a huge part of it. You can’t control luck, but you can move from a game with bad odds to one with better odds. You can make it easier for luck to find you. The most useful thing you can do is stay in the game. If your current get-rich project fails, take what you learned and try something else. Keep repeating until something lucky happens.
10. I do want my failures to make me stronger, of course, but I also want to become smarter, more talented, better networked, healthier and more energized…Failure is a resource that can be managed.
11. Good ideas have no value because the world already has too many of them. The market rewards execution, not ideas. From that point on, I concentrated on ideas that I could execute. I was already failing toward success, but I didn’t yet know it.
12. Humans are like sponges. Put any two humans together and each starts absorbing the traits of the other, including biases, fashion sense, work ethic, morality, preferences, conversation style, knowledge, aspirations, and – according to recent studies – even weight. We don’t do most of this intentionally. It just happens.
13. If you want to be more fit, spend time with friends who make it look easy. If you want more ambition, find some friends who already have it. If you want to avoid being a pessimistic sink hole, avoid the people who give off that vibe. And if you can’t find the right kind of people locally, consider moving.
14. For most of my adult life I’ve had at least one change-the-world type of project percolating in my spare time no matter what else I’m doing. It could be as simple as a new business model I’m concocting in my mind or an invention I’m tinkering with.
15. Once you become good at a few unimportant things, such as hobbies or sports, the habit of success stays with you on more important quests. When you have tasted success, you want more.
16. A great strategy for success in life is to become good at something, anything, and let that feeling propel you to new and better victories. Success can be habit-forming.
17. If success were easy, everyone would do it. It takes effort. That fact works to your advantage because it keeps lazy people out of the game.
18. I’ve come to believe that success at anything has a spill-over effect on other things. You can take advantage of that effect by becoming good at things that require nothing but practice.
19. If you don’t like to practice, don’t waste on a strategy that requires it. You simply need to pick a life strategy that rewards novelty seeking more than mindless repetition.
20. We humans tend to enjoy doing things we are good at, while not enjoying the things we suck at. We’re also fairly good at predicting what we might be good at before we try.
21. Another huge advantage of learning as much as you can in different fields is that the more concepts you understand, the easier it is to learn new ones.
22. I believe exercise makes people smarter, psychologically braver, more creative, more energetic, and more influential.
23. If you are lucky enough to have career options, and only one of them affords a path of continual improvement, choose that one, all else being equal.
24. Always remember that failure is your friend. It is the raw material of success. Invite it in. Learn from it. And don’t let it leave until you pick its pocket.
25. Life is messy and you’re going to be right only sometimes. You’ll do everyone in your life a favour by acting decisively, though, even if you have doubts on the inside.

Year 2014 in Review

A Big Thank You to all the viewers out there 🙂 Have a great 2015 and I hope you will continue visiting my blog!

Best Wishes,
Marcus

Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Sydney Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 12,000 times in 2014. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 4 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

Business related quotes 151 to 200

151. ‘The best franchisers in the world own very few restaurants. I would argue that Subway is one of the best franchisors because they don’t have to own any of their stores. The deal is a good one for the franchisee. And the franchises are doing a good job. There’s little reason for a well-run franchisor to own any restaurants because the business of operating a restaurant is not nearly as attractive as the business of collecting a royalty in exchange for a brand.’ Bill Ackman
152. ‘I love what I do. I love the investing process –the problems and the puzzle-solving and testing my wits. But I have also really enjoyed building an organization. That realization came to me later in life, but as fine as building a great portfolio is, building a great organization with great people is even better.’ Daniel Loeb
153. ‘We’ve had a lot of excellent musicians and athletes here. I don’t want to dismiss the importance of academic credentials, but we want bright people who are really diligent and hardworking, but also have real tenacity and grit who enjoy what they do and have an incredible passion for investing.’ Daniel Loeb
154. ‘Ultimately, of course, you want people with good processes and good outcomes, but I’d rather have somebody working for me who had a good process and a bad outcome in a given year that somebody with a bad process and a good outcome.’ Daniel Loeb
155. ‘Remember one of our points, class. Even a transaction that looks immaterial to an entity may be material to one person in that entity. What was the key here? What was the connection? Why? Material circumstances. Always remember, what is immaterial to one entity can be very material to a key person.’ James Chanos
156. ‘When you are afraid things are going to get worse if you don’t do something, it can prompt you into action. But it is not good when you are so afraid that it keeps you from doing anything.’ Who Moved My Cheese
157. ‘Having Cheese Makes You Happy’; ‘The More Important Your Cheese Is to You, The More You Want to Hold On to It’; ‘If You Don’t Change, You Can Become Extinct’; ‘What Would You Do If You Weren’t Afraid?’; ‘Smell the Cheese Often So You Know It Is Getting Old’; ‘Movement in a New Direction Helps You Find New Cheese’; ‘When You Stop Being Afraid, You Feel Good’; ‘Imagining Yourself Enjoying Your New Cheese Leads You To It’; ‘The Quicker You Let Go of Old Cheese, The Sooner You Find New Cheese’; ‘It is Safer to Search in the Maze, than Remain in a Cheeseless Situation’; ‘Old Beliefs Do Not Lead You to New Cheese’; ‘When You See That You Can Find And Enjoy New Cheese, You Change Course’.’ Who Moved My Cheese
158. ‘1) Change Happens; 2) Anticipate Change; 3) Monitor Change; 4) Adapt to Change Quickly; 5) Change; 6) Enjoy Change; 7) Be Ready to Change Quickly and Enjoy It Again and Again.’ Who Moved My Cheese
159. ‘Thus, there are two essential ingredients for profit in a declining market: you have to have a view on intrinsic value, and you have to hold that view strongly enough to be able to hang in and buy even as prices declines suggest that you’re wrong. Oh yes, there’s a third: you have to be right.’ Howard Marks (The Most Important Thing Is)
160. ‘A good builder is able to avoid construction flaws, while a poor builder incorporates construction flaws. When there are no earthquakes, you can’t tell the difference.’ Howard Marks (The Most Important Thing Is)
161. ‘Skepticism is what it takes to look behind a balance sheet, the latest miracle of financial engineering or the can’t-miss story…only a skeptic can separate the things that sound good and are from the things that sound good and aren’t. The best investors I know exemplify this trait. It’s an absolute necessity.’ Howard Marks (The Most Important Is)
162. ‘The error is clear. The herd applies optimism at the top and pessimism at the bottom. Thus, to benefit, we must be skeptical of the optimism that thrives at the top, and skeptical of the pessimism that prevails at the bottom.’ Howard Marks (The Most Important Is)
163. ‘If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.’ Sun Tzu (The Art of War)
164. ‘You need to enter into the venture with a very clear and unified vision. And no matter how much you love, trust and respect each other, I would urge friends to engage an attorney to put a very clear and comprehensive operating agreement in place. Even if things always go smoothly, it’s still smart to have the details of the partnership laid out in writing.’ Alexis Miesen
165. ‘The principal’s interest will be to have some tasks or actions performed so as to maximize the principal’s profit or some other objective relevant to the principal. Generally, the agent will have other interests. The agent will have to expend effort and act diligently, which is costly to the agent, to perform the actions.’ Thomas Coleman (A Practical Guide to Risk Management)
166. ‘Much of the development of global banking regulation since the 1980s has focused on these three aspects: first, which assets contribute how much to risk-weighted assets; second, what is the appropriate capital ratio; and, third, what counts as capital.’ Thomas Coleman (A Practical Guide to Risk Management)
167. ‘Time is like a river that will take you forward into encounters with reality that will require you to make decisions. You can’t stop the movement down this river, and you can’t avoid the encounters. You can only approach these encounters in the best way possible.’ Ray Dalio
168. ‘I want you to work for yourself, to come up with independent opinions, to stress-test them, to be wary about being overconfident, and to reflect on the consequences of your decisions and to constantly improve.’ Ray Dalio
169. ‘I learned that finding out what is true, regardless of what that is, including all the stuff most people think is bad—like mistakes and personal weaknesses—is good because I can then deal with these things so that they don’t stand in my way.’ Ray Dalio
170. ‘I learned that one of the greatest sources of problems in our society arises from people having loads of wrong theories in their heads—often theories that are critical of others—that they won’t test by speaking to the relevant people about them. Instead, they talk behind people’s backs, which leads to pervasive misinformation.’ Ray Dalio
171. ‘I learned that there is nothing to fear from the truth. While some truths can be scary – for example, finding out that you have a deadly disease – knowing them allows us to deal with them better. Being truthful, and letting others be completely truthful, allows me and others to fully explore our thoughts and exposes us to the feedback that is essential for our learning.’ Ray Dalio
172. ‘For example, suppose making a lot of money is your goal and suppose you make enough so that making more has no marginal utility. Then it would be foolish to continue to have making money be your goal. People who acquire things beyond their usefulness not only will derive little or no marginal gains from these acquisitions, but they also will experience negative consequences, as with any form of gluttony. So, because of the law of diminishing returns, it is only natural that seeking something new, or seeking new depths of something old, is required to bring us satisfaction.’ Ray Dalio
173. ‘Most people don’t like helping others explore their weaknesses, even though they are willing to talk about them behind their backs. For these reasons most people don’t do a good job of understanding themselves and adapting in order to get what they want most out of life.’ Ray Dalio
174. ‘For example, if you are dumb or ugly, you are unlikely to acknowledge it, even though doing so would help you better deal with that reality. Recognizing such “harsh realities” is both very painful and very productive.’ Ray Dalio
175. ‘If I had to pick just one quality that those who make the right choices have, it is character. Character is the ability to get one’s self to do the difficult things that produce the desired results.’ Ray Dalio
176. ‘People who tolerate problems are the worse off because, without the motivation to move on, they cannot succeed. In other words, if you are motivated, you can succeed even if you don’t have the abilities (i.e., talents and skills) because you can get the help from others. But if you’re not motivated to succeed, if you don’t have the will to succeed, the situation is hopeless.’ Ray Dalio
177. ‘It is critical to know each day what you need to do and have the discipline to do it. People with good work habits have to-do lists that are reasonably prioritized, and they make themselves do what needs to be done.’ Ray Dalio
178. ‘Badmouthing people behind their backs shows a serious lack of integrity and is counterproductive. It doesn’t yield any beneficial change, and it subverts both the people you are badmouthing and the environment as a whole. If you talk behind people’s backs at Bridgewater you are called a slimy weasel. ’ Ray Dalio
179. ‘Don’t believe it when someone caught being dishonest says they have seen the light and will never do that sort of thing again. Chances are they will. The cost of keeping someone around who has been dishonest is likely to be higher than any benefits.’ Ray Dalio
180. ‘As a general rule, if you have a demonstrated track record, then you can have an opinion of how to do it – if you don’t, you can’t, though you can have theories and questions.’ Ray Dalio
181. ‘It is a law of nature that you must do difficult things to gain power and strength. As with working out, after a while you make the connection between doing difficult things and the benefits you get from doing them, and you come to look forward to doing these difficult things.’ Ray Dalio
182. ‘In my whole life, I have known no wise people (over a broad subject matter area) who didn’t read all the time – none, zero.” Charlie Munger, on reading
183. ‘I can tell you the secret to finding a job even in a very bad market. It’s breathtakingly simple: look for a job…the harder you look for a job, the more time you spend looking, the more likely you are to find one.’ Megan McArdle (The Upside of Down)
184. ”Being a big fish in a small pond is much better than being a bigger fish in a bigger pond.’ Pat Dorsey (The Little Book that builds wealth)
185. ‘I am totally free – for the first time in six years I am free. The more I walk, the more the more I get a sense of what I am doing – it liberates me.’ Jerome Kerviel
186. ‘Salesmen face the same brutal math as job seekers: success is highly correlated to the amount of time you spend risking rejection. The single biggest predictor of success in a new territory, salesmen will tell you, is the number of calls you make.’ Megan McArdle
187. ‘What actually predicted how long you lived was how much control you had over your workday, and how much opportunity you had to develop skills.’ Megan McArdle
188. ‘Investment is all about odds, and a wide-moat company (intangible assets; network effect; cost advantages; high switching costs) managed by an average CEO will give you better odds of long-run success than a no-moat company managed by a superstar.’ Pat Dorsey (Little Book that Builds Wealth)
189. ‘Everybody has opinions, people who have managed zero games have opinions and we have to accept that. We are in a society where there are thousands of opinions everyday and some go for you and some go against you. You have to live with that.’ Arsene Wenger, manager of AFC
190. ‘I figure that my staff will be less reluctant to work overtime if I work longer hours than they do.’ David Ogilvy (Confessions of an Advertising Man)
191. ‘I believe that our society’s ‘mistakephobia’ is crippling, a problem that begins in most elementary schools, where we learn to learn what we are taught rather than to form our own goals and to figure out how to achieve them. We are fed with facts and tested and those who make the fewest mistakes are considered to be the smart ones, so we learn that it is embarrassing to not know and to make mistakes. Our education system spends virtually no time on how to learn from mistakes, yet this is critical to learning. As a result, schools typically doesn’t prepare young people for real life – unless their lives are spent following instruction and pleasing others. In my opinion, that’s why so many students who succeed in school fail in life.’ Ray Dalio
192. ‘Each of you will have to figure out where your talents lie. And you will have to use your advantages. But if you try to succeed in what you are worst at, you are going to have a very lousy career.’ Charlie Munger (Worldly Wise)
193. ‘When these new businesses come in, there are huge advantages for the early birds. And when you’re an early bird, there’s a model that I call “surfing”—when a surfer gets up and catches the wave and just stays there, he can go a long, long time. But if he gets off the wave, he becomes mired in shallows…’ Charlie Munger (Worldly Wise)
194. ‘In football today, for teams to win titles, you have to play in the sun, in the rain, in the cold, in the hot, on small pitches, on big pitches, direct football, possession football. You have to adapt.’ Jose Mourinho, manager of Chelsea F.C.
195. ‘I admire people who work with gusto. If you don’t enjoy what you are doing, I beg you to find another job. Remember the Scottish proverb, “Be happy while you’re living, for you’re a long time dead.”’ David Ogilvy (Confessions of an advertising man)
196. ‘I admire people with first-class brains, because you cannot run a great advertising agency without brainy people. But brains are not enough unless they are combined with intellectual honesty.’ David Ogilvy (Confessions of an advertising man)
197. ‘I think people should do start-ups. It changes the whole way you think about life. I realized that everything I want, I have to create, and I have the power to do that.’ Ying-Ying Lu
198. ‘Our advertising business needs massive transfusions of talent. And talent, I believe, is most likely to be found among nonconformists, dissenters, and rebels.’ David Ogilvy (Confessions of an Advertising Man)
199. ‘Well, the first rule is that you have got to have multiple thinking models—because if you have just one or two that you are using, the nature of human psychology is such that you will torture reality so that it fits your models, or at least you will think that it does.’ Charlie Munger
200. ‘Just as in an ecosystem, people who narrowly specialize can get terribly good at occupying some little niche. Just as animals flourish in niches, similarly, people who specialize in the business world—and get very good because they specialize in the business world.’ Charlie Munger