Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect. —MARK TWAIN
just that moment, I thought to myself, “What on earth would I be doing right now, if I hadn’t left my job and the U.S. over a year ago?”
I never enjoyed answering this cocktail question because it reflects an epidemic I was long part of: job descriptions as self-descriptions. If someone asks me now and is anything but absolutely sincere, I explain my lifestyle of mysterious means simply. “I’m a drug dealer.”
Life doesn’t have to be so damn hard. It really doesn’t. Most people, my past self included, have spent too much time convincing themselves that life has to be hard, a resignation to 9-to-5 drudgery in exchange for (sometimes) relaxing weekends and the occasional keep-it-short-or-get-fired vacation.
People don’t want to be millionaires—they want to experience what they believe only millions can buy.
The commonsense rules of the “real world” are a fragile collection of socially reinforced illusions.
Reality is negotiable. Outside of science and law, all rules can be bent or broken, and it doesn’t require being unethical.
An expert is a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field. —NIELS BOHR,
I’m hired for minimum wage as the cleaner at an ice cream parlor and quickly realize that the big boss’s methods duplicate effort. I do it my way, finish in one hour instead of eight, and spend the rest of the time reading kung-fu magazines and practicing karate kicks outside. I am fired in a record three days, left with the parting comment, “Maybe someday you’ll understand the value of hard work.”
I manage to slip undetected into Princeton, despite SAT scores 40% lower than the average and my high school admissions counselor telling me to be more “realistic.” I conclude I’m just not good at reality.
and develop a speed-reading seminar. I plaster campus with hundreds of god-awful neon green flyers that read, “TRIPLE YOUR READING SPEED IN 3 HOURS!” and prototypical Princeton students proceed to write “bullsh*t” on every single one. I sell 32 spots at $50 each for the 3-hour event, and $533 per hour convinces me that finding a market before designing a product is smarter than the reverse.
A huge thesis dispute and the acute fear of becoming an investment banker drive me to commit academic suicide and inform the registrar that I am quitting school until further notice.
Despite the hottest job market in the history of the world, I manage to go jobless until three months after graduation, when I pull out my trump card and send one start-up CEO 32 consecutive e-mails. He finally gives in and puts me in sales.
I am ordered by a newly appointed sales director to “start with A” in the phone book and dial for dollars. I ask him in the most tactful way possible why we are doing it like retards. He says, “Because I say so.”
I decide to stay overseas indefinitely for a final exam in automation and experimental living, limiting e-mail to one hour each Monday morning. As soon as I remove myself as a bottleneck, profits increase 40%. What on earth do you do when you no longer have work as an excuse to be hyperactive and avoid the big questions?
These individuals have riches just as we say that we “have a fever,” when really the fever has us. —SENECA
You spent two weeks negotiating your new Infiniti with the dealership and got $10,000 off? That’s great. Does your life have a purpose?
I won the gold medal at the Chinese Kickboxing (Sanshou) National Championships. It wasn’t because I was good at punching and kicking. God forbid. That seemed a bit dangerous, considering I did it on a dare and had four weeks of preparation. Besides, I have a watermelon head—it’s a big target. I won by reading the rules and looking for unexploited opportunities,
Sports evolve when sacred cows are killed, when basic assumptions are tested. The same is true in life and in lifestyles.
I don’t fix it if it isn’t broken. Different is better when it is more effective or more fun.
When I was in data storage sales, my first gig out of college, I realized that most cold calls didn’t get to the intended person for one reason: gatekeepers. If I simply made all my calls from 8:00–8:30 A.M. and 6:00–6:30 P.M., for a total of one hour, I was able to avoid secretaries and book more than twice as many meetings as the senior sales executives who called from 9–5. In other words, I got twice the results for ⅛ the time.
Retirement planning is like life insurance. It should be viewed as nothing more than a hedge against the absolute worst-case scenario: in this case, becoming physically incapable of working and needing a reservoir of capital to survive.
Personally, I now aim for one month of overseas relocation or high-intensity learning (tango, fighting, whatever) for every two months of work projects.
our culture tends to reward personal sacrifice
because our culture tends to reward personal sacrifice instead of personal productivity.
I once asked my mom how she decided when to have her first child, little ol’ me. The answer was simple: “It was something we wanted, and we decided there was no point in putting it off. The timing is never right to have a baby.”
Conditions are never perfect. “Someday” is a disease that will take your dreams to the grave with you.
Most people are fast to stop you before you get started but hesitant to get in the way if you’re moving.
Get good at being a troublemaker and saying sorry when you really screw up.
“John, I’d love to talk about the gaping void I feel in my life, the hopelessness that hits me like a punch in the eye every time I start my computer in the morning, but I have so much work to do! I’ve got at least three hours of unimportant e-mail to reply to before calling the prospects who said ‘no’ yesterday. Gotta run!”
Waiting for the swell, the true emotions come out: “God, I wish I could do what you do.” His reply is always the same: “You can.”
None of these things would be fatal—not even close. Mere panty pinches on the journey of life.
I realized that on a scale of 1–10, 1 being nothing and 10 being permanently life-changing, my so-called worst-case scenario might have a temporary impact of 3 or 4.
That is when I made the decision to take the trip and bought a one-way ticket to Europe. I started planning my adventures and eliminating my physical and psychological baggage. None of my disasters came to pass, and my life has been a near fairy tale since. The business did better than ever, and I practically forgot about it as it financed my travels around the world in style for 15 months.
Most who avoid quitting their jobs entertain the thought that their course will improve with time or increases in income. This seems valid and is a tempting hallucination when a job is boring or uninspiring instead of pure hell. Pure hell forces action, but anything less can be endured with enough clever rationalization.
I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened. —MARK TWAIN
The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man. —GEORGE BERNARD SHAW,
Of 20 students, all frothing at the mouth to win a free spin across the globe, how many completed the challenge? Exactly … none. Not a one. There were many excuses: “It’s not that easy to get someone to …” “I have a big paper due, and …” “I would love to, but there’s no way I can.…” There was but one real reason, however, repeated over and over again in different words: It was a difficult challenge, perhaps impossible, and the other students would outdo them. Since all of them overestimated the competition, no one even showed up.
Doing the Unrealistic Is Easier Than Doing the Realistic
It’s lonely at the top. Ninety-nine percent of people in the world are convinced they are incapable of achieving great things, so they aim for the mediocre. The level of competition is thus fiercest for “realistic” goals, paradoxically making them the most time- and energy-consuming. It is easier to raise $1,000,000 than it is $100,000. It is easier to pick up the one perfect 10 in the bar than the five 8s.
The fishing is best where the fewest go, and the collective insecurity of the world makes it easy for people to hit home runs while everyone else is aiming for base hits. There is just less competition for bigger goals.
The question you should be asking isn’t, “What do I want?” or “What are my goals?” but “What would excite me?”
If you don’t define the “what I want” alternate activities, the X figure will increase indefinitely to avoid the fear-inducing uncertainty of this void. This is when both employees and entrepreneurs become fat men in red BMWs.
asking Google CEO Eric Schmidt via e-mail when he had been happiest in his life. (Schmidt’s answer: “Tomorrow.”)
“I believe that success can be measured in the number of uncomfortable conversations you’re willing to have. I felt that if I could help students overcome the fear of rejection with cold-calling and cold e-mail, it would serve them forever,” Ferriss said. “It’s easy to sell yourself short, but when you see classmates getting responses from people like [former president] George Bush, the CEOs of Disney, Comcast, Google, and HP, and dozens of other impossible-to-reach people, it forces you to reconsider your self-set limitations.”
My maxim comes from Samuel Beckett, a personal hero of mine: ‘Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.’ You won’t believe what you can accomplish by attempting the impossible with the courage to repeatedly fail better.”
What would you do if there were no way you could fail? If you were 10 times smarter than the rest of the world?
For all their bitching about what’s holding them back, most people have a lot of trouble coming up with the defined dreams they’re being held from.
Tomorrow becomes never. No matter how small the task, take the first step now!
To have an uncommon lifestyle, you need to develop the uncommon habit of making decisions, both for yourself and for others.
Being busy is most often used as a guise for avoiding the few critically important but uncomfortable actions.
Out of more than 120 wholesale customers, a mere 5 were bringing in 95% of the revenue. I was spending 98% of my time chasing the remainder, as the aforementioned 5 ordered regularly without any follow-up calls, persuasion, or cajoling.
Slow down and remember this: Most things make no difference. Being busy is a form of laziness—lazy thinking and indiscriminate action.
Parkinson’s Law dictates that a task will swell in (perceived) importance and complexity in relation to the time allotted for its completion. It is the magic of the imminent deadline. If I give you 24 hours to complete a project, the time pressure forces you to focus on execution, and you have no choice but to do only the bare essentials.
At least three times per day at scheduled times, he had to ask himself the following question: Am I being productive or just active?
Am I inventing things to do to avoid the important?
The key to having more time is doing less, and there are two paths to getting there, both of which should be used together: (1) Define a to-do list and (2) define a not-to-do list.
Who are the 20% of people who produce 80% of your enjoyment and propel you forward, and which 20% cause 80% of your depression, anger, and second-guessing?
Learn to ask, “If this is the only thing I accomplish today, will I be satisfied with my day?”
Compile your to-do list for tomorrow no later than this evening.
Reading, after a certain age, diverts the mind too much from its creative pursuits. Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking. —ALBERT EINSTEIN
But what if someone has an emergency? It doesn’t happen. My contacts now know that I don’t respond to emergencies, so the emergencies somehow don’t exist or don’t come to me. Problems, as a rule, solve themselves or disappear if you remove yourself as an information bottleneck and empower others.
develop a template e-mail and call script
Develop the habit of asking yourself, “Will I definitely use this information for something immediate and important
“Excuse me. I know this is going to sound strange, but if I don’t ask you now, I’ll be kicking myself for the rest of the day. I’m running to meet a friend [i.e., I have friends and am not a stalker], but I think you’re really [extremely, drop-dead] cute [gorgeous, hot]. Could I have your phone number? I’m not a psycho—I promise. You can give me a fake one if you’re not interested.”
Meetings are an addictive, highly self-indulgent activity that corporations and other organizations habitually engage in only because they cannot actually masturbate. —DAVE BARRY,
Check e-mail twice per day, once at 12:00 noon or just prior to lunch, and again at 4:00 P.M. 12:00 P.M. and 4:00 P.M. are times that ensure you will have the most responses from previously sent e-mail.
Never check e-mail first thing in the morning.12 Instead, complete your most important task before 11:00 A.M.
THE FIRST DAY our new Sales VP arrived at TrueSAN in 2001, he came into the all-company meeting and made an announcement in just about this many words: “I am not here to make friends. I have been hired to build a sales team and sell product, and that’s what I intend to do. Thanks.” So much for small talk.
He listened with a smile on his face for no more than two minutes and then held up a hand. I stopped. He laughed in a kind-hearted manner and said, “Tim, I don’t want the story. Just tell me what we need to do.”
It is your job to train those around you to be effective and efficient. No one else will do it for you.
Don’t give them a chance to bail out. The “thanks in advance” before a retort increases your chances of getting the e-mail.
Learn to imitate any good child: “Just this once! Please!!! I promise I’ll do X!” Parents fall for it because kids help adults to fool themselves. It works with bosses, suppliers, customers, and the rest of the world, too.
Use it, but don’t fall for it. If a boss asks for overtime “just this once,” he or she will expect it in the future.
It’s amazing how someone’s IQ seems to double as soon as you give them responsibility and indicate that you trust them. The first month cost perhaps $200 more than if I had been micromanaging. In the meantime, I saved more than 100 hours of my own time per month, customers received faster service, returns dropped to less than 3% (the industry average is 10–15%), and outsourcers spent less time on my account, all of which resulted in rapid growth, higher profit margins, and happier people on all sides.
People are smarter than you think. Give them a chance to prove themselves.
Suggest a one-week trial and end with “I’d like to try it. Does that sound like something we could try for a week?” or my personal favorite, “Is that reasonable?” It’s hard for people to label things unreasonable.
Establish yourself as a consistent challenger of the status quo and most people will learn to avoid challenging you, particularly if it is in the interest of higher per-hour productivity.
“No” should be your default answer to all requests. Don’t make up elaborate lies or you’ll get called on them. A simple “I really can’t—sorry; I’ve got too much on my plate right now” will do as a catch-all response.
The company’s CEO, Vivek Kulkarni, responds, “It would be a great pleasure to be talking to a person of your stature.” Already I’m liking this. I’ve never had stature before. In America, I barely command respect from a Bennigan’s maître d’, so it’s nice to know that in India I have stature.
I would try to adapt myself as per your requirements that would lead to desired satisfaction. Desired satisfaction. This is great. Back when I worked at an office, I had assistants, but there was never any talk of desired satisfaction. In fact, if anyone ever used the phrase “desired satisfaction,” we’d all end up in a solemn meeting with HR. •
“You should call Your Man in India,” he says. Misha explains that this is a company for Indian businessmen who have moved overseas but who still have parents back in New Delhi or Mumbai. YMII is their overseas concierge service—it buys movie tickets and cell phones and other sundries for abandoned moms.
Principle number one is to refine rules and processes before adding people. Using people to leverage a refined process multiplies production; using people as a solution to a poor process multiplies problems.
Each delegated task must be both time-consuming and well-defined.
In his hotel-bound years, Hughes was rumored to have instructed assistants to place a single cheeseburger in a specific tree outside his penthouse room at a 4:00 P.M. each day, whether he was there or not. Such a world of possibilities! Just as the Model-T brought transportation to the masses, virtual assistants bring eccentric billionaire behavior within reach of each man, woman, and child. Now, that’s progress.
Each time you are interrupted or change tasks, ask, “Could a VA do this?”
Identify your top five time-consuming non-work tasks and five personal tasks you could assign for sheer fun.
I don’t want my staff instantly zinging me responses or clarifying questions. (This also prevents e-mail chats.) So I hit send, but it’s delayed to arrive later in the evening or at 8 A.M. when my employees arrive the next day. This is how e-mail was meant to be! It’s mail, not a chat service.
To narrow the field further, our target product can’t take more than $500 to test, it has to lend itself to automation within four weeks, and—when up and running—it can’t require more than one day per week of management.
It is critical that you decide how you will sell and distribute your product before you commit to a product in the first place. The more middlemen are involved, the higher your margins must be to maintain profitability for all the links in the chain.
Creating demand is hard. Filling demand is much easier. Don’t create a product, then seek someone to sell it to. Find a market—define your customers—then find or develop a product for them.
Be a member of your target market and don’t speculate what others need or will be willing to buy.
Which social, industry, and professional groups do you belong to, have you belonged to, or do you understand, whether dentists, engineers, rock climbers, recreational cyclists, car restoration aficionados, dancers, or other?
Look at products and books you own, include online and offline subscriptions, and ask yourself, “What groups of people purchase the same?” Which magazines, websites, and newsletters do you read on a regular basis?
Pick the two markets that you are most familiar with that have their own magazines with full-page advertising that costs less than $5,000. There should be no fewer than 15,000 readers.
The Main Benefit Should Be Encapsulated in One Sentence.
People can dislike you—and you often sell more by offending some—but they should never misunderstand you.
Do you have a failure-to-success story that could be turned into a how-to product for others? Consider problems you’ve overcome in the past, both professional and personal.
Join two or three related trade organizations with
Join two or three related trade organizations with official-sounding names.
Read the three top-selling books on your topic (search historical New York Times bestseller lists online) and summarize each on one page.
Give one free one-to-three-hour seminar at the closest well-known university, using posters to advertise.
Then do the same at branches of two well-known big companies (AT&T, IBM, etc.) located in the same area.
In modern PR terms, proof of expertise in most fields is shown with group affiliations, client lists, writing credentials, and media mentions, not IQ points or Ph.D.s.
Answerer: May I ask what this is regarding? You: Sure. I know this might sound a bit odd,32 but I’m a first-time author and just read his interview in Time Out New York.33 I’m a longtime34 fan and have finally built up the courage to35 call him for one specific piece of advice. It wouldn’t take more than two minutes of his time. Is there any way you can help me get through to him?36 I really, really appreciate whatever you can do.
(at the very end of the call): Thank you so much for being so generous with your time. If I have the occasional tough question—very occasional—is there any chance I could keep in touch via e-mail?
ExpertClick (www.expertclick.com) This is another secret of the PR pros. Put up an expert profile for media to see, receive an up-to-date database of top media contacts, and send free press releases to 12,000 journalists, all on one website that gets more than 5 million hits per month. This is how I got on NBC and ended up developing a prime-time TV show. It works. Mention my name on the phone, or use “Tim Ferriss $100” online, to get a $100 discount. LIFESTYLE DESIGN
Thus the yeoman work in any science … is done by the experimentalist, who must keep the theoreticians honest.
Don’t be the CEO or founder. Being the “CEO” or “Founder” screams start-up. Give yourself the mid-level title of “vice president” (VP), “director,” or something similar that can be added to depending on the occasion (Director of Sales, Director of Business Development, etc.). For negotiation purposes as well, remember that it is best not to appear to be the ultimate decision-maker. 2.
Prior to securing an end-to-end fulfillment house that can handle checks and money orders—if you decide to accept them—use a post office box but leave out the “PO Box” and include the street address of the post office itself. Thus “PO Box 555, Nowhere, US 11936” becomes “Suite 555, 1234 Downtown Ave., US 11936.” Go forth and project professionalism
Once per day for two days, simply lie down in the middle of a crowded public place at some point. Lunchtime is ideal. It can be a well-trafficked sidewalk, the middle of a popular Starbucks, or a popular bar. There is no real technique involved. Just lie down and remain silent on the ground for about ten seconds, and then get up and continue on with whatever you were doing before. I used to do this at nightclubs to clear space for break-dancing circles. No one responded to pleading, but going catatonic on the ground did the trick.
By working faithfully eight hours a day, you may eventually get to be a boss and work twelve hours a day. —ROBERT FROST,
Sherwood has been sure to hold back some of his productivity and efficiency so that he can highlight a sudden jump in both during a remote work trial period.
Recently, I was asked if I was going to fire an employee who made a mistake that cost the company $600,000. No, I replied, I just spent $600,000 training him. —THOMAS J. WATSON,
All courses of action are risky, so prudence is not in avoiding danger (it’s impossible), but calculating risk and acting decisively. Make mistakes of ambition and not mistakes of sloth. Develop the strength to do bold things, not the strength to suffer.
“But, you don’t understand my situation. It’s complicated!” But is it really? Don’t confuse the complex with the difficult. Most situations are simple—many are just emotionally difficult to act upon. The problem and the solution are usually obvious and simple. It’s not that you don’t know what to do. Of course you do. You are just terrified that you might end up worse off than you are now.
If there is any question of why you took a break or left your previous job, there is one answer that cannot be countered: “I had a once-in-a-lifetime chance to do [exotic and envy-producing experience] and couldn’t turn it down. I figured that, with [20–40] years of work to go, what’s the rush?”
I’ve seen one determinant of sex appeal to good employers: performance. If you are a rock star when it comes to results, it doesn’t matter if you jump ship from a bad company after three weeks. On the other hand, if tolerating a punishing work environment for years at a time is a prerequisite for promotion in your field, could it be that you’re in a game not worth winning?
I RECENTLY HAD lunch in San Francisco with a good friend and former college roommate. He will soon graduate from a top business school and return to investment banking. He hates coming home from the office at midnight but explained to me that, if he works 80-hour weeks for nine years, he could become a managing director and make a cool $3–10 million per year. Then he would be successful. “Dude, what on earth would you do with $3–10 million per year?” I asked. His answer? “I would take a long trip to Thailand.”
$250 U.S. Five days on a private Smithsonian tropical research island with three local fishermen who caught and cooked all my food and also took me on tours of the best hidden dive spots in Panamá.
Question: What did you spend your last $400 on? It’s two or three weekends of nonsense and throwaway forget-the-workweek behavior in most U.S. cities. $400 is nothing for a full eight days of life-changing experiences. But eight days isn’t what I’m recommending at all. Those were just interludes in a much larger production. I’m proposing much, much more.
How do these numbers compare to your current domestic monthly expenses, including rent, car insurance, utilities, weekend expenditures, partying, public transportation, gas, memberships, subscriptions, food, and all the rest? Add it all up and you may well realize, like I did, that traveling around the world and having the time of your life can save you serious money.
Human beings have the capacity to learn to want almost any conceivable material object. Given, then, the emergence of a modern industrial culture capable of producing almost anything, the time is ripe for opening the storehouse of infinite need!… It is the modern Pandora’s box, and its plagues are loose upon the world. —JULES HENRY
Rather than pack for all contingencies, I bring the absolute minimum and allocate $100–300 for purchasing things after I arrive and as I travel. I no longer take toiletries or more than a week’s worth of clothing. It’s a blast. Finding shaving cream or a dress shirt overseas can produce an adventure in and of itself.
What is the 20% of my belongings that I use 80% of the time? Eliminate the other 80% in clothing, magazines, books, and all else. Be ruthless—you can always repurchase things you can’t live without.
Escape Artist (www.escapeartist.com) Interested in second passports, starting your own country, Swiss banking, and all the other things I wouldn’t dare put in this book? This site is a fantastic resource. Drop me a note from the Caymans or jail, whichever comes first.
GridSkipper: The Urban Travel Guide (www.gridskipper.com) For those who love Blade Runner–like settings and exploring the cool nooks and crannies of cities worldwide, this is the site. It is one of Forbes’s Top 13 Travel sites and is “high-falootin’ and low-brow all in the same breath” (Frommer’s). Translation: Much of the content is not G-rated. If four-letter words or a “world’s sluttiest city” poll bother you, don’t bother visiting this site
Global Freeloaders (www.globalfreeloaders.com) This online community brings people together to offer you free accommodation all over the world. Save money and make new friends while seeing the world from a local’s perspective. The Couchsurfing Project (www.couchsurfing.com) Similar to the above but tends to attract a younger, more party-hearty crowd.
Otalo (www.otalo.com [inactive]) Otalo is a search engine for vacation rentals that searches across the Internet’s many different vacation rentals sites and 200,000+ homes. Otalo is like a Kayak.com for vacation rentals. The site scours a variety of other rental search sites and aggregates the results in one easy-to-use search tool.
I have found Craigslist to be the single best starting point for long-term overseas furnished apartments. As of this writing, there are more than 50 countries represented. That said, prices will be 30–70% less in the local magazines—if you have a tight budget, get a hostel employee or other local to help you make a few calls and strike a deal. Ask the local helper not to mention you’re a foreigner until pricing is agreed upon.
Retirees get depressed for a second reason, and you will too: social isolation.
Don’t be afraid of the existential or social challenges. Freedom is like a new sport. In the beginning, the sheer newness of it is exciting enough to keep things interesting at all times. Once you have learned the basics, though, it becomes clear that to be even a half-decent player requires some serious practice.
Without the distraction of deadlines and co-workers, the big questions (such as “What does it all mean?”) become harder to fend off for a later time.
Lacking an external focus, the mind turns inward on itself and creates problems to solve, even if the problems are undefined or unimportant. If you find a focus, an ambitious goal that seems impossible and forces you to grow,81 these doubts disappear.
I am 100% convinced that most big questions we feel compelled to face—handed down through centuries of overthinking and mistranslation—use terms so undefined as to make attempting to answer them a complete waste of time.82 This isn’t depressing. It’s liberating.
Before spending time on a stress-inducing question, big or otherwise, ensure that the answer is “yes” to the following two questions: 1. Have I decided on a single meaning for each term in this question? 2. Can an answer to this question be acted upon to improve things?
If you can’t define it or act upon it, forget it. If you take just this point from this book, it will put you in the top 1% of performers in the world and keep most philosophical distress out of your life.
What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for a worthwhile goal, a freely chosen task. —VIKTOR E. FRANKL,
to love, be loved, and never stop learning—but I don’t expect that to be universal.
Americans who travel abroad for the first time are often shocked to discover that, despite all the progress that has been made in the last 30 years, many foreign people still speak in foreign languages. —DAVE BARRY
To live is to learn. I see no other option. This is why I’ve felt compelled to quit or be fired from jobs within the first six months or so. The learning curve flattens out and I get bored.
Notice that I often transport a skill I practice domestically—martial arts—to other countries where they are also practiced. Instant social life and camaraderie. It need not be a competitive sport—it could be hiking, chess, or almost anything that keeps your nose out of a textbook and you out of your apartment.
Sports just happen to be excellent for avoiding foreign-language stage fright and developing lasting friendships while still sounding like Tarzan.
Morality is simply the attitude we adopt toward people we personally dislike. —OSCAR WILDE
Do your best and hope for the best. If you’re improving the world—however you define that—consider your job well done.
Adults are always asking kids what they want to be when they grow up because they are looking for ideas. —PAULA POUNDSTONE
For the duration of this trip, note self-criticisms and negative self-talk in a journal. Whenever upset or anxious, ask “why” at least three times and put the answers down on paper.
Defining and exploring it in writing—just as with forcing colleagues to e-mail—demands clarity of thought, after which most concerns are found to be baseless. Second, recording these concerns seems to somehow remove them from your head.
What makes you most angry about the state of the world? What are you most afraid of for the next generation, whether you have children or not? What makes you happiest in your life? How can you help others have the same?
Full-time work isn’t bad if it’s what you’d rather be doing. This is where we distinguish “work” from a “vocation.”
What did you dream of being when you were a kid? Perhaps it’s time to sign up for Space Camp or intern as an assistant to a marine biologist.
Recapturing the excitement of childhood isn’t impossible. In fact, it’s required. There are no more chains—or excuses—to hold you back.
If you don’t make mistakes, you’re not working on hard enough problems. And that’s a big mistake. —FRANK WILCZEK,
performing a thorough 80/20 analysis every two to four weeks for your business and personal life
Most endeavors are like learning to speak a foreign language: to be correct 95% of the time requires six months of concentrated effort, whereas to be correct 98% of the time requires 20–30 years.
Focus on great for a few things and good enough for the rest. Perfection is a good ideal and direction to have, but recognize it for what it is: an impossible destination.
Viewing one product, job, or project as the end-all and be-all of your existence Life is too short to waste, but it is also too long to be a pessimist or nihilist. Whatever you’re doing now is
Viewing one product, job, or project as the end-all and be-all of your existence Life is too short to waste, but it is also too long to be a pessimist or nihilist. Whatever you’re doing now is just a stepping-stone to the next project or adventure.
Surround yourself with smiling, positive people who have absolutely nothing to do with work. Create your muses alone if you must, but do not live your life alone. Happiness shared in the form of friendships and love is happiness multiplied.
For the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” And whenever the answer has been “No” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something … almost everything—all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure—these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. —STEVE JOBS,
The heaviness of success-chasing can be replaced with a serendipitous lightness when you recognize that the only rules and limits are those we set for ourselves.
So be bold and don’t worry about what people think. They don’t do it that often anyway.
It’s not that I go out of my way to irritate people—not at all—but I recognize one critical fact: Oftentimes, in order to do the big things, you have to let the small bad things happen. This is a skill we want to
It’s not that I go out of my way to irritate people—not at all—but I recognize one critical fact: Oftentimes, in order to do the big things, you have to let the small bad things happen. This is a skill we want to cultivate.
risk fishing for crises in those 10 minutes? Not at all. As tempting as it is to “just check e-mail for one minute,” I didn’t do it. I know from experience that any problem found in the inbox will linger in the brain for hours or days after you shut down the computer, rendering “free time” useless with preoccupation.
What’s been on your to-do list the longest? Start it first thing in the morning and don’t allow interruptions or lunch until you finish.
You don’t have to recoup losses the same way you lose them. I own a home in San Jose but moved almost 12 months ago. It’s been empty since, and I’m paying a large mortgage each month. The best part? I don’t care. But this wasn’t always the case. For many months, I felt demoralized as others pressured me to rent it, emphasizing how I was just flushing money away otherwise.
I don’t want to deal with renters, even with a property management company. The solution: Leave the house alone, use it on occasion, and just create incoming revenue elsewhere that would cover the cost of the mortgage through consulting, publishing, etc.
One of the most universal causes of self-doubt and depression: trying to impress people you don’t like. Stressing to impress is fine, but do it for the right people—those you want to emulate.
Adversity doesn’t build character; it reveals it.
Money doesn’t change you; it reveals who you are when you no longer have to be nice.
It doesn’t matter how many people don’t get it. What matters is how many people do. If you have a strong informed opinion, don’t keep it to yourself. Try to help people and make the world a better place. If you strive to do anything remotely interesting, just expect a small percentage of the population to always find a way to take it personally. F*ck ’em. There are no statues erected to critics.
You’re never as bad as they say you are.
An important correlate: You’re never as good as they say you are, either. It’s not helpful to get a big head
Eat a high-protein breakfast within 30 minutes of waking and go for a 10-to-20-minute walk outside afterward, ideally bouncing a handball or tennis ball.
A good question to revisit whenever overwhelmed: Are you having a breakdown or a breakthrough?
Rehearse poverty regularly—restrict even moderate expenses for 1–2 weeks and give away 20%+ of minimally used clothing—so you can think big and take “risks” without fear
It’s usually better to keep old resolutions than to make new ones.
I’ve learned to instead allocate $50–200 per trip to a “settling fund,” which I use to buy needed items once they’re 100% needed.
2 pairs of ExOfficio lightweight underwear. Their tagline is “17 countries. 6 weeks. And one pair of underwear.” I think I’ll opt for two, considering they weigh about as much as a handful of Kleenex. One other nice side effect of their weight: They’re much more comfortable than normal cotton underwear.
Don’t provoke deliberation before you can take action. One simple example: Don’t scan the inbox on Friday evening or over the weekend if you might encounter work problems that can’t be addressed until Monday.
Don’t postpone decisions just to avoid uncomfortable conversations. If an acquaintance asks you if you want to come to their house for dinner next week, and you know you won’t, don’t say, “I’m not sure. I’ll let you know next week.” Instead, use something soft but conclusive like, “Next week? I’m pretty sure I have another commitment on Thursday, but thank you for the invite. Just so I don’t leave you hanging, let’s assume I can’t make it, but can I let you know if that changes?” Decision made. Move on.
Regret is past-tense decision making. Eliminate complaining to minimize regret.
Don’t strive for variation—and thus increase option consideration—when it’s not needed. Routine enables innovation where it’s most valuable.
Don’t confuse what should be results-driven with routine (e.g., exercise) with something enjoyment-driven that benefits from variation (e.g., recreation).
Never make a first offer when purchasing. Flinch after the first offer (“$3,000!” followed by pure silence, which uncomfortable salespeople fill by dropping the price once), let people negotiate against themselves (“Is that really the best you can offer?” elicits at least one additional drop in price), then “bracket.” If they end up at $2,000 and you want to pay $1,500, offer $1,250. They’ll counter with approximately $1,750, to which you respond: “I’ll tell you what—let’s just split the difference. I’ll overnight FedEx you a check, and we can call it a day.” The end result? Exactly what you wanted: $1,500.
If you don’t want to slip, don’t go where it’s slippery.
How do you feel about joint ventures? I’m open to them, but my brand and respectability is #1. I will not do anything with anyone who comes off as deceptive or amateur. “Make millions while you sleep in our super-insane foreclosure program!” on the website disqualifies someone. I cannot be associated with anyone who might be seen as a liar or snake-oil salesman.