...millionaires, who had three times the wealth as those in The Millionaire Next Door, reported as being most important in explaining their economic success. Among those factors were integrity, discipline, social skills, a supportive spouse, leadership qualities, and having a love for one’s vocation...
...“You’ve got to find what you love,” Jobs told the graduating class. “And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle.”...
...What is thrilling on Monday becomes boring by Friday. We habituate, which means that we respond less and less to stimuli that repeat...
...The right sort of practice carried out over a sufficient period of time leads to improvement. Nothing else...
...Sure, a manager could be quite good, but ultimately he also has to be quite lucky—and luck can often masquerade as talent when the latter is absent...
...Even in the growth mindset, failure can be a painful experience. But it doesn’t define you. It’s a problem to be faced, dealt with, and learned from...
...10/10/10, we think about our decisions on three different time frames: How will we feel about it 10 minutes from now? How about 10 months from now? How about 10 years from now?...
...I lost those formative years of discovering who I really was, of knowing where my home was. It sent me on an incessant quest of looking for myself—for home—in all the wrong places...
...I’m going to make a bold, daring generalization here. For the most part—at least when it comes to financial and career decisions—people do not undertake enough risk...
...People need to start understanding the news not as “the news,” but as just such an individualized consumer experience—anger just for you...
...Nobody can prevent you from choosing to be exceptional. The key is to find the meaning in the mundane and power in your purpose...
...The simple question “What would great look like right now?” is completely disarming. It demands that people reflect on their own contribution to great results. It stops emotional waste in its tracks. It relies on a positive belief that everyone is capable and smart and knows what great looks like...
...When you’re debating a material purchase, usually let the tightwad win. When you’re debating an experiential purchase, usually let the spendthrift win...
...another reason so many of us often feel overloaded is because of something called the planning fallacy.1 This describes the fact that we typically expect tasks to take less time than they actually do, because we base our estimates on one standout memory—our best past experience—rather than the average time it’s taken us to do similar tasks in the past...
...They want people who can work well in a team, but who can execute operations by themselves (most operations are solo). They want people who will plan and fully coordinate their operations in advance, but who are able to make changes on the fly, according to circumstances...
...Have we decided what the primary ten things are that we hope to achieve in retirement? What sort of habits do we want to develop? What’s going to get us to where we want to be during those years?...
...The fallibility of human beings guarantees that no technological system will ever be infallible...
...eight out of ten times people will reach the best conclusion on their own. But the other two times you need to make the hard decision and expect that everyone will rally around it...
...Stress is what arises when something you care about is at stake. This definition is big enough to hold both the frustration over traffic and the grief over a loss. It includes your thoughts, emotions, and physical reactions when you’re feeling stressed, as well as how you choose to cope with situations you’d describe as stressful. This definition also highlights an important truth about stress: Stress and meaning are inextricably linked. You don’t stress out about things you don’t care about, and you can’t create a meaningful life without experiencing some stress...
...Every systemic market injustice arose from some loophole in a regulation created to correct some prior injustice...
