...The researchers found a middle ground by creating a model that was simple, but not simplistic. Throw away too much detail, and you explain nothing. Retain all the detail—same thing...We want a model that is just simple enough so that we can extract macro insights with confidence in their micro origins...
...Ideas are easy. Execution is everything...
...As options increase, the effort involved in making decisions increases, so mistakes hurt even more. Thus the growth of options and opportunities for choice has three, related, unfortunate effects. It means that decisions require more effort. It makes mistakes more likely. It makes the psychological consequences of mistakes more severe...
...Chop wood, carry water. Anchor up. “Yes, and.” Ignore the parts you can’t control...
...Delay is the greatest remedy for anger. Ask of your anger, at the outset, not to grant forgiveness but to exercise judgment. Its first impulses are harsh ones; it will relent if it waits. And don’t try to get rid of it all at once; it will be wholly defeated if it is carved away by pieces...
...The what is mere habit. It’s an idea that makes sense until it doesn’t. The what can fly away in the wind. But the why? The why is drilled into the ground...
...Similarly, you can appreciate your life’s journey even when it’s uncomfortable, but it’s unrealistic to expect that you will always enjoy it...
...That’s what makes adult behavioral change so hard. If you want to be a better partner at home or a better manager at work, you not only have to change your ways, you have to get some buy-in from your partner or co-workers. Everyone around you has to recognize that you’re changing. Relying on other people increases the degree of difficulty exponentially...
...when you focus on what you do best, on what brings you the most satisfaction, there is plenty of space for everything...
...People who have had to endure hardships have a chip on their shoulder and thus a need to prove themselves, and he has found this to be correlated with success...
...To be a great reader, it is not enough that you read, it’s how you read...
...Together, all the DNA in our body, if laid end to end, would stretch twice the diameter of the solar system...
...The vast majority of our traits are determined by tens, hundreds, or thousands of genes, in many cases each only playing a small role relative to the others...
...When it comes to information processing, think of the wake state principally as reception (experiencing and constantly learning the world around you), NREM sleep as reflection (storing and strengthening those raw ingredients of new facts and skills), and REM sleep as integration (interconnecting these raw ingredients with each other, with all past experiences, and, in doing so, building an ever more accurate model of how the world works, including innovative insights and problem-solving abilities)...
...It’s a sign of maturity to be able to hold on to two conflicting desires or two opposing ideas at the same time without immediately rejecting one or the other, before there has been time for a careful discernment. To live with desire is to live with tension...
...As we’ve seen, the passing of time is judged in two ways – prospectively, as it happens, and afterwards, retrospectively. When you judge time prospectively it is easy to see that, as I’ve been discussing, attention and emotion both play a part; but when you look retrospectively and try to guess how long an event took, it is a third factor that shapes your answer – memory...
...Everyone asks how you got together; nobody asks how you stayed together. And it’s the latter that is often the real achievement to be proud of....
...In a climate of constant uncertainty, it’s tempting to be cautious with our joy; to hold our breath, wait for the other shoe to drop. Anticipating disaster can give us an illusion of control. But it doesn’t make us free...
...Sunk cost fallacy in full effect. Just finished since I was hoping that there would be some redeeming value to the book as he has turned 'his image' around. There wasn't...
...All of this illustrates what might be termed the paradox of limitation, which runs through everything that follows: the more you try to manage your time with the goal of achieving a feeling of total control, and freedom from the inevitable constraints of being human, the more stressful, empty, and frustrating life gets. But the more you confront the facts of finitude instead—and work with them, rather than against them—the more productive, meaningful, and joyful life becomes...
