Information without emotion isn’t retained.

Though you can upgrade your brain domestically, traveling and relocating provides unique conditions that make progress much faster.

Learning is such an addiction and compulsion of mine that I rarely travel somewhere without deciding first how I’ll obsess on a specific skill.

It’s amazing how someone’s IQ seems to double as soon as you give them responsibility and indicate that you trust them.

Thinking is mostly just asking yourself questions and answering them.

I know nothing. I am a beginner. But I ask a lot of questions.

BrainQuicken was a real learning on the job MBA.

Language learning deserves special mention. It is, bar none, the best thing you can do to hone clear thinking.

Quite aside from the fact that it is impossible to understand a foreign culture without understanding its language, acquiring a new language transforms the human experience and makes you aware your own language: your own thoughts.

Information is useless if it is not applied to something important or if you will forget it before you have a chance to apply it.

For overcoming fear, I think that an exercise called “fear-setting” is extremely helpful.

Measure the cost of inaction, realize the unlikelihood and repairability of most missteps, and develop the most important habit of those who excel and enjoy doing so: action.

For years, I set goals, made resolutions to change direction, and nothing came of either. I was just as insecure and scared as the rest of the world.

Overanalysis has been my life story. It can be far worse than laziness, as overanalysis leads to the same lack of action but also self-loathing.

If the challenge we face doesn’t scare us, then it’s probably not that important.

If you want great mentors, you have to become a great mentee. If you want to lead, you have to first learn to follow.

Top academic institutions are wonderful, but there are unrecognized benefits to not coming out of one. Grads from top schools are funneled into high-income 80-hour-per-week jobs, and 15–30 years of soul-crushing work has been accepted as the default path. How do I know? I’ve been there.

The superheroes you have in your mind (idols, icons, titans, billionaires, etc.) are nearly all walking flaws who’ve maximized 1 or 2 strengths.

Here are a few books that have affected me or made me think differently in the last few years. None of them are directly related to business: Radical Acceptance by Tara Brach — this is an important book, originally recommended to me by a neuroscience PhD who benefited from it. The Yaqui Way of Knowledge by Carlos Castaneda. The Body Keeps The Score by Van Der Kolk.

Resolve to do one thing every day that you fear. I got into this habit by attempting to contact celebrities and famous businesspeople for advice.

I don’t think people are fearless. If you’re fearless, you’re nuts. But you can learn to fear less

To do or not to do? To try or not to try? Most people will vote no, whether they consider themselves brave or not.

Uncertainty and the prospect of failure can be very scary noises in the shadows.

The best people in almost any field are almost always the people who get the most criticism.

Fear itself is quite fear-inducing. Most intelligent people in the world dress it up as something else: optimistic denial.

Sometimes, it just takes one conversation with one rational person to stop a horrible irrational decision.

I realized it would destroy other people’s lives. Killing yourself can spiritually kill other people.

Even if you “feel” like no one loves you or cares about you, you are most likely loved – and most definitely lovable and worthy of love.

Go to the gym and move for at least 30 minutes. For me, this is 80% of the battle.

The little things have a big emotional payback, and guess what? Chances are, at least one person you make smile is on the front lines with you, quietly battling something nearly identical.

If we let the storms pass and choose to reflect, we come out better than ever.

You have gifts to share with the world. You are not alone. You are not flawed. You are human.

The paper is like a photography darkroom for my mind.

It has never been easier to create content self-published, but it has never been harder to get the attention you want, or need, to really put something into orbit.

The quality of my writing dropped miserably if I tried to do more than four hours per day. It’s not necessary to put in 9-5 hours.

Rather than fight for attention with everyone online, I’ve focused on attending and speaking at events where bloggers are the attendees.

Don’t save your best for volume two

When you’re writing and you start to feel really uncomfortable, that’s when you know you’re starting to get it right. I’d imagine that applies to photography. It applies to everything.

For reaching influential people, I think that in-person is the least crowded and most effective way, because they have to trust the messenger before they will endorse the message.

Being called a huckster and a charlatan started several years ago, so that’s something I’m accustomed to. In most cases, it doesn’t bother me.

There is a place, at least in my life, for a decent amount of hedonism.

I did not grow up playing tennis with Steven Spielberg and drinking wine with Jerry Seinfeld – I grew up serving coffee to those people.

I suppose my professional life can be split into writing books that all sound like infomercial products, most notably The 4-Hour Workweek, and then tech investing.

I always thought I was going to end up teaching ninth grade.

My mom always encouraged me to march to my own drummer.

I’m really impatient and I get angry about things that I view as deliberately slow and sloppy. And that anger can be harnessed sometimes in a really productive aggression but it also wears you down at both ends.

We all get frustrated. I am particularly prone to frustration when I see little or no progress after several weeks of practicing something new.

I remember when I had my first real business anything in college, teaching this accelerated learning seminar. I felt richer than I’d ever felt in my life because I was making $8.00 an hour in the college library.

For most people, somewhere between six and seven billion of them, the perfect job is the one that takes the least time.

Reality is negotiable.