Don’t confuse the complex with the difficult. Most situations are simple — many are just emotionally difficult to act upon.

Never automate something that can be eliminated, and never delegate something that can be automated or streamlined. Otherwise, you waste someone else’s time instead of your own, which now wastes your hard-earned cash.

Time is wasted because there is so much time available.

Slow down and remember this: Most things make no difference. Being busy is a form of mental laziness – lazy thinking and indiscriminate action.

The goal is to find your inefficiencies in order to eliminate them and to find your strengths so you can multiply them.

Most people are fast to stop you before you get started but hesitant to get in the way if you’re moving.

You’re never as bad as they say you are, but you’re never as good as they say you are either.

If the recipe sucks, it doesn’t matter how good a cook you are.

Everyone is fighting a battle you know nothing about.

The commonsense rules of the ‘real world’ are a fragile collection of socially reinforced illusions.

The best results in life are often held back by false constructs and untested assumptions.

Many of our strengths in excess become or create glaring weaknesses.

Being efficient without regard to effectiveness is the default mode of the universe.

Improving the quality of life in the world is in no fashion inferior to adding more lives.

Achievement without appreciation makes you ambitious but miserable. Appreciation without achievement makes you unambitious but happy.

Very often, “our” beliefs are not our own.

When you put on really effective armor, you do keep things out but you also keep a lot in.

The options are limitless, but each path must begin with the same first step: replacing assumptions.

The most common approach is very seldom the most effective and most efficient.

If the answer isn’t simple, it’s probably not the right answer.

There is no one right answer.

The way that you become world-class is by asking good questions.

How do you generate the most profit with the least effort? How do you maximize margins without sacrificing quality?

It all starts with the right questions. If you get the answers right to the wrong questions, you won’t get very far, whereas if you get even mediocre answers to the right questions, then those are the force multipliers.