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Character

Nothing in the world is worth having or worth doing unless it means effort, pain, difficulty… I have never in my life envied a human being who led an easy life. I have envied a great many people who led difficult lives and led them well.”  ~ Theodore Roosevelt

Integrity is when what you think and what you say and what you do are one. ~ Naval Ravikant

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

Associate yourself with men of good quality, if you esteem your reputation. Be not apt to relate news, if you know not the truth thereof. Speak no evil of the absent, for it is unjust. Undertake not what you cannot perform, but be careful to keep your promise. There is but one straight course, and that is to seek truth and pursue it steadily. Nothing but harmony, honesty, industry, and frugality are necessary to make us a great and happy nation. ~ George Washington

A man is about as big as the things that make him angry. ~ Winston Churchill

Do what’s right, not what’s easy.

Having anger and resentment toward others is like picking up a hot coal to throw at them. ~ Buddhaghosa

He who jumps into the void owes no explanation to those who stand and watch. ~ Jean-Luc Godard

Don’t do things that you know are morally wrong. Not because someone is watching, but because you are. Self-esteem is just the reputation that you have with yourself. You’ll always know. ~ Naval Ravikant

Verbal threats reveal nothing other than weakness and unreliability. ~ Nassim Taleb ¹

Character is what allows others to trust you, and you to trust yourself.

People respect your rules, but may judge your decisions. ~Shane Parrish

The best effect of fine persons is felt after we have left their presence. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

Discipline means having the strength to say no to the thousands of things that distract you. Courage means having the strength to say yes to the few things that matter. Commitment means having unwavering confidence in yourself and your principles. ~Ian Cassel

Clear thinking

Good judgement is expensive, but poor judgement will cost you a fortune.

What project would, if successful, make the rest of my career look like a footnote? ~Sam Altman

Commitment

Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative and creation, there is one elementary truth […] that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. ~William Hutchinson Murray

Confidence

You don’t become confident by shouting affirmations in the mirror, but by having a stack of undeniable proof that you are who you say you are.

Outwork your self-doub. ~ Alex Hormozi

Don’t build confidence. Build evidence. Confidence comes as a result of evidence. No the other way around. ~ Alex Hormozi

Where there is a will, there is a way.

Courage

Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking that you have something to lose. ~Steve Jobs

Doing

If you have a 10-year plan of how to get somewhere, you should ask: Why can’t you do this in 6 months? ~ Peter Thiel

Do less but better.

Do the things that only you can do.

Always prioritize across two dimensions: urgent vs important.

Do without doing. ~ Tao Te Ching

Lead with the cool stuff.

Rarely is anyone thanked for the work they did to prevent the disaster that didn’t happen.

Mastery is invisible to most people.

An expert is a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field. ~Niels Bohr

Editing

Anything can be cut. ~ Michael Schur

The show doesn’t go on because it’s ready. It goes because it’s 11:30pm. ~ Someone at SNL’s

Always review your output.

Enlightenment

What doesn’t transmit light creates its own darkness.

Flow

A wise man who meditates all day in the mountains while training his sword to flow like water. He has no desire to live for the next day. He lives for the present and protects his family with peace in his heart and mind. He is a samurai one that has accepted death and embraced it. His mind has learnt to flow like water and enter the state of flow. ~ RLsova, Youtube commenter on Miyamoto Musashi Meditation

Focus

John Wick is a man of focus, commitment, and sheer fucking will. ~ (John Wick’s enemies)

Take up one idea. Make that one idea your life; dream of it; think of it; live on that idea. Let the brain, the body, muscles, nerves, every part of your body be full of that idea, and just leave every other idea alone. This is the way to success, and this is the way great spiritual giants are produced. ~ Swami Vivekananda

Constraints are liberating.

People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on. But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully. I’m actually as proud of the things we haven’t done as the things I have done. Innovation is saying no to 1,000 things. ~ Steve Jobs

Do not divide your attention. Focusing on one thing yields increasing returns for each unit of effort. At a micro level, an extra hour of focus on the current project has a much higher return than an hour on something new, or worse, 5 minutes each on 12 new things. Before you ever do something new, you should understand the opportunity cost vs. existing things. Do not rationalize that something you want to do is complementary when it is not! At a macro level, understanding that applied effort has a convex output curve is a very useful discipline when considering new market areas. This convexity means that the opportunity cost of transferring resources from existing projects to new ones is high. Unless the new area is incredibly valuable, anything we can do to extend an existing convex curve is worth so much more. ~Peter Thiel

[…] if one then concentrates on breathing one soon feels oneself shut in by impermeable layers of silence. ~EUgen Herrigel 1884-1955 Zen in the Art of Archery

Steve would say ‘How many things have you said ’no’ to? I would tell him I said no to this, and I said no to that. But he knew I wasn’t interested in doing those things. There was no sacrifice in saying no.

What focus means is saying no to something that with every bone in your body you think is a phenomenal idea, you wake up thinking about it, but you say no to it because you are focusing on something else. You can achieve so much when you truly focus. ~John Ives

Freedom

The mind without passions is a fortress. No place is more secure.

If you’re distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment. ~Marcus Aurelius 121-180

It is not things that trouble us but our judgements about things. ~Epictetus ?-135

Todo lo que nos sucede, incluso nuestras humillaciones, nuestras desgracias, nuestras vergüenzas, todo nos es dado como materia prima, como barro, para que podamos dar forma a nuestro arte. ~Jorge Luis Borges 1899-1986

No man is free who is not a master of himself. ~Epictetus 55-135

An innocent mind is one that is capable of experiencing without accumulating the reside of experience. ~Krishnamurti 1895-1986

Investing

He who turns over the most rocks wins. ~ Peter Lynch

My largest positions aren’t the ones I think I’m going to make the most money from. My largest positions are the ones where I don’t think I’m going to lose money. ² ~ Joel Greenblatt

The only way to hold onto a big position after it makes a big move is to know the underlying company better than anyone else.³ ~ Ian Cassel

My worst enemies are impatience and boredom. ⁴

Successful investors can differentiate business performance from stock performance and can take advantage of those investors who can’t. ⁵

If you can’t sleep at night because of your stock market position, then you have gone too far. If this is the case, then sell your position down to the sleeping level. ⁶ ~ Jesse Livermore

To be a disciplined investor you have to be willing to stand by and watch other people make money on things that you passed on. ~ Howard Marks

Diversification is protection against ignorance. ⁷ ~ Warren Buffett

The goal of investment is to find situations where it is safe not to diversify. ⁸ ~ Munger

During a gold rush, sell shovels. ⁹

Don’t waste time having an opinion on every company. It’s a distraction. You only have to be right on what you own. ¹⁰ ~ Ian Cassel

Be unique in your approach, process, thinking, something.. alpha is generated by being just a little different in a disciplined and thoughtful way. ¹¹ ~ Ian Cassel

Make sure that the probability of the unacceptable (i.e. the risk of ruin) is nil. ~Ray Dalio

Learning

[…] the way to learn the most is […] when you are doing something with such enjoyment that you don’t notice that the time passes. ~ A. Einstein

If you can’t explain it, you don’t understand it. ¹²

Mastery, Excellence

I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times. ~ Bruce Lee

There’s a reset button at every level. Meaning you can be the best in class. And when you go to the next level you’re then at the bottom. And the difference between amateurism and professionalism is you have people looking after you and holding your hand as an amateur. Professionally, no one does. … What matters is, what you do and how you apply yourself consistently. ~ Paul Rabil

Charlatans complicate. People who actually know what they’re doing take the complex and make it simple and actionable.

Focus on what actually matters. Do that well… over and over again.

Action does not lead to perfection; perfection is expressed in action. As long as you judge yourself by your expressions, give them utmost attention, when you realize your own being, your behavior will be perfect- spontaneously. ~ Nisargadatta Maharaj

People underestimate hour hard you can push yourself. ~Todd Combs

Champions don’t create the standards of excellence, standards of excellence create champions. ~Shane Parrish

Standards become habits. Habits become outcomes. And one thing that few people realize is that exceptional results are almost always achieved by people with higher-than-average standards. ~Shane Parrish

At any rate the perfected Master betrays his fearlessness at every turn, not in words, but in his whole demeanor: one has only to look at him to be profoundly affected by it. ~Eugen Herrigel Zen in the Art of Archery

Had he begun the lessons with breathing exercises, he would have never been able to convince you that you owe them anything decisive. You had to suffer shipwreck through your own efforts before you were ready to seize the lifebelt he threw at you. ~Eugen Herrigel, Zen in the Art of Archery

“I don’t know what standards you had where you came from, but here you don’t speak unless you know what you’re talking about.” ~Shane Parrish, Clear Thinking

You should have a simple goal, which is to put out a product which is the highest quality you can. And if you have done that, by definition it’s the best you can do. ~Howard Marks

Most people in high-stress decision-making industries are always operating at this kind of simmering six, as opposed to the undulation between deep relaxation and being at a 10. Being at a 10 is millions of times better than being at a 6. It’s just in a different universe. ~Josh Waitzkin

Many people cannot find success because they lack the patience to go through the process to become who they want to be. ~Pastor T. D. Jakes

Misc

My attention determines my reality. ¹³ ~ Juan Alonso

You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems. ~ James Clear

The first step in crafting the life you want is to get rid of everything you don’t. ~ Joshua Becker

Be so valuable that you never have to ask for compensation. ~ @AscendantPower

Luxury, to me, is feeling unrushed. No hurry, no pause. ~ Tim Ferris

Hope is not a strategy.

Being poor is expensive.

People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will always remember how you made them feel. ¹⁴ ~ Maya Angelou

Rarely is anyone thanked for the work they did to prevent the disaster that didn’t happen.

Motivation

When the end is unknown and the distance is unknown that is when you know who the F you are. ~ David Goggins

If your path demands you walk through hell, walk as if you own the place (samurai pic).

Set a goal so big that you can’t achieve it until you grow into the person who can.

Philosophy

Train yourself to let go of everything you fear to lose. ~ Yoda

You only get pseudo order when you seek order, you only get a measure of control when you embrace randomness. ~ N. Taleb

Play

Play is the highest form of research. ~ Albert Einstein

The opposite of play is not work, it’s depression. ~ Brian Sutton-Smith

Play is the work of the child. ~ Maria Montessori

You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation. ~ Plato

Prioritizing

All the energy you spend on your fourth prioriy comes at the expense of your first. ~Shane Parrish

Reading

I return home and go to my study; at the entrance I pull of my peasant-clothes, covered with dust and dirt, and put on my noble court dress, and thus becoming re-clothed I pass into the ancient courts of the men of old, where, being lovingly received by them, I am fed with that food which is mine alone; where I do not hesitate to speak with them, and to ask for the reason of their actions, and they in their benignity answer me; and for four hours I feel no weariness, I forget every trouble, poverty does not dismay, death does not terrify me; I am possessed entirely by those great men. ~ Machiavelly 1469-1527

Relationships

If you dwell with a lame man, you will learn how to limp. ~Plutarch 46-119

The key is to keep company only with people who uplift you, whose presence calls forth your best. ~Seneca 4-65

Thinking

Anything is possible. It’s the probabilities that matter. Everything must be weighed in terms of its likelihood and prioritized. ~ Ray Dalio

Prediction, not narration, is the real test of our understanding of the world.” ~ N. N. Taleb

Contrary to what we’re led to believe, clear thinking is often the result of the position you are in at the time of the decision.

It doesn’t matter how rational you are if circumstances force you to make a bad choice. ~ Shane Parrish

Time

It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it. ~Seneca

Understanding

If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it ¹⁵ ~ unknown

Wisdom

Wisdom is nothing more profound than the ability to follow your own advice. ~ SH

Footnotes