The Six Filters for Truth Personal experience (Human perceptions are iffy.) Experience of people you know (Even more unreliable.) Experts (They work for money, not truth.) Scientific studies (Correlation is not causation.) Common sense (A good way to be mistaken with complete confidence.) Pattern recognition (Patterns, coincidence, and personal bias look alike.) (Location 224)
But objectively, my passion level moved with my success. Success caused passion more than passion caused success. (Location 408)
So sometimes passion is simply a byproduct of knowing you will be good at something. (Location 412)
when your energy is right you perform better at everything you do, including school, work, sports, and even your personal life. Energy is good. Passion is bullshit. (Location 420)
I do want my failures to make me stronger, of course, but I also want to become smarter, more talented, better networked, healthier, and more energized. (Location 438)
Good ideas have no value because the world already has too many of them. The market rewards execution, not ideas. (Location 452)
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My failure taught me to seek opportunities in which I had an advantage. (Location 466)
I started to understand that timing is often the biggest component of success. And since timing is often hard to get right unless you are psychic, it makes sense to try different things until you get the timing right by luck. (Location 541)
your job is not your job; your job is to find a better job. (Location 714)
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goal-oriented people exist in a state of nearly continuous failure that they hope will be temporary. That feeling wears on you. In time, it becomes heavy and uncomfortable. It might even drive you out of the game. (Location 730)
Goal-oriented people exist in a state of continuous pre-success failure at best and permanent failure at worst, if things never work out. Systems people succeed every time they apply their systems in the sense that they did what they intended to do. The “goals” people are fighting the feeling of discouragement at each turn. The systems people feel good every time they apply their system. That’s a big difference in terms of maintaining your personal energy in the right direction. (Location 738)
For our purposes, let’s say a goal is a specific objective that you either achieve or don’t sometime in the future. A system is something you do on a regular basis that increases your odds of happiness in the long run. If you do something every day, it’s a system. If you’re waiting to achieve it someday in the future, it’s a goal. (Location 745)
Systems have no deadlines, and on any given day, you probably can’t tell if it’s moving you in the right direction. (Location 751)
The minimum requirement of a system is that a reasonable person expects it to work more often than not. (Location 761)
It helps a great deal to have at least a general strategy and some degree of focus. The world offers so many alternatives that you need a quick filter to eliminate some options and pay attention to others. Whatever your plan, focus is always important. (Location 882)
universe makes sure there isn’t much of a link between job performance in the corporate world and outcomes. (Location 929)
If you want success, figure out the price and then pay it. (Location 971)
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Successful people don’t wish for success; they decide to pursue it. And to pursue it effectively, they need a system. (Location 980)
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The most important form of selfishness involves investing time on your fitness, eating right, pursuing your career, and still spending quality time with your family and friends. (Location 1005)
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The healthiest way to look at selfishness is that it’s a necessary strategy when you’re struggling. (Location 1042)
If you pursue your selfish objectives and do that well, someday your focus will turn outward. It’s an extraordinary feeling. I hope you can experience it. (Location 1044)
Energy is a simple word that captures a mind-boggling array of complicated happenings. For our purposes, I’ll define your personal energy as anything that gives you a positive lift, either mentally or physically. Like art, you know it when you see it. Examples will help. (Location 1073)
Exercise, food, and sleep should be your first buttons to push if you’re trying to elevate your attitude and raise your energy. (Location 1330)
The easiest way to manage your attitude is to consume as much feel-good entertainment as you can. (Location 1341)
Today, you want to daydream of your idea being a huge success so you can enjoy the feeling. Let your ideas for the future fuel your energy today. No matter what you want to do in life, higher energy will help you get there. (Location 1359)
It’s smarter to see your big idea projects as part of a system to improve your energy, contacts, and skills. (Location 1362)
Let’s say you wake up tomorrow full of energy for your exciting new project. Over the course of the day, you learn a few things in the process of doing your research, and you meet some new people along the way. If you accomplish that and nothing more, you’re succeeding—no matter what happens with your project. (Location 1368)
I’ve come to believe that success at anything has a spillover effect into other areas. You can take advantage of that effect by becoming good at things that require nothing but practice. Once you become good at a few unimportant things such as hobbies or sports, the habit of success stays with you on more important quests. (Location 1396)
A great strategy for success in life is to become good at something, anything, and let that feeling propel you to new and better victories. Success can be habit-forming. (Location 1417)
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Free yourself from the shackles of an oppressive reality. What’s real to you is what you imagine and what you feel. If you manage your illusions wisely, you might get what you want, but you won’t necessarily understand why it worked. (Location 1468)
Things that will someday work out well start out well. Things that will never work start out bad and stay that way. What you rarely see is a stillborn failure that transmogrifies into a stellar success. Small successes can grow into big ones, but failures rarely grow into successes. (Location 1688)
One of the best ways to detect the X-factor is to watch what customers do about your idea or product, not what they say. People tend to say what they think you want to hear, or what they think will cause the least pain. What people do is far more honest. For example, with comics, a good test of potential is whether people stick the comic to the refrigerator, post it, email it to friends, put it on a blog page, or do anything else active. (Location 1743)
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It’s generally true that if no one is excited about your art/product/idea in the beginning, they never will be. (Location 1749)
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If the first commercial version of your work excites no one to action, it’s time to move on to something different. Don’t be fooled by the opinions of friends and family. They’re all liars. (Location 1751)
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The Success Formula: Every skill you acquire doubles your odds of success. (Location 1809)
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When it comes to skills, quantity often beats quality. (Location 1847)
The Knowledge Formula: The More You Know, the More You Can Know. (Location 1885)
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If you find yourself in a state of continuous failure in your personal life or career, you might be blaming it on fate or karma or animal spirits or some other form of magic—when the real reason is simple math. There’s usually a pattern, but it might be subtle. Don’t stop looking just because you don’t see the pattern in the first seven years. (Location 1950)
I made a list of the skills in which I think every adult should gain a working knowledge. I wouldn’t expect you to become a master of any, but mastery isn’t even necessary. Luck has a good chance of finding you if you become merely good in most of these areas. I’ll make a case for each one, but here’s the preview list. Public speaking Psychology Business writing Accounting Design (the basics) Conversation skills Overcoming shyness Second language Golf Proper grammar Persuasion Technology (hobby level) Proper voice technique (Location 1957)
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Today when I see a stage and a thousand people waiting to hear me speak, a little recording goes off in my head that says, Today is a good day. I’m the happiest person in the room. The audience only gets to listen, but (Location 2022)
I get to speak, to feel, to be fully alive. I will absorb their energy and turn it into something good. And when I’m done, there’s a one hundred percent chance people will say good things about me. (Location 2024)
If you see something that impresses you, a decent respect for humanity insists you voice your praise. (Location 2030)
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Quality is not an independent force in the universe; it depends on what you choose as your frame of reference. (Location 2085)
Below is Wikipedia’s list of cognitive biases.1 It looks like a lot to know, but you have your entire life to acquire the knowledge. Think of it as a system in which you learn a bit every year. That will be easier if you understand how important psychology is to everything you want to accomplish in life. On a scale of one to ten, the importance of understanding psychology is a solid ten. Ambiguity effect Anchoring Availability heuristic Availability cascade Backfire effect Bandwagon effect Barnum effect Base rate neglect or Base rate fallacy Belief bias Bias blind spot Choice-supportive bias Clustering illusion Confirmation bias Congruence bias Conjunction fallacy Conservatism or Regressive Bias Conservatism (Bayesian) Contrast effect Curse of knowledge Decoy effect Denomination effect Distinction bias Duration neglect Empathy gap Endowment effect Essentialism Exaggerated expectation Experimenter’s or Expectation bias False-consensus effect Functional fixedness Focalism Focusing effect Forer effect Framing effect Frequency illusion Gambler’s fallacy Hard-easy effect Hindsight bias Hostile media effect Hyperbolic discounting Illusion of control Illusion of validity Illusory correlation Impact bias Information bias Insensitivity to sample size Irrational escalation Just-world hypothesis Less-is-better effect Loss aversion Ludic fallacy Mere exposure effect Money illusion Moral credential effect Negativity bias Neglect of probability Normalcy bias Observer-expectancy effect Omission bias Optimism bias Ostrich effect Outcome bias Overconfidence effect Pareidolia Pessimism bias Planning fallacy Post-purchase rationalization Pro-innovation bias Pseudocertainty effect Reactance Reactive devaluation Recency bias Recency illusion Restraint bias Rhyme as reason effect Selective perception Semmelweis reflex Selection bias Social comparison bia...
...s Social desirability bias Status quo bias Stereotyping Subadditivity effect Subjective validation Survivorship bias Texas sharpshooter fallacy Time-saving bias Unit bias Well travelled road effect Zero-risk bias Zero-sum heuristic Social biases Actor-observer bias Defensive attribution hypothesis Dunning–Kruger effect Egocentric bias Extrinsic incentives bias Forer effect (aka Barnum effect) False consensus effect Halo effect Illusion of asymmetric insight Illusion of external agency Illusion of transparency Illusory superiority Ingroup bias Just-world phenomenon Moral luck Naive cynicism Outgroup homogeneity bias Projection bias Self-serving bias System justification Trait ascription bias Ultimate attribution error Worse-than-average effect Memory errors and biases Bizarreness effect: Choice-supportive bias Change bias Childhood amnesia Conservatism or Regressive Bias Consistency bias Context effect Cross-race effect Cryptomnesia Egocentric bias Fading affect bias False memory… (Location 2124)
Here’s a summary of good conversation technique: Ask questions. Don’t complain (much). Don’t talk about boring experiences (TV show, meal, dream, etc.). Don’t dominate the conversation. Let others talk. Don’t get stuck on a topic. Keep moving. Planning is useful, but it isn’t conversation. Keep the sad stories SHORT, especially medical stories. (Location 2463)
The single best tip for avoiding shyness involves harnessing the power of acting interested in other people. You don’t want to cross into nosiness, but everyone appreciates it when you show interest. (Location 2563)
The simple rule for “I” versus “me” is that the sentence must make sense if you remove the other person mentioned in the sentence. For example, if you say, “Bob and I went to a movie,” it would still make sense if you removed “Bob and” and said, “I went to a movie.” If the sentence is “Please give the documents to Bob and me,” you can remove “Bob and” and it still makes sense as “Please give the documents to me.” (Location 2640)
Persuasive Words and Phrases “Because . . .” (Location 2675)
“Would you mind . . . ?” “I’m not interested.” “I don’t do that.” “I have a rule . . .” “I just wanted to clarify . . . “Is there anything you can do for me?” “Thank you.” “This is just between you and me.” (Location 2677)
Over-complaining is never funny. Don’t overdo self-deprecation. Don’t mock people. Avoid puns and wordplay. (Location 2965)
Luck won’t give you a strategy or a system—you have to get that yourself. (Location 3155)
I find it helpful to see the world as a slot machine that doesn’t ask you to put money in. All it asks is for your time, focus, and energy—to pull the handle over and over. (Location 3156)
For starters, the single biggest trick for manipulating your happiness chemistry is being able to do what you want when you want. (Location 3356)
Contrast that with the more common situation in which you might be able to do all the things you want, but you can’t often do them when you want. (Location 3357)
You need to control the order and timing of things to be happy. (Location 3364)
A person with a flexible schedule and average resources will be happier than a rich person who has everything except a flexible schedule. Step one in your search for happiness is to continually work toward having control of your schedule. (Location 3366)
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In your personal life and your career, consider schedule flexibility when making any big decision. Realistically, sometimes you do need to suck it up, work long hours, watch the kids, and do your duty. Just remember to keep your eye out for ways to maximize your schedule freedom in the long term. It’s something you want to work toward. Not everyone reading this book will become work-from-home cartoonists, but you can certainly find a boss who values your productivity over your attendance. (Location 3377)
We tend to feel happy when things are moving in the right direction and unhappy when things are trending bad. (Location 3384)
The directional nature of happiness is one reason it’s a good idea to have a sport or hobby that leaves you plenty of room to improve every year. (Location 3385)
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The feeling of progress stimulates your body to create the chemicals that make you feel happy. (Location 3387)
When you choose a career, consider whether it will lead to a lifetime of ever-improved performance, a plateau, or a steady decline in your skills. (Location 3388)
If you can imagine the future being brighter, those thoughts lift your energy and goose the chemistry in your body to produce a sensation of happiness. If you can’t even imagine an improved future, you won’t be happy—no matter how well your life is going right now. (Location 3393)
Happiness is the natural state for most people whenever they feel healthy, have flexible schedules, and expect the future to be good. (Location 3402)
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Taking care of my body always influences my happiness more than whatever task I’m involved in. (Location 3405)
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I’m here to tell you that the primary culprit in your bad moods is a deficit in one of the big five: flexible schedule, imagination, sleep, diet, or exercise. (Location 3409)
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No one wants to believe that the formula for happiness is as simple as daydreaming, controlling your schedule, napping, eating right, and being active every day. (Location 3411)
Recapping the happiness formula: Eat right. Exercise. Get enough sleep. Imagine an incredible future (even if you don’t believe it). Work toward a flexible schedule. Do things you can steadily improve at. Help others (if you’ve already helped yourself). Reduce daily decisions to routine. (Location 3459)
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If you manage your diet right, you’ll want to exercise more, and that will translate into doing so. (Location 3623)
The starting point for good health is diet. Once you get your diet right, your energy level will increase, and you’ll find yourself more in the mood for exercise. (Location 3624)
When tiredness sparks your hunger and you’ve had all the calories you need for a while, try eating peanuts or mixed nuts to suppress your appetite. (Location 3724)
If you get your health in order, success will come more easily. But if you get success without good health, you won’t be able to enjoy it. (Location 3833)
The Simple, No-Willpower Diet System Pay attention to your energy level after eating certain foods. Find your pattern. Remove unhealthy, energy-draining food from your home. Stock up on convenient healthy food (e.g., apples, nuts, bananas, etc.) and let laziness be your copilot in eating right. Stop eating foods that create feelings of addiction: white rice, white potatoes, desserts, white bread, fried foods. Eat as much healthy food as you want, whenever you want. Get enough sleep because tiredness creates the illusion of hunger. If your hunger is caused by tiredness, try healthy foods with fat such as nuts, avocados, protein bars, and cheese to suppress the hungry feeling. If you’re eating for social reasons only, choose the healthiest options with with the fewest calories. Learn how to season healthy-yet-bland foods. In time, you will lose your cravings for bad food without feeling like you’re making a sacrifice. (Location 3836)
The only way to succeed long term is by using a system that bypasses your need for willpower. (Location 3857)
Other successful exercisers get up long before the sun to do their workouts. (Location 3987)
I find it important to reward myself after exercise with a healthy snack I enjoy, some downtime that involves reading interesting articles on my phone, or a nice cup of coffee. By putting those pleasures at the immediate end of my exercise, I develop a strong association between the exercise and the good feelings. That’s habit-forming. (Location 4005)
Optimists notice more opportunities, have more energy because of their imagined future successes, and take more risks. Optimists make themselves an easy target for luck to find them. (Location 4238)
The model for success I described herein looks roughly like this: Focus on your diet first and get that right so you have enough energy to want to exercise. Exercise will further improve your energy, and that in turn will make you more productive, more creative, more positive, more socially desirable, and more able to handle life’s little bumps. (Location 4290)
Happiness is the only useful goal in life. Unless you are a sociopath, your own happiness will depend on being good to others. And happiness tends to happen naturally whenever you have good health, resources, and a flexible schedule. Get your health right first, acquire resources and new skills through hard work, and look for opportunities that will give you a flexible schedule. (Location 4299)
Eat right, exercise, think positively, learn as much as possible, stay out of jail, and good things can happen. (Location 4307)