Getting rich is about knowing what to do, who to do it with, and when to do it. (Location 202)
Tags: blue
Seek wealth, not money or status. Wealth is having assets that earn while you sleep. Money is how we transfer time and wealth. Status is your place in the social hierarchy. (Location 213)
You’re not going to get rich renting out your time. You must own equity—a piece of a business—to gain your financial freedom. (Location 218)
Play iterated games. All the returns in life, whether in wealth, relationships, or knowledge, come from compound interest. (Location 225)
Learn to sell. Learn to build. If you can do both, you will be unstoppable. (Location 230)
Specific knowledge is found by pursuing your genuine curiosity and passion rather than whatever is hot right now. (Location 234)
Embrace accountability, and take business risks under your own name. Society will reward you with responsibility, equity, and leverage. (Location 240)
Tags: pink
“Give me a lever long enough and a place to stand, and I will move the earth.” —Archimedes (Location 241)
Tags: pink
Code and media are permissionless leverage. They’re the leverage behind the newly rich. You can create software and media that works for you while you sleep. (Location 251)
An army of robots is freely available—it’s just packed in data centers for heat and space efficiency. Use it. (Location 253)
Tags: pink
If you can’t code, write books and blogs, record videos and podcasts. ↓ (Location 254)
Tags: blue
Judgment requires experience but can be built faster by learning foundational skills. (Location 257)
Study microeconomics, game theory, psychology, persuasion, ethics, mathematics, and computers. (Location 260)
Tags: pink
Reading is faster than listening. Doing is faster than watching. (Location 261)
Tags: pink
Set and enforce an aspirational personal hourly rate. If fixing a problem will save less than your hourly rate, ignore it. If outsourcing a task will cost less than your hourly rate, outsource it. ↓ (Location 264)
Tags: blue
Become the best in the world at what you do. Keep redefining what you do until this is true. (Location 268)
“Productize” and “yourself.” “Yourself” has uniqueness. “Productize” has leverage. “Yourself” has accountability. “Productize” has specific knowledge. “Yourself” also has specific knowledge in there. So all of these pieces, you can combine them into these two words. (Location 275)
Wealth is the thing you want. Wealth is assets that earn while you sleep. Wealth is the factory, the robots, cranking out things. Wealth is the computer program that’s running at night, serving other customers. Wealth is even money in the bank that is being reinvested into other assets, and into other businesses. (Location 285)
Tags: pink
Technology democratizes consumption but consolidates production. The best person in the world at anything gets to do it for everyone. (Location 290)
Tags: pink
An obsessive personality: you dive into things and remember them quickly (Location 314)
“Escape competition through authenticity.” (Location 352)
Tags: pink
The most important skill for getting rich is becoming a perpetual learner. (Location 358)
Tags: pink
Knowing how to be persuasive when speaking is far more important than being an expert digital marketer or click optimizer. (Location 368)
Tags: pink
Clear accountability is important. Without accountability, you don’t have incentives. Without accountability, you can’t build credibility. But you take risks. You risk failure. You risk humiliation. You risk failure under your own name. (Location 416)
Tags: pink
The people who have the ability to fail in public under their own names actually gain a lot of power. (Location 419)
Tags: orange
Everybody who really makes money at some point owns a piece of a product, a business, or some IP. That can be through stock options if you work at a tech company. That’s a fine way to start. (Location 452)
Tags: pink
You’re more likely to have skills society does not yet know how to train other people to do. If someone can train other people how to do something, then they can replace you. If they can replace you, then they don’t have to pay you a lot. You want to know how to do something other people don’t know how to do at the time period when those skills are in demand. [1] (Location 472)
Tags: blue
Money is good as a form of leverage. It means every time you make a decision, you multiply it with money. [1] Capital is a trickier form of leverage to use. It’s more modern. It’s the one that people have used to get fabulously wealthy in the last century. It’s probably been the dominant form of leverage in the last century. (Location 487)
Tags: blue
The final form of leverage is brand new—the most democratic form. It is: “products with no marginal cost of replication.” This includes books, media, movies, and code. Code is probably the most powerful form of permissionless leverage. All you need is a computer—you don’t need anyone’s permission. [1] (Location 494)
Tags: blue
Probably the most interesting thing to keep in mind about new forms of leverage is they are permissionless. They don’t require somebody else’s permission for you to use them or succeed. (Location 508)
Tags: blue
Coding, writing books, recording podcasts, tweeting, YouTubing—these kinds of things are permissionless. (Location 510)
Tags: blue
A leveraged worker can out-produce a non-leveraged worker by a factor of one thousand or ten thousand. With a leveraged worker, judgment is far more important than how much time they put in or how hard they work. (Location 519)
What you want in life is to be in control of your time. You want to get into a leveraged job where you control your own time and you’re tracked on the outputs. (Location 526)
Tags: blue
When you do just the actual work itself, you’ll be far more productive, far more efficient. You’ll work when you feel like it—when you’re high-energy—and you won’t be trying to struggle through when you’re low energy. You’ll gain your time back. (Location 532)
Tags: pink
If you want to be part of a great tech company, then you need to be able to SELL or BUILD. If you don’t do either, learn. (Location 545)
Tags: orange
Learn to sell, learn to build. If you can do both, you will be unstoppable. (Location 547)
Tags: orange
Earn with your mind, not your time. (Location 555)
Tags: orange
You start as a salaried employee. But you want to work your way up to try and get higher leverage, more accountability, and specific knowledge. The combination of those over a long period of time with the magic of compound interest will make you wealthy. [74] (Location 590)
Tags: blue
I think every human should aspire to being knowledgeable about certain things and being paid for our unique knowledge. (Location 601)
Tags: blue
Demonstrated judgment—credibility around the judgment—is so critical. (Location 606)
Tags: blue
Judgment—especially demonstrated judgment, with high accountability and a clear track record—is critical. [78] (Location 610)
Tags: orange
We waste our time with short-term thinking and busywork. Warren Buffett spends a year deciding and a day acting. That act lasts decades. (Location 611)
Tags: orange
Value your time at an hourly rate, and ruthlessly spend to save time at that rate. You will never be worth more than you think you’re worth. (Location 625)
Tags: orange
The problem is, to win at a status game, you have to put somebody else down. That’s why you should avoid status games in your life—they make you into an angry, combative person. You’re always fighting to put other people down, to put yourself and the people you like up. (Location 669)
Tags: blue
Figure out what you’re good at, and start helping other people with it. Give it away. Pay it forward. Karma works because people are consistent. On a long enough timescale, you will attract what you project. But don’t measure—your patience will run out if you count. [7] (Location 686)
Tags: blue
Well, one way is to have so much money saved that your passive income (without you lifting a finger) covers your burn rate. A second is you just drive your burn rate down to zero—you become a monk. A third is you’re doing something you love. You enjoy it so much, it’s not about the money. So there are multiple ways to retirement. (Location 718)
The way to get out of the competition trap is to be authentic, to find the thing you know how to do better than anybody. (Location 721)
Tags: blue
Art is creativity. Art is anything done for its own sake. What are the things that are done for their own sake, and there’s nothing behind them? Loving somebody, creating something, playing. To me, creating businesses is play. (Location 728)
Tags: pink
The most successful class of people in Silicon Valley on a consistent basis are either the venture capitalists (because they are diversified and control what used to be a scarce resource) or people who are very good at identifying companies that have just hit product/market fit. Those people have the background, expertise, and references those companies really want to help them scale. Then, they go into the latest Dropbox or the latest Airbnb. (Location 758)
Tags: blue
For someone who is early in their career (and maybe even later), the single most important thing about a company is the alumni network you’re going to build. Think about who you will work with and what those people are going on to do. [76] (Location 770)
Tags: pink
Ways to get lucky: • Hope luck finds you. • Hustle until you stumble into it. • Prepare the mind and be sensitive to chances others miss. • Become the best at what you do. Refine what you do until this is true. Opportunity will seek you out. Luck becomes your destiny. (Location 791)
Tags: pink
If you are a trusted, reliable, high-integrity, long-term-thinking dealmaker, when other people want to do deals but don’t know how to do them in a trustworthy manner with strangers, they will literally approach you and give you a cut of the deal just because of the integrity and reputation you’ve built up. (Location 798)
Tags: blue
Your character and your reputation are things you can build, which will let you take advantage of opportunities other people may characterize as lucky, but you know it wasn’t luck. [78] (Location 803)
Tags: pink
My co-founder Nivi said, “In a long-term game, it seems that everybody is making each other rich. And in a short-term game, it seems like everybody is making themselves rich.” (Location 804)
“Be a maker who makes something interesting people want. Show your craft, practice your craft, and the right people will eventually find you.” [14] (Location 812)
Tags: pink
You have to enjoy it and keep doing it, keep doing it, and keep doing it. Don’t keep track, and don’t keep count because if you do, you will run out of time. [78] (Location 837)
Tags: pink
Money buys you freedom in the material world. It’s not going to make you happy, it’s not going to solve your health problems, it’s not going to make your family great, it’s not going to make you fit, it’s not going to make you calm. But it will solve a lot of external problems. It’s a reasonable step to go ahead and make money. [10] (Location 849)
Tags: blue
The best mental models I have found came through evolution, game theory, and Charlie Munger. Charlie Munger is Warren Buffett’s partner. Very good investor. He has tons and tons of great mental models. Author and trader Nassim Taleb has great mental models. Benjamin Franklin had great mental models. I basically load my head full of mental models. [4] (Location 986)
“I don’t want to read everything. I just want to read the 100 great books over and over again.” (Location 1086)
Tags: pink
Read the greats in math, science, and philosophy. Ignore your contemporaries and news. Avoid tribal identification. Put truth above social approval. [11] (Location 1124)
Tags: pink
No book in the library should scare you. Whether it’s a math, physics, electrical engineering, sociology, or economics book. You should be able to take any book down off the shelf and read it. A number of them are going to be too difficult for you. That’s okay—read them anyway. Then go back and reread them and reread them. (Location 1126)
Tags: orange
Similarly, the hard sciences are a solid foundation. Microeconomics is a solid foundation. The moment you start wandering outside of these solid foundations you’re in trouble because now you don’t know what’s true and what’s false. I would focus as much as I could on having solid foundations. (Location 1140)
Tags: orange
If you’re interested in evolution, read Charles Darwin. (Location 1144)
Tags: blue
If you want to learn macroeconomics, first read Adam Smith, read von Mises, or read Hayek. Start with the original philosophers of the economy. (Location 1146)
Tags: pink
I came up with this hack where I started treating books as throwaway blog posts or bite-sized tweets or posts. I felt no obligation to finish any book. Now, when someone mentions a book to me, I buy it. At any given time, I’m reading somewhere between ten and twenty books. I’m flipping through them. (Location 1166)
Tags: pink
If you’re talking about an old problem like how to keep your body healthy, how to stay calm and peaceful, what kinds of value systems are good, how you raise a family, and those kinds of things, the older solutions are probably better. (Location 1174)
Tags: pink
A calm mind, a fit body, and a house full of love. These things cannot be bought. They must be earned. (Location 1180)
Tags: blue
We think of ourselves as fixed and the world as malleable, but it’s really we who are malleable and the world is largely fixed. (Location 1240)
Tags: blue
I have lowered my identity. I have lowered the chattering of my mind. I don’t care about things that don’t really matter. I don’t get involved in politics. I don’t hang around unhappy people. I really value my time on this earth. I read philosophy. I meditate. I hang around with happy people. And it works. (Location 1249)
Tags: orange
A happy person isn’t someone who’s happy all the time. It’s someone who effortlessly interprets events in such a way that they don’t lose their innate peace. (Location 1288)
Tags: pink
The mistake over and over and over is to say, “Oh, I’ll be happy when I get that thing,” whatever it is. That is the fundamental mistake we all make, 24/7, all day long. [4] (Location 1302)
Tags: pink
The reality is life is a single-player game. You’re born alone. You’re going to die alone. All of your interpretations are alone. All your memories are alone. You’re gone in three generations, and nobody cares. Before you showed up, nobody cared. It’s all single player. (Location 1368)
Tags: orange
Perhaps one reason why yoga and meditation are hard to sustain is they have no extrinsic value. Purely single-player games. (Location 1370)
Jealousy was a very hard emotion for me to overcome. When I was young, I had a lot of jealousy. By and by, I learned to get rid of it. It still crops up every now and then. It’s such a poisonous emotion because, at the end of the day, you’re no better off with jealousy. You’re unhappier, and the person you’re jealous of is still successful or good-looking or whatever they are. (Location 1374)
Tags: pink
When working, surround yourself with people more successful than you. When playing, surround yourself with people happier than you. (Location 1389)
You can build good habits. Not drinking alcohol will keep your mood more stable. Not eating sugar will keep your mood more stable. Not going on Facebook, Snapchat, or Twitter will keep your mood more stable. Playing video games will make you happier in the short run—and I used to be an avid gamer—but in the long run, it could ruin your happiness. You’re being fed dopamine and having dopamine withdrawn from you in these little uncontrollable ways. Caffeine is another one where you trade long term for the short term. (Location 1404)
Tags: blue
The first rule of handling conflict is: Don’t hang around people who constantly engage in conflict. I’m not interested in anything unsustainable or even hard to sustain, including difficult relationships. [5] (Location 1418)
Tags: orange
If you can’t see yourself working with someone for life, don’t work with them for a day. (Location 1420)
Tags: pink
Every time you catch yourself desiring something, say, “Is it so important to me I’ll be unhappy unless this goes my way?” You’re going to find with the vast majority of things it’s just not true. [7] (Location 1439)
Tags: orange
I think dropping caffeine made me happier. It makes me more of a stable person. [7] (Location 1441)
I think working out every day made me happier. If you have peace of body, it’s easier to have peace of mind. [7] (Location 1441)
The more you judge, the more you separate yourself. You’ll feel good for an instant, because you feel good about yourself, thinking you’re better than someone. Later, you’re going to feel lonely. Then, you see negativity everywhere. The world just reflects your own feelings back at you. [77] (Location 1442)
A personal metric: how much of the day is spent doing things out of obligation rather than out of interest? [11] (Location 1452)
Tags: pink
First, you know it. Then, you understand it. Then, you can explain it. Then, you can feel it. Finally, you are it. (Location 1462)
Tags: pink
One hack is stepping back and looking at previous bits of suffering I’ve had in my life. I write them down. “Last time you broke up with somebody, last time you had a business failure, last time you had a health issue, what happened?” I can trace the growth and improvement that came from it years later. (Location 1477)
Tags: pink
I have another hack I use for minor annoyances. When they happen, a part of me will instantly react negatively. But I’ve learned to mentally ask myself, “What is the positive of this situation?” (Location 1480)
Your life is a firefly blink in a night. You’re here for such a brief period of time. If you fully acknowledge the futility of what you’re doing, then I think it can bring great happiness and peace because you realize this is a game. (Location 1498)
Tags: blue
You’re going to die one day, and none of this is going to matter. So enjoy yourself. Do something positive. Project some love. Make someone happy. Laugh a little bit. Appreciate the moment. And do your work. [8] (Location 1508)
Tags: orange
Doctors won’t make you healthy. Nutritionists won’t make you slim. Teachers won’t make you smart. Gurus won’t make you calm. Mentors won’t make you rich. Trainers won’t make you fit. Ultimately, you have to take responsibility. Save yourself. (Location 1511)
Tags: blue
No one in the world is going to beat you at being you. You’re never going to be as good at being me as I am. I’m never going to be as good at being you as you are. Certainly, listen and absorb, but don’t try to emulate. (Location 1520)
Your goal in life is to find the people, business, project, or art that needs you the most. There is something out there just for you. What you don’t want to do is build checklists and decision frameworks built on what other people are doing. You’re never going to be them. You’ll never be good at being somebody else. [4] (Location 1525)
Tags: orange
To make an original contribution, you have to be irrationally obsessed with something. (Location 1528)
Tags: orange
Most fit and healthy people focus much more on what they eat than how much. Quality control is easier than (and leads to) quantity control. [11] (Location 1568)
Tags: pink
World’s simplest diet: The more processed the food, the less one should consume. (Location 1575)
Tags: orange
If something is your number one priority, then you will do it. That’s just the way life works. If you’ve got a fuzzy basket of ten or fifteen different priorities, you’re going to end up getting none of them. (Location 1582)
Tags: pink
The best workout for you is one you’re excited enough to do every day. [4] (Location 1593)
Tags: pink
Like everything in life, if you are willing to make the short-term sacrifice, you’ll have the long-term benefit. My physical trainer (Jerzy Gregorek) is a really wise, brilliant guy. He always says, “Easy choices, hard life. Hard choices, easy life.” (Location 1597)
Tags: pink
I (Location 1615)
Tags: pink
Too much sugar leads to a heavy body, and too many distractions lead to a heavy mind. Time spent undistracted and alone, in self-examination, journaling, meditation, resolves the unresolved and takes us from mentally fat to fit. (Location 1632)
The ability to singularly focus is related to the ability to lose yourself and be present, happy, and (ironically) more effective. [4] (Location 1710)
Tags: pink
The mind itself is a muscle—it can be trained and conditioned. It has been haphazardly conditioned by society to be out of our control. If you look at your mind with awareness and intent (a 24/7 job you’re working at every moment) I think you can unpack your own mind, your emotions, thoughts, and reactions. Then you can start reconfiguring. You can start rewriting this program to what you want. [4] (Location 1730)
Tags: pink
Meditation is turning off society and listening to yourself. It only “works” when done for its own sake. Hiking is walking meditation. Journaling is writing meditation. Praying is gratitude meditation. Showering is accidental meditation. Sitting quietly is direct meditation. (Location 1733)
Tags: pink
It takes a long time for markets to adopt products. It takes time for people to get comfortable working with each other. It takes time for great products to emerge as you polish away, polish away, polish away. Impatience with actions, patience with results. As Nivi said, inspiration is perishable. When you have inspiration, act on it right then and there. [78] (Location 1786)
Tags: pink
Having the skill of persuasion is important because if you can influence your fellow human beings, you can get a lot done. I think persuasion is an actual skill. So you can learn it, and it’s not that hard to do so. (Location 1833)
Tags: blue
Nature speaks in mathematics. Mathematics is us reverse engineering the language of nature, and we have only scratched the surface. The good news is you don’t have to know a lot of math. You just have to know basic statistics, arithmetic, etc. You should know statistics and probability forwards and backwards and inside out. [8] (Location 1838)
Tags: pink
Value your time. It is all you have. It’s more important than your money. It’s more important than your friends. It is more important than anything. Your time is all you have. Do not waste your time. (Location 1859)
Tags: pink
This doesn’t mean you can’t relax. As long as you’re doing what you want, it’s not a waste of your time. But if you’re not spending your time doing what you want, and you’re not earning, and you’re not learning—what the heck are you doing? (Location 1861)
All benefits in life come from compound interest, whether in money, relationships, love, health, activities, or habits. I only want to be around people I know I’m going to be around for the rest of my life. I only want to work on things I know have long-term payout. (Location 1938)
Tags: orange
“Anger is a hot coal you hold in your hand while waiting to throw it at somebody.” (Location 1943)
Tags: pink
Try everything, test it for yourself, be skeptical, keep what’s useful, and discard what’s not. (Location 1972)
Tags: pink
There is actually nothing but this moment. No one has ever gone back in time, and no one has ever been able to successfully predict the future in any way that matters. Literally, the only thing that exists is this exact point where you are in space at the exact time you happen to be here. (Location 1983)
Tags: pink
If you eat, invest, and think according to what the “news” advocates, you’ll end up nutritionally, financially, and morally bankrupt. (Location 2187)
Tags: pink
The more desire I have for something to work out a certain way, the less likely I am to see the truth. (Location 914)
Reading science, math, and philosophy one hour per day will likely put you at the upper echelon of human success within seven years. (Location 1071)
Tags: blue