Thoughts

This book is full of wisdom in short sentences. A lot of powerful sentences that make you think. There is no additional context added by Kevin Kelley here so you have to fill in the gaps yourself. I went through each of them and took notes here on my favorites

Favorite Quotes and Chapter Notes

I went through my notes and captured key quotes from all chapters below.

P.S. – Highly recommend Readwise if you want to get the most out of your reading.

Highlights and Notes

• Being enthusiastic is worth 25 IQ points.

• When you forgive others they may not notice but you will heal. Forgiveness is not something we do for others; it is a gift to ourselves.

• Don’t measure your life with someone else’s ruler.

• Collecting things benefits you only if you display your collection prominently and share it in joy with others. The opposite of this is hoarding.

• A worthy goal for a year is to learn enough about a subject so that you can’t believe how ignorant you were a year earlier.

• Gratitude will unlock all other virtues and is something you can get better at.

• Treating a person to a meal never fails and is so easy to do. It’s powerful with old friends and a great way to make new friends.

• Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.

• A great way to understand yourself is to seriously reflect on everything you find irritating in others.

• The advantage of a ridiculously ambitious goal is that it sets the bar very high so even if your effort falls short it may exceed an ordinary success.

• When you give away 10% of your income you lose 10% of your purchasing power which is minor compared to the 110% increase in happiness you will gain.

• We lack rites of passage. Create a memorable family ceremony when your child reaches legal adulthood between eighteen and twenty-one. This moment will become a significant touchstone in their life.

• The best way to get to yes in a negotiation is to truly understand what yes means for the other party.

• Recipe for greatness: Become just a teeny bit better than you were last year. Repeat every year.

• Whenever you can’t decide which path to take pick the one that produces change.

• If you are the smartest person in the room, you are in the wrong room. Hang out with, and learn from people smarter than yourself. Even better, find smart people who will disagree with you.

• Rule of 3 in conversation: To get to the real reason, ask a person to go deeper than what they just said. Then again, and then once more. The third time’s answer is the one closest to the truth.

• Pros make as many mistakes as amateurs; they’ve just learned how to gracefully recover from their mistakes.

• Don’t be the best. Be the only.

• The more you are interested in others the more interesting they’ll find you. To be interesting, be interested.

• Don’t take it personally when someone turns you down. Assume they are like you: busy, occupied, distracted. Try again later. It’s amazing how often a second try works.

• When you are young, spend at least 6 months to 1 year living as cheaply as you can owning as little as you possibly can eating beans and rice in a tiny room or tent. That way any time you have to risk something in the future, you won’t be afraid of the“worst-case” scenario.

• You lead by letting others know what you expect of them which may exceed what they themselves expect. Provide them a reputation that they can step up to.

• If you ask for someone’s feedback you’ll get a critic. But if instead you ask for advice you’ll get a partner.

• To make something good, just do it. To make something great, just redo it redo it, redo it. The secret to making fine things is in remaking them.

• This is true: It’s hard to cheat an honest person.

• At first, buy the absolute cheapest tools you can find. Upgrade the ones you use a lot. If you wind up using some tool for a job buy the very best you can afford.

• Nothing elevates a person higher than taking responsibility for their mistakes. If you mess up, fess up. It’s astounding how powerful this ownership is.

• Hatred is a curse that does not affect the hated. It only poisons the hater. Release a grudge as if it were a poison.

• You can obsess about your customers or you can obsess about beating the competition. Both work, but of the two obsessing about your customers will take you further.

• Separate the processes of creating from improving. You can’t write and edit or sculpt and polish or make and analyze at the same time. If you do, the editor stops the creator. While you invent, don’t select. While you sketch, don’t inspect. While you write the first draft, don’t reflect. At the start, the creator mind must be unleashed from judgment.

• Perhaps the most counterintuitive truth of the universe is that the more you give to others the more you’ll get. Understanding this is the beginning of wisdom.

• Friends are better than money. Almost anything money can do friends can do better. In so many ways, a friend with a boat is better than owning a boat.

• Be more generous than necessary. No one on their deathbed has ever regretted giving too much away. There is no point to being the richest person in the cemetery.

• Before you are old attend as many funerals as you can bear and listen. Nobody talks about the departed’s achievements. The only thing people will remember is what kind of person you were while you were achieving.

• Anything real begins with the fiction of what could be. Imagination is therefore the most potent force in the universe. And you can get better at it. It’s the one skill in life that benefits from ignoring what everyone else knows.

• When crises strike don’t waste them. No problems, no progress.

• When you get invited to do something in the future ask yourself: Would I do this tomorrow? Not too many promises will pass that immediacy filter.

• If you ask to be hired mainly because you need a job you are just another problem for the boss; if you can solve many of the problems the boss has right now you are hired. To be hired, think like your boss.

• Acquiring things will rarely bring you deep satisfaction. But acquiring experiences will.

• To earn bliss just for a moment send someone you don’t know a compliment for something they did.

• When someone is nasty, hateful, or mean toward you treat their behavior like an affliction or illness they have. That makes it easier to have empathy toward them which can soften the conflict.

• Eliminating clutter makes room for your true treasures.

• Don’t bother asking a barber if you need a haircut. Pay attention to incentives.

• Following your bliss is a recipe for paralysis if you don’t know what you are passionate about. A better path for most youth is“master something.” Through mastery of one thing you’ll command a viewpoint to steadily find where your bliss is.

• You are never too young to wonder“Why am I still doing this?” You need to have an excellent answer.

• Life gets better as you replace transactions with relationships.

• Investing small amounts of money over a long time works miracles but no one wants to get rich slow.

• The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.

• To build strong children reinforce their sense of belonging to a family by articulating exactly what is distinctive about your family. They should be able to say with pride“Our family does X.”

• Over the long term the future is decided by optimists. To be an optimist you don’t have to ignore the multitude of problems we create; you just have to imagine how much our ability to solve problems improves.

• Don’t let someone else’s urgency become your emergency. In fact, don’t be governed by the urgent of any sort. Focus on the important. The urgent is a tyrant. The important should be your king. Down with the tyranny of the urgent!

• Learn how to take a 20-minute power nap without embarrassment.

• Fear is fueled by a lack of imagination. The antidote to fear is not bravery; it looks more like imagination.

• Superheroes and saints never make art. Only imperfect beings can make art because art begins in what is broken.

• Don’t create things to make money; make money so you can create things. The reward for good work is more work.

• The greatest rewards come from working on something that nobody has words for. If you possibly can work where there are no names for what you do.

• In all things—except love— start with the exit strategy. Prepare for the ending. Almost anything is easier to get into than out of.

• A multitude of bad ideas is necessary for one good idea.

• You don’t need more time because you already have all the time that you will ever get; you need more focus.

• For marital bliss take turns allowing each partner to be always right.

• Everyone’s time is finite and shrinking. The highest leverage you can get with your money is to buy someone else’s time. Hire and outsource when you can.

• Your best response to an insult is“You’re probably right.” Often they are.

• Be strict with yourself, forgiving of others. The reverse is hell for everyone.

• If you can avoid seeking the approval of others your power is limitless.

• Show me your calendar and I will tell you your priorities. Tell me who your friends are and I’ll tell you where you’re going.

• Contemplating the weaknesses of others is easy; contemplating the weaknesses in yourself is hard but it pays a much higher reward.

• When you are young have friends who are older; when you are old have friends who are younger.

• Calm is contagious. Be calm to help others.

• Money is overrated. Truly new things rarely need an abundance of money. If that was so, billionaires would have a monopoly on inventing new things, and they don’t. Instead, almost all breakthroughs are made by those who lack money. If breakthroughs could be bought, then the rich would buy them. Instead, passion, persistence, belief, and ingenuity are required to invent new things qualities the poor and young often have in abundance. Stay hungry.

• Ignore what others may be thinking of you because they aren’t thinking of you.

• Writing down one thing you are grateful for each day is the cheapest possible therapy ever.

• If you meet a jerk, ignore them. If you meet jerks everywhere every day look deeper into yourself.

• You’ll learn a lot more if you ask people“how are you sleeping?” instead of“how are you doing?”

• Generally, say less than necessary.

• Each time you connect to people bring them a blessing; then they’ll be happy to see you when you bring them a problem.

• Things do not need to be perfect to be wonderful. Especially weddings.

• When you are stuck, sleep on it. Give your subconscious an assignment while you sleep. You’ll have an answer in the morning.

• All the greatest prizes in life in wealth, relationships, or knowledge come from the magic of compounding interest by amplifying small steady gains. All you need for abundance is to keep adding 1% more than you subtract on a regular basis.

• You can eat any dessert you want if you take only three bites.

• Children totally accept —and crave—family rules.“In our family we have a rule for X” is the only excuse a parent needs for setting a family policy. In fact,“I have a rule for X” is the only excuse you need for your own personal policies.

• Be a good ancestor. Do something a future generation will thank you for. A simple thing is to plant a tree.

• People can’t remember more than three points from a speech.

• Finite games are played to win or lose. Infinite games are played to keep the game going. Seek out infinite games because they yield unlimited rewards.

• You don’t marry a person you marry a family.

• Cultivate 12 people who love you because they are worth more than 12 million people who like you.

• Be frugal in all things except in your passions. Select a few interests that you gleefully splurge on. In fact, be all-around thrifty so that you can splurge on your passions.

• Don’t let your email inbox become your to-do list run by others.

• The greatest teacher is called“doing.”

• The consistency of your endeavors(exercise, companionship, work) is more important than the quantity. Nothing beats small things done every day which is way more important than what you do occasionally.

• When you lead your real job is to create more leaders not more followers.

• Efficiency is highly overrated; goofing off is highly underrated. Regularly scheduled sabbaths, sabbaticals vacations, breaks, aimless walks and time off are essential for top performance of any kind. The best work ethic requires a good rest ethic.

• Speak confidently as if you are right but listen carefully as if you are wrong.

• Productivity is often a distraction. Don’t aim for better ways to get through your tasks as quickly as possible. Instead aim for better tasks that you never want to stop doing.

• Your enjoyment of travel is inversely proportional to the size of your luggage. This is 100% true of backpacking. It is liberating to realize how little you really need.

• Ask funders for money and they’ll give you advice; but ask for advice and they’ll give you money.

• Your growth as a mature being is measured by the number of uncomfortable conversations you are willing to have.

• When you have good news and bad news, give the bad news first because we remember how things end more than how they begin. So elevate the ending with good news.

• The four most powerful words in any negotiation should be uttered by you:“Can you do better?”

• Three things you need: the ability to not give up something till it works the ability to give up something that does not work and the trust in other people to help you distinguish between the two.

• You can find no better medicine for your family than regular meals together without screens.

• When you are in the wrong be quick to chastise yourself more severely than the aggrieved might. Paradoxically, this can soften their ire.

• What you do on your bad days matters more than what you do on your good days.

• Ask anyone you admire: Their lucky breaks happened on a detour from their main goal. So embrace detours. Life is not a straight line for anyone.

• When speaking to an audience pause frequently. Pause before you say something in a new way pause after you have said something you believe is important and pause as a relief to let listeners absorb details.

• You’ll get 10 times better results by elevating good behavior rather than punishing bad behavior especially in children and animals.

• Spend as much time crafting the subject line of an email as the message itself because the subject line is often the only thing people read.

• Don’t wait for the storm to pass; dance in the rain.

• The general strategy for real estate is to buy the worst property on the best street.

• If you’re doing something that you are hiding from others it’s probably not good for you.

• Make others feel they are important; it will make their day and it will make your day.

• You will be judged on how well you treat those who can do nothing for you.

• We tend to overestimate what we can do in a day and underestimate what we can achieve in a decade. Miraculous things can be accomplished if you give it 10 years. A long game will compound small gains that will be able to overcome even big mistakes.

• A wise man said: Before you speak, let your words pass through three gates. At the first gate, ask yourself,“Is it true?” At the second gate ask,“Is it necessary?” At the third gate ask,“Is it kind?”

• The only productive way to answer“What should I do now?” is to first tackle the question of“Who should I become?”

• The best investing advice: Average returns, maintained for above-average periods of time will yield extraordinary results. Buy and hold.

• What you actually pay for something can be twice the listed price because the energy, time, and money needed to set it up, learn, maintain, repair it and then dispose of it when done all have their own cost. Not all prices appear on labels.

• If a young student is struggling first thing: Check their eyesight.

• It’s thrilling to be extremely polite to rude strangers.

• Getting cheated occasionally is the small price for trusting the best of everyone because when you trust the best in others they generally treat you best.

• It’s possible that a not-so-smart person who can communicate well can do much better than a super-smart person who can’t communicate well. That is good news because it is much easier to improve your communication skills than your intelligence.

• For the best results with your children spend only half the money you think you should but double the time with them.

• Purchase the most recent tourist guidebook to your hometown or region. You’ll learn a lot by playing the tourist once a year.

• When you are stuck explain your problem to others. Often simply laying out a problem will present a solution. Make“explaining the problem” part of your troubleshooting process.

• When introduced to someone make eye contact and count to four or say to yourself,“I see you.” You’ll both remember each other.

• Be a pro. Back up your backup. Have at least one physical backup and one backup in the cloud. Have more than one of each. How much would you pay to retrieve all your data, photos, notes if you lost them? Backups are cheap compared to regrets.

• Your time and space are limited. Remove, give away, throw out anything that no longer gives you joy in order to make room for those that do.

• Explore or optimize? Do you optimize what you know will sell or explore with something new? Do you order a restaurant dish you are sure is great(optimize) or do you try something new? Do you keep dating new folks(explore) or try to commit to someone you met? The ideal balance for exploring new things vs. optimizing those already found is ⅓. Spend ⅓ of your time on exploring and ⅔ on optimizing and deepening. As you mature it is harder to devote time to exploring because it seems unproductive but aim for ⅓.

• When negotiating don’t aim for a bigger piece of the pie; aim to create a bigger pie.

• The best time to negotiate your salary for a new job is the moment after they say they want you and not before. Then it becomes a game of chicken for each side to name an amount first but it is to your advantage to get them to give a number before you do.

• For maximum results focus on your biggest opportunities not your biggest problems.

• Reading to your children regularly is the best school they will ever get.

• It doesn’t matter how many people don’t appreciate you or your work. The only thing that counts is how many do.

• You can really change someone’s life for the better simply by offering words of encouragement.

• When you are presented with a task that could be completed in 2 minutes or less do it immediately.

• The stronger your beliefs, the stronger your reasons to question them regularly. Don’t simply believe everything you think you believe.

• A superpower worth cultivating is learning from people you don’t like. It is called“humility.” This is the courage to let dumb, stupid, hateful, crazy, mean people teach you something because despite their character flaws they each know something you don’t.

• The trick to making wise decisions is to evaluate your choices as if you were looking back 25 years from today. What would your future self think?

• To be interesting just tell your own story with uncommon honesty.

• When speaking to an audience it’s better to fix your gaze on a few people than to“spray” your gaze across the room. Your eyes telegraph to others whether you really believe what you are saying.

• The main reason to produce something every day is that you must throw away a lot of good work to reach the great stuff. To let it all go easily you need to be convinced that there is“more where that came from.” You get that in steady production.

• The real test of your character is not how you deal with adversity— although that will teach you much. The real test is how you deal with power. The only cure for power is humility and the admission that your power comes from luck. The small person believes they are superior; the superior person knows they are lucky.

• You will thrive more —and so will others— when you promote what you love rather than bash what you hate. Life is short; focus on the good stuff.

• Unhappiness comes from wanting what others have. Happiness comes from wanting what you already have.

• To get your message across follow this formula used by ad writers everywhere: simplify, simplify, simplify, then exaggerate.

• Pay attention to who you are around when you feel your best. Be with them more often.

• The very best thing you can do for your kids is to love your spouse.

• Five years from now you will wish you had started today.

• Let your children choose their punishments. They’ll be tougher than you will.

• Fully embrace“What is the worst that can happen?” at each juncture in life. Rehearsing your response to the“worst” can reveal it as an adventure and rob it of its power to stall you.

• Assuming you are average half of the world will be less proficient than you. Through no fault of their own many of these people can’t handle forms complex instructions, or tricky situations. Be kind to them because the world is not.

• It is impossible for you to become poor by giving. It is impossible for you to become wealthy without giving.

• To get better at speaking watch a recording of yourself speaking. It is shocking and painful but an effective way to improve.

• The best way to advise young people is to find out what they really want to do and then advise them to do it.

• There is no perfection, only progress. Done is much better than perfect.

• You choose to be lucky by believing that any setbacks are just temporary.

• If nobody else does what you do you won’t need a resume.

• We are unconsciously distracted by seeing our reflection. You can alleviate a lot of the fatigue of teleconferencing all day if you turn off your self-view.

• First, always ask for what you want. Works in relationships, business, life.

• Even if you don’t say anything if you listen carefully people will consider you a great conversationalist.

• Curiosity is fatal to certainty. The more curious you are the less certain you’ll be.

• An honest friend is someone who wants nothing at all from you.

• The perfect kind of art to display in your home are odd pieces that a child is unlikely to forget.

• Spending as little as 15 minutes(1% of your day) on improving how you do your thing, is the most powerful way to amplify and advance your thing.

• Instead of asking your child what they learned today, ask them who they helped today.

• The greatest killer of happiness is comparison. If you must compare, compare yourself to you yesterday.

• To succeed once focus on the outcome; to keep succeeding focus on the process that makes the outcome.

• Being curious about another person’s view is the most powerful way to change their view.

• The natural state of all possessions is to need repair and maintenance. What you own will eventually own you. Choose selectively.

• To write about something hard to explain write a detailed letter to a friend about why it is so hard to explain, and then remove the initial“Dear Friend” part and you’ll have a great first draft.

• Commit to doing no work no business no income one day a week. Call it a sabbath(or not). Use that day for resting, recharging, and cultivating the most important things in life. Counterintuitively, this sabbath will prove to be your most productive act all week.

• Embrace pronoia which is the opposite of paranoia. Choose to believe that the entire universe is conspiring behind your back to make you a success.

• The most effective remedy for anger is delay.

• Re-visioning the ordinary is what art, literature, and comedy do. You can elevate mundane details into magical wonders simply by noticing them.

• Aim to die broke. Give to your beneficiaries before you die; it’s more fun and useful to them. Spend it all. Your last check should go to the funeral home and it should bounce.

• Invent as many family rituals as you can handle with ease. Anything done on a schedule —large or small, significant or silly— can become a ritual. Repeated consistently small routines become legendary. Anticipation is key.