Less is more

You want to know how to paint a perfect painting? It's easy. Make yourself perfect and then just paint naturally.

Dealing with failure is easy: Work hard to improve. Success is also easy to handle: You've solved the wrong problem. Work hard to improve.

Your twenties are always an apprenticeship, but you don't always know what for.

The amount of energy necessary to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than to produce it.

You have power over your mind — not outside events

1. Temperance: Eat not to dullness; drink not to elevation.

2. Silence: Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself; avoid trifling conversation.

Attention is today our most precious asset. Notifications are parasites in our lives.

The best writing is rewriting

Why work with a group of people who don’t even like each other? Many seem to think it’s a sacrifice necessary for making money. But taking a merely professional view of the workplace, in which free agents check in and out on a transactional basis, is worse than cold: it’s not even rational. Since time is your most valuable asset, it’s odd to spend it working with people who don’t envision any long-term future together. If you can’t count durable relationships among the fruits of your time at work, you haven’t invested your time well—even in purely financial terms.

Focusing is about saying no

You can do anything you set your mind to.

Benjamin Franklin

Being entirely honest with oneself is a good exercise.