“It’s easy to think I need something else. It’s hard to look instead at what to remove.”

“There are no outsiders.”

“No matter what you say, your actions reveal the truth.”

“Your actions show you what you actually want. There are two smart reactions to this:

1) Stop lying to yourself, and admit your real priorities.

2) Start doing what you say you want to do, and see if it's really true."

“Keep earning your title, or it expires.”

“And if you don’t like the idea of losing your title, then do something about it! This goes for titles like 'leader,' risk-taker,' and 'good friend' too.

Today I updated my website to reflect which of my accomplishments are in the past. It's liberating to speak in the past tense about what you've done, and only speak in the present tense about what you're actually doing."

“One way to get famous is to let others make more money, while you take the spotlight. I learned this while living in Los Angeles, when I got to know some famous Hollywood actors and realized they’re not as rich as you’d think.

The richest people in Hollywood are the ones you’ve never heard of, because they’ve optimized their careers for money. They know that others are willing to take less money in return for more fame, so they profit from the other side of that deal.”

“Before you start something, think of the ways it could end. Sometimes the smart choice is to say no to the whole game."

“Clearing the clutter helps me see the horizon.”

“I’m usually so damn driven, always doing everything as intensely as I can. It was so nice to take it easy for once. I felt I could do this forever, without any exhaustion. When I finished, I looked at the time: forty-five minutes. Wait - what?!? How could that be? Yep. I double-checked: forty-five minutes, as compared to my usual forty-three.

So apparently all of that exhausting, red-faced, full-on push-push-push I had been doing had given me only a 4 percent boost. I could just take it easy and get 96 percent of the results. 

And what a difference in experience! To go the same distance, in about the same time, but one way leaves me exhausted, and the other way, rejuvenated.

I think of this often. When I notice that I'm all stressed out about something or driving myself to exhaustion, I remember that bike ride and try dialing back my effort by 50 percent. It's been amazing how often everything gets done just as well and just as fast, with what feels like half the effort."

“You get no competitive edge from consuming the same stuff as everyone else is consuming. It’s rare, now, to focus.”

“The next time you’re feeling extremely unmotivated, do those things you never want to do anyway.”

“Many people are so worried about looking good that they never do anything great. Many people are so worried about doing something great that they never do anything at all. You destroy that paralysis when you think of yourself as just a student, and your current actions as just practice."

“Maybe instead of 'fault' you prefer the word 'responsibility,' but the idea is the same. Think of every bad thing that happened to you, and imagine that you happened to it."

"Most full-time artists I know only spend an hour or two a day actually doing their art. The rest is spent on the boring work that comes with trying to make it a full-time career. So skip the art career and just do the art."

“I continued learning until I felt like an absolute idiot.”

"A new college campus was built, but one thing was still debated: Where in the grass should we put the paved walkways?

Some people thought the walkways should go around the grass, to leave it green. Some thought the walkways should cut across diagonally.

One professor had the winning idea: Don't make any walkways this year. At the end of the year, look where the grass has worn away. That shows where the students are walking. Then just pave those paths. Brilliant.

I think about this idea applied to life plans or business plans. As time goes on, we get smarter. We learn more about ourselves or our customers - what we or they really want. Therefore, we're at our dumbest at the beginning, and at our smartest at the end.

So when should you make decisions? 

When you have the most information, when you're at your smartest: as late as possible.

Like the college campus, you can do without walkways for a year. Resist the urge to figure it all out in advance. Realize that now, in the beginning, is when you know the least.

When people expect you to make these decisions in advance, get used to saying, 'We don't know yet.' Then tell this simple story about walkways to show them how wise you are."

“Don’t start a business until people are asking you to.”

“Judge a goal by how well it changes your actions in the present moment. A bad goal makes you say, 'I want to do that someday.' A great goal makes you take action immediately."

"Whatever scares you, go do it."

“If you keep experiencing the same things, your mind keeps its same patterns. Same inputs, same responses. Your brain, which was once curious and growing, gets fixed into deep habits. Your values and opinions harden and resist change.

You really learn only when you’re surprised. If you’re not surprised, then everything is fitting into your existing thought patterns. So to get smarter, you need to get surprised, think in new ways, and deeply understand different perspectives.

With effort, you could do this from the comfort of home. But the most effective way to shake things up is to move across the world. Pick a place that’s most unlike what you know, and go. This keeps you in a learning mindset. Previously mindless habits, like buying groceries, now keep your mind open, alert, and noticing new things. New arrivals in a culture often notice what the locals don’t. (Fish don’t know they’re in water.)”

"Fear is just a form of excitement."

"As you go through life, doing everything that scares you, you fear less and less in the world."

“Life is an ongoing process of choosing between safety (out of fear and need for defense) and risk (for the sake of progress and growth). Make the growth choice a dozen times a day."

“But the act of reading a book is really about you and what you get from it. All that matters is what you do with the ideas, no matter the source. Apply them to your own life in your own way. It was never about them. It’s about you.”

“When we say, ‘Put your ass where your heart wants to be,’ we mean station your physical body in the spot where your dream-work will and must happen. Want to write? Sit down at the keyboard. Wanna paint? Step up before the easel. Dance? Get your butt into the rehearsal studio. Dumb and obvious as it sounds, tremendous power lies in this simple physical action.”

“You too have a body of work. It exists inside you, on the Plane of Potentiality. Are you a writer? This body of work exists, like books on a bookshelf. Close your eyes. You can see them.

Are you a musician? These works exist like albums, like concerts, like performances. Listen with your inner ear. You can hear them.

These bodies of work exist as alternative futures. They are that which can be…and should be…and want to be. But they are not that which is guaranteed to be.”

“Can we put our ass where our heart wants to be if we’ve got a family, a job, a mortgage? Yes. The Muse does not count hours. She counts commitment. It is possible to be one hundred percent committed ten percent of the time. The goddess understands.”

“I am passionately pro-education. There are few things I care more about than reading and learning constantly. Yet, the lives of the people profiled in this book show conclusively that education is most certainly not the same thing as academic excellence. We’ve conflated them, at great cost to ourselves, our children, our economy, and our culture.”

“You are a reflection of the 20 or 30 people that give you the best advice.”

“The wealthiest people are not the ones who are hoarding the most value – they’re the ones who have the most value flowing in and out of their lives.”

“The first and most fundamental threat to your Future Self is not having hope in your future. Without hope, the present loses meaning. Without hope, you don't have clear goals or a sense of purpose for your life. Without hope, there is no way. Without hope, you decay."

“You can expect the future to take a definite form or you can treat it as hazily uncertain. If you treat your future as something definite, it makes sense to understand it in advance and to work to shape it. But if you expect an indefinite future ruled by randomness, you will give up trying to master it."

“Anything that isn’t taking you toward your Future Self is a lesser goal."

“The lesson is that the things we had thought were most important - achievement, affirmation, intelligence - are actually less important, and the things we had undervalued - heart and soul - are actually most important."

"It turns out that freedom isn't an ocean you want to spend your life in. Freedom is a river you want to get across so you can plant yourself on the other side - and fully commit to something."

“Life is not a solitary journey. It is building a home together. It is a process of being formed by attachments and then forming attachments in turn. It is a great chain of generations passing down gifts to one another."

"The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.”

#1: "For which of your beliefs do you think that the opposite could also be true?"

#2: “What if you didn’t need money or attention? What would you do then? Who would you be?"

#3: "Which possible career paths - or business opportunities - check all the boxes of being smart to do, useful to others, and fun for you personally?"

#4: “What do you hate not doing? How could you move things around in your life so that you're able to do more of that thing?"

#5: "What are you afraid to admit that you actually want out of life? What's stopping you from admitting this to yourself?"

#6: "What's something that's obvious to you but might be amazing to others? Have you shared this knowledge, talent, or ability with others before?"

#7: "Have you ever been afraid of something, did it anyway, and then discovered that it wasn't actually all that scary? Is there something you're currently afraid of that could turn out the same way?"

#8: "What if the fear you're feeling is actually just excitement?"

#9: "Instead of adding more stuff to your life, what could you subtract?"

#10: "Who knows more about how you should live your life than you do?"

"Judge a man by his questions, rather than by his answers."

"The path to success is to take massive, determined action.”

"I’ve been a musician, producer, circus performer, entrepreneur, TED speaker, and book publisher.

Monomaniac, introvert, slow thinker, and love finding a different point of view.

California native, I now live in New Zealand."