Realistic goals, goals restricted to the average ambition level, are uninspiring and will only fuel you through the first or second problem, at which point you throw in the towel. If the potential payoff is mediocre or average, so is your effort.

What are you good at? What could you be the best at? What makes you happy? What excites you? What makes you feel accomplished and good about yourself? What are you most proud of having accomplished in your life? Can you repeat this or further develop it? What do you enjoy sharing or experiencing with other people?

It is predicated on the assumption that you dislike what you are doing during the most physically capable years of your life. This is a nonstarter—nothing can justify that sacrifice.

The most fulfilled and effective people I know – world-famous creatives, billionaires, thought leaders, and more – look at their life’s journey as perhaps 25 percent finding themselves and 75 percent creating themselves.

When you try to something big it’s hard to fail completely.

To become “successful,” you have to say “yes” to a lot of experiments. To learn what you’re best at, or what you’re most passionate about, you have to throw a lot against the wall.

I encourage you to make huge, ambitious plans. Just remember that the big-beyond-belief things are accomplished when you deconstruct them into the smallest possible pieces and focus on each “moment of impact”, one step at the time.

We end up spending “the best part of one’s life earning money in order to enjoy a questionable liberty during the least valuable part of it.” We’d love to drop all and explore the world outside, we tell ourselves, but the time never seems right. Thus, given an unlimited amount of choices, we make none. Settling into our lives, we get so obsessed with holding on to our domestic certainties that we forget why we desired them in the first place.”

There is a direct correlation between an increased sphere of comfort and getting what you want.

In a world where nobody really knows anything, you have the incredible freedom to continually reinvest yourself and forge new paths, no matter how strange. Embrace your weird self.

For a long time, I’ve known that the key to getting started down the path of being remarkable in anything is to simply act with the intention of being remarkable.

Focus on what’s in front of you, design great days to create a great life, and try not to make the same mistake twice.

Three to five billion new consumers are coming online in the next 6 years. Holy cow, that’s extraordinary. What do they need?

Don’t use skepticism as a thinly veiled excuse for inaction or remaining in your comfort zone.

Find the cause or vehicle that interests you most and make no apologies.

“What do you want?” is too imprecise to produce a meaningful and actionable answer.

While the world is a gold mine, you need to go digging in other people’s heads to unearth riches. Questions are your pickaxes and competitive advantage.

How can you use different belief systems, different frameworks, different principles, different tech tools to optimize your productivity and your effectiveness?

It all starts with the right questions. If you get the answers right to the wrong questions, you won’t get very far, whereas if you get even mediocre answers to the right questions, then those are the force multipliers.

How do you generate the most profit with the least effort? How do you maximize margins without sacrificing quality?

The way that you become world-class is by asking good questions.

There is no one right answer.

If the answer isn’t simple, it’s probably not the right answer.

The most common approach is very seldom the most effective and most efficient.

The options are limitless, but each path must begin with the same first step: replacing assumptions.

When you put on really effective armor, you do keep things out but you also keep a lot in.

Very often, “our” beliefs are not our own.

Achievement without appreciation makes you ambitious but miserable. Appreciation without achievement makes you unambitious but happy.

Improving the quality of life in the world is in no fashion inferior to adding more lives.

Being efficient without regard to effectiveness is the default mode of the universe.

Many of our strengths in excess become or create glaring weaknesses.

The best results in life are often held back by false constructs and untested assumptions.

The commonsense rules of the ‘real world’ are a fragile collection of socially reinforced illusions.

Everyone is fighting a battle you know nothing about.

If the recipe sucks, it doesn’t matter how good a cook you are.

You’re never as bad as they say you are, but you’re never as good as they say you are either.

Most people are fast to stop you before you get started but hesitant to get in the way if you’re moving.

The goal is to find your inefficiencies in order to eliminate them and to find your strengths so you can multiply them.

Slow down and remember this: Most things make no difference. Being busy is a form of mental laziness – lazy thinking and indiscriminate action.

Time is wasted because there is so much time available.

Never automate something that can be eliminated, and never delegate something that can be automated or streamlined. Otherwise, you waste someone else’s time instead of your own, which now wastes your hard-earned cash.

Don’t confuse the complex with the difficult. Most situations are simple — many are just emotionally difficult to act upon.

It isn’t enough to think outside the box. Thinking is passive. Get used to acting outside the box.

The fishing is best where the fewest go and the collective insecurity of the world makes it easy for people to hit home runs while everyone is aiming for base hits.

Look for flexible principles so that you can then have a toolkit that’s adaptable.

“Someday” is a disease that will take your dreams to the grave with you.

Enough is enough. Lemmings no more. The blind quest for cash is a fool’s errand.

If you can free your time and location, your money is automatically worth 3-10 times as much.

Being financially rich and having the ability to live like a millionaire are fundamentally two very different things.

Your network is your net worth.