Here are a few books that have affected me or made me think differently in the last few years. None of them are directly related to business: Radical Acceptance by Tara Brach — this is an important book, originally recommended to me by a neuroscience PhD who benefited from it. The Yaqui Way of Knowledge by Carlos Castaneda. The Body Keeps The Score by Van Der Kolk.

The superheroes you have in your mind (idols, icons, titans, billionaires, etc.) are nearly all walking flaws who’ve maximized 1 or 2 strengths.

Top academic institutions are wonderful, but there are unrecognized benefits to not coming out of one. Grads from top schools are funneled into high-income 80-hour-per-week jobs, and 15–30 years of soul-crushing work has been accepted as the default path. How do I know? I’ve been there.

If you want great mentors, you have to become a great mentee. If you want to lead, you have to first learn to follow.

If the challenge we face doesn’t scare us, then it’s probably not that important.

Overanalysis has been my life story. It can be far worse than laziness, as overanalysis leads to the same lack of action but also self-loathing.

For years, I set goals, made resolutions to change direction, and nothing came of either. I was just as insecure and scared as the rest of the world.

Measure the cost of inaction, realize the unlikelihood and repairability of most missteps, and develop the most important habit of those who excel and enjoy doing so: action.

For overcoming fear, I think that an exercise called “fear-setting” is extremely helpful.

Information is useless if it is not applied to something important or if you will forget it before you have a chance to apply it.

Quite aside from the fact that it is impossible to understand a foreign culture without understanding its language, acquiring a new language transforms the human experience and makes you aware your own language: your own thoughts.

Language learning deserves special mention. It is, bar none, the best thing you can do to hone clear thinking.

BrainQuicken was a real learning on the job MBA.

I know nothing. I am a beginner. But I ask a lot of questions.

Thinking is mostly just asking yourself questions and answering them.

It’s amazing how someone’s IQ seems to double as soon as you give them responsibility and indicate that you trust them.

Learning is such an addiction and compulsion of mine that I rarely travel somewhere without deciding first how I’ll obsess on a specific skill.

Though you can upgrade your brain domestically, traveling and relocating provides unique conditions that make progress much faster.

Information without emotion isn’t retained.

Don’t get angry, don’t get even – focus on living well and that will eat at them more than anything you can do.

Most losses or mistakes are really survivable.

Nothing breaks my heart more than seeing that person who’s struggling to lose weight who thinks that they need to run 20 miles a week. They have no desire to do it, their knees hurt, they hate it, and they’re not losing weight. And I’d like to say, ‘Well, I’ve got great news for you. You don’t ever need to run another step a day in your life, because there’s no value in that.’ “There is value in exercise, though, and I think that the most important type of exercise, especially in terms of bang for your buck, is going to be really high-intensity, heavy strength training. Strength training aids everything from glucose disposal and metabolic health to mitochondrial density and orthopedic stability. That last one might not mean much when you’re a 30-something young buck, but when you’re in your 70s, that’s the difference between a broken hip and a walk in the park.

I would emphasize that by improving your physical machine, which includes the brain, you improve all of your performance, and the transfer is incredible to business.

In practice, strictly making health #1 has real social and business ramifications. That’s a price I’ve realized I must be fine paying, or I could lose weeks or months to sickness or fatigue.