The How of Happiness: A Scientific Approach to Getting the Life You Want (Sonja Lyubomirsky)

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  • It is never too late to be what you might have been.
  • Create a media-free zone in your house and reserve it for conversations.
  • Source: The How of Happiness: A New Approach to Getting the Life You Want – by
  • What assumptions do you hold about the world and why things are the way they are?
  • A deep sense of shared rituals, dreams, and goals underlies thriving relationships.
  • The happier the person, the less attention she pays to how others around her are doing.
  • People have a remarkable capacity to become inured to any positive changes in their lives.
  • Forgiving is something that you do for yourself and not for the person who has wronged you.
  • Forgiving people are less likely to be hateful, depressed, hostile, anxious, angry, and neurotic.
  • Don’t be the person who is waiting for this, that, or the other thing to happen before she can be happy.
  • Frank Lloyd Wright observed: “Many wealthy people are little more than the janitors of their possessions.
  • Not only does materialism not bring happiness, but it’s been shown to be a strong predictor of unhappiness.
  • Studies show that people who perceive God as distant and punitive are more likely to be distressed and ill.
  • Working toward a meaningful life goal is one of the most important strategies for becoming lastingly happier.
  • The research shows that the happier the person, the less attention she pays to how others around her are doing.
  • Establish the precise time periods and activities during which you find yourself in flow… and then multiply them.
  • If you’re not happy today, then you won’t be happy tomorrow unless you take things into your own hands and take action.
  • One prominent psychologist suggests that the magic number is to have three friends or companions you can really count on.
  • If people got just one more hour of sleep each night, our Western “sleep-sick” society would be much healthier and happier.
  • Happiness level is entirely in your hands, that your “unhappy genes” do not doom you to unhappiness or, worse, to depression.
  • Writing out your ruminations can help you organise them, make sense of them, and observe patterns you haven’t perceived before.
  • Be open to beauty and excellence. Allow yourself to truly admire an object of beauty or a display of talent, genius or virtue.
  • Happiness, more than anything, is a state of mind, a way of perceiving and approaching ourselves and the world in which we reside.
  • One of the great obstacles to attaining happiness is that most of our beliefs about what will make us happy are in fact erroneous.
  • In the long run, the preoccupation, hostility and resentment that we harbor serve only to hurt us, both emotionally and physically.
  • In a nutshell, the fountain of happiness can be found in how you behave, what you think, and what goals you set every day of your life.
  • Learn how to appreciate and take pleasure in mundane, everyday experiences like eating a meal, taking a shower or walking to the subway.
  • In the most flourishing relationships, partners evoke the best in each other, helping them to come closer in reaching their ideal selves.
  • I prefer to think of the creation or construction of happiness, because research shows that it’s in our power to fashion it for ourselves.
  • If we can accept as true that life circumstances are not the keys to happiness, we’ll be greatly empowered to pursue happiness for ourselves.
  • An important way that you can bolster the effectiveness of a happiness activity is to vary it. By varying it, we ensure that we don’t adapt to it.
  • It may be obvious that to achieve anything substantial in life—learn a profession, master a sport, raise a child—a good deal of effort is required.
  • Surveys show, and large-scale randomised interventions confirm, that exercise may well be the most effective instant happiness booster of all activities.
  • Why do we need a sense of meaning? Because we need to feel that we matter, that our suffering and hard work aren’t futile, and that our life has purpose.
  • Your face (and body and voice) send signals (feedback) to your brain, informing it that you are experiencing a particular emotion and lead you to feel it.
  • Take pleasure in the senses. Focus on the sweetness of the ripe mango, the aroma of the bakery, or the warmth of the sun when you step out from the shade.
  • It turns out that the process of working toward a goal, participating in a valued and challenging activity, is as important to well-being as its attainment.
  • Replay happy days. The practice of repetitively replaying your happiest life events serves to prolong and reinforce positive emotions and make you happier.
  • In the face of stressful events, smiling and laughter can help “undo” negative emotions, distract, and bring about feelings of peace, amusement, or even joy.
  • When a person is distraught or stressed or nervous or insecure, no insight is gained from overthinking. To the contrary, ruminations makes things only worse.
  • Distract, distract, distract. The distracting activity you select must be engrossing enough so that you don’t have the opportunity to lapse back into ruminations.
  • Studies show that those proficient at reminiscing about the past – looking back on happy times, rekindling joy from happy memories – are best able to buffer stress.
  • Truly happy people have the capacity to distract and absorb themselves in activities that divert their energies and attention away from dark or anxious ruminations.
  • Especially in the face of stressful events, smiling and laughter can help undo negative emotions, distract, and bring about feelings of peace, amusement, or even joy.
  • I use the term happiness to refer to the experience of joy, contentment, or positive well-being, combined with a sense that one’s life is good, meaningful, and worthwhile.
  • You can’t be envious and happy at the same time. People who pay too much attention to social comparisons find themselves chronically vulnerable, threatened, and insecure.
  • A compelling case can be made that the level of material comfort (or lack thereof) you are experiencing today is equivalent to how the top 5 percent lived a half century ago!
  • Gratitude is an antidote to negative emotions, a neutralizer of envy, hostility, worry, and irritation. It is savoring; it is not taking things for granted; it is present oriented.
  • Happy moods, no matter what the source, lead people to be more productive, more likeable, more active, more healthy, more friendly, more helpful, more resilient, and more creative.
  • The research study revealed that less than a year after winning, lottery ticket winners reported being no more happy than regular folks who had not experienced the sudden windfall.
  • I have found that truly happy people have the capacity to distract and absorb themselves in activities that divert their energies and attention away from dark or anxious ruminations.
  • Practice empathy. The more successful you are at achieving understanding, concern, and consideration of the other person’s perspective, the more likely you are to forgive him or her.
  • This may be because happy people frequently experience positive moods and these positive moods prompt them to be more likely to work actively toward new goals and build new resources.
  • We habitually fail to enjoy, savor, and live in the present, as our minds are often someplace else. However, when you think about it, the present moment is all we are really guaranteed.
  • Before you part in the morning, find one thing that each of you is going to do that day. When you meet again in the evening, have a “reunion conversation” in a low stress setting and listen.
  • We cannot allow our happiness to depend on our external circumstances, for every positive event and accomplishment we experience are accompanied by rapid adaptation and escalating expectations.
  • People prone to joyful anticipation, skilled at obtaining pleasure from looking forward and imagining future happy events, are especially likely to be optimistic and to experience intense emotions.
  • If you understand your guiding values and have a clear sense of your preferences and desires, you will likely instantly recognise when there’s a match between you and a particular activity or life task.
  • Happy people are more likely than their less happy peers to have fulfilling marriages and relationships, high incomes, superior work performance, community involvement, robust health and even a long life.
  • Aerobic exercise was just as effective at treating depression as was Zoloft, or as a combination of exercise and Zoloft. Yet exercise is a lot less expensive, usually with no side effects apart from soreness.
  • Researchers believe that a genuine sense of meaning in life must be rooted in a person’s own thoughts, feelings, and experiences. Blindly embracing someone else’s meaning won’t bring about happiness and growth.
  • In sedentary older adults, a very low-intensity exercise program (walking or resistance / flexibility training) reduces depression and increases confidence and maintains the improvement for an amazing five years.
  • Our expectations about what our lives should be like are greater than ever before; we believe that we can do anything, and we are profoundly disappointed when reality doesn’t meet or even come close to perfection.
  • Dispute or challenge your pessimistic thoughts. Identify any negative beliefs triggered by the adversity or problem.  Dispute the negative belief, challenging it, thinking of other possible reasons for the problem. 
  • One benevolent act can set in motion a series of kind acts. Recent research shows that simply witnessing or hearing about a kindness leads people to feel “elevated” and increases their desire to perform good deeds. 
  • Every week, try to do at least one thing that supports your partners roles or dreams. The goal should be to honour and respect each other and each other’s life dreams and interests, even if you don’t share them all. 
  • The combination of rumination and negative mood is toxic. Research shows that people who ruminate while sad or distraught are likely to feel besieged, powerless, self-critical, pessimistic, and generally negatively biased.
  • There is sometimes powerful meaning in anguish and trauma. Suffering may bring about posttraumatic growth, including spiritual growth, a timeless perspective on possible life paths, and a sense that life has renewed meaning.
  • Granting forgiveness does not necessarily imply excusing or tolerating the offender’s behaviour, but it does entail trying to let go of your hurt, anger, and hostility and adopting a more charitable and benevolent perspective.
  • Religion and spirituality undoubtedly help us to find meaning in life. Why do we need a sense of meaning? Because we need to feel that we matter, that our suffering and our hard work aren’t futile, and that our life has a purpose.
  • Researchers define savouring as any thoughts or behaviours capable of “generating, intensifying, and prolonging enjoyment.” The habit of savouring has been shown in empirical research to be related to intense and frequent happiness.
  • Pretending that you’re happy – smiling, engaged, mimicking energy and enthusiasm – not only can earn you some of the benefits of happiness (returned smkiles, strengthened friendships, success at work) but can actually make you happier.
  • Not surprisingly, commitment is especially potent when made in front of other people. A University of Scranton study found that people who made public New Year’s resolutions were a remarkable ten times more likely to succeed at their goal.
  • One of the strongest findings in the literature is that happy people have better relationships than do their less happy peers. It’s no surprise, then, that investing in social relationships is a potent strategy on the path to becoming happier.
  • Another way to appreciate being forgiven is to seek forgiveness for yourself. Write a letter of apology. Describe what you have done, acknowledge it was wrong, describe the harm it has done and apologise. Whether you send the letter is up to you.
  • The key to happiness lies not in changing our genetic makeup (which is impossible) and not in changing our circumstances (i.e. seeking wealth or attractivness or better colleagues, which is usually impractical), but in our daily intentional activities.
  • People who strive for something personally significant, whether it’s learning a new craft, changing careers, or raising moral children, are far happier than those who don’t have strong dreams or aspirations. Find a happy person, and you will find a project.
  • Essentially, all optimism strategies involve the exercise of construing the world with a more positive and charitable perspective, and many entail considering the silver lining in the cloud, identifying the door that opens as a result of one that has closed.
  • Thus the key to happiness lies not in changing our genetic makeup (which is impossible) and not in changing our circumstances (i.e., seeking wealth or attractiveness or better colleagues, which is usually impractical), but in our daily intentional activities.
  • It takes hard work and a great deal of practice to accomplish effectively, but if you can persist at these strategies until they become habitual, the benefits could be immense. Some optimists may be born that way, but scores of optimists are made with practice.
  • The label comes from the conviction that empowering people to develop a positive state of mind—to live the most rewarding and happiest lives they can—is just as important as psychology’s traditional focus on repairing their weaknesses and healing their pathologies.
  • If we train ourselves to obtain flow in as many circumstances as possible, we will have happier lives. Flow is inherently pleasurable and fulfilling, and the enjoyment you obtain is generally of the type that is lasting and reinforcing. Flow provides a natural high. 
  • Happiness is not out there for us to find. The reason that it’s not out there is that it’s inside us. As banal and cliched as this may sound, happiness more than anything is a state of mind, a way of perceiving and approaching ourselves and the world in which we reside. 
  • Last but not least, the happiest people do have their share of stresses, crises, and even tragedies. They may become just as distressed and emotional in such circumstances as you or I, but their secret weapon is the poise and strength they show in coping in the face of challenge.
  • [Optimism] is not about providing a recipe for self-deception. The world can be a horrible, cruel place, and at the same time it can be wonderful and abundant. These are both truths. There is not a halfway point; there is only choosing which truth to put in your personal foreground.
  • All that is required to become an optimist is to have the goal and to practice it. The more you rehearse optimistic thoughts, the more ‘natural’ and ‘ingrained’ they will become. With time they will be part of you, and you will have made yourself into an altogether different person.
  • Studies show that spiritual people are relatively happier than nonspiritual people, have superior mental health, cope better with stressors, are physically healthier and live longer lives. People who perceive the divine being as loving and responsive are happier than those who don’t.
  • You have to participate relentlessly in the manifestations of your own blessings. And once you have achieved a state of happiness, you must never become lax about maintaining it, you must make a mighty effort to keep swimming upward into that happiness forever, to stay afloat on top of it.
  • If you suddenly experienced a financial windfall, you would ultimately be much happier if you spent the money on numerous pleasant, mood- boosting things occurring on a day-to- day or weekly basis – rather than spend it all on a single big-ticket item that you believe you would really love. 
  • Self-disclosure, revealing intimate thoughts and feelings, is difficult for some individuals, but it’s critical to friendships, especially women’s friendships. This is because honest self- disclosure, when it occurs unhurriedly and appropriately, breeds more self-disclosure and cultivates intimacy. 
  • Sometimes when I’m facing a horrendous week or am upset over a perceived slight, I remind myself that I won’t remember it (much less care about it) one month, six months, or a year from now. (The more extreme version of this strategy is to use the deathbed criterion: Will it matter when you’re on your deathbed?)
  • Researchers have studied people’s responses to a variety of traumas. When a challenge or trauma is profound, unsettling a person’s foundations and forcing him to confront his personal priorities, sense of meaning and identity, a small subset of individuals report personal growth, strengthening and even thriving.
  • Express admiration, appreciation and affection. One of the key conclusions of two decades of research on marriage is that happy relationships are characterised by a ratio of positive to negative affect of five to one. This means that for every negative statement or behaviour, there are at least five positive ones.
  • Research showed that people who wrote about their visions for twenty minutes per day over several days, relative to those who wrote about other topics, were more likely to show immediate increases in positive moods, to be happier several weeks later, and even to report fewer physical ailments several months thence.
  • The world’s most prominent researcher and writer about gratitude, Robert Emmons, defines gratitude as “a felt sense of wonder, thankfulness and appreciation for life.” By definition, the practice of gratitude involves a focus on the present moment, on appreciating your life as it is today and what has made it so. 
  • Human beings are actually lucky to have to have the ability to adapt quickly to changing circumstances, as it’s extremely useful when bad things happen. Some studies of hedonic adaptation show, for instance, that we have a phenomenal ability to recover much of our happiness after a debilitating illness or accident.
  • One of the great ironies of our quest to become happier is that so many of us focus on changing the circumstances of our lives in the misguided hope that those changes will deliver happiness… An impressive body of research now shows that trying to be happy by changing our life situations ultimately will not work.
  • The key to creating flow is to establish a balance between skills and challenges. A flow experience falls in just the right space between boredom and anxiety. To maintain flow, we continually have to test ourselves in ever more challenging activities. We have to stretch our skills or find novel opportunities to use them. 
  • Greater meaning in life comes from having a coherent “life scheme.” Sit back and write, or share with someone, your own life story. Who are you now, and who were you before?  What future do you imagine for yourself?  What are the obstacles in your path?  What assumptions do you hold about the world and why things are the way they are? 
  • Don’t go through life wearing blinders to everything that is touching, beautiful, virtuous, and magnificent. Consider the example of the poet Walt Whitman, whose ‘favourite activity was to stroll outdoors by himself, admiring trees, flowers, the sky, and the shifting light of the day, listening to birds, crickets, and other natural sounds.
  • No one in our society needs to be told that exercise is good for us. Whether you are overweight or have a chronic illness or are a slim couch potato, you’ve probably heard or read this dictum countless times throughout your life. But has anyone told you— indeed, guaranteed you—that regular physical activity will make you happier? I swear by it.
  • Write down your barrier thoughts, and then consider ways to reinterpret the situation. In the process, ask yourself questions like… What else could this situation or experience mean? Can anything good come from it? Does it present any opportunities for me? What lessons can I learn and apply to the future? Did I develop any strengths as a result?
  • The notion that happiness must be found is so pervasive that even the familiar phrase “pursuit of happiness” implies that happiness is an object that one has to chase or discover. I don’t like the phrase. I prefer to think of the “creation” or “construction” of happiness because research shows that it’s in our power to fashion it for ourselves. 
  • Be open to beauty and excellence. This strategy involves allowing yourself to truly admire an object of beauty or a display of talent, genius or virtue. Strive even to feel reverence and awe. Positive psychologists suggest that people who open themselves to the beauty and excellence around them are more likely to find joy, meaning, and profound connections in their lives.
  • Find meaning through expressive writing. Write about your distressing or painful life experience. Describe the experience in detail and explore your personal reactions and deepest emotions fully.  When an experience has structure and meaning, it seems much more manageable and controllable than when it’s represented by a chaotic and painful jumble of thoughts and images. 
  • Some of the common transformative experiences reported by trauma survivors were renewed belief in their ability to endure and prevail, improved relationships (in particular discovering who one’s true friends are), feeling more comfortable with intimacy and a greater sense of compassion for others who suffer and developing a deeper, more sophisticated and more satisfying philosophy of life.
  • Approximately one-third of all homes in 1940 did not have running water, indoor toilets, or bathtub/showers, and more than half had no central heating. If you were twenty-five years or older in 1940, you would have stood only a 40 percent chance of having completed the eighth grade, a 25 percent chance of having graduated from high school, and only a 5 percent chance of having finished college.
  • We found that the happiest people take pleasure in other people’s successes and show concern in the face of others’ failures. A completely different portrait, however, has emerged of a typical unhappy person—namely, as someone who is deflated rather than delighted about his peers’ accomplishments and triumphs and who is relieved rather than sympathetic in the face of his peers’ failures and undoings.
  • Consider how much you agree with the following statements: 1. I’ll make him/her pay. I want to see him/her hurt and miserable.    I live as if he/she doesn’t exist, isn’t around.  4. I keep as much distance between us as possible.  The more you agree with any of these items –  the first two tapping revenge and the second two measuring avoidance –  the more work you still need to do in order to forgive. 
  • There are questions of faith, such as “Does God exist?” There are questions of opinion, such as “Who is the greatest baseball player of all time?” There are debate questions, such as “Should abortion be legal?” And then there are questions that can be answered to a degree of certainty by the application of the scientific method, which are called empirical questions—in other words, those that can be largely settled by the evidence.
  • Flow is a state of intense absorption and involvement with the present moment. You’re totally immersed in what you’re doing, fully concentrating, and unaware of yourself. The activity you’re performing is engrossing, stretching your your skills and expertise.  When in flow, people report feeling strong and efficacious, at the peak of their abilities, alert, in control, and completely unselfconscious.  They do the activity for the sheer sake of doing it. 
  • Take twenty to thirty minutes to think about what you expect your life to be one, five, or ten years from now. Visualize a future for yourself in which everything has turned out the way you’ve wanted. This writing exercise in a sense puts your optimistic ‘muscles’ into practice. Even if thinking about the brightest future for yourself doesn’t come naturally at first, it may get there with time and training. Amazing things can come about as a result of writing.
  • Why does hedonic adaptation occur? The two biggest culprits are rising aspirations (e.g. the bigger house you buy after your windfall feels natural after a while; you experience a kind of “creeping normalcy” and begin to want an even bigger one) and social comparison (e.g. your new friends in the neighbourhood are driving BMWs and you feel you should too). As a result, even as people amass more of what they want with every year, their overall happiness tends to stay the same. 
  • People who are consistently grateful have been found to be relatively happier, more energetic, and more hopeful and to report experiencing more frequent positive emotions. They also tend to be more helpful and empathic, more spiritual and religious, more forgiving, and less materialistic than others who are less predisposed to gratefulness. Furthermore, the more a person is inclined to gratitude, the less likely he or she is to be depressed, anxious, lonely, envious, or neurotic.
  • Only about 10 percent of the variance in our happiness levels is explained by differences in life circumstances or situations – that is, whether we are rich or poor, healthy or unhealthy, beautiful or plain, married or divorced, etc. If with a magic wand we could put a group of people into the same set of circumstances (same house, same spouse, same place of birth, same face, same aches and pains), the differences in their happiness levels would be reduced by a measly 10 percent.
  • Consider how much time and commitment many people devote to physical exercise, whether it’s going to the gym, jogging, kickboxing, or yoga. My research reveals that if you desire greater happiness, you need to go about it in a similar way. In other words, becoming lastingly happier demands making some permanent changes that require effort and commitment every day of your life. Pursuing happiness takes work but consider that this ‘happiness work’ may be the most rewarding work you’ll ever do.
  • A series of studies conducted at the University of Rochester focused on people high in mindfulness – that is, those who are prone to be mindfully attentive to the here and now and keenly aware of their surroundings. It turns out that such individuals are are models of flourishing and positive mental health.  Relative to the average person, they are more likely to be happy, optimistic, self- confident, and satisfied with their lives and less likely to be depressed, angry, anxious or self- conscious. 
  • The face of happiness may be someone who is intensely curious and enthusiastic about learning; it may be someone who is engrossed in plans for his next five years; it may be someone who can distinguish between the things that matter and the things that don’t; it may be someone who looks forward each night to reading to her child. Some happy people may appear outwardly cheerful or transparently serene, and others are simply busy. In other words, we all have the potential to be happy, each in our own way.
  • If we observe genuinely happy people, we shall find that they do not just sit around being contented. They make things happen. They pursue new understandings, seek new achievements, and control their thoughts and feelings. In sum, our intentional, effortful activities have a powerful effect on how happy we are, over and above the effects of our set points and the circumstances in which we find themselves. If an unhappy person wants to experience interest, enthusiasm, contentment, peace, and joy, he or she can make it happen by learning the habits of a happy person.
  • In sum, across all the domains of life, happiness appears to have numerous positive byproducts that few of us have taken the time to really understand. In becoming happier, we not only boost experiences of joy, contentment, love, pride, and awe but also improve other aspects of our lives: our energy levels, our immune systems, our engagement with work and with other people, and our physical and mental health. In becoming happier, we bolster as well our feelings of self-confidence and self-esteem; we come to believe that we are worthy human beings, deserving of respect.
  • Finally, if you resolve that the trouble you’re enduring now is indeed significant and will matter in a year, then consider what the experience can teach you. Focusing on the lessons you can learn from a stress, irritant, or ordeal will help soften its blow. The lessons that those realities impart could be patience, perseverance, loyalty, or courage. Or perhaps you’re learning open-mindedness, forgiveness, generosity, or self-control. Psychologists call this posttraumatic growth, and it’s one of the vital tools used by happy, resilient people in facing the inevitable perils and hardships of life.
  • Intrinsic goals are those that you pursue because they are inherently satisfying and meaningful to you, which allow you to grow as a person, to develop emotional maturity, and to contribute to your community. By contrast, extrinsic goals reflect more what other people approve or desire of you – for example, pursuing goals for such superficial reasons as making money, boosting your ego, seeking power of fame, and bowing to manipulation or peer pressure. Research shows following intrinsic goals make us happier, in part because they are more inspiring and enjoyable and because they satisfy our most basic psychological needs in life.
  • This is a mental exercise in which you visualise the best possible future for yourself in multiple domains of your life. You imagine yourself in the future, after everything has gone as well as it possibly could. You have worked hard and succeeded at accomplishing all your life goals. Think of this as the realisation of your life dreams, and of your best potentials. An advantage of the Best Possible Selves exercise is that it is conducted through writing. Because writing is highly structured systematic, and rule bound, it prompts you to analyse your thoughts in a way that would be difficult, if not impossible, to do if you were just fantasising. Writing about your dreams helps you to better understand your priorities, your emotions, and your motives, your identity, who you really are and what’s in your heart. Research shows that people who write about their visions for twenty minutes per day over several days, relative to those who write about other topics, are more likely to show immediate increases in positive moods, to be happier several weeks later, and even to report fewer physical ailments several months thence.
  • Still others assert that they have grown enormously as a result of their traumatic experience, discovering a maturity and strength of character that they didn’t know they had—for example, reporting having found “a growth and a freedom to…give fuller expression to my feelings or to assert myself.” A new and more positive perspective is a common theme among those enduring traumas or loss, a renewed appreciation of the preciousness of life and a sense that one must live more fully in the present. For example, one bereaved person rediscovered that “having your health and living life to the fullest is a real blessing. I appreciate my family, friends, nature, life in general. I see a goodness in people.”12 A woman survivor of a traumatic plane crash described her experience afterward: “When I got home, the sky was brighter. I paid attention to the texture of sidewalks. It was like being in a movie.”13 Construing benefit in negative events can influence your physical health as well as your happiness, a remarkable demonstration of the power of mind over body. For example, in one study researchers interviewed men who had had heart attacks between the ages of thirty and sixty.14 Those who perceived benefits in the event seven weeks after it happened—for example, believing that they had grown and matured as a result, or revalued home life, or resolved to create less hectic schedules for themselves—were less likely to have recurrences and more likely to be healthy eight years later. In contrast, those who blamed their heart attacks on other people or on their own emotions (e.g., having been too stressed) were now in poorer health.

 

 

Golden Rules for Everyday Life (Omraam Mikhaël Aïvanhov)

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  • By beginning at the beginning, with little things, you will be able to go much further.
  • It is time you understand that true spirituality means that you yourself become the living expression of the divine teaching you follow.
  • Don’t make the mistake of thinking that tiredness is always the result of overwork; it is very often caused by a wasteful use of energy.
  • It is a rule of the spiritual life that, when you receive a truth, you must put it into practice in your life before trying to pass it on to others.
  • So never forget: the greatest secret, the most important key, to your happiness and progress is gratitude. As long as you appreciate all that heaven gives you, it will never abandon you.
  • Look at the newly opened rose: everyone is attracted by its delicious scent, even bees and butterflies. Yes, because it has opened its petals. So, why keep your petals closed? Why refuse to give off any perfume?
  • It is important to understand the power and efficacy of love. Whatever you do, do it with love… or don’t do it at all. For anything you do without love only fatigues and poisons you, and you need not be surprised to find yourself drained and ill. People are always asking how they can become tireless: the secret is to love what you do, for it is love that awakens your latent energies.
  • Never let your inner feelings of malaise reach such proportions that you can no longer put them right. Suppose you absentmindedly stepped in some wet concrete and are so lost in thought that you neglect to step out of it again; what will the result be? The concrete will harden; in fact, it will become so hard that someone will have to go and get some tools to break it before you can get your feet free, and you may well be hurt in the process. Well, this is what happens in the inner life: if you fail to put your mistakes or faults right very quickly, it will be too late. The remedy will be very costly and may well cause further damage.
  • It is love that provides the greatest possibilities for success; it is love that makes us more capable, more lucid and more perceptive; it is love that prepares the right conditions for the most harmonious and constructive manifestations. But who ever thinks about love? Sexual love… yes, of course: everybody is interested in that, but impersonal, spiritual love is the last thing they think about. … The greatest secret, the most effective method, is to love. When you leave your house in the morning, think of greeting all the creatures of the universe. Tell them, ‘I love you. I love you….,’ and then go off to work. For the rest of the day, you will feel happy and great-hearted, and your relations with others will be all the easier, because you have started the day by sending your love to every creature in the universe, and from every direction that love comes back to you. There are so many different things you can do to make life worth living.
  • Nobody is asking you to imitate those mystics and ascetics who fled from the temptations and difficulties of the world and to neglect your material life by dedicating yourself exclusively to prayer and meditation. On the other hand, more and more people today are totally absorbed by material concerns, and that is not the right solution either. Everyone should be in a position to work, earn a living and have their own family and, at the same time, possess the inner light and the methods they need to work at their own evolution. You have to develop both the spiritual and the material aspects of your lives, to be in the world while, at the same time, living a heavenly life. This is the goal you should aim for. It is difficult, of course, because you are still at the stage where, when you engage in spiritual activities, you let material affairs go to pieces and, when you take care of material affairs, you neglect your spiritual life. But you must have both. Both are necessary and both are possible. How? Well, before undertaking anything, always say to yourself, ‘My goal is to obtain true light, love and power: will I get them by doing this or that?’ Examine the situation carefully, and if you see that such or such an activity or interest deflects you from your ideal, abandon it.
  • So many people ruin their lives in their eagerness to acquire all kinds of possessions worth far less than life itself. Have you ever thought about this? If you learned to give priority to life, if you took care to treasure and protect it and keep it in a state of perfect integrity and purity, you would have far more opportunity to fulfill all your wishes, for when life is enlightened, illuminated and intense it gives us all the rest. You take life for granted and think you are free to do whatever you like with it, but one day, after years spent in the pursuit of your own ambitions, you will be so exhausted and disillusioned that if you weigh up all you have gained against everything you have lost you will find you have lost almost everything and gained practically nothing. People say, ‘Since I possess life, I can use it to get all the other things I want—money, pleasure, knowledge, glory, etc.,’ and they keep drawing on their reserves, until one day there is nothing left and they are forced to give up all their activities. It is senseless to behave like that, because in losing your life you lose everything. The essential thing is life itself, and you must protect, purify and strengthen it and reject whatever hampers or inhibits it, because it is thanks to life that you will obtain health, beauty, power, intelligence, love and true wealth. So, from now on, work at beautifying, intensifying and sanctifying your life.
  • How does the pearl oyster set about making a pearl? It all starts with a grain of sand that gets into its shell and begins to irritate it. ‘Oh, dear!’ says the oyster. ‘This is terrible; what a problem. What can I do to get rid of it?’ So the oyster begins to reflect: it concentrates and meditates and asks for guidance until, one day, it realizes that it will never be able to get rid of the grain of sand. But what it can do is wrap the grain up in such a way that it will be smooth, and shiny and velvety. And then, when it has succeeded in doing this, it is very happy and says to itself, ‘Ah, I’ve overcome a problem.’ For thousands of years the pearl oyster has been there, as a lesson to human beings, but they have never understood it. And what does it teach us? Simply that, if we wrap our difficulties and all the things that annoy us in a soft, luminous, opalescent matter, we will be very rich indeed. This is what you have to understand. So, from now on, instead of complaining and doing nothing to stop yourself from getting worn down by your difficulties, set to work to secrete this special matter and wrap them up in it. Every time you have to put up with a painful situation or somebody you really can’t bear, be glad, and say, ‘Lord God, what luck: another grain of sand, and a potential new pearl.’ If you really understand the example of the pearl oyster, you will have enough work to keep you busy for the rest of your life.
  • Before trying to educate others, look after your own education, otherwise it is like trying to remove a speck of dirt from a friend’s face when your own hands are black with coal dust: you will simply make him or her dirtier than before. Those who start trying to enlighten and reform others without having reformed themselves first can only lead them astray. So, leave everybody else alone, and concentrate on improving yourself. What is the point of moaning about the imperfections of humankind? Pay no attention to that; give all your attention to getting rid of your own imperfections. In that way, you will have less to worry about, you will stop wearing yourself out, and your evolution will progress much more rapidly, because you will be concentrating on improving yourself. Believe me, you must leave others to do as they please and work at yourself. You yourself must advance and become an example for others. You will never reform others by preaching at them, however eloquently, but if you are an example they will follow you in spite of themselves. This is why, instead of expecting harmony to reign in your family, neighborhood and place of work— and complaining when it doesn’t—you must begin by achieving it within yourself. When others see how much you have changed, they will feel they ought to change, too, for it is contagious; it is magic. Human beings who make a sincere effort to change release forces that make those around them do the same.
  • You are often anxious about the future and worry about possible accidents, illness or poverty, but why poison your life by thinking of all the bad things that might happen? We never know what the future holds, that’s true, but the best way to avoid disasters you fear is to try to live sensibly in the present. The future will be what you have made it in the present. It is today that is important. Just as the present is a consequence, a result of the past, the future will be a projection of the present. Everything hangs together; past, present and future cannot be separated. The future will be built on the foundations you lay today, and, of course, if those foundations are faulty, it is no good hoping for a very bright future. If they are solidly built, on the other hand, there will be no need to worry: with healthy roots you will get a strong trunk and healthy branches and fruit. The past is past but it has given birth to the present, and the present contains the roots of the future. This means that you must build your future in advance by improving the present. To do this, you must say to yourself, every day, ‘Let me see, what have I said and done today? What kind of thoughts and feelings have I had?’ And if you have done something wrong, if you have entertained bad thoughts and feelings, you must realize that this puts you on the side of the forces of darkness and that those forces will destroy your future. If you have lived badly during the day, you must at least try, before going to sleep, to lessen the bad effects by having better thoughts and deciding to do better the next day. Your good thoughts will be like a swarm of bees that clean and mend everything overnight so that you can start off next morning in better conditions.

 

 

Courage: The Joy of Living Dangerously (Osho)

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  • The more fearless a person is, the less mind he uses. The more fearful a person, the more he uses the mind.
  • Life is not a problem. To look at it as a problem is to take a wrong step. It is a mystery to be lived, loved, experienced.
  • Fear is nothing but absence of love. Do something with love, forget about fear. If you love well, fear disappears. If you love deeply, fear is not found.
  • If a man knows what peace is, and what mind is, he cannot write a book entitled Peace of Mind, because mind is the cause of all unpeace, all restlessness. Peace is when there is no mind.
  • Why does one feel bored? One feels bored because one has been living in dead patterns given to you by others. Renounce those patterns, come out of those patterns! Start living on your own.
  • Boredom simply means that the way you are living is wrong; hence it can become a great event, the understanding that, ‘I am bored and something has to be done, some transformation is needed.’
  • Committing many mistakes, one learns what is a mistake and how not to commit it. Knowing what is error, one comes closer and closer to what is truth. It is an individual exploration, you cannot depend on others’ conclusions.
  • You cannot bring the new in your life; the new comes. You can either accept it or reject it. If you reject it you remain a stone, closed and dead. If you receive it you become a flower, you start opening… and in that opening is celebration.
  • You cannot be truthful if you are not courageous. You cannot be loving if you are not courageous. You cannot be trusting if you are not courageous. You cannot inquire into reality if you are not courageous. Hence, courage comes first and everything else follows.
  • Love is not a relationship. Love is a state of being; it has nothing to do with anybody else. One is not in love, one is love. And of course when one is love, one is in love—but that is an outcome, a by-product, that is not the source. The source is that one is love.
  • To me, to be blissful is the greatest courage. To be miserable is very cowardly. In fact to be miserable, nothing is needed. Any coward can do it, any fool can do it. Everybody is capable of being miserable, but to be blissful, great courage is needed—it is an uphill task.
  • Courage means going into the unknown in spite of all the fears. Courage does not mean fearlessness. Fearlessness happens if you go on being courageous and more courageous. That is the ultimate experience of courage—fearlessness: That is the fragrance when the courage has become absolute.
  • Basically courage is risking the known for the unknown, the familiar for the unfamiliar, the comfortable for the uncomfortable, arduous pilgrimage to some unknown destination. One never knows whether one will be able to make it or not. It is gambling, but only the gamblers know what life is.
  • Insecurity is an intrinsic part of life—and good that it is so, because it makes life a freedom, it makes life a continuous surprise. One never knows what is going to happen. It keeps you continuously in wonder. Don’t call it uncertainty—call it wonder. Don’t call it insecurity—call it freedom.
  • All that is beautiful and all that is good and all that is divine can be felt only by the inner sense. Stop being influenced by people’s opinions. Rather, start looking in… allow your inner sense to say things to you. Trust it. If you trust it, it will grow. If you trust it, you will feed it, it will become stronger.
  • Only at the moment of death do [people] recognize the fact that they have not lived. Life has simply passed as if a dream, and death has come. Now there is no more time to live—death is knocking on the door. And when there was time to live, you were doing a thousand and one foolish things, wasting your time rather than living it.
  • It is difficult to love real people because a real person is not going to fulfill your expectations. He is not meant to. He is not here to fulfill anybody else’s expectations; he has to live his own life. And whenever he moves somewhere that goes against you or is not in tune with your feelings, emotions, your being, it becomes difficult.
  • To live dangerously means to live. If you don’t live dangerously, you don’t live. Living flowers only in danger. Living never flowers in security; it flowers only in insecurity. If you start getting secure, you become a stagnant pool. Then your energy is no longer moving. Then you are afraid… because one never knows how to go into the unknown.
  • Those who are courageous, they go headlong. They search all opportunities of danger. Their life philosophy is not that of insurance companies. Their life philosophy is that of a mountain climber, a glider, a surfer. And not only in the outside seas they surf; they surf in their innermost seas. And not only on the outside they climb Alps and Himalayas; they seek inner peaks.
  • To grow to your destiny needs great courage, it needs fearlessness. People who are full of fear cannot move beyond the known. The known gives a kind of comfort, security, safety because it is known. One is perfectly aware, one knows how to deal with it. One can remain almost asleep and go on dealing with it—there is no need to be awake; that’s the convenience with the known.
  • Whenever you have been in love with someone, even for a single moment, was there any fear? It has never been found in any relationship where, if even for a single moment, two persons are in deep love and a meeting happens, they are tuned to each other—in that moment fear has never been found. Just as if the light is on and darkness has not been found—there is the secret key: love more.
  • The word courage is very interesting. It comes from the Latin root cor, which means ‘heart.’ So to be courageous means to live with the heart. And weaklings, only weaklings, live with the head; afraid, they create a security of logic around themselves. Fearful, they close every window and door—with theology, concepts, words, theories—and inside those closed doors and windows, they hide.
  • Everybody is afraid—has to be. Life is such that one has to be. And people who become fearless, become fearless not by becoming brave—because a brave man has only repressed his fear; he’s not really fearless. A man becomes fearless by accepting his fears. It is not a question of bravery. It is simply seeing into the facts of life and realizing that these fears are natural. One accepts them!
  • Nothing can be secure, because a secure life will be worse than death. Nothing is certain. Life is full of uncertainties, full of surprises—that is its beauty! You can never come to a moment when you can say, ‘Now I am certain.’ When you say you are certain, you simply declare your death. Life goes on moving with a thousand and one uncertainties. That’s its freedom. Don’t call it insecurity.
  • That is one of the problems: people have been taught never to do anything wrong, and then they become so hesitant, so fearful, so frightened of doing wrong, that they become stuck. They cannot move, something wrong may happen. So they become like rocks, they lose all movement. Commit as many mistakes as possible, remembering only one thing: don’t commit the same mistake again. And you will be growing.
  • The way of the heart is the way of courage. It is to live in insecurity; it is to live in love, and trust; it is to move in the unknown. It is leaving the past and allowing the future to be. Courage is to move on dangerous paths. Life is dangerous, and only cowards can avoid the danger—but then, they are already dead. A person who is alive, really alive, vitally alive, will always move into the unknown.
  • They say all that is old is not gold. I say, even if all that is old is gold, forget about it. Choose the new—gold or no gold, it doesn’t matter. What matters is your choice: your choice to learn, your choice to experience, your choice to go into the dark. Slowly slowly your courage will start functioning. And sharpness of intelligence is not something separate from courage, it is almost one organic whole.
  • You were born as a no-mind. Let this sink into your heart as deeply as possible because through that, a door opens. If you were born as a no-mind, then the mind is just a social product. It is nothing natural, it is cultivated. It has been put together on top of you. Deep down you are still free, you can get out of it. One can never get out of nature, but one can get out of the artificial any moment one decides to.
  • [Listen] to the heart consciously, alertly, attentively. And follow it, go wherever it takes you. Yes, sometimes it will take you into dangers—but remember, those dangers are needed to make you ripe. Sometimes it will take you astray—but remember again, those goings astray are part of growth. Many times you will fall—rise up again, because this is how one gathers strength, by falling and rising again. This is how one becomes integrated.
  • In India it is common wisdom that the world is like a waiting room in a railway station; it is not your house. You are not going to remain in the waiting room forever. Nothing in the waiting room belongs to you—the furniture, the paintings on the wall… You use them—you see the painting, you sit on the chair, you rest on the bed—but nothing belongs to you. You are just here for a few minutes, or for a few hours at the most, then you will be gone.
  • Have you ever gone climbing the mountains? The higher the climb, the fresher you feel, the younger you feel. The greater the danger of falling, the bigger the abyss by the side, the more alive you are… between life and death, when you are just hanging between life and death. There is no boredom, then there is no dust of the past, no desire for the future. Then the present moment is very sharp, like a flame. It is enough—you live in the here and now.
  • Meditation should be an inner shelter, an inner shrine. Whenever you feel that the world is too much for you, you can move into your shrine. You can have a bath in your inner being. You can rejuvenate yourself. You can come out resurrected; again alive, fresh, young, renewed… to live, to be. But you should also be capable of loving people and facing problems, because a silence that is impotent and cannot face problems is not much of a silence, is not worth much.
  • People come to me, they always say, ‘The other is not loving me.’ Nobody comes and says, ‘I am not loving the other.’ Love has become a demand: ‘The other is not loving me.’ Forget about the other! Love is such a beautiful phenomenon, if you love you will enjoy. And the more you love, the more you become lovable. The less you love and the more you demand that other should love you, the less and less you are lovable, the more and more you become closed, confined to your ego.
  • People come to me, they always say, ‘The other is not loving me.’ Nobody comes and says, ‘I am not loving the other.’ Love has become a demand: ‘The other is not loving me.’ Forget about the other! Love is such a beautiful phenomenon, if you love you will enjoy. And the more you love, the more you become lovable. The less you love and the more you demand that other should love you, the less and less you are lovable, the more and more you become closed, confined to your ego.
  • What’s most interesting to me is how deeply connected both types of adventuring are. It is very similar to the connection between breathing in and breathing out. Adventuring on the outside is the expansion of the lungs—it is the breathing in of all that the world has to offer. Adventuring on the inside is the contraction of the lungs—it is the breathing out of all that you have inhaled and synthesized from your experiences. One leads to the other and the other leads to more of the one.
  • So much has been given to you. Do you deserve it? Have you earned it? Existence goes on pouring so much over you that to ask for more is just ugly. That which you have received, you should be grateful for it. And the most beautiful thing is that when you are grateful, more and more existence starts pouring over you. It becomes a circle: the more you get, the more you become grateful; the more you become grateful, the more you get… and there is no need to end it, it is an infinite process.
  • Drop all fears and love more—and love unconditionally. Don’t think that you are doing something for the other when you love; you are doing something for yourself. When you love it is beneficial to you. So don’t wait; don’t say that when others love, you will love—that is not the point at all. Be selfish. Love is selfish. Love people—you will be fulfilled through it, you will be getting more and more blessedness through it. And when love goes deeper, fear disappears; love is the light, fear is darkness.
  • Looking at a flower, become the flower; dance around the flower, sing a song. the wind is cool and crisp, the sun is warm, and the flower is in its prime. The flower is dancing in the wind, rejoicing, singing a song, singing alleluia. Participate with it! Drop indifference, objectivity, detachment. Drop all your scientific attitudes. Become a little more fluid, more melting, more merging. Let the flower speak to your heart, let the flower enter your being. Invite him—he is a guest! And then you will have some taste of mystery.
  • The young child is free of fear; children are born without any fear. If the society can help and support them to remain without fear, can help them to climb the trees and the mountains and swim the oceans and the rivers—if the society can help them in every possible way to become adventurers, adventurers of the unknown, and if the society can create a great inquiry instead of giving them dead beliefs—then the children will turn into great lovers, lovers of life. And that is true religion. There is no higher religion than love.
  • If love appears, who is going to go to the temple? For what? It is because love is missing that you are searching for God. God is nothing but a substitute for your missing love. Because you are not blissful, because you are not peaceful, because you are not ecstatic, you are searching for God—otherwise, who bothers? Who cares? If your life is a dance, God has been attained already. The loving heart is full of God. There is no need for any search, there is no need for any prayer, there is no need to go to any temple, to any priest.
  • Meet people, mix with people, with as many people as possible, because each person expresses a different facet of God. Learn from people. Don’t be afraid, this existence is not your enemy. This existence mothers you, this existence is ready to support you in every possible way. Trust, and you will start feeling a new upsurge of energy in you. That energy is love. That energy wants to bless the whole existence, because in that energy one feels blessed. And when you feel blessed, what else can you do except bless the whole existence?
  • Life can only be lived dangerously—there is no other way to live it. It is only through danger that life attains to maturity, growth. One needs to be an adventurer, always ready to risk the known for the unknown. And once one has tasted the joys of freedom and fearlessness, one never repents because then one knows what it means to live at the optimum. Then one knows what it means to burn your life’s torch from both ends together. And even a single moment of that intensity is more gratifying than the whole eternity of mediocre living.
  • The good news is that courage can be learned—it’s not something that you either have or you don’t. It’s something that can be improved upon from whatever level it is currently at. Courage is not fearlessness. It is not an absence of fear. It is not only grand, heroic gestures and actions. Courage is simply the ability to act in spite of fear. And since everybody’s fear levels are different and everybody has exercised their courage muscles differently throughout their lives, everybody’s courage should be expected to be called upon differently as well.
  • Once you have heard a truth it is impossible to forget it. That is one of the qualities of truth, that you don’t need to remember it. The lie has to be remembered continually; you may forget. The person habituated to lies needs a better memory than the person who is habituated to truth, because a true person has no need of memory. If you say only the truth there is no need to remember. But if you are saying a lie, then you have to continually remember because you have said one lie to one person, another lie to another person, something else to somebody else.
  • To accept the challenge of the unknown, in spite of all fears, is courage. The fears are there, but if you go on accepting the challenge again and again, slowly slowly those fears disappear. The experience of the joy that the unknown brings, the great ecstasy that starts happening with the unknown, makes you strong enough, gives you a certain integrity, makes your intelligence sharp. For the first time you start feeling that life is not just a boredom but an adventure. Then slowly slowly fears disappear; then you are always seeking and searching for some adventure.
  • Ordinary people love only when their conditions are fulfilled. They say, ‘You should be like this, only then will I love.’ A mother says to the child, ‘I’ll love you only if you behave.’ A wife says to the husband, ‘You have to be this way, only then can I love you.’ Everybody creates conditions; love disappears. Love is an infinite sky! You cannot force it into narrow spaces, conditioned, limited. If you bring fresh air into your house and close it off from everywhere—all the windows closed, all the doors closed—soon it becomes stale. Whenever love happens it is a part of freedom; then soon you bring that fresh air into your house and everything goes stale; dirty.
  • When I say live dangerously, I mean don’t live the life of ordinary respectability—that you are a mayor in a town, or a member of the corporation. This is not life. Or you are a minister, or you have a good profession and are earning well and money goes on accumulating in the bank and everything is going perfectly well. When everything is going perfectly well, simply see it—you are dying and nothing is happening. People may respect you, and when you die a great procession will follow you. Good, that’s all, and in the newspapers your pictures will be published and there will be editorials, and then people will forget about you. And you lived your whole life only for these things?
  • It is very easy to think about love. It is very difficult to love. It is very easy to love the whole world. The real difficulty is to love a single human being. It is very easy to love God or humanity. The real problem arises when you come across a real person and you encounter him. To encounter him is to go through a great change and a great challenge. He is not going to be your slave and neither are you going to be a slave to him. That’s where the real problem arises. If you are going to be a slave or if he is going to be a slave, then there is no problem. The problem arises because nobody is here to play a slave—and nobody can be a slave. Everybody is a free agent… the whole being consists of freedom. Man is freedom.
  • There are two types of living: one fear-oriented, one love-oriented. Fear-oriented living can never lead you into deep relationship. You remain afraid, and the other cannot be allowed, cannot be allowed to penetrate you to your very core. To an extent you allow the other, but then the wall comes up and everything stops. The love-oriented person is one who is not afraid of the future, one who is not afraid of the result and the consequence, who lives here and now. Don’t be bothered about the result; that is the fear-oriented mind. Don’t think about what will happen out of it. Just be here and act totally. Don’t calculate. A fear-oriented man is always calculating, planning, safeguarding. His whole life is lost in this way.
  • When the child is ill, take care of his body but don’t pay too much attention. It is dangerous, because if illness and your attention become associated… which is bound to happen if it is repeated again and again. Whenever the child is ill he becomes the center of the whole family: daddy comes and sits by his side and inquires about his health, and the doctor comes, and the neighbors start coming, and friends inquire, and people bring presents for him… Now he can become too much attached to all this; it can be so nourishing to his ego that he may not like to be well again. And if this happens, then it is impossible to be healthy. No medicine can help now. The person has become decisively committed to illness. And that’s what has happened to many people, the majority.

 

 

Make Time: How to Focus on What Matters Every Day (Jake Knapp & John Zeratsky)

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  • Every mistake is just a data point.
  • You know the antidote to exhaustion is not necessarily rest ….
  • You only waste time if you’re not intentional about how you spend it.
  • The antidote to exhaustion is wholeheartedness. —Brother David Steindl-Rast
  • Believe in your Highlight: It is worth prioritizing over random disruption.
  • Something magic happens when you start the day with one high-priority goal.
  • When distraction is hard to access, you don’t have to worry about willpower.
  • Perfection is a distraction—another shiny object taking your attention away from your real priorities.
  • it’s helpful to remember that Homo sapiens evolved to be hunter-gatherers, not screen tappers and pencil pushers.
  • Studies have shown that caffeine naps improve cognitive and memory performance more than coffee or a nap alone does.
  • Every time you check your email or another message service, you’re basically saying, Does any random person need my time right now?
  • Shifting your focus to something that your mind perceives as a doable, completable task will create a real increase in positive energy, direction, and motivation.
  • Compared with the life of a hunter-gatherer, farm work and village life sucked. Leisure time plummeted. Violence and disease skyrocketed. Unfortunately, there was no going back.
  • Combine the four-plus hours the average person spends on their smartphone with the four-plus hours the average person spends watching television, and distraction is a full-time job.
  • That is, one new tactic to help you make time for your Highlight, one that keeps you laser-focused by changing how you react to distractions, and one for building energy—three tactics total.
  • Instead of relying on your willpower, create real, physical barriers around distractions to focus your attention like a laser beam on your highlight. Delete all the social apps from your phone.
  • Another lesson from our design sprints was that we got more done when we banned devices. Since we set the rules, we were able to prohibit laptops and smartphones, and the difference was phenomenal.
  • In our design sprints, we found that if we ended each workday before people were exhausted, the week’s productivity increased dramatically. Even shortening the day by thirty minutes made a big difference.
  • Today’s constant noise and distractions are a disaster for your energy and your attention span. We’ll show you easy ways to find moments of quiet, like taking a break without screens and leaving your headphones at home.
  • Apple reports that people unlock their iPhones an average of 80 times per day, and a 2016 study by customer-research firm Dscout found that people touched their phones an average of 2,617 times per day. Distracted has become the new default.
  • Set a single intention at the start of each day. You’ll be more satisfied, joyful and effective. The highlight should take 60–90 minutes and will define your day. Of course, it’s not the only thing you’ll do over your day, but it’s the most important one.
  • All of a sudden I’d realize I was working toward a goal that no longer mattered to me. And living a someday life was demoralizing. In the words of author James Clear, I was essentially saying, I’m not good enough yet, but I will be when I reach my goal.
  • When you don’t take care of your body, your brain can’t do its job. If you’ve ever felt sluggish and uninspired after a big lunch or invigorated and clearheaded after exercising, you know what we mean. If you want energy for your brain, you need to take care of your body.
  • Anthropologists estimate that ancient humans worked only thirty hours a week. They lived and worked in tight-knit communities in which face-to-face communication was the only option. And of course they got plenty of sleep, going to bed when it was dark and rising with the sun.
  • Make Time is a framework for choosing what you want to focus on, building the energy to do it, and breaking the default cycle so that you can start being more intentional about the way you live your life. Even if you don’t completely control your own schedule—and few of us do—you absolutely can control your attention.
  • The Internet is home to many a treatise about the Best This or the Cool New Way to Do That.16 But this obsession with tools is misguided. Unless you’re a carpenter, a mechanic, or a surgeon, choosing the perfect tool is usually a distraction, yet another way to stay busy instead of doing the work you want to be doing.
  • We’re the descendants of those ancient humans, but our species hasn’t evolved nearly as fast as the world around us has. That means we’re still wired for a lifestyle of constant movement, varied but relatively sparse diets, ample quiet, plenty of face-to-face time, and restful sleep that’s aligned with the rhythm of the day.
  • Although some of our tactics turned into habits, others sputtered and failed. But taking stock of our results each day helped us understand why we tripped up. And this experimental approach also allowed us to be kinder to ourselves when we made mistakes—after all, every mistake was just a data point, and we could always try again tomorrow.
  • Over the centuries, we switched from wood to fossil fuel. We mastered steam and electricity. Then, during the last couple of centuries, things went bonkers. We created factories. We developed the television and then became obsessed with it, changing our sleep schedules to fit in daily TV time. We invented the home computer, the Internet, and the smartphone. Each time, we wrapped our lives around the new invention. Each time, there was no going back.
  • Every distraction imposes a cost on the depth of your focus. When your brain changes contexts—say, going from painting a picture to answering a text and then back to painting again—there’s a switching cost. Your brain has to load a different set of rules and information into working memory. This boot up costs at least a few minutes, and for complex tasks, it can take even longer. The two of us have found it can take a couple of hours of uninterrupted writing before we’re doing our best work; sometimes it even requires several consecutive days before we’re in the zone.

 

 

Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World (Cal Newport)

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  • Focus on the Wildly Important
  • If you can’t learn, you can’t thrive.”
  • To learn requires intense concentration.”
  • Clarity about what matters provides clarity about what does not.”
  • Clarity about what matters provides clarity about what does not.”
  • [Great creative minds] think like artists but work like accountants.”
  • why a shutdown will be profitable to your ability to produce valuable output
  • Less mental clutter means more mental resources available for deep thinking.”
  • (As Nietzsche said: It is only ideas gained from walking that have any worth.”)”
  • If you don’t produce, you won’t thrive—no matter how skilled or talented you are.”
  • Human beings, it seems, are at their best when immersed deeply in something challenging.
  • Who you are, what you think, feel, and do, what you love – is the sum of what you focus on.”
  • What we choose to focus on and what we choose to ignore – plays in defining the quality of our life.”
  • why cultures of connectivity persist, the answer, according to our principle, is because it’s easier.
  • An interruption, even if short, delays the total time required to complete a task by a significant fraction.”
  • To remain valuable in our economy, therefore, you must master the art of quickly learning complicated things.”
  • To succeed you have to produce the absolute best stuff you’re capable of producing—a task that requires depth.
  • There is a middle ground, and if you’re interested in developing a deep work habit, you must fight to get there.”
  • To build your working life around the experience of flow produced by deep work is a proven path to deep satisfaction.”
  • Efforts to deepen your focus will struggle if you don’t simultaneously wean your mind from a dependence on distraction.”
  • The shallow work that increasingly dominates the time and attention of knowledge workers are less vital than it often seems in the moment.”
  • Knowledge workers, I’m arguing, are tending toward increasingly visible busyness because they lack a better way to demonstrate their value.”
  • If you service low-impact activities, therefore, you’re taking away time you could be spending on higher-impact activities. It’s a zero-sum game.”
  • If you service low-impact activities, therefore, you’re taking away time you could be spending on higher-impact activities. It’s a zero-sum game.”
  • To simply wait and be bored has become a novel experience in modern life, but from the perspective of concentration training, it’s incredibly valuable.”
  • Want to pick up a great book or two this season? Check out our recommendations of hot books selected by your fellow readers, bestselling authors, and more!
  • As the author Tim Ferriss once wrote: Develop the habit of letting small bad things happen. If you don’t, you’ll never find time for the life-changing big things.”
  • As the author, Tim Ferriss once wrote: Develop the habit of letting small bad things happen. If you don’t, you’ll never find time for the life-changing big things.”
  • The task of a craftsman, they conclude, is not to generate meaning, but rather to cultivate in himself the skill of discerning the meanings that are already there.”
  • Deep work is important, in other words, not because distraction is evil, but because it enabled Bill Gates to start a billiondollar industry in less than a semester.
  • If you believe this formula, then Grant’s habits make sense: By maximizing his intensity when he works, he maximizes the results he produces per unit of time spent working.
  • Your goal is not to stick to a given schedule at all costs; it’s instead to maintain, at all times, a thoughtful say in what you’re doing with your time going forward—even”
  • Two Core Abilities for Thriving in the New Economy . The ability to quickly master hard things. . The ability to produce at an elite level, in terms of both quality and speed.”
  • People will usually respect your right to become inaccessible if these periods are well defined and well advertised, and outside these stretches, you’re once again easy to find.
  • A side effect of memory training, in other words, is an improvement in your general ability to concentrate. This ability can then be fruitfully applied to any task demanding deep work.”
  • Shallow Work: Non-cognitively demanding, logistical-style tasks, often performed while distracted.These efforts tend to not create much new value in the world and are easy to replicate.
  • Ericsson notes that for a novice, somewhere around an hour a day of intense concentration seems to be a limit, while for experts this number can expand to as many as four hours—but rarely more.”
  • In this new economy, three groups will have a particular advantage: those who can work well and creatively with intelligent machines, those who are the best at what they do, and those with access to capital.
  • To produce at your peak level you need to work for extended periods with full concentration on a single task free from distraction. Put another way, the type of work that optimizes your performance is deep work.”
  • In the absence of clear indicators of what it means to be productive and valuable in their jobs, many knowledge workers turn back toward the industrial indicator of productivity: doing lots of stuff in a visible manner.”
  • Deep Work: Professional activities performed in a state of distraction-free concentration that push your cognitive capabilities to their limit. These efforts create new value, improve your skill, and are hard to replicate.
  • Decades of work from multiple different subfields within psychology all point toward the conclusion that regularly resting your brain improves the quality of your deep work. When you work, work hard. When you’re done, be done.
  • To remain valuable in our economy, therefore, you must master the art of quickly learning complicated things. This task requires deep work. If you don’t cultivate this ability, you are likely to fall behind as technology advances.”
  • This, ultimately, is the lesson to come away with from our brief foray into the world of experimental psychology: To build your working life around the experience of flow produced by deep work is a proven path to deep satisfaction.”
  • The ability to perform deep work is becoming increasingly rare at exactly the same time it is becoming increasingly valuable in our economy. As a consequence, the few who cultivate this skill, and then make it the core of their working life, will thrive.
  • If you give your mind something meaningful to do throughout all your waking hours, you’ll end the day more fulfilled, and begin the next one more relaxed, than if you instead allow your mind to bathe for hours in semiconscious and unstructured Web surfing.
  • For an individual focused on deep work, hours spent working deeply should be the lead measure. It follows, therefore, that the individual’s scoreboard should be a physical artifact in the workspace that displays the individual’s current deep work hour count.
  • The best students understood the role intensity plays in productivity and therefore went out of their way to maximize their concentration—radically reducing the time required to prepare for tests or write papers, without diminishing the quality of their results.
  • The Deep Work Hypothesis: The ability to perform deep work is becoming increasingly rare at exactly the same time it is becoming increasingly valuable in our economy. As a consequence, the few who cultivate this skill, and then make it the core of their working life, will thrive.”
  • When Carl Jung wanted to revolutionize the field of psychiatry, he built a retreat in the woods. Jung’s Bollingen Tower became a place where he could maintain his ability to think deeply and then apply the skill to produce work of such stunning originality that it changed the world.
  • Like fingers pointing to the moon, other diverse disciplines from anthropology to education, behavioral economics to family counseling, similarly suggest that the skillful management of attention is the sine qua non of the good life and the key to improving virtually every aspect of your experience.”
  • If you can’t learn, you can’t thrive…If you don’t produce, you won’t thrive—no matter how skilled or talented you are…The two core abilities just described depend on your ability to perform deep work. If you haven’t mastered this foundational skill, you’ll struggle to learn hard things or produce at an elite level.
  • If your answer is ‘no’ to both questions, quit the service permanently. If your answer was a clear ‘yes,’ then return to using the service. If your answers are qualified or ambiguous, it’s up to you whether you return to the service, though I would encourage you to lean toward quitting. (You can always rejoin later.)
  • The reduction in shallow frees up more energy for the deep alternative, allowing us to produce more than if we had defaulted to a more typical crowded schedule. Second, the limits to our time necessitate more careful thinking about our organizational habits, also leading to more value produced as compared to longer but less organized schedules.
  • If you want to eliminate the addictive pull of entertainment sites on your time and attention, give your brain a quality alternative. Not only will this preserve your ability to resist distraction and concentrate, but you might even fulfill Arnold Bennett’s ambitious goal of experiencing, perhaps for the first time, what it means to live, and not just exist.
  • When it comes to deep work, in other words, consider the use of collaboration when appropriate, as it can push your results to a new level. At the same time, don’t lionize this quest for interaction and positive randomness to the point where it crowds out the unbroken concentration ultimately required to wring something useful out of the swirl of ideas all around us.
  • Ironically, jobs are actually easier to enjoy than free time, because like flow activities they have built-in goals, feedback rules, and challenges, all of which encourage one to become involved in one’s work, to concentrate and lose oneself in it. Free time, on the other hand, is unstructured, and requires much greater effort to be shaped into something that can be enjoyed.”
  • Treat shallow work with suspicion because its damage is often vastly underestimated and its importance vastly overestimated. This type of work is inevitable, but you must keep it confined to a point where it doesn’t impede your ability to take full advantage of the deeper efforts that ultimately determine your impact. The strategies that follow will help you act on this reality.
  • Decide in advance what you’re going to do with every minute of your workday. It’s natural, at first, to resist this idea, as it’s undoubtedly easier to continue to allow the twin forces of internal whim and external requests to drive your schedule. But you must overcome this distrust of structure if you want to approach your true potential as someone who creates things that matter.
  • The type of work that optimizes your performance is deep work. If you’re not comfortable going deep for extended periods of time, it’ll be difficult to get your performance to the peak levels of quality and quantity increasingly necessary to thrive professionally. Unless your talent and skills absolutely dwarf those of your competition, the deep workers among them will out-produce you.
  • If you find yourself glued to a smartphone or laptop throughout your evenings and weekends, then it’s likely that your behavior outside of work is undoing many of your attempts during the workday to rewire your brain (which makes little distinction between the two settings). In this case, I would suggest that you maintain the strategy of scheduling Internet use even after the workday is over.
  • For an individual focused on deep work, the implication is that you should identify a small number of ambitious outcomes to pursue with your deep work hours. The general exhortation to ‘spend more time working deeply’ doesn’t spark a lot of enthusiasm. To instead have a specific goal that would return tangible and substantial professional benefits will generate a steadier stream of enthusiasm.
  • Unfortunately, when it comes to replacing distraction with focus, matters are not so simple. To understand why this is true let’s take a closer look at one of the main obstacles to going deep: the urge to turn your attention toward something more superficial. Most people recognize that this urge can complicate efforts to concentrate on hard things, but most underestimate its regularity and strength.
  • Once you know where your activities fall on the deep-to-shallow scale, bias your time toward the former. When we reconsider our case studies, for example, we see that the first task is something that you would want to prioritize as a good use of time, while the second and third are activities of a type that should be minimized—they might feel productive, but their return on (time) investment is measly.
  • If you keep interrupting your evening to check and respond to e-mail, or put aside a few hours after dinner to catch up on an approaching deadline, you’re robbing your directed attention centers of the uninterrupted rest they need for restoration. Even if these work dashes consume only a small amount of time, they prevent you from reaching the levels of deeper relaxation in which attention restoration can occur.”
  • Adam Grant doesn’t work substantially more hours than the average professor at an elite research institution (generally speaking, this is a group prone to workaholism), but he still manages to produce more than just about anyone else in his field. I argue that his approach to batching helps explain this paradox. In particular, by consolidating his work into intense and uninterrupted pulses, he’s leveraging the following law of productivity:
  • Feynman was adamant in avoiding administrative duties because he knew they would only decrease his ability to do the one thing that mattered most in his professional life: ‘to do real good physics work.’ Feynman, we can assume, was probably bad at responding to e-mails and would likely switch universities if you had tried to move him into an open office or demand that he tweet. Clarity about what matters provides clarity about what does not.
  • Your will, in other words, is not a manifestation of your character that you can deploy without limit; it’s instead like a muscle that tires. This is why the subjects in the Hofmann and Baumeister study had such a hard time fighting desires—over time these distractions drained their finite pool of willpower until they could no longer resist. The same will happen to you, regardless of your intentions—unless, that is, you’re smart about your habits.
  • Fixed-schedule productivity, in other words, is a meta-habit that’s simple to adopt but broad in its impact. If you have to choose just one behavior that reorients your focus toward the deep, this one should be high on your list of possibilities. If you’re still not sure, however, about the idea that artificial limits on your workday can make you more successful, I urge you to once again turn your attention to the career of fixed-schedule advocate Radhika Nagpal.
  • By working on a single hard task for a long time without switching, Grant minimizes the negative impact of attention residue from his other obligations, allowing him to maximize performance on this one task. When Grant is working for days in isolation on a paper, in other words, he’s doing so at a higher level of effectiveness than the standard professor following a more distracted strategy in which the work is repeatedly interrupted by residue-slathering interruptions.
  • It’s not just the change of environment or seeking of quiet that enables more depth. The dominant force is the psychology of committing so seriously to the task at hand. To put yourself in an exotic location to focus on a writing project, or to take a week off from work just to think, or to lock yourself in a hotel room until you complete an important invention: These gestures push your deep goal to a level of mental priority that helps unlock the needed mental resources.
  • Your world is the outcome of what you pay attention to, so consider for a moment the type of mental world constructed when you dedicate significant time to deep endeavors. There’s a gravity and sense of importance inherent in deep work—whether you’re Ric Furrer smithing a sword or a computer programmer optimizing an algorithm. Gallagher’s theory, therefore, predicts that if you spend enough time in this state, your mind will understand your world as rich in meaning and importance.
  • There are two common tropes bandied around when people discuss solutions to e-mail overload. One says that sending e-mails generates more emails,while the other says that wrestling with ambiguous or irrelevant e-mails is a major source of inbox-related stress. The approach suggested here responds aggressively to both issues—you send fewer e-mails and ignore those that aren’t easy to process—and by doing so will significantly weaken the grip your inbox maintains over your time and attention.
  • Your ritual needs rules and processes to keep your efforts structured. For example, you might institute a ban on any Internet use, or maintain a metric such as words produced per twenty minute interval to keep your concentration honed. Without this structure, you’ll have to mentally litigate again and again what you should and should not be doing during these sessions and keep trying to assess whether you’re working sufficiently hard. These are unnecessary drains on your willpower reserves.
  • Knowledge work is not an assembly line, and extracting value from information is an activity that’s often at odds with busyness, not supported by it…. For example, Adam Grant, the academic… who became the youngest full professor at Wharton by repeatedly shutting himself off from the outside world to concentrate on writing. Such behavior is the opposite of being publicly busy. If Grant worked for Yahoo, Marissa Mayer might have fired him. But this deep strategy turned out to produce a massive amount of value.
  • Very few people work even 8 hours a day. You’re lucky if you get a few good hours in between all the meetings, interruptions, web surfing, office politics, and personal business that permeate the typical workday.Fewer official working hours helps squeeze the fat out of the typical workweek. Once everyone has less time to get their stuff done, they respect that time even more. People become stingy with their time and that’s a good thing. They don’t waste it on things that just don’t matter. When you have fewer hours you usually spend them more wisely.
  • An often-overlooked observation about those who use their minds to create valuable things is that they’re rarely haphazard in their work habits. Consider the Pulitzer Prize–winning biographer Robert Caro. As revealed in a 2009 magazine profile, ‘every inch of [Caro’s] New York office is governed by rules.’ Where he places his books, how he stacks his notebooks, what he puts on his wall, even what he wears to the office: Everything is specified by a routine that has varied little over Caro’s long career. ‘I trained myself to be organized,’ he explained.
  • This brings us to the question of what deliberate practice actually requires. Its core components are usually identified as follows: (1) your attention is focused tightly on a specific skill you’re trying to improve or an idea you’re trying to master; (2) you receive feedback so you can correct your approach to keep your attention exactly where it’s most productive. The first component is of particular importance to our discussion, as it emphasizes that deliberate practice cannot exist alongside distraction, and that it instead requires uninterrupted concentration.
  • Once your brain has become accustomed to on-demand distraction, Nass discovered, it’s hard to shake the addiction even when you want to concentrate. To put this more concretely: If every moment of potential boredom in your life—say, having to wait five minutes in line or sit alone in a restaurant until a friend arrives—is relieved with a quick glance at your smartphone, then your brain has likely been rewired to a point where, like the mental wrecks” in Nass’s research, it’s not ready for deep work—even if you regularly schedule time to practice this concentration.”
  • Many knowledge workers spend most of their working day interacting with these types of shallow concerns. Even when they’re required to complete something more involved, the habit of frequently checking inboxes ensures that these issues remain at the forefront of their attention. Gallagher teaches us that this is a foolhardy way to go about your day, as it ensures that your mind will construct an understanding of your working life that’s dominated by stress, irritation, frustration, and triviality. The world represented by your inbox, in other words, isn’t a pleasant world to inhabit.
  • These services aren’t necessarily, as advertised, the lifeblood of our modern connected world. They’re just products, developed by private companies, funded lavishly, marketed carefully, and designed ultimately to capture then sell your personal information and attention to advertisers. They can be fun, but in the scheme of your life and what you want to accomplish, they’re a lightweight whimsy, one unimportant distraction among many threatening to derail you from something deeper. Or maybe social media tools are at the core of your existence. You won’t know either way until you sample life without them.
  • For an individual focused on his or her own deep work habit, there’s likely no team to meet with, but this doesn’t exempt you from the need for regular accountability. I… recommend the habit of a weekly review in which you make a plan for the workweek ahead . During my experiments with 4DX, I used a weekly review to look over my scoreboard to celebrate good weeks, help understand what led to bad weeks, and most important, figure out how to ensure a good score for the days ahead. This led me to adjust my schedule to meet the needs of my lead measure —enabling significantly more deep work than if I had avoided such reviews altogether.
  • Your ritual needs to specify a location for your deep work efforts. This location can be as simple as your normal office with the door shut and desk cleaned off (a colleague of mine likes to put a hotel-style ‘do not disturb’ sign on his office door when he’s tackling something difficult). If it’s possible to identify a location used only for depth—for instance, a conference room or quiet library—the positive effect can be even greater. (If you work in an open office plan, this need to find a deep work retreat becomes particularly important.) Regardless of where you work, be sure to also give yourself a specific time frame to keep the session a discrete challenge and not an open-ended slog.
  • The goal of productive meditation is to take a period in which you’re occupied physically but not mentally—walking, jogging, driving, showering—and focus your attention on a single well-defined professional problem. Depending on your profession, this problem might be outlining an article,writing a talk, making progress on a proof, or attempting to sharpen a business strategy. As in mindfulness meditation, you must continue to bring your attention back to the problem at hand when it wanders or stalls….I suggest that you adopt a productive meditation practice in your own life.You don’t necessarily need a serious session every day, but your goal should be to participate in at least two or three such sessions in a typical week.
  • We tend to place a lot of emphasis on our circumstances, assuming that what happens to us (or fails to happen) determines how we feel. From this perspective, the small-scale details of how you spend your day aren’t that important, because what matters are the large-scale outcomes, such as whether or not you get a promotion or move to that nicer apartment…. decades of research contradict this understanding. Our brains instead construct our worldview based on what we pay attention to.[Suppose you are a cancer patient] If you focus on a cancer diagnosis, you and your life become unhappy and dark, but if you focus instead on an evening martini, you and your life become more pleasant—even though the circumstances in both scenarios are the same.
  • The common habit of working in a state of semi-distraction is potentially devastating to your performance. It might seem harmless to take a quick glance at your inbox every ten minutes or so.Indeed, many justify this behavior as better than the old practice of leaving an inbox open on the screen at all times (a straw-man habit that few follow anymore). But Leroy teaches us that this is not in fact much of an improvement.That quick check introduces a new target for your attention. Even worse, by seeing messages that you cannot deal with at the moment (which is almost always the case), you’ll be forced to turn back to the primary task with a secondary task left unfinished. The attention residue left by such unresolved switches dampens your performance.
  • Your ritual needs to ensure your brain gets the support it needs to keep operating at a high level of depth. For example,the ritual might specify that you start with a cup of good coffee, or make sure you have access to enough food of the right type to maintain energy, or integrate light exercise such as walking to help keep the mind clear. (As Nietzsche said:’It is only ideas gained from walking that have any worth.’) This support might also include environmental factors, such as organizing the raw materials of your work to minimize energy-dissipating friction (as we saw with Caro’s example).To maximize your success, you need to support your efforts to go deep. At the same time, this support needs to be systematized so that you don’t waste mental energy figuring out what you need in the moment.
  • This strategy asks that you perform the equivalent of a packing party on the social media services that you currently use. Instead of ‘packing,’ however, you’ll instead ban yourself from using them for thirty days. All of them: Facebook, Instagram, Google+, Twitter, Snapchat, Vine—or whatever other services have risen to popularity since I first wrote these words. Don’t formally deactivate these services, and (this is important) don’t mention online that you’ll be signing off: Just stop using them, cold turkey. If someone reaches out to you by other means and asks why your activity on a particular service has fallen off, you can explain, but don’t go out of your way to tell people.After thirty days of this self-imposed network isolation, ask yourself the following two questions about each of the services you temporarily quit:
  • The key to developing a deep work habit is to move beyond good intentions and add routines and rituals to your working life designed to minimize the amount of your limited willpower necessary to transition into and maintain a state of unbroken concentration. If you suddenly decide, for example, in the middle of a distracted afternoon spent Web browsing, to switch your attention to a cognitively demanding task, you’ll draw heavily from your finite willpower to wrest your attention away from the online shininess. Such attempts will therefore frequently fail. On the other hand, if you deployed smart routines and rituals—perhaps a set time and quiet location used for your deep tasks each afternoon—you’d require much less willpower to start and keep going. In the long run, you’d therefore succeed with these deep efforts far more often.
  • Another key commitment for succeeding with this strategy is to support your commitment to shutting down with a strict shutdown ritual that you use at the end of the workday to maximize the probability that you succeed. In more detail, this ritual should ensure that every incomplete task, goal, or project has been reviewed and that for each you have confirmed that either () you have a plan you trust for its completion, or () it’s captured in a place where it will be revisited when the time is right. The process should be an algorithm: a series of steps you always conduct, one after another. When you’re done, have a set phrase you say that indicates completion (to end my own ritual, I say, Shutdown complete”). This final step sounds cheesy, but it provides a simple cue to your mind that it’s safe to release work-related thoughts for the rest of the day.”
  • When it comes to your relaxation, don’t default to whatever catches your attention at the moment, but instead dedicate some advance thinking to the question of how you want to spend your ‘day within a day.’Addictive websites…[the Huffington Post, BuzzFeed, Business Insider, and Reddit] thrive in a vacuum: If you haven’t given yourself something to do in a given moment, they’ll always beckon as an appealing option. If you instead fill this free time with something of more quality, their grip on your attention will loosen. It’s crucial, therefore, that you figure out in advance what you’re going to do with your evenings and weekends before they begin. Structured hobbies provide good fodder for these hours, as they generate specific actions with specific goals to fill your time. A set program of reading, à la Bennett, where you spend regular time each night making progress on a series of deliberately chosen books, is also a good option, as is, of course, exercise or the enjoyment of good (in-person) company.
  • Once you’ve identified a wildly important goal, you need to measure your success….there are two types of metrics for this purpose: lag measures and lead measures. Lag measures describe the thing you’re ultimately trying to improve For example, if your goal is to increase customer satisfaction in your bakery, then the relevant lag measure is your customer satisfaction scores.….Lead measures, on the other hand, ‘measure the new behaviors that will drive success on the lag measures.’ In the bakery example, a good lead measure might be the number of customers who receive free samples. This is a number you can directly increase by giving out more samples. As you increase this number, your lag measures will likely eventually improve as well. In other words, lead measures turn your attention to improving the behaviors you directly control in the near future that will then have a positive impact on your long-term goals.For an individual focused on deep work, it’s easy to identify the relevant lead measure: time spent in a state of deep work dedicated toward your wildly important goal.
  • If you eat healthy just one day a week,you’re unlikely to lose weight, as the majority of your time is still spent gorging.Similarly, if you spend just one day a week resisting distraction, you’re unlikely to diminish your brain’s craving for these stimuli, as most of your time is still spent giving in to it.I propose an alternative to the Internet Sabbath. Instead of scheduling the occasional break from distraction so you can focus, you should instead schedule the occasional break from focus to give in to distraction. To make this suggestion more concrete, let’s make the simplifying assumption that Internet use is synonymous with seeking distracting stimuli. (You can, of course, use the Internet in a way that’s focused and deep, but for a distraction addict, this is a difficult task.) Similarly, let’s consider working in the absence of the Internet to be synonymous with more focused work. (You can, of course, find ways to be distracted without a network connection, but these tend to be easier to resist.)With these rough categorizations established, the strategy works as follows:Schedule in advance when you’ll use the Internet, and then avoid it altogether outside these times. I suggest that you keep a notepad near your computer at work. On this pad, record the next time you’re allowed to use the Internet. Until you arrive at that time, absolutely no network connectivity is allowed—no matter how tempting.
  • Identify a deep task (that is, something that requires deep work to complete) that’s high on your priority list. Estimate how long you’d normally put aside for an obligation of this type, then give yourself a hard deadline that drastically reduces this time. If possible, commit publicly to the deadline—for example, by telling the person expecting the finished project when they should expect it. If this isn’t possible (or if it puts your job in jeopardy), then motivate yourself by setting a countdown timer on your phone and propping it up where you can’t avoid seeing it as you work.At this point, there should be only one possible way to get the deep task done in time: working with great intensity—no e-mail breaks, no daydreaming, no Facebook browsing, no repeated trips to the coffee machine. Like Roosevelt at Harvard, attack the task with every free neuron until it gives way under your unwavering barrage of concentration.Try this experiment no more than once a week at first—giving your brain practice with intensity, but also giving it (and your stress levels) time to rest in between. Once you feel confident in your ability to trade concentration for completion time, increase the frequency of these Roosevelt dashes. Remember,however, to always keep your self-imposed deadlines right at the edge of feasibility. You should be able to consistently beat the buzzer (or at least be close), but to do so should require teeth-gritting concentration.

 

 

Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear (Elizabeth Gilbert)

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  • Done is better than good.
  • Be the weirdo who dares to enjoy.
  • Gratitude, always. Always, gratitude.
  • I do what I do because I like doing it.
  • If you’re alive, you’re a creative person.
  • Everybody imitates before they can innovate.
  • Create whatever causes a revolution in your heart.
  • Argue for your limitations and you get to keep them.
  • It ain’t what they call you; it’s what you answer to.
  • You don’t need to conduct autopsies on your disasters.
  • People’s judgments about you are none of your business.
  • Ideas are driven by a single impulse: to be made manifest.
  • Perfectionism is just fear in fancy shoes and a mink coat.
  • You must learn how to become a deeply disciplined half-ass.
  • You do not need anybody’s permission to live a creative life.
  • It might have been done before, but it hasn’t been done by you!
  • We are all just beginners here, and we shall all die beginners.
  • Live a life that is driven more strongly by curiosity than by fear.
  • Own your disappointment, acknowledge it for what it is, and move on.
  • living a life that is driven more strongly by curiosity than by fear.
  • We don’t have time for perfect. In any event, perfection is unachievable.
  • Frustration is not an interruption of your process; frustration is the process.
  • Do you have the courage to bring forth the treasures that are hidden within you?
  • So many people murder their creativity by demanding that their art pay the bills.
  • failure has a function. It asks you whether you really want to go on making things.
  • It’s a simple and generous rule of life that whatever you practice, you will improve at.
  • And since creativity is still the most effective way for me to access wonder, I choose it.
  • Create whatever causes a revolution in your heart. The rest of it will take care of itself.
  • What is a creative living? Any life that is driven more strongly by curiosity than by fear.
  • You own reasons to make are reason enough. Create whatever causes a revolution in your heart.
  • You can measure your worth by your dedication to your path, not by your successes or failures.
  • What do you love doing so much that the words failure and success essentially become irrelevant?
  • If inspiration is allowed to unexpectedly enter you, it is also allowed to unexpectedly exit you.
  • Learning how to endure your disappointment and frustration is part of the job of a creative person.
  • A good-enough novel violently written now is better than a perfect novel meticulously written never.
  • Give your mind a job to do, or else it will find a job to do, and you might not like the job it invents.
  • It seems to me that the less I fight my fear, the less it fights back. If I can relax, fear relaxes, too.
  • The clock is ticking, and the world is spinning, and we simply do not have time anymore to think so small.
  • Because the truth is, I believe that creativity is a force of enchantment—not entirely human in its origins.
  • Whatever you do, try not to dwell too long on your failures. You don’t need to conduct autopsies on your disasters.
  • Most of their lives, most people just walk around saying: No, No, No, No, No. Then again, someday you just might say yes.
  • When I refer to creative living,… I’m talking about living a life that is driven more strongly by curiosity than by fear.
  • Ideas of every kind are constantly galloping toward us, constantly pass through us, constantly trying to get our attention.
  • Attempts at originality can often feel forced and precious, but authenticity has quiet resonance that never fails to stir me.
  • Your own reasons to create are reason enough. Merely by pursuing what you love, you may inadvertently end up helping us plenty.
  • At such times, I can always steady my life one more by returning to my soul. I ask it, And what is it that you want, dear one?”
  • Don’t abandon your creativity the moment things top being easy or rewarding — because that’s the moment when interesting beings.
  • Through the mere act of creating something—anything—you might inadvertently produce work that is magnificent, eternal, or important.
  • Keep your eyes open. Listen. Follow your curiosity. Ideas are constantly trying to get our attention. Let them know you’re available.
  • Every time you express a complaint about how difficult and tiresome it is to be creative, inspiration takes another step away from you.
  • The Romans didn’t believe that an exceptionally gifted person was a genius; they believe that an exceptionally gifted person had a genius.
  • What is creativity? ‘Creativity is a crushing chore and a glorious mystery. The work wants to be made, and it wants to be made through you.
  • Embrace creativity and do not care about the results. It’s better to be a beginner until the end of life than waiting forever to be perfect.
  • There’s no dishonor in having a job. What is dishonorable is scaring away your creativity by demanding that it pay for your entire existence.
  • If you can’t learn to travel comfortably alongside your fear, then you’ll never be able to go anywhere interesting or do anything interesting.
  • This is how I want to spend my life — collaborating with forces of inspiration that I can neither see, nor prove, nor command, nor understand.
  • If you don’t learn to travel comfortably alongside your fear, then you’ll never be able to go anywhere interesting or do anything interesting.
  • If you’re going to live your life based on delusions (and you are, because we all do), then why not at least select a delusion that is helpful?
  • Every time you express a complaint about how difficult and tiresome it is to be creative, inspiration takes another step away from you, offended.
  • Let inspiration lead you wherever it wants. For most of history people just made things, and they didn’t make such a big freaking deal out of it.
  • Pure creativity is something better than a necessity; it’s a gift. It’s the frosting. Our creativity is a wild and unexpected bonus from the universe.
  • When I refer to ‘creative living,’ I am speaking more broadly. I’m talking about living a life that is driven more strongly by curiosity than by fear.
  • But never delude yourself into believing that you require someone else’s blessing (or even their comprehension) in order to make your own creative work.
  • If I am not actively creating something, then chances are I am probably actively destroying something — myself, a relationship, or my own peace of mind.
  • Do whatever brings you to life, then. Follow your own fascinations, obsessions, and compulsions. Trust them. Create whatever causes a revolution in your heart.
  • Your fear will always be triggered by your creativity, because creativity asks you to enter into realms of uncertain outcome, and fear hates uncertain outcome.
  • This is a world, not a womb. You can look after yourself in this world while looking after your creativity at the same time — just as people have done for ages.
  • This, I believe, is the central question upon which all creative living hinges: Do you have the courage to bring forth the treasures that are hidden within you?
  • You’re not required to save the world with your creativity. Your art not only doesn’t have to be original, in other words, it also doesn’t have to be important.
  • Your life is short and rare and amazing and miraculous, and you want to do really interesting things and make really interesting things while you’re still here.
  • The universe buries strange jewels deep within us all, and then stands back to see if we can find them. The hunt to discover those jewels––that’s creative living.
  • Often what keeps you from creative living is your self-absorption (your self-doubt, your self-disgust, your self-judgment, your crushing sense of self-protection).
  • So this, I believe, is the central question upon which all creative living hinges: Do you have the courage to bring forth the treasures that are hidden within you?
  • creative entitlement simply means believing that you are allowed to be here, and that—merely by being here—you are allowed to have a voice and a vision of your own.
  • But it’s a terrible master-because the only thing your ego ever wants to reward, reward, and more reward. Always remember this: you are not only and ego; you are also a soul.
  • One of the oldest and most generous tricks that the universe plays on human beings is to bury strange jewels within us all, and then stand back to see if we can ever find them.
  • I have never created anything in my life that did not make me feel, at some point or another, like I was the guy who just walked into a fancy ball wearing a homemade lobster costume.
  • Work with all your heart, because—I promise—if you show up for your work day after day after day after day, you just might get lucky enough some random morning to burst right into bloom.
  • You can clear out whatever obstacles are preventing you from living your most creative life, with the simple understanding that whatever is bad for you is probably also bad for your work.
  • Fear is always triggered by creativity, because creativity asks you to enter into realms of uncertain outcome. This is nothing to be ashamed of. It is, however, something to be dealt with.
  • If you don’t have the courage, let’s try to get you some. Because creative living is a path for the brave. We all know this. And we all know that when courage dies, creativity dies with it.
  • The guardians of high culture will try to convince you that the arts belong only to a chosen few, but they are wrong and they are also annoying. We are all the chosen few. We are all makers by design.
  • You have extraordinary treasures hidden within you. Bringing forth those treasures takes work and faith and focus and courage and hours of devotion. We simply do not have time anymore to think so small.
  • Basically, your fear is like a mall cop who thinks he’s a Navy SEAL: He hasn’t slept in days, he’s all hopped up on Red Bull, and he’s liable to shoot at his own shadow in an absurd effort to keep everyone ‘safe’.
  • As long as I’m still moving in that direction—toward wonder–then I know I will always be fine in my soul, which is where it counts. And since creativity is still the most effective way for me to access wonder, I choose it.
  • Fear is always triggered by creativity, because creativity asks you to enter into reals of an uncertain outcome. And fear hates an uncertain outcome. This is nothing to be ashamed of. It is, however, something to be dealt with.
  • So take your insecurities and your fears and hold them upside down by their ankles and shake yourself free of all your cumbersome ideas about what you require (and how much you need to pay) in order to become creatively legitimate.
  • We must understand the need for perfectionism is a corrosive waste of time, because nothing is ever beyond criticism. No matter how many hours you spend to render something flawless, somebody will always be able to find fault with it.
  • People don’t do this kind of thing because they have all kinds of extra time and energy for it; they do this kind of thing because their creativity matters to them enough that they are willing to make all kinds of extra sacrifices for it.
  • Anyhow, the older I get, the less impressed I become with originality. These days, I’m far more moved by authenticity. Attempts at originality can often feel forced and precious, but authenticity has quiet resonance that never fails to stir me.
  • [Believe that] ideas are alive, that ideas do seek the most available human collaborator, that ideas do have a conscious will, that ideas do move from soul to soul, that ideas will always try to seek the swiftest and most efficient conduit to the earth (just as lightning does).
  • But to yell at your creativity, saying, “You must earn money for me!” is sort of like yelling at a cat; it has no idea what you’re talking about, and all you’re doing is scaring it away, because you’re making really loud noises and your face looks weird when you do that.
  • A creative life is an amplified life. It’s a bigger life, a happier life, an expanded life, and a hell of a lot more interesting life. Living in this manner — continually and stubbornly bringing forth the jewels that are hidden within you — is a fine art, in and of itself.
  • Creative entitlement doesn’t mean behaving like a princess, or acting as though the world owes you anything whatsoever. No, creative entitlement simply means believing that you are allowed to be here, and that—merely by being here—you are allowed to have a voice and a vision of your own.
  • The paradox that you need to comfortably inhabit, if you wish to live a contented creative life, goes something like this: ‘My creative expression must be the most important thing in the world to me (if I am to live artistically), and it also must not matter at all (if I am to live sanely).’
  • The essential ingredients for creativity remain exactly the same for everybody: courage, enchantment, permission, persistence, trust—and those elements are universally accessible. Which does not mean that creative living is always easy; it merely means that creative living is always possible.
  • I think perfectionism is just fear in fancy shoes and a mink coat, pretending to be elegant when actually it’s just terrified. Because underneath that shiny veneer, perfectionism is nothing more that a deep existential angst the says, again and again, ‘I am not good enough and I will never be good enough.
  • You are worthy, dear one, regardless of the outcome. You will keep making your work, regardless of the outcome. You will keep sharing your work, regardless of the outcome. You were born to create, regardless of the outcome. You will never lose trust in the creative process, even when you don’t understand the outcome.
  • You have treasures hidden within you — extraordinary treasures — and so do I, and so does everyone around us. And bringing those treasures to light takes work and faith and focus and courage and hours of devotion, and the clock is ticking, and the world is spinning, and we simply do not have time anymore to think so small.
  • My soul, when I tend to it, is a far more expansive and fascinating source of guidance than my ego will ever be, because my soul desires only one thing: wonder. And since creativity is my most efficient pathway to wonder, I take refuge there, and it feeds my soul, and it quiets the hungry ghost—thereby saving me from the most dangerous aspect of myself.
  • Fierce trust asks you to stand strong within this truth: You are worthy, dear one, regardless of the outcome. You will keep making your work, regardless of the outcome. You will keep sharing your work, regardless of the outcome. You were born to create, regardless of the outcome. You will never lose trust in the creative process, even when you don’t understand the outcome.
  • You are free, because everyone is too busy fussing over themselves to worry all that much about you. Go be whomever you want to be, then. Do whatever you want to do. Pursue whatever fascinates you and brings you to life. Create whatever you want to create — and let it be stupendously imperfect, because it’s exceedingly likely that nobody will even notice. And that’s awesome.
  • Are you considering becoming a creative person? Too late, you already are one. To even call somebody a creative person is almost laughably redundant; creativity is the hallmark of our species. We have the senses for it; we have the curiosity for it; we have the opposable thumbs for it; we have the rhythm for it; we have the language and the excitement and the innate connection to divinity for it.
  • Pure creativity is magnificent expressly because it is the opposite of everything else in life that’s essential or inescapable (food, shelter, medicine, rule of law, social order, community and familial responsibility, sickness, loss, death, taxes, etc.). Pure creativity is something better than a necessity; it’s a gift. It’s the frosting. Our creativity is a wild and unexpected bonus from the universe.
  • She said: We all spend our twenties and thirties trying so hard to be perfect, because we’re so worried about what people will think of us. Then we get into our forties and fifties, and we finally start to be free, because we decide that we don’t give a damn what anyone thinks of us. But you won’t be completely free until you reach your sixties and seventies, when you finally realize this liberating truth—nobody was ever thinking about you, anyhow.
  • I have a friend, an aspiring musician, whose sister said to her one day, quite reasonably, What happens if you never get anything out of this? What happens if you pursue your passion forever, but success never comes? How will you feel then, having wasted your entire life for nothing? My friend, with equal reason, replied, If you can’t see what I’m already getting out of this, then I’ll never be able to explain it to you. When it’s for love, you will always do it anyhow.
  • It starts by forgetting about perfect. We don’t have time for perfect. In any event, perfection is unachievable: It’s a myth and a trap and a hamster wheel that will run you to death. The writer Rebecca Solnit puts it well: ‘So many of us believe in perfection, which ruins everything else, because the perfect is not only the enemy of the good; it’s also the enemy of the realistic, the possible, and the fun… The most evil trick about perfectionism, though, is that it disguises itself as a virtue.’
  • Creativity is a path for the brave, yes, but it is not a path for the fearless, and it’s important to recognize the distinction. Bravery means doing something scary. Fearlessness means not even understanding what the word ‘scary’ means. If your goal in life is to become fearless, then I believe you’re already on the wrong path, because the only truly fearless people I’ve ever met were straight-up sociopaths and a few exceptionally reckless three-year-olds—and those aren’t good role models for anyone.
  • You’re not required to save the world with your creativity. Your art not only doesn’t have to be original, in other words, it also doesn’t have to be important. For example, whenever anyone tells me that they want to write a book in order to help other people I always think ‘Oh, please don’t. Please don’t try to help me.’ I mean it’s very kind of you to help people, but please don’t make it your sole creative motive because we will feel the weight of your heavy intention, and it will put a strain upon our souls.
  • Creativity is sacred, and it is not sacred. What we make matters enormously, and it doesn’t matter at all. We toil alone, and we are accompanied by spirits. We are terrified, and we are brave. Art is a crushing chore and a wonderful privilege. Only when we are at our most playful can divinity finally get serious with us. Make space for all these paradoxes to be equally true inside your soul, and I promise—you can make anything. So please calm down now and get back to work, okay? The treasures that are hidden inside you are hoping you will say yes.
  • Frustration is not an interruption of your process; frustration is the process. The fun part (the part where it doesn’t feel like work at all) is when you’re actually creating something wonderful, and everything’s going great, and everyone loves it, and you’re flying high. But such instances are rare. You don’t just get to leap from bright moment to bright moment. How you manage yourself between those bright moments, when things aren’t going so great, is a measure of how devoted you are to your vocation, and how equipped you are for the weird demands of creative living.
  • Possessing a creative mind, after all, is something like having a border collie for a pet: It needs to work, or else it will cause you an outrageous amount of trouble. Give your mind a job to do, or else it will find a job to do, and you might not like the job it invents (eating the couch, digging a hole through the living room floor, biting the mailman, etc.). It has taken me years to learn this, but it does seem to be the case that if I am not actively creating something, then I am probably actively destroying something (myself, a relationship, or my own peace of mind).
  • Recognizing that people’s reactions don’t belong to you is the only sane way to create. If people enjoy what you’ve created, terrific. If people ignore what you’ve created, too bad. If people misunderstand what you’ve created, don’t sweat it. And what if people absolutely hate what you’ve created? What if people attack you with savage vitriol, and insult your intelligence, and malign your motives, and drag your good name through the mud? Just smile sweetly and suggest – as politely as you possibly can – that they go make their own fucking art. Then stubbornly continue making yours.
  • I believe that our planet is inhabited not only by animals and plants and bacteria and viruses, but also by ideas. Ideas are a disembodied, energetic life-form. They are completely separate from us, but capable of interacting with us—albeit strangely. Ideas have no material body, but they do have consciousness, and they most certainly have will. Ideas are driven by a single impulse: to be made manifest. And the only way an idea can be made manifest in our world is through collaboration with a human partner. It is only through a human’s efforts that an idea can be escorted out of the ether and into the realm of the actual.
  • but understand this: Creativity and I are the only ones who will be making any decisions along the way. I recognize and respect that you are part of this family, and so I will never exclude you from our activities, but still—your suggestions will never be followed. You’re allowed to have a seat, and you’re allowed to have a voice, but you are not allowed to have a vote. You’re not allowed to touch the road maps; you’re not allowed to suggest detours; you’re not allowed to fiddle with the temperature. Dude, you’re not even allowed to touch the radio. But above all else, my dear old familiar friend, you are absolutely forbidden to drive.
  • Dearest Fear: Creativity and I are about to go on a road trip together. I understand you’ll be joining us, because you always do. I acknowledge that you believe you have an important job to do in my life, and that you take your job seriously. Apparently your job is to induce complete panic whenever I’m about to do anything interesting—and, may I say, you are superb at your job. So by all means, keep doing your job, if you feel you must. But I will also be doing my job on this road trip, which is to work hard and stay focused. And Creativity will be doing its job, which is to remain stimulating and inspiring. There’s plenty of room in this vehicle for all of us, so make yourself at home,
  • So whenever that brittle voice of dissatisfaction emerges within me, I can say “Ah, my ego! There you are, old friend!” It’s the same thing when I’m being criticized and I notice myself reaching with outrage, heartache, or defensiveness. It’s just my ego, flaring up and testing its power. In such circumstances, I have learned to watch my heated emotions carefully, but I try not to take them too seriously, because I know that it’s merely my ego that has been wounded–never my soul It is merely my ego that wants revenge, or to win the biggest prize. It is merely my ego that wants to start a Twitter war against a hater, or to sulk at an insult or to quit in righteous indignation because I didn’t get the outcome I wanted.
  • What’s your favorite flavor of shit sandwich? What Manson means is that every single pursuit—no matter how wonderful and exciting and glamorous it may initially seem—comes with its own brand of shit sandwich, its own lousy side effects. As Manson writes with profound wisdom: Everything sucks, some of the time. You just have to decide what sort of suckage you’re willing to deal with. So the question is not so much What are you passionate about? The question is What are you passionate enough about that you can endure the most disagreeable aspects of the work? Manson explains it this way: If you want to be a professional artist, but you aren’t willing to see your work rejected hundreds, if not thousands, of times, then you’re done before you start. If you want to be a hotshot court lawyer, but can’t stand the eighty-hour workweeks, then I’ve got bad news for you. Because if you love and want something enough—whatever it is—then you don’t really mind eating the shit sandwich that comes with it.
  • You can resist the seductions of grandiosity, blame, and shame. You can support other people in their creative efforts, acknowledging the truth that there’s plenty of room for everyone. You can measure your worth by your dedication to your path, not by your successes or failures. You can battle your demons (through therapy, recovery, prayer, or humility) instead of battling your gifts—in part by realizing that your demons were never the ones doing the work, anyhow. You can believe that you are neither a slave to inspiration nor its master, but something far more interesting—its partner—and that the two of you are working together toward something intriguing and worthwhile. You can live a long life, making and doing really cool things the entire time. You might earn a living with your pursuits or you might not, but you can recognize that this is not really the point. And at the end of your days, you can thank creativity for having blessed you with a charmed, interesting, passionate existence.
  • I think a lot of people quit pursuing creative lives because they’re scared of the word interesting. My favorite meditation teacher, Pema Chödrön, once said that the biggest problem she sees with people’s meditation practice is that they quit just when things are starting to get interesting. Which is to say, they quit as soon as things aren’t easy anymore, as soon as it gets painful, or boring, or agitating. They quit as soon as they see something in their minds that scares them or hurts them. So they miss the good part, the wild part, the transformative part—the part when you push past the difficulty and enter into some raw new unexplored universe within yourself. And maybe it’s like that with every important aspect of your life. Whatever it is you are pursuing, whatever it is you are seeking, whatever it is you are creating, be careful not to quit too soon. As my friend Pastor Rob Bell warns: Don’t rush through the experiences and circumstances that have the most capacity to transform you. Don’t let go of your courage the moment things stop being easy or rewarding. Because that moment? That’s the moment when interesting begins.
  • Let me list for you some of the many ways in which you might be afraid to live a more creative life: You’re afraid you have no talent. You’re afraid you’ll be rejected or criticized or ridiculed or misunderstood or—worst of all—ignored. You’re afraid there’s no market for your creativity, and therefore no point in pursuing it. You’re afraid somebody else already did it better. You’re afraid everybody else already did it better. You’re afraid somebody will steal your ideas, so it’s safer to keep them hidden forever in the dark. You’re afraid you won’t be taken seriously. You’re afraid your work isn’t politically, emotionally, or artistically important enough to change anyone’s life. You’re afraid your dreams are embarrassing. You’re afraid that someday you’ll look back on your creative endeavors as having been a giant waste of time, effort, and money. You’re afraid you don’t have the right kind of discipline. You’re afraid you don’t have the right kind of work space, or financial freedom, or empty hours in which to focus on invention or exploration. You’re afraid you don’t have the right kind of training or degree. You’re afraid you’re too fat. (I don’t know what this has to do with creativity, exactly, but experience has taught me that most of us are afraid we’re too fat, so let’s just put that on the anxiety list, for good measure.) You’re afraid of being exposed as a hack, or a fool, or a dilettante, or a narcissist. You’re afraid of upsetting your family with what you may reveal. You’re afraid of what your peers and coworkers will say if you express your personal truth aloud. You’re afraid of unleashing your innermost demons, and you really don’t want to encounter your innermost demons. You’re afraid your best work is behind you. You’re afraid you never had any best work to begin with. You’re afraid you neglected your creativity for so long that now you can never get it back. You’re afraid you’re too old to start. You’re afraid you’re too young to start. You’re afraid because something went well in your life once, so obviously nothing can ever go well again. You’re afraid because nothing has ever gone well in your life, so why bother trying? You’re afraid of being a one-hit wonder. You’re afraid of being a no-hit wonder
  • Perfectionism is a particularly evil lure for women, who, I believe, hold themselves to an even higher standard of performance than do men. There are many reasons why women’s voices and visions are not more widely represented today in creative fields. Some of that exclusion is due to regular old misogyny, but it’s also true that—all too often—women are the ones holding themselves back from participating in the first place. Holding back their ideas, holding back their contributions, holding back their leadership and their talents. Too many women still seem to believe that they are not allowed to put themselves forward at all, until both they and their work are perfect and beyond criticism. Meanwhile, putting forth work that is far from perfect rarely stops men from participating in the global cultural conversation. Just sayin’. And I don’t say this as a criticism of men, by the way. I like that feature in men—their absurd overconfidence, the way they will casually decide, Well, I’m 41 percent qualified for this task, so give me the job! Yes, sometimes the results are ridiculous and disastrous, but sometimes, strangely enough, it works—a man who seems not ready for the task, not good enough for the task, somehow grows immediately into his potential through the wild leap of faith itself. I only wish more women would risk these same kinds of wild leaps. But I’ve watched too many women do the opposite. I’ve watched far too many brilliant and gifted female creators say, I am 99.8 percent qualified for this task, but until I master that last smidgen of ability, I will hold myself back, just to be on the safe side. Now, I cannot imagine where women ever got the idea that they must be perfect in order to be loved or successful. (Ha ha ha! Just kidding! I can totally imagine: We got it from every single message society has ever sent us! Thanks, all of human history!) But we women must break this habit in ourselves—and we are the only ones who can break it. We must understand that the drive for perfectionism is a corrosive waste of time, because nothing is ever beyond criticism. No matter how many hours you spend attempting to render something flawless, somebody will always be able to find fault with it. (There are people out there who still consider Beethoven’s symphonies a little bit too, you know, loud.) At some point, you really just have to finish your work and release it as is—if only so that you can go on to make other things with a glad and determined heart. Which is the entire point. Or should be.

 

Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life (Nir Eyal)

/in /by
  • The one thing we control is the time we put into a task.
  • Samuel Johnson said, “My life is one long escape from myself.”
  • Traction (the actions that draw us toward what we want in life)
  • The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity
  • Loneliness, according to researchers, is more dangerous than obesity.
  • Play doesn’t have to be pleasurable. It just has to hold our attention.
  • We are compelled to reach for things we supposedly need but really don’t.
  • Parents don’t need to believe tech is evil to help kids manage distraction.
  • Labeling yourself as having poor self-control actually leads to less self-control.
  • You can’t call something a distraction unless you know what it’s distracting you from.
  • The wealth of information means a dearth of something else . . . a poverty of attention.
  • People who did not see willpower as a finite resource did not show signs of ego depletion.
  • The better we are at noticing the behavior, the better we’ll be at managing it over time.
  • Look for the discomfort that precedes the distraction, focusing in on the internal trigger
  • As philosopher Paul Virilio wrote, “When you invent the ship, you also invent the shipwreck.”
  • Precommitment involves removing a future choice in order to overcome our impulsivity.
  • Distraction, it turns out, isn’t about the distraction itself; rather, it’s about how we respond to it.
  • I’m not telling you to tag emails by topic or categories, only by when the message requires a response.
  • Fun and play don’t have to make us feel good per se; rather, they can be used as tools to keep us focused.
  • Only by understanding our pain can we begin to control it and find better ways to deal with negative urges
  • You’ll learn why you can’t call something a distraction unless you know what it is distracting you from.
  • Values are how we want to be, what we want to stand for, and how we want to relate to the world around us.
  • Only by understanding our pain can we begin to control it and find better ways to deal with negative urges.
  • We must disavow the misguided idea that if we’re not happy, we’re not normal—exactly the opposite is true.
  • Ryan and Deci proposed the human psyche needs three things to flourish: autonomy, competence, and relatedness
  • While we can’t control the feelings and thoughts that pop into our heads, we can control what we do with them.
  • We can use the same neural hardwiring that keeps us hooked to media to keep us engaged in an otherwise unpleasant task.
  • Most people don’t want to acknowledge the uncomfortable truth that distraction is always an unhealthy escape from reality
  • Even when we think we’re seeking pleasure, we’re actually driven by the desire to free ourselves from the pain of wanting.
  • Dissatisfaction and discomfort dominate our brain’s default state, but we can use them to motivate us instead of defeat us.
  • Simply put, the drive to relieve discomfort is the root cause of all our behavior, while everything else is a proximate cause.
  • Self-compassion makes people more resilient to let-downs by breaking the vicious cycle of stress that often accompanies failure.
  • It’s a curious truth that when you gently pay attention to negative emotions, they tend to dissipate—but positive ones expand.
  • Simply put, the drive to relieve discomfort is the root cause of all our behavior, while everything else is a proximate cause.
  • Dweck concluded that signs of ego depletion were observed only in those test subjects who believed willpower was a limited resource.
  • Bricker then recommends getting curious about that sensation. For example, do your fingers twitch when you’re about to be distracted?
  • The goal is to eliminate all white space on your calendar so you’re left with a template for how you intend to spend your time each day.
  • But like the parents who blame a sugar high for their kid’s bad behavior, blaming devices is a surface-level answer to a deep question.
  • Learning certain techniques as part of acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) can disarm the discomfort that so often leads to harmful distractions
  • Fun is looking for the variability in something other people don’t notice. It’s breaking through the boredom and monotony to discover its hidden beauty.
  • I discovered that living the life we want requires not only doing the right things; it also requires we stop doing the wrong things that take us off track.
  • People who have a positive and caring attitude . . . toward her- or himself in the face of failures and individual shortcomings tend to be happier.
  • Test for tech readiness. A good measure of a child’s readiness is the ability to manage distraction by using the settings on the device to turn off external triggers.
  • Socially, we see that close friendships are the bedrock of our psychological and physical health. Loneliness, according to researchers, is more dangerous than obesity.
  • Anything that stops discomfort is potentially addictive, but that doesn’t make it irresistible. If you know the drivers of your behavior, you can take steps to manage them.
  • A study published in the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs found that individuals who believed they were powerless to fight their cravings were much more likely to drink again.
  • In the future, there will be two kinds of people in the world: those who let their attention and lives be controlled and coerced by others and those who proudly call themselves indistractable.
  • If you were to walk around Slack’s company headquarters in San Francisco, you’d notice a peculiar slogan on the hallway walls. White letters on a bright pink background blare, “Work hard and go home.”
  • Another study found that people’s tendency to self-blame, along with how much they ruminated on a problem, could almost completely mediate the most common factors associated with depression and anxiety.
  • Timeboxing enables us to think of each week as a mini-experiment. The goal is to figure out where your schedule didn’t work out in the prior week so you can make it easier to follow the next time around.
  • When we need to perform a difficult task, it’s more productive and healthful to believe a lack of motivation is temporary than it is to tell ourselves we’re spent and need a break (and maybe some ice cream).
  • He believes that willpower is not a finite resource but instead acts like an emotion. Just as we don’t run out of joy or anger, willpower ebbs and flows in response to what’s happening to us and how we feel.
  • Ten-minute rule. If I find myself wanting to check my phone as a pacification device when I can’t think of anything better to do, I tell myself it’s fine to give in, but not right now. I have to wait just ten minutes.
  • As is the case with all human behavior, distraction is just another way our brains attempt to deal with pain. If we accept this fact, it makes sense that the only way to handle distraction is by learning to handle discomfort.
  • Tantalus’s curse is also our curse. We are compelled to reach for things we supposedly need but really don’t. We don’t need to check our email right this second or need to see the latest trending news, no matter how much we feel we must
  • Only a third of Americans keep a daily schedule, which means the vast majority wake up every morning with no formal plans. Our most precious asset—our time—is unguarded, just waiting to be stolen. If we don’t plan our days, someone else will.
  • At the heart of the therapy is learning to notice and accept one’s cravings and to handle them healthfully. Instead of suppressing urges, ACT prescribes a method for stepping back, noticing, observing, and finally letting the desire disappear naturally.
  • To make sure we always have something fun to do, we spent one afternoon writing down over a hundred things to do together in town, each one on a separate little strip of paper. Then, we rolled up all the little strips and placed them inside our fun jar.
  • When similar techniques were applied in a smoking cessation study, the participants who had learned to acknowledge and explore their cravings managed to quit at double the rate of those in the American Lung Association’s best-performing cessation program.
  • Hedonic adaptation, the tendency to quickly return to a baseline level of satisfaction, no matter what happens to us in life, is Mother Nature’s bait and switch. All sorts of life events we think would make us happier actually don’t, or at least they don’t for long.
  • Being indistractable means striving to do what you say you will do. Indistractable people are as honest with themselves as they are with others. If you care about your work, your family, and your physical and mental well-being, you must learn how to become indistractable
  • The curse is not that Tantalus spends all eternity reaching for things just out of reach, but rather his obliviousness to the greater folly of his actions. Tantalus’s curse was his blindness to the fact he didn’t need those things in the first place. That’s the real moral of the story.
  • An individual’s level of self-compassion had a greater effect on whether they would develop anxiety and depression than all the usual things that tend to screw up people’s lives, like traumatic life events, a family history of mental illness, low social status, or a lack of social support.
  • Next, book fifteen minutes on your schedule every week to reflect and refine your calendar by asking two questions: Question 1 (Reflect): When in my schedule did I do what I said I would do and when did I get distracted? Answering this question requires you to look back at the past week.
  • When I taught at the Stanford design school, I consistently saw how teams who brainstormed individually before coming together not only generated better ideas but were also more likely to have a wider diversity of solutions as they were less likely to be overrun by the louder, more dominating members of the group.
  • Eons of evolution gave you and me a brain in a near-constant state of discontentment. We’re wired this way for a simple reason. As a study published in the Review of General Psychology notes, If satisfaction and pleasure were permanent, there might be little incentive to continue seeking further benefits or advances.
  • We can cope with uncomfortable internal triggers by reflecting on, rather than reacting to, our discomfort. We can reimagine the task we’re trying to accomplish by looking for the fun in it and focusing on it more intensely. Finally, and most important, we can change the way we see ourselves to get rid of self-limiting beliefs.
  • My wife bought a hard-to-miss headpiece on Amazon for just a few dollars. She calls it the concentration crown, and the built-in LEDs light up her head to send an impossible-to-ignore message. When she wears it, she’s clearly letting our daughter (and me) know not to interrupt her unless it’s an emergency. It works like a charm.
  • In order to live our values in each of these domains, we must reserve time in our schedules to do so. Only by setting aside specific time in our schedules for traction (the actions that draw us toward what we want in life) can we turn our backs on distraction. Without planning ahead, it’s impossible to tell the difference between traction and distraction.
  • Whether I’m able to fall asleep at any given moment or whether a breakthrough idea for my next book comes to me when I sit down at my desk isn’t entirely up to me, but one thing is for certain: I won’t do what I want to do if I’m not in the right place at the right time, whether that’s in bed when I want to sleep or at my desk when I want to do good work. Not showing up guarantees failure.
  • The primary objective of most meetings should be to gain consensus around a decision, not to create an echo chamber for the meeting organizer’s own thoughts. One of the easiest ways to prevent superfluous meetings is to require two things of anyone who calls one. First, meeting organizers must circulate an agenda of what problem will be discussed. No agenda, no meeting. Second, they must give their best shot at a solution in the form of a brief, written digest. The digest need not be more than a page or two discussing the problem, their reasoning, and their recommendation.

 

 

Radical Focus (Christina Wodtke)

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  • The enemy of timely execution is distraction.
  • If everything is important, nothing is important.
  • Solve the problems you have, not the ones you imagine.
  • Impossible goals are depressing. Hard goals are inspiring
  • A mission keeps you on the rails. The OKRs provide focus and milestones.
  • When you are tired of saying it, people are starting to hear it – Jeff Weiner,
  • You don’t need people to work more, you need people to work on the right things
  • Life always gives you plenty to do. The secret is not forgetting the things that matter
  • Don’t tell people how to do things, tell them what you need done and let them surprise you
  • We start our journey to our dreams by wanting, but we arrive by focusing, planning and learning.
  • It’s not important to protect an idea. It’s important to protect the time it takes to make it real
  • OKRs are about continuous improvement and learning cycles. They are not about making check marks in a list.
  • It’s that ideas are easier to come up with than you think. What’s hard — really hard— is moving from an idea to reality.
  • A mission keeps you on the rails. The OKRs provide focus and milestones. Using OKRs without a mission is like using jet fuel without a jet.
  • …as an organization scales, the OKRs become an increasingly necessary tool to ensure that each product team understands how they are contributing to the greater whole, for coordinating work across teams, and in avoiding duplicate work.
  • What all too often happens in this case is that the actual people on the product teams are conflicted as to where they should be spending their time, resulting in confusion, frustration and disappointing results from leadership and individual contributors alike.
  • Why We Can’t Get Things Done. One: We haven’t prioritized our goals.  Two: We haven’t communicated the goal obsessively and comprehensively. Three: We don’t have a plan to get things done.  Four: We haven’t made time for what matters.  Five: We give up instead of iterate.
  • One: set inspiring and measurable goals. Two: make sure you and your team are always making progress toward that desired end state. No matter how many other things are on your plate. And three: set a cadence that makes sure the group both remembers what they are trying to accomplish and holds each other accountable.

 

 

Your Brain at Work: Strategies for Overcoming Distraction, Regaining Focus, and Working Smarter All Day Long (David Rock)

/in /by
  • Explore content recommended by Goodreads
  • we see the world as we are, not as the world is.
  • Schedule blocks of time for different modes of thinking.
  • The wrong answers are stopping the right ones from emerging.
  • Your brain craves patterns and searches for them endlessly. Thomas B. Czerner
  • They need leaders who help them shine, who help them fulfill their potential at work.
  • The right dose of expectations can be as powerful as one of the strongest painkillers.
  • We all often think about what’s easy to think about, rather than what’s right to think about.
  • Sometimes reducing a problem to one short sentence can be enough to bring about insight on its own.
  • The uncreative mind can spot wrong answers, but it takes a very creative mind to spot wrong questions. ANTHONY JAY
  • Bring your dopamine or adrenaline level down by activating other regions of the brain other than the prefrontal cortex.
  • When you get the nerve to talk to the attractive person across the room, your brain was being bold three-tenths of a second before you.
  • study done at the University of London found that constant emailing and text-messaging reduces mental capability by an average of ten points on an IQ test.
  • Want to pick up a great book or two this season? Check out our recommendations of hot books selected by your fellow readers, bestselling authors, and more!
  • It appears that the perception of choice may be more important than diet and other factors for health. Choosing in some way to experience stress is less stressful than experiencing stress without a sense of choice or control.
  • May your cortisol levels stay low, your dopamine levels high, your oxytocin run thick and rich, your serotonin build to a lovely plateau, and your ability to watch your brain at work keep you fascinated until your last breath. I wish you well on your journey.
  • One final insight about prioritizing involves getting disciplined about what you don’t put on the stage. This means not thinking when you don’t have to, becoming disciplined about not paying attention to non-urgent tasks unless, or until, it’s truly essential that you do.
  • Mindfulness is a habit, it’s something the more one does, the more likely one is to be in that mode with less and less effort…it’s a skill that can be learned. It’s accessing something we already have. Mindfulness isn’t difficult. What’s difficult is to remember to be mindful.
  • New lovers tend to lose their minds and do all sorts of crazy things in the heat of the moment. One study showed that new lovers’ brains have a lot in common with people on cocaine. Dopamine is sometimes called the drug of desire. Too much dopamine, from being high with excitement.
  • Microsoft has a division that studies the way people work, to develop efficiency-improving software. (According to Microsoft’s research up to 2007, if you’re looking for a technological solution to being more efficient, getting a bigger computer screen is one of the few clear winners.)
  • Here’s my full list of guidelines for how to apply the principles of this chapter to email communication. 1. Emails should contain as few words as possible. 2. Make it easy to see your central point at a glance, in one screen. 3. Never send an email that could emotionally affect ano . . . Read more
  • As Stone says, This always on, anywhere, anytime, anyplace era has created an artificial sense of constant crisis. What happens to mammals in a state of constant crisis is the adrenalized fight-or-flight mechanism kicks in. It’s great when tigers are chasing us. How many of those five hundred emails a day is a tiger? Despite
  • There’s a famous finding in the psychological literature, Ochsner explains, showing that six months later, someone who has become a paraplegic is just as happy as someone who’s won the lottery. It seems clear people are doing something to find what’s positive in even the most dire of circumstances. The one thing you can always do is control your interpretation of the meaning of the situation,
  • Studies of teenage behavior shows that the terrible teens is not a biological necessity, as a number of cultures don’t experience this phenomenon. A study of teenagers in Western cultures found that these teenagers have fewer choices than a felon in prison. Food for thought. Finding a way to make a choice, however small, seems to have a measurable impact on the brain, shifting you from an away response to a toward response.
  • Even the strongest toward emotion, lust, is unlikely to make you run, whereas fear can do so in an instant. The toward emotions are more subtle, more easily displaced, and harder to build on, than the away emotions. This also explains why upward spirals, where positive emotions beget more positive emotions, are less common than downward spirals, where negative emotions beget more negative emotions. Human beings walk toward, but run away.
  • Trying to change other people’s thinking appears to be one of the hardest tasks in the world. While the easy answer may seem to be to give people feedback, real change happens when people see things they have not seen before. The best way to help someone see something new is to help quiet her mind so that she can have a moment of insight. As you have insights, you change your brain, and by changing your brain you change your whole world.
  • Without this ability to stand outside your experience, without self-awareness, you would have little ability to moderate and direct your behavior moment to moment. Such real-time, goal-directed modulation of behavior is the key to acting as a mature adult. You need this capacity to free yourself from the automatic flow of experience, and to choose where to direct your attention. Without a director you are a mere automaton, driven by greed, fear, or habit.
  • Many great leaders understand intuitively that they need to work hard to create a sense of safety in others. In this way, great leaders are often humble leaders, thereby reducing the status threat. Great leaders provide clear expectations and talk a lot about the future, helping to increase certainty. Great leaders let others take charge and make decisions, increasing autonomy. Great leaders often have a strong presence, which comes from working hard to be authentic and real with other people, to create a sense of relatedness. And great leaders keep their promises, taking care to be perceived as fair.
  • More people than ever are being paid to think, instead of just doing routine tasks. Yet making complex decisions and solving new problems is difficult for any stretch of time because of some real biological limits on your brain. Surprisingly, one of the best ways to improve mental performance is to understand these limits. In act 1, Emily discovers why thinking requires so much energy, and develops new techniques for dealing with having too much to do. Paul learns about the space limits of his brain, and works out how to deal with information overload. Emily finds out why it’s so hard to do two things at once, and rethinks how she organizes her work. Paul discovers why he is so easily distracted, and works on how to stay more focused. Then he finds out how to stay in his brain’s sweet spot. In the last scene, Emily discovers that her problem-solving techniques need improving, and learns how to have breakthroughs when she needs them most.
  • The impact of doing too much. A study done at the University of London found that constant emailing and text-messaging reduces mental capability by an average of ten points on an IQ test. It was five points for women, and fifteen points for men. This effect is similar to missing a night’s sleep. For men, it’s around three times more than the effect of smoking cannabis. While this fact might make an interesting dinner party topic, it’s really not that amusing that one of the most common productivity tools can make one as dumb as a stoner. (Apologies to technology manufacturers: there are good ways to use this technology, specifically being able to switch off for hours at a time.) Always on may not be the most productive way to work. One of the reasons for this will become clearer in the chapter on staying cool under pressure; however, in summary, the brain is being forced to be on alert far too much. This increases what is known as your allostatic load, which is a reading of stress hormones and other factors relating to a sense of threat.
  • In the workplace, you could increase people’s status by publicly recognizing them. The positive reward from positive public recognition can resonate with people for years. In the workplace, increasing a sense of certainty comes from having a better understanding of the big picture. You could reward someone by giving him or her access to more information. Some innovative firms allow all employees access access to full financial data, weekly. People feel much more certain about their world when they have information, which puts their mind more at ease and therefore makes them better able to solve difficult problems. In the workplace, you could increase autonomy by letting people work more flexibly, or work from home, or reducing the amount of reporting required. In the workplace, an example of increasing relatedness would be giving people opportunities to network with their peers more, by allowing them to attend more conferences or networking groups. In the workplace, in order to increase fairness some organizations allow employees to have community days, where they give their time to a charity of their choice.

 

 

Steve Martin (quotes)

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Quotes about life and comedy

  • Comedy is not pretty.
  • I am a wild and crazy guy!
  • Be so good they can’t ignore you.
  • It’s pain that changes our lives.
  • Be so good they can’t ignore you.
  • So, I can hurt now, or hurt later.
  • No art comes from the conscious mind.
  • Nothing I do is done by popular demand.
  • There are few takers for the quiet heart.
  • Love is a promise delivered already broken.
  • Comedy may be big business but it isn’t pretty.
  • Always make room for the unexpected in yourself.
  • Relationships end, but they don’t end your life.
  • A joke that works is complete knowledge in a nanosecond.
  • Thankfully, persistence is a great substitute for talent.
  • You can’t really conduct your life by one or two phrases.
  • When you’re reaching for a star, there’s a long way to fall.
  • Writing is extremely personal, and that’s the joy of it for me.
  • It was essential that I never show doubt about what I was doing.
  • If I screw up raising my kids, nothing I achieve will matter much.
  • I was seeking comic originality, and fame fell on me as a byproduct.
  • Introductions are hard to come by when your natural state is shyness
  • I’ve heard lots of people lie to themselves but they never fool anyone.
  • You want to be a bit compulsive in your art or craft or whatever you do.
  • The conscious mind is the editor, and the subconscious mind is the writer.
  • Chaos in the midst of chaos isn’t funny, but chaos in the midst of order is.
  • What is comedy? Comedy is the art of making people laugh without making them puke.
  • With comedy, you have no place to go but more comedy, so you’re never off the hook.
  • The presence of excessive wealth puts an unnatural spin on the appreciation of art.
  • The banjo is truly an American instrument, and it captures something about our past.
  • Lots of women are getting involved. They’re not satisfied just being passengers anymore.
  • Comedy makes you humble. Because there are so many opportunities to miss, and strike out.
  • Comedy is a distortion of what is happening, and there will always be something happening.
  • I have found that– just as in real life–imagination sometimes has to stand in for experience.
  • She tried to get even with him through psychological warfare but couldn’t, because he didn’t care.
  • My problem is that I don’t get the same exhiliration from success as I get depression from failure.
  • If you feel tired midway through, give Neil Patrick Harris a Red Bull and throw some sheet music at him.
  • I really enjoy finding the right word, creating a good, flowing sentence. I enjoy the rhythm of the words.
  • There’s no better way to learn something than to learn it in front of an audience. Your terror drives you.
  • I was very vulnerable to criticism for many years. I could read a bad review and remember it my whole life.
  • I believe entertainment can aspire to be art, and can become art, but if you set out to make art you’re an idiot.
  • Romance takes place when you first fall in love. It stirs all emotions and you can manipulate and be manipulated.
  • I was always very shy but as I get older I think, What am I being shy for? You just grow weary of your own hang-ups.
  • I was not naturally talented. I didn’t sing, dance or act, though working around that minor detail made me inventive.
  • College totally changed my life. It changed what I believe and what I think about everything. I majored in philosophy.
  • I just believe that the interesting time in a career is pre-success, what shaped things, how did you get to this point.
  • You cannot make your opportunities concur with the opportunities of people whose incomes are ten times greater than yours.
  • Awards mean nothing to comedians. What matters is the audience, how you’re doing – artistically, for the most part – at that moment.
  • I’m always looking for something to engage my imagination and take me on a little mental voyage. I just want a new topic in my life.
  • To me, torture would be, “I can’t think what to write in the next sentence. I’m stuck.” Torture would be if you didn’t have the next idea.
  • You know when you’re telling these little stories? Here’s a good idea: have a point. It makes it so much more interesting for the listener!
  • I don’t really manage my time. I really just wait until I’m inspired to do something. And when I’m inspired to do something, it just happens.
  • Acting is collaborative because you are working with another actor, and it’s almost like a two-man juggling team. You have to really be in sync.
  • Whether I’m involved in creating something or not, it’s a personal issue of do I respect it. But you can only know that five or ten years later.
  • The course was more plodding than heroic: I did not strive valiantly against doubters but took incremental steps studded with a few intuitive leaps.
  • You can’t make something beautiful by trying to make something beautiful. Something becomes beautiful in the process of trying to be something else.
  • You have to get comfortable [with your work], you really have to know what you’re doing, and it has to be almost boring to you to be able to do it well.
  • It’s funny that some ideas start with a little “What if?” and then suddenly you’re spending a million dollars to shoot the scene and hoping that it works.
  • Relationships end, but they don’t end your life. But people do often spending more time finding out about failed relationships than finding successful ones.
  • Always do business as if the person you’re doing business with is trying to screw you, because he probably is. And if he’s not, you can be pleasantly surprised.
  • You know, there’s a moment when you’re famous when it’s unbearable to go out because you’re too famous. And then there’s a moment when you’re famous just right.
  • …it is not the big events that hurt the most but rather the smallest questionable shift in tone at the end of a spoken word that can plow most deeply into the heart.
  • It [live performance] is just very difficult. Doing an hour, hour and a half of live standup is an endurance test. You almost have to do it every day to stay up on it.
  • What means the most to me changes through the years. There was a time when movies meant the most. But when I’m concentrating on a project, that’s what means the most to me.
  • Writing is something I took up rather than anything I had an inclination toward. I like acting -delivering someone else’s message – but writing is more of an accomplishment.
  • I don’t think comic timing is the same as music timing, but I definitely find that I’ve learned from just writing in general that songs can be narrative without having a story.
  • I cringe at backstory. Because it never quite explains or gets into some psychological thing that is never quite right and never quite the truth and who knows why someone is someway.
  • If you’re studying Geology, which is all facts, as soon as you get out of school you forget it all, but Philosophy you remember just enough to screw you up for the rest of your life.
  • The real joy is in constructing a sentence. But I see myself as an actor first because writing is what you do when you are ready and acting is what you do when someone else is ready.
  • Reviews for someone like me come in three packages. One is justifiable praise, the second is justifiable criticism, and the third is, “This is only published because he’s a celebrity.”
  • Home to me is when someone comes up to me and says, “Can I get a selfie?” No. It’s where your wife and your family are. It’s the emotional place where you feel like you’re not away from it.
  • I’m enamored with the art world. Anytime you look at anything that’s considered artistic, there’s a commercial world around it: the ballet, opera, any kind of music. It can’t exist without it.
  • Acting keeps me alert to people, and life. I don’t know, there’s something about going to work early in the morning, and having to stay alert and concentrated. Maybe that keeps your mind alive.
  • I try not to think about legacy because it is all folly. If you study history, even recent history, you’ll find many people who were quite significant in their time but are completely forgotten.
  • With comedy, you never know until you put it in front of an audience. You shoot it and a year later you have no idea if it’s going to work. And then you get the response. It’s great when it’s good.
  • I just wanted to be in show business. I didn’t care if I was going to be an actor or a magician or what. Comedy was a point of the least resistance, really. And on the simplest level, I loved comedy.
  • I understood that as much as I had resisted the outside, as much as I had constricted my life, as much as I had closed and narrowed the channels into me, there were still many takers for the quiet heart.
  • I just don’t identify myself with a place. I just don’t get it. Like, why am I cheering for this town? Towns are good and bad but they don’t have principles, constitutions. You wouldn’t go to war for your town.
  • I think films are about having a good time, so I don’t know that there’s a message. The message of a film is always what a critic writes, and the fun of a film or the emotion of a film is what the audience feels.
  • Acting has helped me understand people, not only because you are acting as a character, but also because you are watching other actors work. That really helps you identify in life when someone is acting, not being true.
  • A friend of mine once asked how to make it in show business and I said “Be so good that they can’t ignore you.” She thought I was being flip but it’s true. The challenge is trying to live up to the opportunities given me.
  • When people ask me, ‘how do you make it in show business,’ or whatever, what I always tell them‚ and nobody ever takes note of it,cuz it’s not the answer they wanted to hear‚ but I always say, ‘Be so good they can’t ignore you.’
  • I’ve run into people in my life who were so dramatic; people who are so extreme and so frustrating to be around that you end up thinking about them and talking about them for literally years after your experience with them is over.
  • There’s a lot of thought in art. People get to talk about important things. There’s a lot of sex, you know, in art. There’s a lot of naked women and men, and there’s intrigue, there’s fakery. It’s a real microcosm of the larger world.
  • The conscious mind is the editor, and the subconscious mind is the writer. And the joy of writing, when you’re writing from your subconscious, is beautiful – it’s thrilling. When you’re editing, which is your conscious mind, it’s like torture.
  • I choose a project based on whether it feels worthwhile working on when it comes to me. But secondly I choose it if it sounds like fun. Projects are determined by just how they strike me at the moment, as they have done throughout my whole life.
  • I did stand-up comedy for 18 years. Ten of those years were spent learning, four years were spent refining, and four years were spent in wild success. I was seeking comic originality, and fame fell on me as a byproduct. The course was more plodding than heroic.
  • As a human being on Earth, you can’t imagine friendship not being important in some other solar system or some other planet, or some other context of beings that are conscious. We even see it in animals. It is important for people on Earth to reach out or reach into someone.
  • I had loved magic tricks from the time I was six or seven. I bought books on magic. I did magic acts for my parents and their friends. I was aiming for show business from early days, and magic was the poor man’s way of getting in: you buy a trick for $2, and you’ve got an act.
  • I would say the three stages of making a film are the initial ‘are we gonna do this,’ ‘how much will I be paid,’ is there a lot of nights, who’s it going to be with? The second stage of doing a film is how much fun your going to have doing it. The third stage is was the film a hit?
  • I loved to make people laugh in high school, and then I found I loved being on stage in front of people. I’m sure that’s some kind of ego trip or a way to overcome shyness. I was very kind of shy and reserved, so there’s a way to be on stage and be performing and balance your life out.
  • I knew I wanted to be in show business so I took the path of least resistance. I loved comedy. But you never know you are funny until people laugh. It’s just what I was interested in. I could make people laugh, I guess, but doing it at school and doing it onstage are very different things.
  • What I mean is that none of my talents had a – what’s that great word – rubric. A singer, an actor, a dancer – there was nothing I could really say I was. The writing came much later. And, actually, thank God, because if I had said I’m a singer, I would really have just had one thing to do.
  • In a strange way, I don’t have a job, so I have a lot of time on my hands. When I do work, it might be very concentrated, and it might be months where you’re not really doing anything except maybe playing the banjo or writing something. You know, there’s a lot of time in the day if you’re not working 9 to 5.
  • I don’t think anyone is ever writing so that you can throw it away. You’re always writing it to be something. Later, you decide whether it’ll ever see the light of day. But at the moment of its writing, it’s always meant to be something. So, to me, there’s no practicing; there’s only editing and publishing or not publishing.
  • No matter how many times people say it – ‘Oh, I’m just writing this for myself’ ‘Oh, I’m just doing this for myself’ – nobody’s doing it for themselves! You’re doing it for an audience. So whether I’m performing or writing a book or playing music, it’s definitely to be put out there and to be received in some way, definitely.
  • My fear represented the failure of the human system. It is a sad truth of our creation: Something is amiss in our design, there are loose ends of our psychology that are simply not wrapped up. My fears were the dirty secrets of evolution. They were not provided for, and I was forced to construct elaborate temples to house them.
  • Your only guidepost is your own instinct and judicious editing. In my stand-up act I learned that in the first 10 minutes I could say anything and it would get a laugh. Then I’d better deliver. In the movie it’s the same thing. You get a lot of laughs when people first sit down and then the story better kick in. Many years in front of an audience, I would hope, give me a sense of what works.
  • My most persistent memory of stand – up is of my mouth being in the present and my mind being in the future: the mouth speaking the line, the body delivering the gesture, while the mind looks back, observing, analyzing, judging, worrying, and then deciding when and what to say next. Enjoyment while performing was rare – enjoyment would have been an indulgent loss of focus that comedy cannot afford.
  • I take editing seriously. It’s a joy to edit. I always hand a manuscript to several editors and can’t wait to get back their notes and see what they’ve said. I don’t criticize myself for making blunders here and there, because it’s just natural. You write in chunks, and you may not remember that that sentence you wrote yesterday had the same word repeated three times. I do enjoy that. I love the feeling of repairing. Repairing is really nice.
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On a lighter note

  • She was feeling her bohemian oats.
  • … you’re nuts but you’re welcome here.
  • I’m hello, and I’d like to say myself.
  • A day with out sun shine is like……….night
  • A day without sunshine is like, you know, night.
  • It’s not tipping I believe in. It’s overtipping.
  • Teaching is, after all, a form of show business.
  • All of life’s riddles are answered in the movies.
  • All of life’s riddles are answered in the movies.
  • Women have choices, and men have responsibilities.
  • …teaching is, after all, a form of show business.
  • Finally, we do become wise, but then it’s too late.
  • The greatest thing you can do is surprise yourself.
  • How many people have never raised their hand before?
  • A father carries pictures where his money used to be.
  • I got a flue shot and now my chimney works perfectly.
  • It’s not what you know, it’s what you think you know.
  • Talking about music is like dancing about architecture.
  • Thankfully, perseverance is a good substitute for talent.
  • I like a woman with a head on her shoulders. I hate necks.
  • Why sip from a tea cup, when you can drink from the river.
  • How to make a million dollars: First, get a million dollars
  • Boy, those French: they have a different word for everything!
  • A kiss may not be the truth, but it is what we wish were true.
  • I’m tired of wasting letters when punctuation will do, period.
  • The operation was a success, but I’m afraid the doctor is dead.
  • Knowledge of means without knowledge of ends is animal training.
  • You kill me and I’ll see that you never work in this town again.
  • Comedy is the art of making people laugh without making them puke.
  • Were they beautiful? We were all beautiful. We were in our twenties.
  • We’ve had some fun tonight…considering we’re all gonna die someday.
  • All I’ve ever wanted was an honest week’s pay for an honest day’s work.
  • I just gave my cat a bath. Now how do I get all this fur off my tounge?
  • I started a grease fire at McDonald’s – threw a match in the cook’s hair.
  • To be with another woman, that is French. To be caught, that is American.
  • You know that look that women get when they want to have sex? Me neither.
  • I’ve got to keep breathing. It’ll be my worst business mistake if I don’t.
  • It’s not the size of the nose that matters, it’s what’s inside that counts.
  • Some people have a way with words, and other people…oh, uh, not have way.
  • Somewhere in the world is…The world’s worst doctor and he could be yours.
  • I’ve decided to take up smoking, my doctor said I wasn’t getting enough tar.
  • I can’t smell moth balls, I find it too difficult to get their tiny legs apart
  • I just downloaded eleven hundred books onto my Kindle, and now I can’t lift it.
  • I was deeply unhappy, but I didn’t know it because I was so happy all the time.
  • I will do anything to look like him – except, of course, exercise or eat right.
  • When someone less capable is ahead of me, I am not pleased. It makes me insane.
  • She had destroyed whatever was between us by making a profound gaffe: She met me.
  • I cannot smell mothballs because it’s so difficult to get their little legs apart.
  • First the doctor told me the good news: I was going to have a disease named after me.
  • I could never be a woman, ’cause I’d just stay home and play with my breasts all day.
  • I’m not trying to be a big shot or anything like that, but I get my drinks half price.
  • I guess I wouldn’t believe in anything if it weren’t for my lucky astrology mood watch.
  • I thought yesterday was the first day of the rest of my life but it turns out today is.
  • Halle Berry is here, whose win last year broke down barriers for unbelievably hot women.
  • Dinosaurs did not walk with humans. The evolutionary record says different. They gambled.
  • Talent is the ability to say things well, but genius is the ability to, well, say things.
  • These days it’s hard to look at a poodle without thinking what a good meal he would make.
  • You know, you’re really nobody in L.A. unless you live in a house with a really big door.
  • Don’t have sex man. It leads to kissing and pretty soon you have to start talking to them.
  • So, while fitting in, she was like a wicked detail standing out against a placid background.
  • I believe you should place a woman on a pedestal: high enough so you can look up  her dress.
  • I never touched a gun in my life. That and that alone forever doomed me to middle management.
  • I think I did pretty well, considering I started out with nothing but a bunch of blank paper.
  • I believe that sex is one of the most beautiful, natural, wholesome things that money can buy.
  • Writer’s block is a fancy term made up by whiners so they can have an excuse to drink alcohol.
  • I guess I wouldn’t believe in anything anymore if it weren’t for my lucky astrology mood watch.
  • I have found that– just as in real life–imagination sometimes has to stand in for experience.
  • I have decided to give the greatest performance of my life! Oh, wait, sorry, that’s tomorrow night.
  • I believe Ronald Reagan can make this country what it once was… an Arctic region covered with ice.
  • When I die, now don’t think that I’m a nut, don’t want no fancy funeral, just one like old King Tut.
  • The Apple Pie Hubbub was a significant novel for me, because that’s when I first started using verbs.
  • An apology? Bah! Disgusting! Cowardly! Beneath the dignity of any gentleman, however wrong he might be.
  • I believe in equality. Equality for everybody. No matter how stupid they are or how superior I am to them.
  • People come up to me and say “Steve, what is film editing?” And I say “How should I know? You’re the director.
  • The banjo is such a happy instrument–you can’t play a sad song on the banjo – it always comes out so cheerful.
  • There’s someone out there for everyone – even if you need a pickaxe, a compass, and night goggles to find them.
  • A celebrity is any well-known TV or movie star who looks like he spends more than two hours working on his hair.
  • With a cheery delicacy she divided my obsessions into three categories: acceptable, unacceptable, and hilarious.
  • How is it possible to miss a woman whom you kept at a distance, so that when she was gone you would not miss her?
  • I handed in a script last year and the studio didn’t change one word. The word they didn’t change was on page 87.
  • I believe in eight of the ten commandments. I believe in going to church every Sunday… unless there’s a game on.
  • Lacy was just as happy alone as with company. When she was alone, she was potential; with others she was realized.
  • There is one thing I would break up over, and that is if she caught me with another woman. I won’t stand for that.
  • The self-prepared dinner is a great time killer for lonely people and as much time should be spent on it as possible.
  • Hollywood must be the only place on earth where you can be fired by a man wearing a Hawaiian shirt and a baseball cap.
  • Hosting the Oscars is much like making love to a woman. It’s something I only get to do when Billy Crystal is out of town.
  • He never complicates a desire by overthinking it, unlike Mirabelle, who spins a cocoon around an idea until it is immobile.
  • You know what your problem is, it’s that you haven’t seen enough movies – all of life’s riddles are answered in the movies.
  • Through the years, I have learned there is no harm in charging oneself up with delusions between moments of valid inspiration.
  • I believe the United States should allow all foreigners in this country, provided they can speak our native language… Apache.
  • I’ve put an umbrella in my mouth and opened it. I sat in a lemon-meringue pie. I’ve done terrible things to my dog with a fork.
  • What is a movie star? A movie star is many things. They can be tall, short, thin, or skinny. They can be Democrats… or skinny.
  • You want to know how I think art should be taught to children? Take them to a museum and say, ‘This is art, and you can’t do it.
  • Yeah, well, we’re all writers, aren’t we? He’s a writer that hasn’t been published, and I’m a writer who hasn’t written anything.
  • …the divided world of Aspen, where locals with a sense of entitlement were pitted against developers with a sense of condominiums.
  • Before you criticize a man, walk a mile in his shoes. That way, when you do criticize him, you’ll be a mile away and have his shoes.
  • Anyone who’s ever worked with Meryl Streep always says the same thing: can that woman act! And what’s with all the Hitler memorabilia?
  • I opened the show with this line: “I have decided to give the greatest performance of my life! Oh, wait, sorry, that’s tomorrow night.
  • I’m for the Wall Street Occupiers. But will they accept me when they find out I sell packaged mortgage default instruments to children?
  • Kids like my act because I’m wearing nose glasses. Adults like my act because there’s a guy who thinks putting on nose glasses is funny.
  • She has learned that her body is precious and it mustn’t be offered carelessly ever again, as it holds a direct connection to her heart.
  • There are some people that will not pick up a phone and call you, but if you knock on a door and talk to them, they’ll talk back to you.
  • There is something going on now in Mexico that I happen to think is cruelty to animals. What I’m talking about, of course, is cat juggling.
  • I couldn’t see his face, because the light came in from behind him and he was in shadow, and he said, “I am Picasso.” And I said, “Well, so what?
  • The only thing that bothers me is if I’m in a restaurant and I’m eating and someone says, ‘Hey, mind if I smoke?’ I always say, ‘No. Mind if I fart?
  • Be pompous, obese, and eat cactus. Be dull and boring and omnipresent. Criticize things you don’t know about. Be oblong and have your knees removed.
  • Now let’s repeat the non-conformists’ oath: I promise to be different! I promise to be unique! I promise not to repeat things other people say! Good!
  • Tweeting is really only good for one thing – it’s just good for tweeting… It is rewarding, because it’s just its own reward. It’s sort of like heaven.
  • The thing about the banjo is when you first hear it, it strikes many people as what’s that? There’s something very compelling about it to certain people.
  • I gave my cat a bath the other day…they love it. He sat there, he enjoyed it, it was fun for me. The fur would stick to my tongue, but other than that…
  • I happened to take a photo, and there was my wife, my dog and my banjo, all in the same shot – and I thought, “Oh, that’s like a family portrait right there.”
  • Be tasteless, rude, and offensive, Live in a swamp and be three dimensional, Put a live chicken in your underwear, Get all excited and go to a yawning festival.
  • I have no fear, no fear at all. I wake up, and I have no fear. I go to bed without fear. Fear, fear, fear, fear. Yes, ‘fear’ is a word that is not in my vocabulary.
  • I saw the movie, ‘Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon’ and was surprised because I didn’t see any tigers or dragons. And then I realized why: they’re crouching and hidden.
  • She didn’t even finish her last sentence; it just trailed off. I think the subject had changed in her head while her mouth had continued on the old topic, not realizing it was out of supplies.
  • A girl who is willing to give every ounce of herself to someone, who could never betray her lover, who never suspects maliciousness of anyone, and whose sexuality sleeps in her, waiting to be stirred.
  • I used to think a wedding was a simple affair. Boy and girl meet, they fall in love, he buys a ring, she buys a dress, they say I do. I was wrong. That’s getting married. A wedding is an entirely different proposition.
  • In talking to girls I could never remember the right sequence of things to say. I’d meet a girl and say, Hi, was it good for you too? If a girl spent the night, I’d wake up in the morning and then try to get her drunk.
  • I actually learned about sex watching neighborhood dogs. And it was good. Go ahead and laugh. I think the most important thing I learned was: Never let go of the girl’s leg, no matter how hard she tries to shake you off.
  • I love money. I love everything about it. I bought some pretty good stuff. Got me a $300 pair of socks. Got a fur sink. An electric dog polisher. A gasoline powered turtleneck sweater. And, of course, I bought some dumb stuff, too.
  • His view of the world is one that keeps his blood pressure low, sweeping the cholesterol from his relaxed, freeway-sized arteries. Everyone knows he is going to live till age ninety, although the question that goes begging is, what?
  • If you’ve got a dollar and you spend 29 cents on a loaf of bread, you’ve got 71 cents left; But if you’ve got seventeen grand and you spend 29 cents on a loaf of bread, you’ve still got seventeen grand. There’s a math lesson for you.
  • You know, a lot of people come to me and they say, “Steve, how can you be so fucking funny?” There’s a secret to it, it’s no big deal. Before I go out, I put a slice of bologna in each of my shoes. So when I’m on stage, I feel funny.
  • I would like a wine. The purpose of the wine is to get me drunk. A bad wine will get me as drunk as a good wine. I would like the good wine. And since the result is the same no matter which wine I drink, I’d like to pay the bad wine price.
  • I would assign every lie a color: yellow when they were innocent, pale blue when they sailed over you like the sky, red because I knew they drew blood. And then there was the black lie. That’s the worst of all. A black lie was when I told you the truth.
  • When I first started doing my stand-up act, I played the banjo, did comedy, magic tricks, juggled, read poetry. I stuck it all in. I didn’t know you were supposed to just stand up and tell jokes. Essentially, that’s what my act became: those five elements – except I dropped the poetry.
  • I studied with the Maharishi for many years, and really didn’t learn that much. But one thing that he taught me, I’ll never forget: ‘ALWAYS…’ no, wait– ‘NEVER…’ no, wait, it was ‘ALWAYS carry a litter bag in your car. It doesn’t take up much room, and if it gets full, you can toss it out the window.’
  • Communication has changed so rapidly in the last 20 years, it’s almost impossible to predict what might occur even in the next decade. E-mail, which now sends data hurtling across vast distances at the speed of light, has replaced primitive forms of communication such as smoke signals, which sent data hurtling across vast distances at the speed of light.
  • It’s so hard to believe in anything anymore, you know what I mean? It’s like, religion, you really can’t take it seriously, ’cause it seems so mythological, and seems so arbitrary; and then on the other hand, science is just pure empiricism, and by virtue of its method, it excludes metaphysics. I guess I wouldn’t believe in anything if it weren’t for my lucky astrology mood watch.
  • I used to smoke marijuana. But I’ll tell you something: I would only smoke it in the late evening. Oh, occasionally the early evening, but usually the late evening – or the mid-evening. Just the early evening, midevening and late evening. Occasionally, early afternoon, early mid-afternoon, or perhaps the late-midafternoon. Oh, sometimes the early-mid-late-early morning. . . But never at dusk!