What I’m Reading

* How To Maximize Serendipity: “Serendipity is a state of mind. Serendipity births unexpected opportunities which fuel progress and push us in fruitful directions. Serendipity is a skill, which means it can be learned.”

* On Defending Your Time: “One thing at a time doesn’t mean one thing, then another thing, then another thing in quick succession.”

* Thinking Around Human Bling Spots: “We can take some idea and spin a complete and compelling story around it…and it doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s right.”

* The Argument For Spending More Time Outdoors: “We think shopping makes us happy, or streaming Netflix, eating ice cream—and those things do make us happy, but we get a tremendous boost from being outside in a natural.”

* The Origins of Greed and Fear: “The two traits evolve from something innocent: the amount of confidence we have that our actions influence our outcomes.”

* How To Do Great Things: “Moving forward requires change but change does not mean that you are moving forward.”

* Maximizing Creativity: “We don’t see the universe as it is; we see it as we are.”

* Mindless Resolutions: “Resolutions don’t stick because they’re tactics, not systems. They’re strategies, not philosophies.”

* Life and Business Lessons from Morgan Housel: “Part of the reason pessimism is more seductive than optimism is because it’s easy to underestimate our ability to change in the future.”

* Why Delayed Gratification Works: “You can create a masterpiece in two days – after years of effort.”

* Why Insecure People Buy More Things: Why Insecure People Buy More Things: “Money may not buy you love, but it won’t break your heart either.”

* Less Focus on Specific Goals and More Focus On Practicing Life: “Life satisfaction is a byproduct of transitioning from being a seeker, or someone who wants a certain lifestyle, to a practitioner, or someone who lives that lifestyle day in and day out.”

* On Going Deep Versus Going Broad: “Depth wasn’t so much a game of persistently striving to top myself, it was more like a new lens for looking at the tools and opportunities that had always been there.”

* What Holds Us Back from Performing to Our Capabilities? Our Self.: “Trying to do anything well exposes your ego and self-esteem. It makes you vulnerable, open to seeing where your skill set truly lies. You have to confront reality, something that as humans, we actively avoid.”

* Coolest Things I Learned in 2018: “Fun factoids and interesting stats.”

* The Rise After the Fall: Post-Traumatic Growth in Life and Markets: “Of course there is no silver bullet to life. There is no fool-proof way to guarantee success and recovery through trauma.”

* Thoughts for the Year Ahead: “The end of December is a time for resolutions for many but more important than any resolution is to take time to reflect on the life you’re living.”

* My Favorite Year-End Lessons Learned Post: “These are the major things I’ve learned this year, in no particular order…”

* On Cultivating and Sustaining Love: “Love is losing yourself in the process of caring about and showing undivided attention to someone or something, through ups and downs. It’s as simple and as hard as that.”

* On Planning For The Ups and Downs of Happiness: “There are time when all the lies you have told yourself about yourself just fall away.”

* On Attention Being A Valuable Resource: “In many ways, we are what we pay attention to. The things that we work on also work on us. Everything we take in has an effect on the taker-inner, on us. Our attention is perhaps the most precious resource there is. We need to use it as skillfully as we can.”

* On Fake Versus Real Toughness: “The strongest people we know  tend to be caring, considerate, and calm. The people we know who want to be strong and tough — but who are not — tend to be loud, defensive, and overly proud.”

* On the Ups and Downs of Happiness: “There are time when all the lies you have told yourself about yourself just fall away.”

* On the Value of Taking Pay Cuts: “You’ll make your own calculations. But you will be making a mistake if all of those calculations are financial.”

* How to Remember What You Learn: “There is a way to slow down the process of forgetting. We are not taught how to learn in school, we are taught how to pass tests.”

* Why Unread Books Are More Valuable to Our Lives than Read Ones: “We tend to treat our knowledge as personal property to be protected and defended.”

* On the Value of Writing For Yourself Versus An Audience: “Many of the good writers you enjoy probably aren’t much smarter than you. They’ve just forced themselves through the process of transferring vague feelings into words and the clarity that generates.”

* A Practical System for Reading More Daily: “Regardless of what unit of reading you choose, the math will still work out: In six months, or a year, or five years, or ten years, you’ll have digested a large swath of human wisdom.”

* On the Power of Rituals and Routines: “Routines power your day, but rituals help you get through them. The structure of routine comforts us, and the specialness of ritual vitalizes us.”

* On the Value of Making Irrational Decisions: “Rational is hard. Being reasonable is often the most practical goal.”

* On Happiness and Enjoying Life: “We can easily spend nine-tenths of our lives trying to appreciate the free time, hammocks, bike rides, and coffee breaks to come, or we can spend that time—which amounts to decades—appreciating what is already happening. And there’s nothing subtle about the difference it makes.”

* On Regret: “We all have joys, hopes, fears, and longings that never go away no matter how old we get.”

* On Asking Not Telling: “We put tasks and achievements before relationships, without recognizing the damage it does to our colleagues or families. ”

* On What You Can’t Buy: ” All of the money in the world can’t satisfy your soul. Wealth can’t satisfy the need to belong to something bigger than yourself. As someone who writes about finance every single week, I can tell you that there are some things that money can’t buy. Things like character. Things like integrity. Things like beliefs. ‘

* On Impostor Syndrome: “All that separates an impostor from a real person is the willingness to grow. As long as you push your comfort zone a little bit each day, you’re never an impostor.”

* You Probably Won’t Make it to the Top: “Making it to the top isn’t the game you should be focused on.”

* Why Boredom Is So Powerful in Your Life: “Boredom is neutral — it’s up to you turn into something positive or negative.”

* On Human Nature, Confidence and Worship: “No matter how complicated the problem, you have an absolutely overwhelming belief that you are infallibly right in your solution.”

* On Humble Exits and The Value of Leaving When On Top: “In each case it’s the actual success – not bad luck, not a mistake, not unfortunate timing – that sets up the potential downfall.”