It’s a pleasant, fun read packed with the occasional nugget of wisdom. The reader is given full permission to skip any parts of the book he finds dull, so I flew past the ketosis, hyperbaric oxygen chamber, and food supplements. Recommended read, though not as good as his classic The Four Hour Work Week.
Here are some of my favorite notes from the book:
“My goal is not to fail fast. My goal is to succeed in the long-run. They are not the same thing.”
“My confidence came from my vision.. I am a big believer that if you have a very clear vision of where you want to go, then the rest of it is much easier. Because you always know why you are training 5 hours a day, you always know why you are pushing and going through the pain barrier, and why you have to eat more, and why you have to struggle more, and why you have to be more disciplined…. I felt that I could win it, and that was what I was there for. I wasn’t there to compete. I was there to win.”
“Even when everything is going terribly, and I have no reason to be confident, I just decide to be.”
“The people who download your book as a bad PDF aren’t your customers. They would never buy it in the first place. Look at is as free advertising.”
“If you would not be forgotten as soon as you are dead and rotten, either write things worth reading, or do things worth writing.”
On writing in the morning: “once we get those muddy, maddening, confusing thoughts on the page, we face our day with clearer eyes.”
“I’m just caging my monkey mind on paper so I can get on with my fucking day. If you take nothing from this chapter but #2 above and the next few lines, I’ll consider my mission accomplished. Morning pages don’t need to solve your problems. They simple need to get them out of your head, where they’ll otherwise bounce around all day like bullet ricocheting inside your skull. Could bitching and moaning on paper for 5 minutes each day change your life? As crazy as it seems, I believe the answer is yes”
“Never go to sleep without a request to your subconscious” – Thomas Edison
“….ourselves caught in this cycle of keeping track of the wrong things. Keeping track of how many times we’ve been rejected. Keeping track of how many times it didn’t work. Keeping track of all the times someone has broken our heart or double-crossed or let us down. Of course, we can keep track of those things, but why? Why keep track of them? Are they making us better? Wouldn’t it make more sense to keep track of the other stuff? To keep track of all the times it worked? All the times we took a risk? All the times we were able to brighten someone’s day? When we start doing that, we can redefine ourselves as people who are able to make an impact on the world. It took me a bunch of cycles to figure out that the narrative was up to me. If a narrative isn’t working, well then, why are you using it? The narrative isn’t done to you; it’s something that you choose. Once we can dig deep and find a different narrative, then we ought to be able to change the game.”
“Goals: Setting and Achieving Them on Schedule, How to stay Motivated, and Secrets of Closing the Sale by Zig Ziglar: “Zig is your grandfather and my grandfather. He’s Tony Robbin’s grandfather. None of us would be here if it weren’t for Zig.””
“I distinctly remember him saying not to worry about what I was going to do because the job I was going to do hadn’t even been invented yet….The interesting jobs are the ones that you make up. That’s something that I hope to instill in my son: Don’t worry about what your job is going to be….Do things that you’re interested in, and if you do them really well, you’re going to find a way to temper them with some good business opportunity.”
“Five days a week, I read my goals before I go to sleep and when I wake up. There are 10 goals around health, family, business, etc., with expiration dates, and I update them every 6 months.”
Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World. TF: That last Genghis Khan book has been recommended to me by several billionaires.
“The biggest mistake you can make is to accept the norms of your time.”
Life is Elsewhere by Milan Kundera; “I think it’s an analogy for that choice we all have in life: Are you going to fulfill your potential? Or, are you just going to give into the peer pressure of the moment and become nothing?”
“A problem is a terrible thing to waste.” This is highly related to the “scratch your own itch” thread that pops up throughout this book. Peter expands: “I think of problems as gold mines. The world’s biggest problems are the world’s biggest opportunities.”
“When 99% of people doubt you, you’re either gravely wrong or about to make history.”
On the Shortness of Life by Seneca.
“If you want to be tougher, be tougher.”
“The secrets to life are hidden behind the word ‘cliché.’” Shay recalled being on a specific bike ride during his rapid weight-loss period: “I remember exactly where I was. I thought to myself, ‘The secrets to life are hidden behind the word “cliché.”’ So any time you hear something that you think is a cliché, my tip to you is to perk your ears up and listen more carefully.” He had heard certain phrases like “Eat more vegetables” a million times, but ignored them for years, as it all seemed too simplistic. Ultimately, it was the simple that worked. He didn’t need sophisticated answers. They were right in front of him the whole time. What advice are you ignoring because you think it’s trite or clichéd? Can you mine it for any testable action?
Learning from Your Future Self—An Exercise We Both Use I asked Shay what advice he’d give his 25-year-old self, and he replied with: “Maybe I would’ve said, ‘Drop out of college sooner’? But I don’t think I would change anything. . . . It’s easy to think, ‘Well, what would I tell my 25-year-old self?’ So then I think, ‘Well, if I’m 45 and I’m asked that question, what would I tell my 36-year-old self [how old Shay is currently]?’” TF: This prompted me to share a story with him, which I’ll repeat here in brief. I never write fiction, but one of the only pieces of writing I’ve lost that made me sad for an extended period was fiction. I wrote a short story about going skiing, retiring to the ski lodge to sip hot chocolate and wine, and ending up seated across the table from a wise old stranger. Several hours of conversation later, this stranger turns out to be my future self. I ask him for advice and he gives me the benefit of his 20/20 hindsight. It was a fun story to write, but—and this sounds a bit weird—I also got a lot of actionable, specific advice by going through the exercise. When I put my pen down, I was somewhat puzzled and thought, “I don’t know what I just did there, but it seems like a funky magic trick.” I later realized that the storyline is similar to a spectacular piece written by Jorge Luis Borges entitled “The Other” (“El Otro”). When I told Shay this story, his eyes lit up. He jumped in with: “What you just explained is exactly what I was going to suggest. Think about how old you are right now and think about being a 10-year-older version of yourself. Then think, ‘What would I probably tell myself as an older version of myself?’ That is the wisdom that I think you found in that exercise. . . . [If you do this exercise and then start living the answers,] I think you’re going to grow exponentially faster than you would have otherwise.”
“To not do something because you might get injured is a terrible reason to not do something.”
“If you want to be successful, surround yourself with people who are more successful than you are, but if you want to be happy, surround yourself with people who are less successful than you are.”
“What you choose to work on, and who you choose to work with, are far more important than how hard you work.”
“Free education is abundant, all over the internet. It’s the desire to learn that scarce.”
“So the best advice I learnt by mistake and that is: Be willing to fail or succeed on who you really are. Don’t ever try to be anything else.”
“I think passion comes from a combination of being open and curious, and of really going all-in when you find something that you’re interested in.”
“Don’t waste your time on marketing, just try to get better.”
Advice to your younger self? “I would say it’s pretty simple: ‘Don’t be scared.’ There are a lot of things I did not do, a lot of experiences I never tried, a lot of people I never met or hung out with because I was, in some form, intimidated or scared. . . . It also plays into what psychologists call the ‘spotlight effect,’ [as if] everybody must be caring about what I do. And the fact is: Nobody gives a crap what I do.”
“As Billy points out, if your last three turns are precise, then what you’re internalizing on the lift ride up is precision. So I carry this on to the guys who I train in the finance world, for example: ending the work day with very high quality, which for one thing means you’re internalizing quality overnight.”
TF: Khaled Hosseini wrote The Kite Runner in the early mornings before working as a full-time doctor. Paul Levesque (page 128) often works out at midnight. If it’s truly important, schedule it. As Paul might ask you, “Is that a dream or a goal?” If it isn’t on the calendar, it isn’t real.
“what I do is based on the Morning Pages by Julia Cameron in The Artist’s Way. Of the 100 people I’ve given it to, maybe ten of them have actually opened the book and done the exercises. Of those ten, seven have had books, movies, TV shows, and made out successful. It’s incredible. That book changed my life, even though it’s very spiritual and I’m an atheist.”
Oh, mission got cancelled? Good. We can focus on another one. Didn’t get the new high-speed gear we wanted? Good. We can keep it simple. Didn’t get promoted? Good. More time to get better. Didn’t get funded? Good. We own more of the company. Didn’t get the job you wanted? Good. Go out, gain more experience, and build a better résumé. Got injured? Good. Needed a break from training. Got tapped out? Good. It’s better to tap out in training than to tap out on the street. Got beat? Good. We learned. Unexpected problems? Good. We have the opportunity to figure out a solution.
“Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist.” – Picasso