Oct, 2015

The One Thing By Gary Keller

The Big Idea: 1) find your purpose and then 2) for four UNINTERRUPTED hours every morning, focus on THE ONE THING that will get you there fastest.

  • If you chase two rabbits, you will not catch either one. –Russian proverb
  • Ask yourself “What’s the one thing you can do right now that will make everything else easier or unnecessary?”
  • It is those who concentrate on but one thing at a time who advance in this world. –Og Mandino
  • Most great businesses owe their great success to only one thing.
  • 80/20: 80% of the output is from 20% of the input.
  • Multitasking doesn’t work.
  • Don’t rely on extraordinary discipline to achieve.  Rely on habits developed with just a little bit (66 days) of discipline.
  • Willpower is limited.  Do your hardest tasks in the morning, when your willpower and energy are highest.
  • Don’t pursue a life of constant balance.  Instead counterbalance your life between sprints of work and constant life.
  • Extraordinary success requires thinking big.
  • If you have a growth mindset, you don’t need to fear failure. –Carol Dweck
  • Ask yourself “What’s the one thing you can do right now that will make everything else easier or unnecessary?”
  • The most productive people start with a purpose and use it like a compass.
  • Having a clear purpose makes it easy to prioritize.
  • Money won’t make you happy.
  • Happiness happens on the way to fulfillment.
  • Ask yourself where you want to be in 20 years, then 5 year, then 1 year, then 3 months, then 1 month, then 1 week, then what you need to do today.
  • Block out the first 4 hours of every morning for your ONE THING and don’t let anyone interfere.
  • Successful people always have coaches.
  • Get used to saying no to requests that don’t advance your ONE THING.
  • Be prepared for a little chaos while you are focused on your ONE THING.
  • Watch your mental and physical health and sleep.
  • Avoid any negative environments and people.
  • The best way to live is to live with NO REGRETS.
  • Top 5 Regrets of the Dying
    • I wish I’d let myself be happier.
    • I wish I’d stayed in touch with my friends.
    • I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.
    • I wish I’d hadn’t worked so hard.
    • I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself.

Step 7: Martin Seligman’s Salary Slave and Learned Helplessness

The Big Idea: Take risks in life

  • The modern education system trains students to rely on others for their education
  • Read a book a day and become self-educated for happiness
  • Learned helplessness exists in education, health, income, love
  • Great nations are born stoic and die epicurean
  • In the American economy today, the consequences of failure are not catastrophic
  • You have to take risks to be happy
  • Playing it too safe is penny wise and dollar foolish
  • Jeff bezos says to innovate out of your problem (use creativity)
  • Learned helplessness is almost synonymous with depression
  • The antithesis of helplessness is creativity
  • Read Schwarzenegger’s book, Total Recall, to learn about reps and sets
  • Sloth and unreliability will guarantee being unsuccessful

Tai Lopez is an entrepreneur, investor, and blogger who runs an awesome online book club. 67 Steps is a lecture series teaching how to be successful in health, wealth, love, and happiness.  I’m a big fan.

 

Step 6: Sculpture vs Lottery and the Anthropic Media Bias

The Big Idea: The media lies to you about success.  Success takes years of focused work towards a wisely-chosen goal.

  • The media lies to you about success
  • The media doesn’t emphasize Bill Gates worked 7 days a week for ten years.  Arnold Schwarzenegger worked out 4 hours a day during his teens.
  • Overnight success takes years
  • Learn to love the grind, because life is a grind, don’t wait
  • Love your life, perfect your life —Tecumseh
  • Sculpture Approach: identify a rock (goal) and chip away (work) until it becomes a sculpture (success)
  • Understand your strengths and choose goals that build upon your strengths
  • Jeff bezos embraces the truth
  • The narrative bias oversimplifies things
  • Magazines are the worst at oversimplifying things
  • Media bias will lead to the lottery bias (overnight success)
  • It took Warren Buffett 49 years to go from first stock purchase (1941) to billionaire (1990)
  • Spend a day trying to go to bed a little wiser than when you woke up —Charlie Munger
  • At the end of the day, if you live long enough, most people get what they deserve.  —Charlie Munger
  • Pick the rock of your health, wealth, love, and happiness and chip away
  • The trees that are slow to grow bear the best fruit. —Moliere

Tai Lopez is an entrepreneur, investor, and blogger who runs an awesome online book club. 67 Steps is a lecture series teaching how to be successful in health, wealth, love, and happiness.  I’m a big fan.

 

Step 5: My Poor Friends & Cameron Diaz’s Parrot

The Big Idea: Study how successful people think.  

  • Don’t pick your friends based on their success, but be selective about which friend’s advice you listen to.
  • Pay attention to how your more successful friends think and how your less successful friends think.
  • Like parrots, successful people repeat quotes all the time (not their own opinions.)
  • Successful people ask for other people’s opinions all the time.
  • I’ve never had an original idea in my life.  I just go to smart people and copy their ideas. —Joel Salatin

Tai Lopez is an entrepreneur, investor, and blogger who runs an awesome online book club. 67 Steps is a lecture series teaching how to be successful in health, wealth, love, and happiness.  I’m a big fan.

Step 4: Picasso’s Rising Tide and the Law of 33%

The Big Idea: Use mentors to shorten your learning curve.

  • Good artists copy and great artists steal. —Picasso
  • If I’m great it’s because I’m standing on the shoulders of giants. —Einstein
  • To get what you want you must be a learning machine.
  • Poor people should take rich people to dinner.
  • 70% of communication is nonverbal.
  • Find a mentor for every goal you want, who are 10-20 years ahead of where you want to be.
  • Ellen Degeneres had Oprah as her mentor.
  • Draft behind your mentors like race cars or geese in formation.
  • Law of 33%: 1/3 of time with people below your level (good for your self-esteem and good for their development), 1/3 with people at your level (good for friendship and loyalty), 1/3 with people above your level (good for your development).
  • Don’t seek professional mentors, seek professional doers and learn from osmosis (even if difficult).
  • I don’t mind carrying a man but I don’t want him dragging his feet. –Joel Salatin
  • You want it to be tough.  You want it to be hard.  The hard is what makes it worth it. — Tom Hanks
  • Jeff Bezos was mentored by Sam Walton through Walton’s autobiography.
  • To learn from a mentor, you’ll absorb by osmosis not by direct teaching.
  • Make a list of mentors to meet who are 10-20 years ahead of you.
  • Be persistent in trying to contact mentors.
  • Half of success is just showing up, but that means showing up over and over.
  • Email + handwritten letter >> email alone.
  • Be patient when cultivating mentors because people need time to trust you.
  • Mentors can weave in and out of your life, keep in touch.
  • LPT: become a blogger in order to interview possible mentors, then always give them a small gift.
  • Reciprocal bias/reward bias: buy mentors small gifts and they will remember you.
  • LPT: give an assistant automated instructions to send potential mentors small gifts (eg coffee table book of their city).
  • Also add value to your mentor’s life.
  • Great books can be mentors but in-person mentors are preferred.
  • Try for the top guys in your field first.
  • Add value 3 times before asking for value 1 time.
  • Read great books to make you worthy of mentorship.

Tai Lopez is an entrepreneur, investor, and blogger who runs an awesome online book club. 67 Steps is a lecture series teaching how to be successful in health, wealth, love, and happiness.  I’m a big fan.