One of the fundamental struggles of life is recognizing we have a body and a mind. If you can’t handle the dual, you’re in trouble. The body is “creatureliness”, yet you are ‘A worm and a God’   Need to be important not to die -> need to be important for this most important person (parent, lover, culture). Feeling important -> self esteem -> feeling good about oneself.

Humans are primarily status driven. And  the status of one human comes from how the other humans treat them .  If your product or service changes how other people treat your customer, which it does in some way, it pays to show how.  Show the people gaining status, your customers. Show the people giving it to them. I f you lose weight, do your kids have a new role model? Does your spouse now decide to get healthy too? Are you more likely to get promoted at work?  I’d talk about how a business's competitors notice their phones don’t ring as much because all their customers are flowing to that business. How their business owner buddies say “business must be good” when they pull up in their new car at the golf range.  

“The virtue of prosperity is temperance; the virtue of adversity is fortitude”

Felix Dennis: How to get Rich Ignore 'great ideas'. Concentrate on great execution. Focus. Keep your eye on the ball marked 'The Money Is Here'. Hire talent smarter than you. Delegate. Share the annual pie Sell before you need to, or when bored. Empty your mind when negotiating. Fear nothing and no one.

If you’re looking toward the long-term goal of getting wealthy, you should ask yourself, “Is this authentic to me? Is it myself that I am projecting?” And then, “Am I productizing it? Am I scaling it? Am I scaling with labor or with capital or with code or with media?”

Death wakes people up and the closer it gets, the more awake and aware we become. When the end is near, we suddenly start thinking, What the hell am I doing? Why did I wait this long? Until then, most of us go through life as if we had all the time in the world.

Biggest ideas in this book: 1- Compatible desires (either symmetric desires or asymmetric desires) 2- Easy path focuses on what you can do and not changing what others want or naturally do 3- A free person spends their time choosing among attractive alternatives 4- Know what you want. Do what makes you uniquely happy and do not compromise your desires. Act creating consequence leading to your happiness 5- Recognize everyone else is different and unique - both in what makes them happy and therefore how they act

I thought the dulling of perception was an inevitable consequence of age just as the lens of the eye is bound gradually to dim. I didn't understand that clarity is in the mind.

The techniques that Spanish chef Ferran Adrià pioneered at El Bulli introduced molecular gastronomy to the world.

  1- Incentives Law is to disincentivize future tragedy, not just to assign blame for past tragedy.

Finally,

Why do I get angry when I am insulted? Because I entertain the verity of the insult.

This book gives three "right" questions, and the Eventual Innovators should put these questions on a wall in their office because they must constantly remind themselves of the need to get back to basics and confront these questions, Step 1: What is this product used for?

Founders should not grow beyond a team of six until there is true product market fit. True product market fit means one million dollars in recurring revenue for an enterprise company.   Chaos is expected in a team of six or less - they want if to be hard. 

If you think that only which is your own to be your own, no man will ever compel you, no man will hinder you, you will never blame or accuse no man, you will do nothing involuntarily, no man will harm you, you will have no enemy, for you will not suffer any harm.  

When choosing career, the correct place to start is: “what do I want to learn?”  Follow your natural interests,  not- “What company has enough name recognition that my mom can brutally crush the other moms when they boast about their kids?”  😂

Intelligence is not borne out of self-discipline or suppression. In the one instance it is wholly the pursuit of desire, the primitive man pursuing the object he desires. In the other instance, the intelligent man sees the significance of desire and sees the conflict; the primitive man does not, he pursues anything he desires and creates suffering and pain. So to me self-discipline and suppression are both alike—they both deny intelligence.

The highest leverage point for managers is choosing tasks - there are infinite things you and your team can do - which are the high leverage tasks? Premise: as an item moves through the production process it gets more valuable.  Corollary: Detect and fix any problem in the production process at the lowest value stage possible. Thus, we should find the rotten egg as it’s being delivered from the supplier rather than permitting the customer to find it. 

Sometimes people have to suffer enough in a relationship to get disillusioned about all relationships. It takes that rock bottom to reach the insight of: there must be another way of living than depending on another human being.  

Biggest takeaways - wow Change your behavior, then change your thinking (/your thinking will follow) Delegate decisions to the lowest level possible. Give control. Give responsibility. 

Discretion is the wonderful virtue of being able to see the way things are, and act accordingly.   The forces governing life are knowable, and to an extent controllable. This knowledge and control requires effort, talent, experience, mind and Fortune. 

There is nothing worth thinking but has been thought before; we must only try thinking it again.   Our endeavor must be to strive until our personality attains entelechy—it’s full development. 

If you ask your robot to cook italian dinner 

Corporate capabilities Competitive reaction We must analyze: Financial - are there any underutilized assets, have we achieved our cost potential (lowest)’ Technology economics

  So What? Means so what, until they know how what you have that can benefit them.   10 ways to apply: Heres-how-I-can-benefit-you thinking:  if you can anticipate—and address—the So What Question that is always in your audience’s mind, you will be much more successful in business and in life.

Increasing effectiveness of intervention to the system: 12. Constants, parameters, numbers. 11. The sizes of buffers and other stabilizing stocks, relative to their flows. 10. The structure of material stocks and flows. 9. The lengths of delays, relative to the rate of system change. 8. The strength of negative feedback loops. 7. The gain around driving positive feedback loops.

Acquire wisdom by keeling company with the aged teachers See through your spies. 

Superstar salespeople prospect day and night.   In sales, there are three things you control: Your actions Your reactions Your Mindset Keep your energy focused on the things you can control. 

I had never considered the importance of a regular eating schedule on your circadian rhythm. Interesting: apply chronotypes to your relationship. Understand if you two have the same tendencies or different, and you can alter your schedules together for a more favorable outcome.

Framing the problem: McKinsey solves problems in a structured, hypothesis-driven manner.  A hypothesis greatly speeds up your quest for a solution by sketching out a roadmap for research and analysis.  Helps you prioritize. 

Lower the intonation of your voice at the end of sentences.   Reduce how quickly and often you nod.  Pause for 2 full seconds before you speak. (Allow yourself to take their full statement into consideration)

Intimacy is the only completely satisfying answer to stimulus-hunger, recognition-hunger, and structure-hunger. 

We recognize the interaction between the body and the mind.   Emotions and personality can have a tremendous impact on the functioning health of virtually every cell in the body. 

Human nature = the shared peculiarities of being human.   There are very few features of the human psyche which can be understood without reference to reproduction.  This is because there is no way for evolution to work other than by competitive reproduction.  Those that reproduce persist, those who do not reproduce die out. 

If you’re not moving into a mathematically oriented career, that’s fine. But you can still do math. Math is woven into the way we reason. And math makes you better at things.   Math is a science of not being wrong about things, its techniques and habits hammered out by centuries of hard work and argument. 

In the same way that an apartment building is worth the present value of the rent that will be paid by its tenants, a company is worth the present value of the cash we expect it to generate over its lifetime, less whatever the company has to spend to continue running and expanding its business.  

Early stage startups are probably the most productive part of the whole economy.   An automotive magazine modified a “sports” model car to make it as fast as possible.  What did they do? They cut off all the crap the manufacturer had bolted onto the car to make it  look  fast. 

  Why is a two year old so terrible?   Because they are systematically testing the notion that something that gives her pleasure might not actually give someone else pleasure—and the truth is that as adults we never lose that fascination. 

Body language is like the written language. You have to use context.  

Images give logos to perception.   One must be receptive to the image, the image the moment it appears. 

  Weasel words: Can’t  Need (you only need water every five days, food after starving for a month, and shelter to keep you warm) Bad Try Set your computer to automatically capitalize weasel words so you’ll have to change them to more truthful words. 

Seneca believed that “philosophers don’t practice what they preach” What counts, is one’s attitude toward wealth, which is the wise man’s servant and the fool’s master; he, like any good Stoic, could lose all he had without being a whit less happy. 

He was taught to dress plainly and to live simply, to avoid all softness and luxury. His body was trained to hardihood by wrestling, hunting, and outdoor games.  

The world belongs to those who see possibilities before they become obvious and who effectively marshal resources and energies for their attainment or avoidance.  Nor is anything great accomplished without high spirits. 

The kitchen is not a place of labor, but a field of fantasy and play.   If you can read and follow directions, you can cook. 

  Break out a journal and write out the ways you’ve been hurt or are still in harm’s way.   Give your pain shape and absorb its power.  Use that story, the list of excuses, to fuel your ultimate success.  Most white men have no idea how hard it can be to be  the only .  It makes you want to stay home some days because to go out in public is to be completely exposed, vulnerable to a world that tracks and judges you. 

A joyful life is an individual creation that cannot be copied from a recipe.   Happiness does not depend on outside events, but, rather, on how we interpret them.  It is by being fully involved with every detail of our lives, whether good or bad, that we find happiness. 

The potential energy of humans is usually curtailed, leaving only flatness.   Change your approach to discover new ways of seeing and for animating and awakening.  The distance separating our eyes means that there is a difference between the view each produces—thus there is no single “correct” view.  The displacement,  parallax , is what allows us to perceive depth and greater meaning. 

The gut has a circadian pacemaker of its own.   When your guy is not on its biological clock schedule, hormone disruption causes: -increased inflammation -inefficient metabolism -decreased effectiveness of prescription therapies

A rainmaker is a person who brings revenue into an organization.  

Why are the laws important?   The laws will allow you to react to others not with emotion but with the desire to understand where their behavior might come from.  You will become more tolerant as you become less likely to judge and instead accept their flaws as part of human nature. 

Interesting:  Aristotle defined vice as the ways of behaving least conducive to happiness and virtue as the ways of behaving most conducive to happiness.   Dreams shed light on the dim places where reason has yet to voyage. 

  Good coaches help people realize their full potential. They focus on a few key points—often simple points. Once you master these points, your play improves enormously.  

Propaganda began in WWI.   Before then, it was not even in the Oxford English dictionary, nor did the word have a pernicious connotation.  

In all versions of the Faust legend, the hero is offered something he desperately wants - power or knowledge or a fast-ball that will beat the Yankees - and all he has to do is give up his soul.   Versions end up either tragic or comic depending on whether the devil successfully collects the soul at the end of the work.  (P. xxiv)

When I write an advertisement, I don't want you to tell me that you find it 'creative'. I want you to find it so interesting that you buy the product.   When Aeschines spoke, they said, 'How well he speaks.' But when Demosthenes spoke, they said, 'Let us march against Philip.”

  A Black Swan is an event with 3 attributes: It is an outlier, as it lies beyond the realm of regular expectations, because nothing in the past can point to its possibility.  It carries an extreme impact.  In spite of its outlier status, human nature makes us concoct explanations for its occurrence after the fact, making it seem explainable and predictable. 

  The moment you reach out to a VIP, two questions flash in their minds: Who are you? And what do you want?

What techniques work for the small sale do not always apply to the large sale. In fact, what works in small sales can hurt your success as the sales grow larger.   The building of perceived value is probably the single most important selling skill in larger sales. 

Through consecutive Hook cycles, successful products reach their ultimate goal of unprompted user engagement, bringing users back repeatedly, without depending on costly advertising or aggressive messaging.

Take responsibility and have a strong internal locus of control.   Think of the future as multiple outcomes floating loosely in the air. They have different weights—their probabilities. Think of the future in terms of probability, many things can happen, how can you make the one you want more likely to happen?

Think in terms of what is in it for him. Speak in terms of other’s interest when influencing them. Even charity can be thought of as selfish, if they did it to feel good.  

  Rules to be observed in proper trade: Endeavor to be perfect in the calling you are engaged in; and be assiduous in every part thereof; INDUSTRY being the natural means if acquiring  wealth, honor, and reputation ; as IDLENESS is of  poverty, shame, and disgrace. 

Charlie Munger was Warren Buffet’s business partner.  

The best thing about startups? You only ever experience two emotions: euphoria and terror. And the lack of sleep that comes with the job seems to enhance them both.  

If you detect the stench of conceit in this book, I would have you know my conceit is selective. I cannot read a balance sheet, work a computer, ski, sail, or play golf. But when it comes to advertising they call me King. When Fortune published an article about me titled “Is David Ogilvy a Genius?,” I asked my lawyers to sue the editor for the question mark.

How is it that in a city so fine as Babylon, wealthiest in the world at the time, there are haphazard arrays of living arrangements, with some poor and some wealthy? How is it that good, honest men will toil ceaselessly but barely have enough money for food, and at the end of the day be left with as little as the king's slaves carrying water from the Euphrates?  

Pygmalion Effect - higher expectations will lead to higher performance "What you are shouts so loudly in my ears that I cannot hear what you say" - Emerson

Selling based on price is like heroin. The short-term gain is fantastic, but the more you do it, the harder it becomes to kick the habit. Once buyers get used to paying a lower-than-average price for a product or service, it is very hard to get them to pay more. The downward spiral of price addiction is inevitable for all commodities.

Kliebers law proves that as life gets bigger, energy slows down. But Geoffrey West's model demonstrated one crucial way in which human-built cities broke from patterns of biological life: as cities get bigger, they generate ideas at a faster rate. 

  Great sales line: "Look Mr./Mrs. Prospect. There are a thousand people you can turn to for xyz service if that's what you want. The people that do it, I know about half of them, and there very nice men and women, and I think they're very ethical, and I think they to a very fine job for what they are and what they do. But our approach, our strategy, our positioning is totally different." Then you can get into why you're different and why your experience is better. 

  "As long as you're green your growing, as soon as you're ripe you start to rot" "Work is the meat in the hamburger of life"