Hell Yeah or No: What's Worth Doing

People often ask me what they can do to be moresuccessful. I say disconnect. Even if just for a few hours. Unplug. Turn off your phone and Wi-Fi. Focus. Write. Practice. Create. That’s what’s rare and valuable thesedays.You get no competitive edge from consuming the same stuff everyone else is consuming.

Learning without doing is wasted. If I don’t use what I learn, then it was pointless! How horrible to waste those hundreds of hours I spent learning, and not turn it into action.

If you keep experiencing the same things, your mind keeps its same patterns. Same inputs, same responses. Your brain, which was once curious and growing, gets fixed intodeep habits. Your values and opinions harden and resist change. You really learn only when you’re surprised. If you’re not surprised, then everything is fitting into your existing thought patterns. So to get smarter, you need to get surprised, think in new ways, and deeply understand different perspectives.With effort, you could do this from the comfort of home. But the most effective way to shake things up is to move across the world. Pick a place that’s most unlike what youknow, and go. This keeps you in a learning mindset. Previously mindlesshabits, like buying groceries, now keep your mind open, alert, and noticing new things. New arrivals in a culture often notice what the locals don’t. (Fish don’t know they’re in water.)

We shouldn’t preserve our first opinions as if they reflect our pure, untarnished, true nature. They’re often just the result of inexperience or a temporary phase. Old opinions shouldn’t define who we are in the future.

A bad goal makes you say, “I want to do that some day.” A great goal makes you take action immediately.

It’s so important to separate the real goal from the old mental associations. We have old dreams. We have images we want to re-create. They’re hard to untangle from the result we really want. They become excuses, and reasons to procrastinate.

We want to see the world clearly and know what’s what. But once we’re past the first stage of wisdom, the next stage involves adapting to new changes. We don’t get wise just by adding and adding. We also need to subtract.

He taught me that “the standard pace is for chumps” — that the system is designed so anyone can keep up. If you’re more driven than most people, you can do way more than anyone expects. And this principle applies to all of life, not just school.

We’re clearly bad judges of our own creations. We should just put them out there and let the world decide.

People often ask me what they can do to be more successful. I say disconnect. Even if just for a few hours. Unplug. Turn off your phone and Wi-Fi. Focus. Write. Practice. Create. That’s what’s rare and valuable these days. You get no competitive edge from consuming the same stuff everyone else is consuming. It’s rare, now, to focus. And it gives such better rewards.

You may have heard this story: Buridan’s donkey is standing halfway between a pile of hay and a bucket of water. It keeps looking left and right, trying to decide between hay and water. Unable to decide, it eventually dies of hunger and thirst.

Being stupid means avoiding thinking by jumping to conclusions.

Start doing what you said you want to do and start saying if it's really true.

no matter what you tell the world or yourself your actions reveal your real values. your actions show you what you really want

- Hell yeah or no. Spend time doing/working/being things you love and are passionate about. If it doesn’t excite you, and you don’t have to do it, say no.

The word “inspiration” usually means “something that mentally stimulates you.” But “inspiration” also means to breathe in. The meanings poetically combine when you think of yourself breathing in thoughts, filling your body with ideas. But don’t forget to breathe out.

skip the art career and just do the art.

Everybody’s ideas seem obvious to them.

Relax for the same result

Holding on to an old title gives you satisfaction without action.

A farmer had only one horse. One day, his horse ran away.His neighbors said, “I’m so sorry. This is such bad news. You must be so upset.”The man just said, “We’ll see.”A few days later, his horse came back with twenty wild horses following. The man and his son corralled all twenty- one horses.His neighbors said, “Congratulations! This is such good news. You must be so happy!”The man just said, “We’ll see.”One of the wild horses kicked the man’s only son, breaking both his legs.His neighbors said, “I’m so sorry. This is such bad news. You must be so upset.”The man just said, “We’ll see.”The country went to war, and every able-bodied young man was drafted to fight. The war was terrible and killed every young man, but the farmer’s son was spared, since his broken legs prevented him from being drafted.His neighbors said, “Congratulations! This is such good news. You must be so happy!”The man just said, “We’ll see.

You have a goal you’ve been putting off. You want to do it someday. You’ve been meaning to take real action on it, but could use more motivation. Let it go. It’s a bad goal. If it was a great goal, you would have jumped into action already. You wouldn’t wait. Nothing would stop you.

You really learn only when you’re surprised. If you’re not surprised, then everything is fitting into your existing thought patterns. So to get smarter, you need to get surprised, think in new ways, and deeply understand different perspectives.

You are the way you are because of what you’ve experienced.

But the act of reading a book is really about you and what you get from it. All that matters is what you do with the ideas, no matter the source. Apply them to your own life in your own way. It was never about them. It’s about you.

Life can be improved by adding, or by subtracting. The world pushes us to add, because that benefits them. But the secret is to focus on subtracting.

Doesn’t that feel more powerful? Try it. Maybe instead of “fault” you prefer the word “responsibility,” but the idea is the same. Think of every bad thing that happened to you, and imagine that you happened to it.

The problem is taking any one person’s advice too seriously. Ideally, asking advice should be like echolocation. Bounce ideas off of all of your surroundings, and listen to all the echoes to get the whole picture.

Whatever you decide, you need to optimize for that goal, and be willing to let go of the others.

He said, “If they really wanted to do it, they would have done it.