Experiential Based Thinking

They are pre-specified periods of time, effort or stress that you decide you’re willing to endure before you step back and re-evaluate.

• Set shorter lengths of projects: set projects that are short enough that committing to them all the way is easy enough to do or break into chunks th bigger ones.
• Set re-evaluation points for ongoing habits and goals.
• Based on impact to other areas of your life. You can choose metrics like: time and how those things impact your life.

Successful people quit (or proactively adjust) a lot more often than people who aren’t successful. They stay flexible and open to new ideas or opportunities or ways of getting things done.

But never quit something with great long-term potential just because you can’t deal with the stress at the moment

“Instead of continually trying to force yourself to do things you don’t want to do, let them go. Without the emotional weight and mental clutter of keeping things on your agenda that don’t absolutely need to be there, you’re much freer to rapidly move forward on what you really do want and need to get done.”

In the movie, Chris Gardner is a single father, struggling in poverty. Unable to sell the products he invested his life savings into, he finds himself struggling to pay rent. Within one year, he manages to become a stockbroker at a top firm and goes on to run his own multimillion dollar firm.

People gravitated to this story because it's the ultimate success story: the story of the underdog. It's about perseverance, determination and hard work.

While trying to sell one of his bone scanners downtown, he meets Jay Twistle, a manager for Dean Witter, whom he impresses after solving a Rubix cube puzzle in a taxi ride. After securing an interview with Dean Witter to become an intern stockbroker, he is arrested for unpaid parking tickets. When he’s let go, he’s out of time to change clothes and has to suck up his pride and go to the interview in sweatpants and a wife beater. He presents his reasons for candidacy with such strength, determination and passion that his employers were forced to look beyond his appearance.

... for choosing personal goals. Ask yourself these questions:

1. Ask yourself which aspect of your life you would like to change most.
2. Think about why you want to change this.
3. How will that change make you feel? Determine what exactly will make you feel this way.
4. Ask yourself how you can make this happen and then make it your personal goal.

• Draw a chart. Write down each of the various areas of your life (family, health, self-development, career, relationships) in a new column or line.
• Assess your current happiness level in each of these categories by giving it a score from 1 to 10.
• Think what will make you be fully satisfied with these areas. Write down your ideas – you will be able to transform them into personal plans.

Sunk cost is about the past. Opportunity cost is about the future.

If you are scared to quit (which is absolutely natural), always think of the opportunity cost. Think of the brighter future, not the scary past, and often times that is enough to give you that extra push to make the right decision.

When you finally succeed, but you don’t have the health or someone to share the success with, the project might prove not be be worth it. 

Take 5 minutes at the end of the week and reflect on what you have achieved versus what you had to give up to achieve it so you don’t end up giving up too much without even realizing it.  Make this a habit. 

Some possible but weak reasons why action is hard:

• Talent. But the world is full of brilliant stars that flame out and mediocre minds that build empires.
• Preferences can explain our failure to try, but don't explain our inner struggles with inaction.
• Capacity for effort. If your capacity for doing things is lower, it does not explain chronic bursts of activity with inevitable crashes in your goals and projects.
• Motivation. Some people with the most reason have the hardest time taking action. 

• Your motivation to complete a task depends on the value of the reward and your expectation of success. 
• Your expectation of success depends on your motivation.

If your projects tend to fail, your expectations are low, and motivation fades. If your projects tend to succeed, your expectations go up, and motivation stays strong.

1. Stick to short commitments. Get good at this skill before going further.
2. Understand your goal at different levels. The highest goal should be fairly abstract.
3. Set a much more specific agenda of how I could fulfill this.
4. Have periodic reviews where you can change your direction and incorporate new ideas. 
5. Don't let your reviews interfere with the short-term process of committing.

1. A goal level, which is big-picture and abstract. It has just enough detail to inspire, but not so much that you're stuck pursuing things that don’t matter when conditions change. 
2. Underneath that, have projects: these tend to be short-to-medium term efforts you think will help realize the larger goal.

The flexibility of the system comes once one leg of a short-term commitment has ended. This provides an opportunity for pivoting and redirecting.

It is a byproduct of self-discipline — it requires a method, not just a positive attitude.

Rather than worrying about the end result, focus on how to make daily progress.

But by pushing ourselves too hard, we exhaust the mental muscles needed to stay focused, to avoid temptations, and to persist in the face of frustration or failure. 

This type of comfort breeds something lazy in us and we only do what is expected of us, but do not go beyond. 

Crave what is new and unexplored, and fearlessly pursue those areas. 

Effort counts twice as much as genius or talent.

Commit to being a person who wants to be more, do more, and consistently test the limits of your capacity. Embrace the responsibility and enjoy the freedom that comes with it.

The gap between expectation and reality is the cause for many of life’s disappointments.
We like to create detailed fantasies of how our lives are going to be. But when we expect our reality to match a fantasy but life turns out nothing like it, we feel disappointed.

"Are you the right person for me?" is the wrong question to ask, because nothing outside of ourselves can fix us or bring us happiness.
A more constructive question to ask would be "Can I accommodate your imperfections with humor and grace?"