Surprise The Reader

It is less about what you do and more about how you see what you do.

Qualities a purpose needs:

• It's a stable and far-reaching goal. You need something that motivates you and that you can organize your actions around.
• It involves a contribution to the world. It makes a difference in the lives of people who don’t happen to be you.

You have a story you tell yourself about your life — whether you realize it or not.

A trend in the stories that people with meaningful lives tell themselves -  redemption stories: the tellers move from suffering to salvation — they experience a negative event followed by a positive event that resulted from the negative event and therefore gives their suffering some meaning.

Focus on baby steps. The key to new good habits is to do the minimum and be consistent.

Do not be ambitious at the beginning. That leads to failure. Consistency is what you’re shooting for, so make the hurdle as low as possible.

Thinking about the details makes you more likely to follow through. 

Just writing down your plan also makes a big difference in effectively committing to your goals.

"Why should you examine your writing style with the idea of improving it? Do so as a mark of respect for your readers, whatever you’re writing.”

... for establishing what and how you will write:

• Who: Who is my audience?
• What: What do they need to know?
• When: When does this apply, when did this happen, or when do they need to know it by?
• Where: Where is this happening?
• Why: Why do they need this information?
• How: How should they use this information?

• Be Optimistic. Confronted by a bad situation, optimists perceive it as a challenge and try harder.
• Find Meaning In What You Do. When you find true meaning in your work — when it’s not a job, it’s a calling — you don’t burn out.

• Double Down On Relationships. Those who increase their social activity when things get hard handles stress the best.

Most writing mistakes are widespread, but good writers just get better at spotting them. Some things you'll learn to watch for are:

• Overuse of jargon and business-speak, like "utilize" or "endeavor" instead of "use" or "try."
• Clichés are stale phrases that have lost their impact and novelty through overuse. If you are used to seeing it in print, don't use it.
• The passive voice. The subject of the sentence should be the person or thing taking action, not the thing being acted on. "Harry wrote this article," is better than "This article was written by Harry."
• Rambling. When you are not sure what you want to say, it is easy to phrase it in three or four different ways. A single concise sentence is generally better.

When you write something, you get very close to it. It is nearly impossible to distance yourself from it straight away to edit properly.

The longer you can leave a draft before editing, the better. Half an hour to two days is enough of a break to edit well. When you do edit, read your work out loud. You'll catch more problems and get a better feel for how everything flows.

Narcissists lack empathy, they usually don’t work hard, and in a few weeks to a few months, they make the people around them miserable. And narcissism is very hard to change. So, if at all possible, just stay away.

Clinical psychologist Al Bernstein recommends you kiss up to them or at least keep your mouth shut until you can get out of there.

There’s this concept called “narcissistic injury.” Pointing out a narcissist isn’t all they think they are can be like pulling the pin on a grenade. A grenade you have to see every day of your life.

Your first impressions are usually pretty accurate. But whether they are wrong or right, first impressions affect us in a big way and we are slow to change them.

You have to be willing to update them quite rapidly. 

• Studies show that if someone seems extroverted, confident, religious or conscientious, they probably are.
• We all pay more attention to pretty people, and so we tend to take the time to evaluate them.
• If you want to know if someone is good at their job, watch them do it for 30-60 seconds. 
• Funny people are smart: Effective humor production acts as an honest indicator of intelligence in humans.

We find motivation when something is meaningful. Meaning is much bigger than the enjoyment of a moment. It can include something we don't like. Soldiers risk being killed every day to serve their country. New parents handle poop daily for years.

Meaningful things give us purpose. This means doing something that serves a larger cause than yourself or, at least, making a contribution in your own world.

When a task you have to do doesn't seem meaningful, reframe your experience. You may not always be able to change what you have to do but you can change how you view it. When you look at it in light of how it helps others, you'll often find motivation.

You're not "filling out boring paperwork, you're helping people get the insurance that could save their life. You're not slaving over a hot stove, you're showing your family how much you love them.

Forgive. Research indicates that forgiveness makes you less angry and more healthy.

A dash is simply a short burst of focused activity during which you force yourself to do nothing but work on the procrastinated item for a very short period of time—perhaps as little as just one minute.

The first thing is to take one minute and just write down the steps you need to do to finish the task - just a rough draft, at first, and that’s it. 

Now there is nothing else to think about, and there is no way to screw this task up. Everything is laid out and you can just start working on it.

First, give your friend $100. If you get the task done by 5 PM, you get your $100 back. If it doesn’t, you lose the $100.

Or make it $200 that the friend doesn’t keep — they donate it to some weird organizations, in your name.

Get the picture? That’s a commitment device.