The Bed of Procrustes by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Key Lesson:

If you manage to seduce, charm, and deceive your opponents, you will attain the ultimate power.

Key Lesson:

Obeying logic will help you create an ordinary product. Respecting the illogical nature of humans will help you create a masterpiece.

Key Lesson:

Focus on creating value over the long-term. This allows leaders to make decisions and weigh trade-offs differently.

Key Lesson

Globalization replaced technology as the hope for the future. Entrepreneurs learned four big (mistaken) lessons: 1. make incremental advances, 2. stay lean and flexible, 3. improve on the competition, and 4. focus on product, not sales

Key Lesson:

One of the most important factors of a stoic mindset is the ability to control your reaction. No matter the situation, the way you respond is always within your realm of control. It's easy to let your emotions get the best of you.

Key Lessons:

Remove Blind Spots To Win.

Do not Seek For Unlimited Gain In a Limited World.

Learn to Navigate Outside of Your Circle Of Competence

Key Lessons:

I, and I alone, am responsible for everything I think and feel.

No one is going to value you more than you value yourself.

Key Lesson:

The most common misunderstanding I encounter is that the good life is a stable state or condition.

Wrong.

The good life is only achieved through constant readjustment.

Key Lesson:

You ask what this freedom is? It means not fearing either men or gods; it means not craving wickedness or excess; it means possessing supreme power over oneself

And it is a priceless good to be master of oneself.

Key Lesson:

Antifragility is beyond resilience or robustness. When you workout, your body will adapt to get stronger and make your workout easier to do the next time. Thus, your body benefits from physical stressors and is antifragile.

Key Lesson:

The key to developing a deep work habit is to move beyond good intentions and add routines to your working life designed to minimize the amount of your willpower necessary to transition into and maintain a state of unbroken concentration

Key Lesson:

You can get anything you want if you learn to use the key principles of persuasion: reciprocity, consistency and commitment, social proof, liking, authority, and scarcity.

Key Lesson:

You think you can change things that you have no control over. The illusion of control describes how we believe our influence extends to things that are impossible to manipulate. We do this because it brings us hope

Key Lesson:

Getting money requires taking risks, being optimistic, and putting yourself out there. But keeping money requires the opposite of taking risk. It requires humility, and fear that what you've made can be taken away from you

Key Lesson:

What's worth doing, fixing faulty thinking, and making things happen. Small paradigm shifts and questions like these can be life-changing.

Key Lesson:

Be helpful to others in any kind of way, your time to receive help will come too. Don't bother looking for new opportunities until you can show some level of success in what you do.