Make sure you use every app on your home screen every day. For example:<ul><li>Phone, Messages — Self-explanatory&nbsp;</li><li>Clock — for alarms</li><li>Your to-do app&nbsp;</li><li>The messaging apps&nbsp;</li><li>Meditation app</li></ul>

Minimalist Phone: The Home Screen

When your phone does tap you on the shoulder, it isn’t because your phone has anything useful for you.&nbsp;On the contrary, it usually has something useful for someone else: notifications for coupons that help stores sell products, notifications about posts from acquaintances and ex-friends you don’t need to see, notifications from games that want you to waste your time, and notifications from apps to spend money on in-app purchases.

Use Your Phone When It's Good For You

Apps are engineered so that you spend as much time on them as possible.&nbsp;Social media is designed to have endless scrolling, buttons are placed right where it’s easiest to tap, and apps are full of bright and stimulating colors.

Don't Use Your Phone For Long Periods Of Time

This is not the first time I’ve written about digital minimalism. It feels like I can’t go a week without spotting someone’s phone out of the corner of my eye, overflowing with hundreds of unseen…

Stashed ideas

What My Minimalist Phone Looks Like

Elizabeth Gilbert teaches how to be creative despite fears and uncertainty and where innovative ideas actually come from.An absolute must-read for anyone who is holding themselves back from pursuing her dreams and hesitating to take the next big leap in life.“Creative entitlement simply means believing that you are allowed to be here, and that — merely by being here — you are allowed to have a voice and a vision of your own.”

Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert

The book is not only packed with inspiration that will empower you to go out and live your best life, but it also includes actionable tasks and ideas on how to find your passion, or element, as Robinson calls it.The ideal read for anyone who is still on the path of finding his passion and calling in life.<blockquote>“If you’re doing something that you love, by the end of the day you may be physically tired but spiritually energized.”</blockquote>

Finding Your Element by Ken Robinson

This is a fantastic piece that will convince you to speed up your decision-making process, no matter how important the decision seems to be.Gladwell describes how most of our decisions are based on our gut feeling and what happens when we listen to our intuition instead of over-thinking and creating endless pro-contra lists.“If we are to learn to improve the quality of the decisions we make, we need to accept the mysterious nature of our snap judgments.”

Blink by Malcolm Gladwell

21 Lessons For The 21st Century summarizes today’s highlights in terms of politics, culture, and economics in a way everybody can relate and still make up their own opinion.<blockquote>“In a world deluged by irrelevant information, clarity is power.”</blockquote>

21 Lessons For The 21st Century by Yuval Noah Harari

This book is the ultimate must-read for anyone who wants to level up her performance and life in general.“Be more intentional about who you want to become. Have vision beyond your current circumstances. Imagine your best future self, and start acting like that person today.”

High Performance Habits by Brendon Burchard

It’s basically a look into all the lessons Oprah learned throughout the past decades.She openly shares all the struggles she faced and the lessons learned on her path to becoming one of the most influential people of today’s wold.<blockquote>“What I know for sure is that every day brings a chance for you to draw in a breath, kick off your shoes, and step out and dance — to live free of regret and filled with as much joy, fun, and laughter as you can stand.”</blockquote>

What I Know For Sure by Oprah

This one is a fantastic step-by-step guide on how to create a happier, more joyful life without much effort.Rubin describes her own happiness project, which she practiced for 12 months and openly shares which strategies best worked for her and how you can apply them as well.“The belief that unhappiness is selfless and happiness is selfish is misguided. It’s more selfless to act happy. It takes energy, generosity, and discipline to be unfailingly lighthearted, yet everyone takes the happy person for granted.”

The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin

Jen Sincero talks about topics like the law of attraction and <a href="https://medium.com/publishous/how-i-manifested-my-first-5-000-month-on-medium-88966064b346" target="_self">manifestation</a> in a way everybody can understand and apply the lessons.An absolute recommendation for anyone who wants to make the universal laws work for them and finally attract all their biggest desires.<blockquote>“You’ve gotten to where you are right now by doing whatever it is you’re doing, so if you’re less than impressed with your current situation, you clearly need to change things up.”</blockquote>

You Are A Badass by Jen Sincero

The 4-Hour Workweek is a bible for personal growth and business.Ferriss teaches so many strategies on how to live better and build lasting, automated businesses. This sounds like too much to cover in a single book, but he truly delivers the value.&nbsp;<blockquote>“Doing less meaningless work, so that you can focus on things of greater personal importance, is NOT laziness. This is hard for most to accept, because our culture tends to reward personal sacrifice instead of personal productivity.”</blockquote>

The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss

Best books to read in 2020: Must-read books about personal development, creativity, business, and how to succeed in life. Books to read for a better life.

If You Only Read A Few Books This Year, Read These

Paul Graham argues that explosive growth is the only measure of success. “Making it” means one of two things: go public or sell. But a startup has about as much chance of making it as a single sperm has of fertilizing an egg. 90% of startups fail. The majority die within 20 months of their last round of funding. Success equals the amount of money raised, or the profits made upon exit — never mind whether any value is generated in the world beyond capital.

90% of startups fail

“The tyranny of the quantifiable” describes the current ethos of venture financing.In such a system, what can be measured almost always takes precedence over what cannot: private profit over public good; speed and efficiency over enjoyment and quality.

The tyranny of the quantifiable

Outside of bootstrapping, or relying on wealthy friends or family, or having connections to the limited network of mission-driven angel investors, there’s a dearth of options for tech companies seeking financing: It’s venture capital or bust. In an alternative version of the future, we create a new model: We invent another style of investing, one that recognizes founders with long-term, wide-ranging visions. We focus not only on how much money is raised, and on investor returns, but also on how we generate value for users, elevate communities, and build a more equitable and inclusive system.

Alternatives to venture capital

Startups, like the male anatomy, are designed for liquidity events. Consider the metaphors: “seed” funding, “up and to the right” trajectories, “acceleration,” “exit.” Paul Graham’s seminal essay…

Sex & Startups

The hustle has become synonymous with the grind. Pushing through pain and exhaustion in the chase of a bigger carrot. Sacrificing the choice bits of the human experience to climb some arbitrary ladder of success.&nbsp;You’re not very likely to find that key insight or breakthrough idea north of the 14th hour. Creativity, progress, and impact does not yield easily or commonly to brute force.

Let’s bury the hustle

<ol><li>Get a great night’s sleep.You take a bigger hit on your productive and creative powers through lack of proper sleep than almost any other neglect.</li><li>Get plenty of fresh air. Unlike sleep, it’s far less known just how much cognitive impairment you can suffer from poor air quality.</li><li>Get regular exercise. This isn’t about “staying fit” or “looking good". It’s about what moving your body does to your brain.&nbsp;</li><li>Read some classics. Read the best humankind had to offer over the last few millennia.&nbsp;</li><li>Say no to more dumb shit. Engage with fewer things but at a higher intensity. Stop chasing so much.</li></ol>

Cheat sheet and counter to the hustle

I love Gary Vaynerchuk dearly. So much of his message about patience and perseverance is completely in line with how I view the world. But I can’t take any more odes to “the hustle”. Like most…

There’s an ingrained mythology around startups that not only celebrates burn-out efforts, but actually requires it. It’s the logical outcome of trying to compress a lifetime’s worth of work into the abbreviated timeline of a venture fund.It’s not hard to understand why such mythology serves the interest of money men who spread their bets wide and only succeed when unicorns emerge.

Trickle-down workaholism in startups

If you want to understand why so many startups become infected with unhealthy work habits, or outright workaholism, a good place to start your examination is in the attitudes of their venture capital…

makers