Charlie

• The traits that make us successful in our careers aren’t optimized for happiness.
• Sacrificing the present for a better tomorrow, toiling hard with a single-minded focus isn’t exactly fun. Let’s face it, success and happiness are two different things.
• Happiness is something that is only felt in the present moment, and meditation is a way to reach that mindset permanently.

Success is just one of the outcomes of the process of pursuing one’s goal.

You ought to read a ton of books, and only implement a fraction of the ideas, depending on what you have time for.

• Reading books is quite cheap. Kindle editions of popular books cost less than a nice meal. Libraries and borrowing books means you often don’t even need to pay that. Even the time spent reading a book is a fairly low investment. 
• Implementing ideas, in contrast, is often quite expensive. Implementing just one idea from a book can take more time, money, or effort than reading the book itself. Implementing all the ideas from a single book might take years.

• FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) is a collection of feelings and emotions that influence our thinking.
• It was coined by Gene Amdahl, who worked at IBM and later founded his own company.
• Business, media, politics and even some religions use FUD intentionally, as they understand its power and how vulnerable people are to it.
• Marketers and salespeople often exploit these behaviour patterns in people and manipulate them by planting doubts and uncertainties about a competing product or service in their minds.

It is often unhelpful to hear that the perfect routine is the one you can stick to to help you reach your goals. As everyone is different in personality, constraints, and preferences, the ideal method will differ.

Instead of outlining an exact routine, look at the essential parts of a routine, and season them as you desire.

1. Start small: Get comfortable to let go of the need to be perfect from the beginning.
2. Try an outside perspective: We're usually hard on ourselves, but not nearly as harsh with other people.
3. Make a commitment to work on a project for a set period of time: Once the time is up, you're done, whether the project is perfect or not.
4. Put all your perfectionistic tendencies towards areas that are truly important to you.

• Writing a book summary helps you remember what you read months, or even years, after reading.
• It helps you connect main concepts from other books, giving you a deeper level of understanding.
• Lastly, it helps you improve your own writing.

• It increases your chances of mental illness. And as your mental health declines, your tendency to ruminate increases.
• It interferes with problem-solving. It will cause you to dwell on the problem rather than look for solutions.
• It disturbs your sleep. You'll be more likely to toss and turn for hours before you drift off.

You can choose a friend who also wants to learn the language. Agree to talk in your language of choice at least once per day or whenever you talk to each other.

Your friend does not have to be a native speaker. But, 10% of your time should be speaking with an advanced or native speaker. Use a dictionary or other tools when you feel the need.

When you feel that you are unable to do even a menial task, your motivation is your biggest friend.

When a huge project is given to you and it feels overwhelming, give yourself some time to examine the project and break it down to bite-sized piece that you can take on. At the end of the day, you are still able to finish tasks and have achieved something.

The whole process of producing ideas doesn't end when an idea is generated. Ideation should be followed by an evaluation part.

• Idea generation: it means coming up different ways to solve a problem. The focus here is on quantity.
• Idea evaluation: it means evaluating how relevant each idea (solution) is. The focus in this this stage is on quality.