<ul><li>The knowledge of what is mine and what is not mine, what I can and cannot do</li><li>I must die. But must I die bawling? </li><li>I must be put in chains – but moaning and groaning too? </li><li>I must be exiled; but is there anything to keep me from going with a smile, calm and self-composed?</li></ul>

Concerning what is in our power and what is not (1)

<ul><li>Man, the rational animal, can put up with anything except what seems to him irrational; whatever is rational is tolerable</li><li>Physical hardships are not intolerable by nature. The Spartans, for instance, gladly submit to being whipped because they are taught that it is done for good reason</li><li>But what about being hanged – isn’t that intolerable? Well, people frequently go and hang themselves, whenever they judge that it is a reasonable course of action.</li></ul>

Concerning what is in our power and what is not (2)

<ul><li>Why should I worry about what happens if I am armed with the virtue of fortitude? Nothing can trouble or upset me, or even seem annoying</li><li>Bring on whatever difficulties you like, Zeus; I have resources and a constitution that you gave me by means of which I can do myself credit whatever happens.</li></ul>

On Providence 

<ul><li>Whenever we do something wrong, then, from now on we will not blame anything except the opinion on which it’s based; and we will try to root out wrong opinions with more determination than we remove tumours or infections from the body</li><li>By the same token, we will acknowledge opinion as the source of our good behaviour too</li><li>And we, not externals, are the masters of our judgements</li></ul>

We are master of our own judgement

<ul><li>Philosophy does not claim to secure for us anything outside our control. Otherwise it would be taking on matters that do not concern it. For as wood is the material of the carpenter, and marble that of the sculptor, so the subject matter of the art of life is the life of the self.</li><li>Nothing important comes into being overnight; even grapes or figs need time to ripen. If you say that you want a fig now, I will tell you to be patient. First, you must allow the tree to flower, then put forth fruit; then you have to wait until the fruit is ripe. </li></ul>

What philosophy professes

Selected writings of philosopher Epictetus 

Contains The Discourses/Fragments/Enchiridion 'I must die. But must I die bawling?' Epictetus, a Greek Stoic and freed slave, ran a thriving philosophy school in Nicopolis in the early second century AD. His animated discussions were celebrated for their rhetorical wizardry and were written down by Arrian, his most famous pupil. The Discourses argue that happiness lies in learning to perceive exactly what is in our power to change and what is not, and in embracing our fate to live in harmony with god and nature. In this personal, practical guide to the ethics of Stoicism and moral self-improvement, Epictetus tackles questions of freedom and imprisonment, illness and fear, family, friendship and love. Translated and Edited with an Introduction by Robert Dobbin

Discourses and Selected Writings

Don’t aim at success—the more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side-effect of one’s dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one’s surrender to a person other than oneself. Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success: you have to let it happen by not caring about it.

Over 16 million copies sold worldwide 'Every human being should read this book' Simon Sinek One of the outstanding classics to emerge from the Holocaust, Man's Search for Meaning is Viktor Frankl's story of his struggle for survival in Auschwitz and other Nazi concentration camps. Today, this remarkable tribute to hope offers us an avenue to finding greater meaning and purpose in our own lives.

Man's Search For Meaning

In the 1860s and 1870s, the American economy went through perhaps the greatest transformation in its history (when rail road built and wall street emerge). <ul><li>If you were born in the late 1840s you missed it. You were too young to take advantage of that moment</li><li>If you were born in the 1820s you were too old: your mind-set was shaped by the pre-Civil War paradigm.</li><li>But there was a particular, narrow nine year window (1830s) that was just perfect for seeing the potential that the future held.</li></ul>

The Year You Are Born In Matter

<ul><li>John D. Rockefeller, 1839</li><li>Andrew Carnegie, 1835</li><li>Frederick Weyerhaeuser, 1834</li><li>Jay Gould, 1836</li><li>Marshall Field, 1834</li><li>George F. Baker, 1840</li><li>Hetty Green, 1834</li><li>James G. Fair, 1831</li><li>Henry H. Rogers, 1840</li><li>J. P . Morgan, 1837</li><li>Oliver H. Payne, 1839</li><li>George Pullman, 1831</li><li>Peter Arrell Brown Widener, 1834</li><li>Philip Danforth Armour, 1832</li></ul>

Successful People Who Born In 1830s

Below is a list of people who born in the 1950s, the best year to be born as they will be in their 20s when the computer and internet start booming (1970s)

<ul><li class="ql-align-justify">Bill Gates: October 28, 1955</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Paul Allen: January 21, 1953</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Steve Ballmer: March 24, 1956</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Steve Jobs: February 24, 1955</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Eric Schmidt: April 27, 1955</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Bill Joy: November 8, 1954</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Scott McNealy: November 13, 1954</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Vinod Khosla: January 28, 1955</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Andy Bechtolsheim: September 30, 1955</li></ul>

Successful People Who Born In 1950s

<ul><li>This doesn't means that every software tycoon in Silicon Valley was born in 1955, or every business titan in United States was born in mid 1830s</li><li>But there are very clear patterns and what's striking is how little we seem to want to acknowledge them. We pretend that success is exclusively a matter of individual merit.</li><li>They are the people who were given a special opportunity to work really hard and seized it, and who happened to come of age at a time when that extraordinary effort was rewarded by the rest of society</li></ul>

The other interesting thing about that ten thousand 
hours, of course, is that ten thousand hours is an enormous amount of time. It's all but impossible to reach that number all by yourself by the time you're a young adult. You have to have parents who encourage and support you. You can't be poor, because if you have to hold down a part-time job on the side to help make ends meet, there won't be time left in the day to practice enough. In fact, most people can reach that number only if they get into some kind of special program-like a hockey all-star squad.

From the bestselling author of Blink and The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers: The Story of Success overturns conventional wisdom about genius to show us what makes an ordinary person an extreme overachiever. Why do some people achieve so much more than others? Can they lie so far out of the ordinary? In this provocative and inspiring book, Malcolm Gladwell looks at everyone from rock stars to professional athletes, software billionaires to scientific geniuses, to show that the story of success is far more surprising, and far more fascinating, than we could ever have imagined. He reveals that it's as much about where we're from and what we do, as who we are - and that no one, not even a genius, ever makes it alone. Outliers will change the way you think about your own life story, and about what makes us all unique. 'Gladwell is not only a brilliant storyteller; he can see what those stories tell us, the lessons they contain' Guardian 'Malcolm Gladwell is a global phenomenon ... he has a genius for making everything he writes seem like an impossible adventure' Observer 'He is the best kind of writer - the kind who makes you feel like you're a genius, rather than he's a genius' The Times

Outliers

<ul><li>Have no plan</li><li>Surplus money immediately spent</li><li>Road most travel because it's the path of least resistance</li><li>Instant gratification</li></ul>

Side Walk

Debt perception: Credit allows me to buy things now! Credit cards, consolidation loans, car payments-these supplement my income and help me enjoy life today! If I want it now, I'm going to get it now.Time perception: Time is abundant and I spend money like there's no tomorrow. Heck, I could be dead in two weeks, and you can't take it with you!Education perception: I finished school when I graduated, hooray!Money perception: If you got it, flaunt it! Why save for a rainy day? I spend every dime I earn and most of my bills are paid on time; isn't that being fiscally responsible? ﻿

Side Walker Mindset (1)

Primary income source:whatever gigs pay the most is what I will do, I chase money, it is all about the BenjaminsPrimary wealth accelerator:Net worth? I hit the casino, I buy lottery tickets, and I have an active lawsuit against an insurance company. Dows that count? Wealth perception:He who dies with the most toys winWealth equation:Wealth = income + debt

Side Walker Mindset (2)

Destination:What destination? I live for today and I can't be bothered about tomorrow.Responsibility and control:Everything bad happens to me. The man is keeping me down. I am a victim. It's someone else fault.Life perception:Live today, to hell with tomorrow. Life is too short to plan any further than 30 days out. You can't take it with you! You're only young once! Besides, I'll hit it big someday

Side Walker Mindset (3)

Affordability is when you don't have to think about it. If you have to think about "affordability" you can't afford it because affordability carries conditions and consequences

Self talk about I can afford it when... is an indication that you can't afford it. Remember you can bluff yourself but you can't bluff consequences

<ol><li>The commandment of Need</li><li>The commandment of Entry</li><li>The commandment of Control</li><li>The commandment of Scale </li><li>The commandment of Time</li></ol>

Fastlane Commandment  (NECST)

This books reveal the real truth how wealth are made

Is the financial plan of mediocrity -- a dream-stealing, soul-sucking dogma known as "The Slowlane" your plan for creating wealth? You know how it goes; it sounds a lil something like this: "Go to school, get a good job, save 10% of your paycheck, buy a used car, cancel the movie channels, quit drinking expensive Starbucks mocha lattes, save and penny-pinch your life away, trust your life-savings to the stock market, and one day, when you are oh, say, 65 years old, you can retire rich." The mainstream financial gurus have sold you blindly down the river to a great financial gamble: You've been hoodwinked to believe that wealth can be created by recklessly trusting in the uncontrollable and unpredictable markets: the housing market, the stock market, and the job market. This impotent financial gamble dubiously promises wealth in a wheelchair -- sacrifice your adult life for a financial plan that reaps dividends in the twilight of life. Accept the Slowlane as your blueprint for wealth and your financial future will blow carelessly asunder on a sailboat of HOPE: HOPE you can find a job and keep it, HOPE the stock market doesn't tank, HOPE the economy rebounds, HOPE, HOPE, and HOPE. Do you really want HOPE to be the centerpiece for your family's financial plan? Drive the Slowlane road and you will find your life deteriorate into a miserable exhibition about what you cannot do, versus what you can. For those who don't want a lifetime subscription to "settle-for-less" and a slight chance of elderly riches, there is an alternative; an expressway to extraordinary wealth that can burn a trail to financial independence faster than any road out there. Why jobs, 401(k)s, mutual funds, and 40-years of mindless frugality will never make you rich young. Why most entrepreneurs fail and how to immediately put the odds in your favor. The real law of wealth: Leverage this and wealth has no choice but to be magnetized to you. The leading cause of poorness: Change this and you change everything. How the rich really get rich - and no, it has nothing to do with a paycheck or a 401K match. Why the guru's grand deity - compound interest - is an impotent wealth accelerator. Why the guru myth of "do what you love" will most likely keep you poor, not rich. And 250+ more poverty busting distinctions... Demand the Fastlane, an alternative road-to-wealth; one that actually ignites dreams and creates millionaires young, not old. Change lanes and find your explosive wealth accelerator. Hit the Fastlane, crack the code to wealth, and find out how to live rich for a lifetime.

The Millionaire Fastlane

Your attention determines:<ul><li>what you perceive, learn, and remember;</li><li>how steady or how reactive you feel;</li><li>which decisions you make and actions you take;</li><li>how you interact with others</li><li>your sense of fulfillment and accomplishment. </li></ul>No matter how much I tell you about how attention works and why, and no matter how motivated you are, the way your brain pays attention cannot be fundamentally altered by sheer force of will

Introduction

<ul><li>Attention simultaneously highlights what’s important and dims distractions so we can think deeply, problem-solve, plan, prioritize, and innovate</li><li>It threads together the moment-by-moment colors, flavors, textures, insights, memories, emotions, decisions, and actions that create the fabric of our lives</li><li>What you pay attention to is your life</li></ul>

Attention Is Your Superpower

<ul><li>attention biases brain activity. It gives a competitive advantage to the information it selects. Whatever it is you pay attention to will have more neural activity associated with it. Your attention, quite literally, alters the functioning of your brain at the cellular level. It truly is a superpower.</li></ul>

(continue)

The Flashlight<ul><li>Where you focus to, that point become clearer. Other than that point, become suppressed. Like a flashlight</li><li>Called orienting system</li></ul>The Floodlight<ul><li>Opposite of flashlight, this subsystem is broad and open. Your attention is ready for any input within your vision</li><li>Called alerting system</li></ul>The Juggler <ul><li>To direct, oversee, and manage what we’re doing, moment to moment, as well as ensure that our actions are aligned with what we’re aiming to do </li><li>This is the overseer that makes sure we stay on track</li><li>Called central executive</li></ul>

3 Brain Subsystems 

<ul><li>Attention never vanishes, even though it might feel as if it does when you’re struggling to focus and simply can’t</li><li>The amount of attention you have remains constant. It just gets used differently, and maybe not how you want it to be used</li><li>You always use 100 percent of your attention. Attention always goes somewhere. So the question becomes: Where?</li></ul>

Load Theory: Attention Is Not A Gas Tank

Any tasks you do over a period of time:<ul><li>Performance declines</li><li>Errors goes up</li><li>Response becomes slower and more variable</li></ul>

The Vigilance Decrement

<ol><li>Get ready, sit in an upright alerted posture, shoulder back chest open and be comfortable.</li><li>Tune in to the breath related sensation, imagine the air entering your lung as you breathe in slowly, and exit your lung as you breathe out</li><li>Notice when your mind wander and focus back to the breathing exercises. It's normal to wander and always use constructive words when trying to refocus</li></ol>

Core Practice: Find Your Focus

<ul><li>When we try to do two things at once that both require our attention, it’s really hard to do either of them well</li><li>Think of it this way: You only have one flashlight. Not two. Not three. And your one flashlight can only ever be shining at one thing at a time</li><li>When you’re trying to accomplish multiple tasks at once that require your focused attention, what you’re actually doing is moving your flashlight from one thing, then to the next, then back to the first</li></ul>

Don't Multitask

To get a sense of what this means for your cognition, imagine a studio apartment. There is only one room. Every time you want to use the room, you have to completely change out the furniture. Want to sleep? Set up a bed and nightstand. Want to host a party? Take down the bedroom and set up couches and coffee tables. Need to cook? Drag that all away and set up a stove, counter, and cooking supplies. Sound exhausting? It is! And it’s the same for your cognition, when you switch from task to task.

Multitasking Metaphor

<ul><li>Working memory is where you hold the micro-intentions and deliberate aim of having a desired outcome for each and every task you engage in</li><li>All the decisions, planning, thinking, actions, and behaviors you do over the course of a day: anything you set out to do</li><li>You lean on your working memory to maintain your goals and subgoals, update them, and scrap them for a different goal, on a continuous, moment-by-moment, task-by-task basis.</li><li>Hold a goal in mind, and then take action based on that goal. That’s how working memory works, and also why it impacts you so profoundly</li></ul>

Working Memory

Working memory is the essential partner to attention: it’s what allows you to actually do something with the information your flashlight focuses on. But if attention keeps piping in salient and distracting content, that will become a big problem for goal maintenance, let alone goal accomplishment. Why? Because you only have so much space to work with. Just like a real-life whiteboard, your working memory has limits

Continue

The flashlight encodes information and maintains it in working memory, “retracing” it on the whiteboard to keep it there for longer. — Key vulnerability: Bait and SwitchWhen your attention is automatically “captured” or yanked by something salient, this more exciting (to your attention) content overwrites what was being maintained. Voluntary attention then starts retracing this new content. The prior information is lost forever, gone without a trace.

The Flashlight

The floodlight gains access to the whiteboard to accomplish an urgent goal. Under acute threat or stress, your alerting system temporarily blocks access to working memory to ensure that your brain’s action systems prioritize basic survival behaviors (fight, flight, freeze) over any other goals or plans. — Key vulnerability: Road BlockThe alerting system can be set off by feelings of threat, even when there is no real danger. This temporarily cuts off access to working memory and impairs any functions that rely on it (like long-term memory, social connection, and emotion regulation).

The Floodlight

The juggler keeps your current goals active on the whiteboard, and updates these goals as circumstances change. — Key vulnerability: Ball DropOverload, blanking, and distraction in working memory all derail the central executive’s juggler, leading to lost goals and misguided behaviors. The juggler drops the ball.

The Juggler

1. Repeat the previous steps. We begin the same way we did with the basic Find Your Flashlight (find where your thoughts focus on), by sitting in a chair, comfortable but upright, resting your hands in your lap, and closing or lowering your eyes (to limit visual distraction). Again, select prominent breath-related sensations. Remember the metaphor of your attention as a flashlight, the beam pointing toward your selected breath-related body sensation. When your flashlight drifts to something else . . .

CORE PRACTICE BOOSTER: WATCH YOUR WHITEBOARD

2. Notice where it goes. This is a new step! In the first exercise, I asked you to notice if attention wandered away, and if so to immediately move your flashlight back to your breath. This time, I want you to pause for a moment and observe where the flashlight is now directed.

3. Give it a label. Identify what type of distraction has appeared on your whiteboard. Is it a thought, an emotion, or a sensation? A thought could be a worry, a reminder, a memory, an idea, an item on your to-do list. An emotion could be a feeling of frustration, an urge to stop doing the practice and do something else, a twinge of happiness, a swell of stress. A sensation is something in your physical body: An itch. A sore muscle. Noticing that your back hurts from sitting there, or noticing something you heard, smelled, touched, or saw (such as a door slamming, food cooking, cat jumping).

4. Make this a quick process. Notice if you begin going down a rabbit hole of elaborating on the distraction, or asking why you are thinking about this particular topic, or defaulting to unsupportive habits like chastising yourself for getting distracted in the first place. It is not your job right now to answer these questions or reprimand yourself. Now is actually the time to notice what is on your whiteboard but not to engage with it. Just label the contents as best you can from these three categories: thought, emotion, sensation. And then . . .

5. Move on. Come back to the present moment, back to your breath, after every instance of labeling. If it’s a strong experience, it might pop up repeatedly—then just label it again.

6. Repeat. Each time you notice yourself mind-wandering, tag the content of your mind-wandering (as thought, emotion, or sensation) and then come back to your breath.

your memory for experiences, involves selective encoding of only those aspects of experience that were most attended to and held in working memory. Translation: you’ll only remember what you focused on and “wrote” on your whiteboard—not everything that occurred. And further, your episodic memory doesn’t merely involve the external aspects of events (who, what, where, and so forth) but is deeply wrapped up in your autobiographical take on what you experienced. So—was the experience happy? Sad? Interesting? Tense? Your emotional experience will influence what you focus on.

Episodic Memory

your general world knowledge, for facts, ideas, concepts—is similarly selective. What you remember is based on what else you’ve previously learned.

Semantic Memory

Do these three critical things:1. Rehearsalwhen you studied with flashcards, that was rehearsal2. Elaborationrelating new experiences or facts to knowledge or memories you already have3. ConsolidationThis is what happens as you’re performing the above two functions, and it ultimately leads to the memory being stored. As the brain replays information, it’s laying down new neural pathways and then going over them, strengthening those new connections

How To Make Memory

Certain things may become “sticky” on our whiteboards because of generalization. We can make generalizations about the behavior and intentions of others (“She never supports me”) or regarding ourselves (“I will never amount to anything”). An incident where you made a mistake becomes “I always get this stuff wrong—I’m such an idiot!” It’s not the incident itself that takes center stage on your whiteboard: it’s the generalization you derived from it. The oversimplified packaging allows it to remain in working memory with minimal effort: it’s short, it’s clear, and it probably isn’t accurate.

Get ready . . . This time, stand up! You can always sit if you prefer, in the same way as with the previous practices. But I usually recommend doing this practice in what is commonly known as Mountain Pose. Stand comfortably, your feet shoulder-distance apart. Let your arms relax at your sides, palms out. Close your eyes or lower your gaze.

CORE PRACTICE: RIVER OF THOUGHT (1)

Get set . . . Find your flashlight and direct it toward prominent breath-related sensations for several breaths. This is always where we’ll start with any practice. And at any point in this exercise if you feel yourself getting drawn away (for example, getting caught in a ruminative loop), you can always anchor back on the breath. Flashlight on the breath is your home base—return to it whenever necessary, and reset.

CORE PRACTICE: RIVER OF THOUGHT (2)

Go! Now broaden your awareness so that you are not selecting any target object. Instead, use the metaphor of your mind being like a river. You’re standing on the riverbank, watching the water flow by. Imagine your thoughts, memories, sensations, emotions—whatever arises—as if they are flowing past you. Notice what appears there, but don’t engage with it. Don’t fish it up, chase it, or elaborate on it. Just let it flow by.

CORE PRACTICE: RIVER OF THOUGHT (3)

Keep going. You’re not going to be actively “labeling” the stuff that you notice on your whiteboard, nor returning to your breath once you do. Your job right now is not to be making distinctions between which content is useful or relevant, and what’s mind wandering. You’re not even going to try to stop your mind from wandering. The river will keep flowing—there isn’t anything you can or need to do about that. This is the key to open monitoring: you allow your mind to do what it will do. Your job is simply to observe that flow, at a distance, without engagement or participation.

CORE PRACTICE: RIVER OF THOUGHT (4)

Troubleshooting. If you have difficulty letting things pass you by, come back to your breath. Imagine your breath sensations as a boulder in the middle of all that flowing water. Rest your attention on that stable, steady object; when you feel ready, broaden your attention again and go back to monitoring.

CORE PRACTICE: RIVER OF THOUGHT (5)

(1) Stop the inner war against the actual circumstances—just accept them. It is what it is. Let me be clear: this does not mean that you are “all good” with the situation. It has nothing to do with your judgement about the actual event. It just means that you are accepting the actuality of what has occurred.

Decenter - Skills To Control Your Emotions

(2) Drop the story—your assessment of this situation is merely one story. Not the only one.

(3) Roll with it—keep going, keep moving, get curious about what the next moment will bring.

Decenter - Skills To Control Your Emotion

During a difficult interaction, take a moment to pause. It can be the length of one breath. Or, before a difficult interaction, take a moment and picture this person. Then, remind yourself: “This person has experienced pain, just like me. This person has experienced loss, just like me. Joy, just like me. Was born from a mother, just like me; will die someday, just like me.” If these phrases don’t resonate with you, feel free to substitute with other phrases that emphasize the common humanity we share with others.

On-Demand Practice: “Just Like Me”

<ol><li>Begin this practice as you have the others, sitting comfortably yet alert. Anchor on your breath and focus on breath-related sensations.</li><li>Now shift to bringing a sense of yourself into your mind, at this very moment in your life.</li></ol>

CORE PRACTICE: CONNECTION PRACTICE

3. Silently repeat the following phrases to offer yourself well-wishes (three min). Remember: the point is to offer yourself well-wishes, not make requests or demands for them. Saying these phrases supports that: May I be happyMay I be healthyMay I be safeMay I live with easeThe phrases and their order are not important. Some people may say, May I be free from suffering instead of May I be safe. Others may wish to say, May I find peace instead of May I live with ease. The important thing is that you choose phrases that resonate with you and that convey a feeling of goodwill to the recipient.

4. Next, while allowing this sense of yourself to recede from your focus, call to mind someone who has been very good to you in this life, very kind and supportive, someone you might describe as a benefactor. Silently repeat the phrases below, offering them to this person: May you be happyMay you be healthyMay you be safeMay you live with ease

5. Now, letting your sense of this person recede, bring to mind the image of someone with whom you have no real connection and for whom your feelings are neutral. It could be someone you see now and again but don’t have strong feelings for, one way or another. Perhaps it’s a neighbor you pass while walking your dog, a parking lot attendant you see daily, or a grocery store clerk. Mentally offer them the phrases.

6. As a sense of this person recedes from your focus, next bring to mind an image of someone with whom things are challenging at this time in your life. This is often called a “difficult person” . Remember, you are not endorsing their view and are not necessarily even forgiving their actions in the past. You are simply offering kindness to them as a practice aimed at strengthening your ability to take another’s perspective, realizing that—like you—they too wish for happiness, health, safety, and ease. With this in mind, mentally offer them the phrases.

7. Now move on to everyone in your home, community, state or province, and country, and continue to expand outward until you include all beings everywhere. Spend a few moments visualizing each place (your home, your community), and then offer the phrases to everyone there.

8. Throughout this practice, notice when your mind wanders away from the chosen focus, and gently guide your attention back.

9. When you’re ready, spend a few moments anchoring on your breath to end the practice.

How to train your attention and be more productive

STOP FOR A MOMENT. Are you here right now? Is your focus on this page? Or is it roaming elsewhere, to the past or future, to a worry, to your to-do list, or to your phone? Whether you’re simply browsing, talking to friends, or trying to stay focused in an important meeting, you can’t seem to manage to hang on to your attention. No matter how hard you try, you’re somewhere else. The consequence is that you miss out on 50 percent of your life—including the most important moments. The good news: There’s nothing wrong with you—your brain isn’t broken. The human brain was built to be distractible. The even better news: You can train your brain to pay attention more effectively. Stay with me a little longer and soon you will be able to: Focus without all the struggle. Take back your attention from the pull of distraction. And function at your peak, for all that truly matters in your life.

Power

Peak Mind

Studying a specific person can be dangerous because we tend to study extreme examples—the billionaires, the CEOs, or the massive failures that dominate the news—and extreme examples are often the least applicable to other situations, given their complexity. The more extreme the outcome, the less likely you can apply its lessons to your own life, because the more likely the outcome was influenced by extreme ends of luck or risk.

To make money they didn’t have and didn’t need, they risked what they did have and did need. And that’s foolish. It is just plain foolish. If you risk something that is important to you for something that is unimportant to you, it just does not make any sense

People like to feel like they’re in control—in the drivers’ seat. When we try to get them to do something, they feel disempowered. Rather than feeling like they made the choice, they feel like we made it for them. So they say no or do something else, even when they might have originally been happy to go along.

Jonah Berger

Freedom of time is what money can give you that makes you happy. Not the ability to buy things

We tend to judge wealth by what we see, because that’s the information we have in front of us. We can’t see people’s bank accounts or brokerage statements. So we rely on outward appearances to gauge financial success. Cars. Homes. Instagram photos.Modern capitalism makes helping people fake it until they make it a cherished industry.But the truth is that wealth is what you don’t see

<ul><li>Pessimism just sounds smarter and more plausible than optimism.</li><li>Tell someone that everything will be great and they’re likely to either shrug you off or offer a skeptical eye. Tell someone they’re in danger and you have their undivided attention.</li><li>If a smart person tells me they have a stock pick that’s going to rise 10-fold in the next year, I will immediately write them off as full of nonsense.</li><li>If someone who’s full of nonsense tells me that a stock I own is about to collapse because it’s an accounting fraud, I will clear my calendar and listen to their every word.</li></ul>

17. The Seduction Of Pessimism

<ul><li>There are many things in life that we think are true because we desperately want them to be true</li><li>Hindsight, the ability to explain the past, gives us the illusion that the world is understandable. It gives us the illusion that the world makes sense, even when it doesn’t make sense. That’s a big deal in producing mistakes in many fields</li></ul>

18. When You'll Believe Anything

<ul><li>Go out of your way to find humility when things are going right and forgiveness/compassion when they go wrong</li><li>Less ego, more wealth. Saving money is the gap between your ego and your income, and wealth is what you don’t see. So wealth is created by suppressing what you could buy today in order to have more stuff or more options in the future</li><li>Manage your money in a way that helps you sleep at night</li><li>If you want to do better as an investor, the single most powerful thing you can do is increase your time horizon. Time is the most powerful force in investing. It makes little things grow big </li></ul>

19. All Together

<ul><li>Become OK with a lot of things going wrong. You can be wrong half the time and still make a fortune, because a small minority of things account for the majority of outcomes</li><li>Use money to gain control over your time</li><li>Be nicer and less flashy. No one is impressed with your possessions as much as you are. You might think you want a fancy car or a nice watch. But what you probably want is respect and admiration. And you’re more likely to gain those things through kindness and humility than horsepower and chrome</li></ul>

19. All Together (continue)

<ul><li>Define the cost of success and be ready to pay it. Because nothing worthwhile is free</li><li>Worship room for error. A gap between what could happen in the future and what you need to happen in the future in order to do well is what gives you endurance</li><li>Avoid the extreme ends of financial decisions</li><li>You should like risk because it pays off over time</li><li>Define the game you’re playing, and make sure your actions are not being influenced by people playing a different game</li><li>Respect the mess. Smart, informed, and reasonable people can disagree in finance, because people have vastly different goals and desires. </li></ul>

<ul><li>But everything I’ve learned about personal finance tells me that everyone—without exception—will eventually face a huge expense they did not expect—and they don’t plan for these expenses specifically because they did not expect them</li><li>Every investor should pick a strategy that has the highest odds of successfully meeting their goals. And I think for most investors, dollar-cost averaging into a low-cost index fund will provide the highest odds of long-term success</li><li>That doesn’t mean index investing will always work. It doesn’t mean it’s for everyone. </li></ul>

20. Confessions

Beating the market should be hard; the odds of success should be low. If they weren’t, everyone would do it, and if everyone did it there would be no opportunity. So no one should be surprised that the majority of those trying to beat the market fail to do so. (The statistics show 85% of large-cap active managers didn’t beat the S&P 500 over the decade ending 2019.

20. Confessions (continue)

<ul><li>Everyone have different financial goal and definition of financial freedom. Be careful when following others advice because we all bound by different circumstances</li><li>Social Media and advertisement made us feel like we're not enough and we need that "shiny object" in order to be happy. That makes us made irrational decision with money and end up with debt</li><li>There's no such thing as overnight success. It is compounded effort that succeed in one night. Observe the effort and process, not the result.</li><li>Be frugal with your money</li></ul>

My Take From This Book

Highly recommended, cause this book is not typical financial advice book. The book explains why we spend money on something we don't need based on emotional decision, not based on mathematical calculation.

Doing well with money isn’t necessarily about what you know. It’s about how you behave. And behavior is hard to teach, even to really smart people. Money—investing, personal finance, and business decisions—is typically taught as a math-based field, where data and formulas tell us exactly what to do. But in the real world people don’t make financial decisions on a spreadsheet. They make them at the dinner table, or in a meeting room, where personal history, your own unique view of the world, ego, pride, marketing, and odd incentives are scrambled together. In The Psychology of Money, award-winning author Morgan Housel shares 19 short stories exploring the strange ways people think about money and teaches you how to make better sense of one of life’s most important topics.

Investing

The Psychology of Money

Never outshine your master.<ul><li>A master who cannot bestow on you the gifts of his experience may direct rancor and ill will at you instead</li></ul>

Law #1

Never put too much trust in friends, learn how to use your enemies<ul><li>Friends are easily aroused to envy</li><li>Without enemies around us, we grow lazy. An enemy at our heels sharpens our wits, keeping us focused and alert. It is sometimes better</li><li>Men are more ready to repay an injury than a benefit, because gratitude is a burden and revenge a pleasure</li><li>Work with enemies because the relationship is based on mutual self-interest, and not be contaminated by personal feelings</li></ul>

Law #2

Conceal your intentions<ul><li>By telling your plan and being honest about it makes you predictable</li><li>Bland facial expression is the simplest smoke screen to hide your thoughts</li><li>Another effective smoke screen is the pattern, the establishment of a series of actions that seduce the victim into believing you will continue in the same way. The pattern plays on the psychology of anticipation: Our behavior conforms to patterns, or so we like to think.</li></ul>

Law #3

Always say less than necessary<ul><li>The more you say, the more common you appear</li><li>"Human tongue is a beast that few can master"</li><li>Once the words are out, you cannot take them back. Keep them under control. Be particularly careful with sarcasm: The momentary satisfaction you gain with your biting words will be outweighed by the price you pay</li></ul>

Law #4

So much depends on reputation, guard it with your life. <ul><li>You must work to establish a reputation for one outstanding quality, whether generosity or honesty or cunning</li><li>If your reputation is stained, it is wise to associate with someone whose image is counteract with your own</li></ul>

Law #5

Court attention at all cost<ul><li>At the beginning of your rise to the top, then, spend all your energy on attracting attention. Most important: The quality of the attention is irrelevant</li><li>Court controversy, even scandal. It is better to be attacked, even slandered, than ignored</li><li>BUT Never appear overly greedy for attention, for it signals insecurity, and insecurity drives power away</li></ul>

Law #6

Get others to do the work for you, but always take the credit<ul><li>Kissinger played the game expertly: He took credit for the work of those below him while graciously giving credit for his own labors to those above</li><li>Never do yourself what others can do for you</li></ul>

Law #7 

Make other come to you use bait if neccessary<ul><li>The essence of power is the ability to keep the initiative, to get others to react to your moves, to keep your opponent and those around you on the defensive</li><li>You yourself must learn to master your emotions, and never to be influenced by anger; meanwhile, however, you must play on people's natural tendency to react angrily when pushed and baited</li></ul>

Law #8

Win through your actions, never through argument<ul><li>Each man believes that he is right, and words will rarely convince him otherwise</li><li>Demonstrate, do not explicate</li></ul>

Law #9

Infection: avoid the unhappy and unlucky<ul><li>Recognize the fortunate so that you may choose their company, and the unfortunate so that you may avoid them</li><li>Those misfortunates among us who were brought down by circumstances beyond their control deserve all the help and sympathy we can give them</li><li>But there are others who are not born to misfortune or unhappiness, but who draw it upon themselves by their destructive actions and unsettling effect on others. Avoid this kind of person immediately</li></ul>

Law #10

Learn to keep people dependant on you<ul><li>Such is the fate of those who do not make others dependent on them. Sooner or later someone come along who can do the job as well as them; someone younger, fresher, less expensive, less threatening</li><li>Be the only one who can do what you do, and make the fate of those who hire you so entwined with yours that they cannot get rid of you</li><li>Better make others depends on you out of fear of consequences of losing you than out of love of your company</li></ul>

Law #11

Use selective honesty and generosity to disarm your victim<ul><li>Give before you take</li><li>A gift brings out the child in us, instantly lowering our defenses</li><li>Selective kindness will often break down even the most stubborn foe: Aiming right for the heart, it corrodes the will to fight back</li><li>As with any emotional approach, the tactic must be practiced with caution: If people see through it, their disappointed feelings of gratitude and warmth will become the most violent hatred and distrust</li></ul>

Law #12

When asking for help, appeal to people's self-interest, never to their mercy or gratitude<ul><li>If you need to turn to an ally for help, do not bother to remind him of your past assistance and good deeds</li><li>Every person you deal with is like another culture, an alien land with a past that has nothing to do with yours. Yet you can bypass the differences between you and him by appealing to his self-interest</li><li>At each step on the way to acquiring power, you must train yourself to think your way inside the other person's mind</li></ul>

Law #13

Pose as a friend, work as a spy<ul><li>If you have reason to suspect that a person is telling you a lie, look as though you believed every word he said. This will give him courage to go on; he will become more vehement in his assertions, and in the end betray himself. Again, if you perceive that a person is trying to conceal something from you, but with only partial success, look as though you did not believe him. The opposition on your part will provoke him into leading out his reserve of truth and bringing the whole force of it to bear upon your incredulity.</li></ul>

Law #14

Crush your enemy totally<ul><li>Those who seek to achieve things should show no mercy</li><li>In your struggle for power you will stir up rivalries and create enemies. There will be people you cannot win over, who will remain your enemies no matter what. But whatever wound you inflicted on them, deliberately or not, do not take their hatred personally. Just recognize that there is no possibility of peace between you, especially as long as you stay in power</li></ul>

Law #15

Use absence to increase respect and honor<ul><li>Familiarity in this existence makes all things tame</li><li>Absence diminishes minor passions and inflames great ones, as the wind douses a candle and fans afire</li></ul>But <ul><li>The need to withdraw only comes after you have established your presence; leave too early and you do not increase your respect, you are simply forgotten</li></ul>

Law #16

Keep others in suspended terror: cultivate an air of unpredictability<ul><li>A person of power instills a kind of fear by deliberately unsettling those around him to keep the initiative on his side</li><li>Scrambling your patterns on a day-to-day basis will cause a stir around you and stimulate interest</li></ul>But <ul><li>Too much unpredictability will be seen as a sign of indecisiveness, or even some more serious psychic problems. Patterns are powerful, and you can terrify people by disrupting them. Such power should only be used judiciously</li></ul>

Law #17

Do not build fortress to protect yourself, isolation is dangerous<ul><li>Because humans are social creatures by nature, power depends on social interaction and circulation. To make yourself powerful you must place yourself at the center of things</li></ul>

Law #18

Know who you're dealing with. Do not offend the wrong person<ul><li>Never assume that the person you are dealing with is weaker or less important than you are</li><li>We forget a lot in our lives, but we rarely forget an insult</li><li>Swallow the impulse to offend, even if the other person seems weak. The satisfaction is meager compared to the danger that someday he or she will be in a position to hurt you</li></ul>

Law #19

Do not commit to anyone<ul><li>Desire is like a virus: If we see that someone is desired by other people, we tend to find this person desirable too</li><li>Alcibiades tactic: Put yourself in the middle between competing powers. Lure one side with the promise of your help; the other side, always wanting to outdo its enemy, will pursue you as well. As each side vies for your attention, you will immediately seem a person of great influence and desirability</li></ul>

Law #20

Play a sucker to catch a sucker. Seem dumber than your mark<ul><li>The feeling that someone else is more intelligent than we are is almost intolerable</li><li>We usually try to justify it in different ways: “He only has book knowledge, whereas I have real knowledge.” “Her parents paid for her to get a good education. If my parents had had as much money, if I had been as privileged.. . .” “He's not as smart as he thinks.” Last but not least: “She may know her narrow little field better than I do, but beyond that she's really not smart at all.</li><li>never inadvertently insult or impugn a person's brain power</li></ul>

Law #21

Use the surrender tactic: turn weakness into power<ul><li>Surrender conceals great power: Lulling the enemy into complacency, it gives you time to recoup, time to undermine, time for revenge</li><li>You have to remember that you only appear to surrender, like the animal that plays dead to save its hide</li></ul>

Law #22

Concentrate your forces<ul><li>Beware of dissipating your powers; strive constantly to concentrate them</li><li>Prize intensity more than extensity. Perfection resides in quality, not quantity</li></ul>

Law #23

Play the perfect courtier<ul><li>Never seem to be working too hard. Your talent must appear to flow naturally, with an ease that makes people take you for a genius rather than a workaholic</li><li>Most important: Do not ask for favors on another person's behalf, least of all a friend's</li><li>Do not overstep your bounds. Do what you are assigned to do, to the best of your abilities, and never do more</li></ul>

Law #24

Recreate yourself<ul><li>The world wants to assign you a role in life. And once you accept that role, you are doomed</li><li>Adopt the plasticity of the actor, who can mold his or her face to the emotion required.</li></ul>

Law #25

Keep your hands clean<ul><li>By apologizing you open up all sorts of doubts about your competence, your intentions, any other mistakes you may not have confessed</li><li>Power depends on appearances, and those in power must seem never to make mistakes</li><li>All men make mistakes, but the wise conceal the blunders they have made, while fools make them public</li></ul>

Law #26

Play on people need to believe to create a cult like following<ul><li>Always in a rush to believe in something, we will manufacture saints and faiths out of nothing</li></ul>

Law #27

Enter action with boldness<ul><li>Hesitation puts obstacles in your path, boldness eliminates them</li><li>If boldness is not natural, neither is timidity. It is an acquired habit, picked up out of a desire to avoid conflict. If timidity has taken hold of you, then, root it out. Your fears of the consequences of a bold action are way out of proportion to reality, and in fact the consequences of timidity are worse</li></ul>

Law #28

Plan all the way to the end<ul><li>Most men are ruled by the heart, not the head. Their plans are vague, and when they meet obstacles they improvise</li><li>But improvisation will only bring you as far as the next crisis, and is never a substitute for thinking several steps ahead and planning to the end.</li><li>Experience shows that, if one foresees from far away the designs to be undertaken, one can act with speed when the moment comes to execute them</li></ul>

Law #29

Make your accomplishments seem effortless<ul><li>Keep your effort and your tricks to yourself and you seem to have the grace and ease of a god</li><li>What is understandable is not awe-inspiring, we tell ourselves we could do as well if we had the money and time</li></ul>

Law #30

Control the options: get others to play with the cards you deal<ul><li>unlimited options would actually paralyze us and cloud our ability to choose. Our limited range of choices comforts us</li><li>Push them to “choose” what you want them to do by appearing to advocate the opposite.</li></ul>

Law #31

Amoral, cunning, ruthless, and instructive, this multi-million-copy New York Times bestseller is the definitive manual for anyone interested in gaining, observing, or defending against ultimate control – from the author of The Laws of Human Nature. In the book that People magazine proclaimed “beguiling” and “fascinating,” Robert Greene and Joost Elffers have distilled three thousand years of the history of power into 48 essential laws by drawing from the philosophies of Machiavelli, Sun Tzu, and Carl Von Clausewitz and also from the lives of figures ranging from Henry Kissinger to P.T. Barnum. Some laws teach the need for prudence (“Law 1: Never Outshine the Master”), others teach the value of confidence (“Law 28: Enter Action with Boldness”), and many recommend absolute self-preservation (“Law 15: Crush Your Enemy Totally”). Every law, though, has one thing in common: an interest in total domination. In a bold and arresting two-color package, The 48 Laws of Power is ideal whether your aim is conquest, self-defense, or simply to understand the rules of the game.

Discourses and Selected Writings

Man's Search For Meaning

Outliers

The Millionaire Fastlane

Peak Mind

Ian Puang