Most failures are one-time costs. Most regrets are recurring costs. The pain of inaction stings longer than the pain of incorrect action.

People discuss the importance of choosing the right city to live in, but it’s even more granular than that: choose the right neighborhood. In my case, I didn’t appreciate how much living in a walkable...

It is not necessary to change a person in order to change their behavior. Just change their environment. Similarly, it is not necessary to change your environment in order to change your behavior—if you can...

Whenever you see an overnight success, your eyes deceive you. What you are witnessing is the hour of opportunity unleashing the potential energy of previous choices. It was not one decision, but the accumulated power...

A good writer is impatient on behalf of the reader. They ruthlessly eliminate unnecessary information and needless words. They are respectful of the reader’s time by only including what matters.

Focus is the art of knowing what to ignore.

The more immediate the consequences, the more trustworthy the behavior.

The fastest way to raise your level of performance: Cut your number of commitments in half.

We hold onto our flaws because they are insurance for our failures. Every fear serves a purpose. When we cling to unhelpful beliefs and old fears, we can blame failure on them. Growth requires the...

The Paradox of Freedom—the way to expand your freedom is to narrow your focus. Stay focused on saving to achieve financial freedom. Stay focused on training to achieve physical freedom. Stay focused on learning to...

The desire to belong often overpowers the desire to improve.

Optimists solve problems when they arise. Pessimists invent problems before they start.

Your current habits are perfectly designed to deliver your current results.

Systems are for people who care about winning repeatedly. Goals are for people who care about winning once

If you want to take something more seriously, do it publicly. Publishing an article pressures you to think clearly. Competing in a race pressures you to train consistently. Presenting on any topic pressures you to...

Modeling a behavior is 100x stronger than telling someone to act differently. Kids imitate the habits of their parents. Teammates match the competitive energy of one another. Employees learn to manage like their supervisor. Be...

The most useful form of patience is persistence. Patience implies waiting for things to improve on their own. Persistence implies keeping your head down and continuing to work when things take longer than you expect.

For ideas to truly stick, we must make contact with them repeatedly.

Your choices create leverage. Your habits unleash leverage. A good initial choice (like choosing the right thing to work on or the right person to work with) can deliver 100x payoff. However, if you don’t...

Life is too short to not be pursuing the best opportunity you know of.

Whenever there is a gap between your habits and your goals, your habits will always win.

You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.

Good habits stockpile pleasure. Bad habits postpone pain.

People often hold a particular belief or state an opinion because of what it signals to others in that moment not because it will be accurate in the long run. Belonging, acceptance, and praise from...

If you do not like your results in a particular area it is rarely your intellect that deserves the blame, but rather where you have directed your intellect. Results are purchased by how you spend...

Your goal is your desired outcome. Your system is the collection of daily habits that will get you there.

The way to attract good luck is to be reliable in a valuable area. The more you repeatedly deliver value, the more people seek you out for that value. Your reputation is a magnet. Once...

Do not wait. If there is something you wish to do, go do it. Death comes for busy people too. It will not pause and return at a more convenient time.

This year, spend less time focusing on outcomes and more time focusing on the habits that precede the results.

Live with a bias toward action. Ironically, this will teach you patience. When you take action each day, you learn the value of accumulating small improvements over time. You understand how daily habits compound. Be...

My email response time is either 3 minutes or 3 months.

The most satisfying form of freedom is not a life without responsibilities, but a life where you are free to choose your responsibilities.

The events of your past are fixed. The meaning of your past is not. The influence of every experience in your life is determined by the meaning you assign to it. Assign a more useful...

The highest level of mastery is simplicity. Most information is irrelevant and most effort is wasted, but only the expert knows what to ignore.

As gatekeepers decline, status signals shift from approval-based to performance-based.

The hardest part of solving a problem is accurately defining it.

Your actions are a consequence of your thoughts. Your thoughts are a consequence of what you consume. And in the modern age, what you consume is largely a consequence of how you select and refine...

Speed matters, but stamina matters even more. Go as fast as possible while staying fully recovered. Go fast. Stay fresh.

It’s crazy how you hear the story of The Tortoise and the Hare while growing up, and assume it’s just a nice thing to tell kids—and then you start your career and watch it actually...

Every creative project starts as an imitation. You begin by mapping what you already know or have previously seen onto the situation. But if you iterate and recombine enough, it becomes an original.

Hard work is not always something you can see. It is not always physical effort. In fact, the most powerful form of hard work is thinking clearly. Designing a winning strategy may not look very...

Before you dream about the view from the summit, ask yourself if you’re willing to keep your head down, focus on the path, and spend your life walking up the side of a very big...

When failure is expensive, plan carefully. When failure is cheap, act quickly.

Options reveal themselves after starting. If you feel uncertain in the beginning—join the club. Nobody starts with all the answers. The path to the summit is not fully visible from base camp.

Mastery is an endless quest to reduce effort without reducing effectiveness.

Sometimes greatness is the result of a transcendent, peak performance. But often, greatness is simply the result of a good performance repeated and sustained much longer than usual.

Authenticity is the gap between your thoughts and your actions. The smaller the gap, the more genuine the lifestyle.

Before you ask for readers, write the article you wish you could read. Before you ask for the sale, create the product you wish you had. Before you need support, be the supportive friend. Before...

A principle for writing, investing, and life in general: It is much easier to notice when something is working than to predict ahead of time if it will work. Take action, make many small bets,...

It is the imagination of better results that causes us to desire them. And it is the desire for better results that causes us to strive for them. Bold action, then, always begins with a...