Too busy to read?

Make sure you have something every day you're looking forward to. Maybe it's your job, maybe it's a basketball game after work or a voice lesson or your writing group, maybe it's a date. But have something every day that lights you up. It'll keep your soul hungry to create more of these moments.

"Courage over comfort." Just a simple reminder that there's nothing comfortable about being courageous. Everyone wants to be brave, but no one wants to be vulnerable.

Happiness is a choice you make and a skill you develop. The mind is just as malleable as the body. We spend so much time and effort trying to change the external world, other people, and our own bodies, all the while accepting ourselves the way we were programmed in our youths. We accept the voice that talks to us in our head all the time as the source of all truth. But all of it is malleable, every day is new, and memory and identity are burdens from the past that prevent us from living freely in the present.

Ignore the unfairness--there is no fair. Play the hand that you're dealt to the best of your ability. People are highly consistent, so you will eventually get what you deserve and so will they. In the end, everyone gets the same judgment: death.

When you feel overwhelmed or unfocused, what do you do? What questions do you ask yourself? I step back ... and slow down ... and ask the five whys. And when I am done, I also ask if I am afraid of something but too afraid to admit it.

"It's not how well you play the game, it's deciding what game you want to play."--Kwame Appiah. This quote separates striving from strategy and reminds me to take a macro view of what I'm doing, like in a video game where you can zoom out and you suddenly see you've been running around in one corner of the maze.

Poker has taught me to disconnect failure from outcomes. Just because I lose doesn't mean I failed, and just because I won doesn't mean I succeeded--not when you define success and failure around making good decisions that will win in the long run. What matters is the decisions I made along the way, and every decision failure is an opportunity to learn and adjust my strategy going forward. By doing this, losing becomes a less emotional experience and more an opportunity to explore and learn.

To learn from the best, you don't need to meet them, you just need to absorb them. This can be through books, audio, or a single powerful quote.

"No one owes you anything." We live in a world that's rampant with entitlement, with many people believing that they deserve to be given more. My parents raised me to be self-sufficient, and impressed upon me that the only person you can really depend on in life is you. If you want something, you work for it. You don't expect it to be given. If others help you out along the way, that's fantastic, but it's not a given. I believe that the key to self-sufficiency is breaking free of the mindset that someone, somewhere, owes you something or will come to your rescue.

Time and attention are very different things. They're your most precious resources moving forward. Just like you walk through the air and you swim through the water, you work through your attention. It's the medium of work. While people often say there's not enough time, remember that you'll always have less attention than time. Full attention is where you do your best work, and everyone's going to be looking to rip it from you. Protect and preserve it.

The greatest lessons you learn in the beginning of a career are about people--how to work with people, be managed by people, manage expectations with people, and lead other people. As such, the team you choose to join, and your boss, are huge factors in the value of a professional experience early in your career. Choose opportunities based on the quality of people you will get to work with.

"We try more to profit from always remembering the obvious than from grasping the esoteric. It is remarkable how much long-term advantage people like us have gotten by trying to be consistently not stupid, instead of trying to be very intelligent."

Simple one for me to answer: "Storms make us stronger." If I had one message for young people embarking on life, it would be this. Don't shy away from the hard times. Tackle them head-on, move toward the path less trodden, riddled with obstacles, because most other people run at the first sign of battle. The storms give us a chance to define ourselves, to distinguish ourselves, and we always emerge from them stronger.

life is the obstacles. There is no underlying path. Our role here is to get better at navigating those obstacles. I strive to find calm, measured responses and to see hindrances as a chance to problem-solve. Often I fall back into old frustrations, but if I remind myself, this is a chance to step up, I can reframe conflicts as a chance to experiment with solutions.

I failed selection for the British SAS on my first attempt, and it ripped my heart out at the time. I had never given so much for anything and to fall short was soul-destroying. But I went back and tried a second time and eventually passed. Four out of 120 will generally make it, and they often say the best soldiers pass the second time. I like that. It tells me that tenacity matters more than talent, and in life, that is certainly true.

"Great opportunities never have 'great opportunity' in the subject line."

"Don't let the weight of fear weigh down the joy of curiosity." Fear is really false evidence appearing real.

You must seize opportunities when they present themselves, not when they are convenient or obvious. The only way to cultivate your own luck is to be more flexible (you'll need to give up something for the right opportunity), humble (timing is out of your control), and gracious (when you see it, seize it!). Life's greatest opportunities run on their own schedule, not yours.

In my experience, going from 1x to 10x, from 10x to 100x, and from 100x to (when Lady Luck really smiles) 1000x returns in various areas has been a product of better questions. John Dewey's dictum that "__a problem well put is half-solved" applies. Life punishes the vague wish and rewards the specific ask.__

"LOVE THE PAIN" isn't about self-flagellation. It's a simple reminder that nearly all growth requires discomfort. Sometimes the discomfort is mild, like an uphill bike ride or swallowing your ego to listen more attentively. Other times, it's far more painful, like lactic-threshold training or the emotional equivalent of having a bone reset. None of these stressors are lethal, and it's the rare person who pursues them. The benefits or lack thereof depend on how you talk to yourself.

The practice of daily journaling has been a remarkable tool in helping me navigate the storms of life and be my best self through it all. The daily ritual of self-reflected writing has produced priceless personal insights in my life. For me, daily writing heightens my personal awareness in a nearly magical way. I see, feel, and experience things so much more vividly as a consequence of the writing. The hectic pace of life becomes more balanced and manageable when I intentionally set aside time for self-reflection. I am able to be more in the present in everything I do and, for whatever reason, more accepting of my flaws. Journal writing can be used for catharsis and healing or for growing and expanding capacity. Entries can be as short as a minute or as long as time permits. It typically takes two to four weeks before one can see and feel positive results. For the best outcomes, entries to one's journal should be made by hand rather than on a computer.

First, I listen to my gratitude playlist on Spotify, any song on the list. For example, here are nine tracks as of today: "Breathturn" by Hammock "Your Hand in Mine" by Explosions in the Sky "Devi Prayer" by Craig Pruess and Ananda "Horizon" by Tycho "Recurring" by Bonobo "Hanging On" by Active Child "Long Time Sun" by Snatam Kaur "Angels Prayer" by Ty Burhoe, James Hoskins, Cat McCarthy, Manorama, and Janaki Kagel "Twentytwofourteen" by The Album Leaf

"The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing."

failure is not the opposite of success but a steppingstone to success.

never let a good crisis go to waste. It's the universe challenging you to learn something new and rise to the next level of your potential.

"Do something you're afraid of every day."--often attributed to Eleanor Roosevelt.

What advice would you give to a smart, driven college student about to enter the "real world"? What advice should they ignore? [My advice is to] take risks, now. The advantages that college students and new grads have are their youth, drive, lack of significant responsibilities, and, importantly, lack of the creature comforts one acquires with time. Nothing to lose, everything to gain. Barnacles of the good life tend to slow you down, if you don't get used to risk-taking early in your career.

David Deutsch's The Beginning of Infinity. It's a remarkable argument for the power of knowledge--as not just a human capability but as a force that shapes the universe.

"Look around. Look around. How lucky we are to be alive right now!"

Tom has given more than 2,500 speeches, and his speech and writing materials are available for free at tompeters.com

"There is no way to happiness--happiness is the way."

"Execution is strategy--it's all about the people and the doing, not the talking and the theory.

What is an unusual habit or an absurd thing that you love? Egg boxing, though I'm convinced if the world knew about it, it would become a worldwide sport and eventually an Olympic sport and therefore cease to be absurd. [Note from Tim: Egg boxing arguably deserves its own chapter, but it's beyond the scope of this book. For a video of Peter demonstrating egg boxing, please visit tim.blog/eggboxing

I think this idea that you learn the most from failures is wrong. It's a good thing to say so that people feel better, but whenever you want to learn how to do something well, you start by studying people who are really good. You don't study all the failed sprinters to learn how to run fast; you study the person who's really fast. There are a lot of reasons things can go wrong, but your job is to make things work.

What are bad recommendations you hear in your profession or area of expertise? "Find an area of expertise." It's so weird when I hear this. Just learn how to learn. Then you can always figure out the next thing that you will need to know.

"If you find yourself in a fair fight, you didn't plan your mission properly."

"The things you own end up owning you."

"Know before you go."

Nothing truly meaningful or lasting has ever been created in a short period of time. If you learn the story behind any great success, you realize how many years went by and how many hard choices were made to achieve it.

the documentary The Century of the Self.

Her TED Talk, "Why You Think You're Right--Even If You're Wrong," has more than three million views.

"Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage."

Linda Kaplan-Thaler's The Power of Nice: How to Conquer the Business World with Kindness and The Power of Small:

The Tao of Power by Lao Tzu [a translation of the Tao Te Ching by R. L. Wing] helped me see the relationship between "enough," health, and wealth. It sent me on a 30-year journey to find enough food, exercise, and rest; to learn how to live between too much and too little to create a youthful and happier existence.

Understanding Media by Marshall McLuhan.

Mind Gym by Gary Mack is a book that strips down the esoteric nature of applied sport psychology. Gary introduces a variety of mindset training principles and makes them extremely easy to understand and practice.

I read Mental Toughness Training for Sports in a bunk bed, and it changed my life.

The book I've gifted most is Stephen Mitchell's translation of the Tao Te Ching: ancient Taoist wisdom applicable to anything. It can be read at different times in your

frequently give the book A Pattern Language by Christopher Alexander. I'm not a visual person, but this book taught me to see the world around me in an entirely new way. It's a brilliant way of analyzing experience and information. It's haunting.

Jon Kabat-Zinn's Wherever You Go, There You Are. It's a wonderful book from 1994. The beauty of it is that it can spark the desire in a nonmeditator to take up the practice. [At the same time] you could be a lifelong meditator, read it, and still learn a tremendous amount. Thinking about it now inspires me to read it again.

Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. I think it is the most prophetic book of the 20th century, and the most profound discussion of happiness in modern Western philosophy. It had a deep impact on my thinking about politics and happiness. And since, for me, the relationship between power and happiness is the most important question in history, Brave New World has also reshaped my understanding of history.

The Better Angels of Our Nature by Steven Pinker (here). Most news is about things that are going wrong. It can be discouraging and makes people feel powerless. This book takes a long view and shows the long-term decline in violence that has occurred.

I was persuaded to adopt a low-carb approach to eating when I read Gary Taubes' book Why We Get Fat.

What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami

"In all affairs, it's a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted."--Bertrand Russell

"In the hopes of reaching the moon men fail to see the flowers that blossom at their feet."--Albert Schweitzer

Getting Real: The Smarter, Faster, Easier Way to Build a Successful Web Application, which is available for free at gettingreal.37signals.com

(when reading The Effective Executive by Peter Drucker, one of my all-time favorite management books)

Propaganda by Edward Bernays,

The Whole Earth Catalog by Stewart Brand

10% Happier by Dan Harris made me totally rethink mindfulness and meditation.

"Many a false step was made by standing still."

If they're interested in running, I give them Born to Run by Christopher McDougall.

"Always make new mistakes!"

Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond: This text helped rid me of the nagging incompleteness in my understood connection between the successes and failings of ancient and modern civilizations. Power needs tools and circumstance. Neither need be earned.

"Part of knowing who you are is knowing who you're not."

The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand:

Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene, explains more about life (including human behavior and myself) than anything else I've read.

The Alchemist, by Paulo Coelho.

"The fairest rules are those to which everyone would agree if they did not know how much power they would have."--John Rawls

"If you want to go fast, go alone, but if you want to go far, you must go together."

Little Things Make All the Difference, and Cathy O'Neil's Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data

The books Superforecasting (by Philip E. Tetlock and Dan Gardner) and How to Measure Anything (by Douglas W. Hubbard) have some good advice on how to improve your ability to make accurate predictions.

"Money in a business is like gas in your car. You need to pay attention so you don't end up on the side of the road. But your trip is not a tour of gas stations."

"He suffers more than necessary, who suffers before it is necessary."