Highlights

Our job is not to "go with our gut" or fixage on the first impression we form about an issue. No, we need to be strong enough to resist thinking that is too neat, too plausible, and therefore almost always wrong.

it’s very difficult to think or act clearly (to say nothing of being happy) when we are drowning in information. It’s why lawyers attempt to bury the other side in paper. It’s why intelligence operatives flood the enemy with propaganda, so they’ll lose the scent of the truth. It’s not a coincidence that the goal of these tactics is casually referred to as analysis paralysis. Yet we do this to ourselves!

All this noise. All this information. All these inputs. We are afraid of the silence. We are afraid of looking stupid. We are afraid of missing out. We are afraid of being the bad guy who says, “Nope, not interested.”

A wealth of information creates poverty of attention. (– Herbert Simon)

If you wish to improve, be content to appear clueless or stupid in extraneous matters. (– Epictetus)

We all demand reparation for our early wounds to our narcissism. (– Sigmund Freud)

Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself. (– Arthur Conan Doyle)

There is no enjoying the possesion of anything valuable unless one has someone to share it with. (– Seneca)

To have an impulse and to resist it, to sit with it and examine it, to let it pass by like a bad smell—this is how we develop spiritual strength. This is how we become who we want to be in this world.

A good relationship requires us to be virtuous, faithful, present, empathetic, generous, open, and willing to be a part of a larger whole. It requires, in order to create growth, real surrender. No one would say that’s easy. But rising to this challenge—even attempting to rise to it—transforms us . . . if we let it.

It is only ideas gained from walking that have any worth. (– Friedrich Nietzsche)

Walk away from the thoughts that need to be walked away from; walk toward the ones that have now appeared.

Routine, done for long enough and done sincerely enough, becomes more than routine. It becomes ritual—it becomes sanctified and holy.

Ah, but the greats know that complete freedom is a nightmare. They know that order is a prerequisite of excellence and that in an unpredictable world, good habits are a safe haven of certainty.

When our thoughts are empty and our body is in its groove, we do our best work.

The gentleman makes things his servants. The petty man is servant to things. (– Xunzi)

Work will not set you free. It will kill you if you’re not careful.