“Because all late-night hosts are expected to have this same broad appeal, they all have basically the same persona. It’s a time-tested persona that has proven very popular in all sorts of media, that of a likeable, playfully irreverent everyman.” (11)
“Head writers are looking for writers who can turn out comedy material that requires very little editing to get it to the point where the host is happy with it.” (14)
“On any television show the amount of time that a writer is expected to spend at the office is inversely correlated with how well-run the show is.” (38)
“A former writer for Johnny Carson said this about writing a topical Monologue: “Doing this every day is like taking a dump when you don’t have to.”” (51)
“If a mass audience hears a joke about one of those traditionally taboo topics the subtleties of the Surprise Theory of Laughter come into play. The audience might want to be surprised by the incongruity in the punch line but they won’t laugh because the incongruity isn’t harmless. The incongruity harms them because it makes them think, “If I laugh at that punch line I’m a horrible person.”” (61)
“A good topic for a Monologue joke has to meet six conditions. It must be: factually true not intentionally funny only one sentence long a news item that will capture most people’s interest something that your audience will let you joke about something that your host is willing to joke about” (67)
“Yes, a comedian should be outspoken, puncturing hypocrisy and taking shots at emperors, venerable institutions, and celebrities. But if the comedian tries to educate his audience they won’t laugh.” (72)
“The job of a comedy/talk show host isn’t to get his audience to discuss his jokes. His job is to make his audience laugh, immediately and loudly, and to do that he can’t say the emperor’s not wearing any clothes. Instead, he has to tell the audience something they already know.” (72)
“To make your jokes as funny as possible… Shorten as much as possible. End on the laugh trigger. Backload the topic. Make everything clear. Don’t telegraph the punch line. Make the punch line parallel. Use stop consonants, alliteration, and assonance. Wildly exaggerate. Get specific. Use the Rule of Three. Don’t be too on-the-nose. Consider an act-out.” (115)
“Your parody and the original video should be very similar in at least these nine ways: actors tone visuals pace of the editing music on-screen text length format structure” (260)
“The best packet to submit to a comedy/talk show that’s currently being broadcast is one you’ve written specifically for that show.” (342)
“What types of comedy pieces does the show do? Desk Pieces? Story Sketches? Audience Pieces? Does the host perform characters? Does the show do Semi-Scripted Field Pieces? If so, who goes out on location, the host or a correspondent? Not very show does all the types of comedy pieces covered in this book. What is the host’s persona? … How big a budget does the show seem to have? … Are celebrities enlisted to participate in the show’s comedy? If so, are they A-listers or C-listers? If you pitch an idea that requires a celebrity, you want to suggest someone who’s gettable. What audience does the show seem to be aimed at?” (346-347)
“‘The same, but different’ is a paradoxical principle that governs the production of most forms of American mass entertainment. What it means is that a new television show, say, has to be in many ways the same as other, successful television shows. That’s because that sameness reassures the television executives who approve the production of the expensive new show that it will be successful, too. But a new television show also has to be different in some significant ways from every other television show because those differences will make the show seem somewhat fresh and therefore more attractive to viewers.” (348)
“Remember that your overall goal is to submit material that’s as close as possible to being immediately useable on your Target Show.” (352)
“Submit each idea for a new comedy piece in the format recommended by every head writer I’ve ever talked with. This is the same format that staff writers on comedy/talk shows use to submit their own new ideas to their head writers. The format consists of these three elements for each idea you submit: Title: Give the comedy piece a good title, one that the host could use when introducing the piece on the show. A good title is descriptive, punchy, and short. Premise: State the basic concept of the piece in, at most, a couple of short paragraphs, briefly describing the participants and what they do. Also include any key production details. Your goal here is to get your readers to quickly visualize how the piece would play out on the show and to convince them that it’s producible. Keep your description straightforward. Don’t embellish your description with little quips, which will just distract and annoy the reader. Save your comedy for the sample jokes. Sample jokes: Provide your best three or four sample jokes for the piece, with each joke comprising at most a few sentences. The reason to include these jokes is to convince your readers that the piece would get laughs. In the case of a sketch idea, the sample jokes should be funny things that happen (“beats”) in the sketch, including how the sketch ends.” (355)
“The best way [to write monologue jokes] – Write all your Monologue jokes within a week of when you submit your packet to the show… even if your submission packet is read months after you submit it, the fact that all the Monologue jokes were written during the same week will be apparent to your readers because of the topics you’ve used. You’ll still have shown your writing speed and your dedication to your craft and, even though your jokes may seem dated, your readers will still be able to judge the skill that went into creating them.” (356)
“If your Target Show doesn’t specify a length for submission packets, keep yours to eight to ten pages.” (358)
“The piece you think is funniest should go first… The piece you think is second-funniest should go second. You want to convince your readers that your first piece wasn’t a fluke and to hook them into reading even more of your material. The piece you think is third-funniest should go last, so your readers will read something strong right before they have to decide what to do with your submission.” (358)
“Type it in regular 12-point Courier.” (359)
“If seeing a particular photo or graphic is necessary to understand a joke, show the actual photo or graphic on the page.” (360)
“Lay out each page so that it’s easy-to-read and inviting. Don’t fill your pages with long, intimidating blocks of text; build in plenty of white space.” (360)
“Don’t put a cover on your submission, just a title page laid out like the one in the sample packet.” (360)
“Your script should parody a TV show promo, a commercial, a movie trailer, or a PSA.” (366)
“Write a generic packet almost exactly the same way you’d write a customized packet but include these comedy pieces: one page of Monologue jokes two pages of new ideas for Desk Pieces one page of new ideas for Audience Pieces one fully-scripted Parody Sketch (two pages maximum) one page of new ideas for Semi-Scripted Field Pieces one page of new ideas for other live pieces like Liev Joke Basket Sketches” (371)
“The ideal person to read your packet is the host of the show. If the host wants to hire you, you’ll have a job. But getting your submission packet to the host without first going through somebody else on the show’s staff is almost impossible. So instead your goal should be to have the head writer read your submission.” (376)
“The best way to have your packet read by a head writer is to convince someone the head writer knows to give it to him.” (377)
“The most useful spec scripts are probably an original pilot and an episode of a well-regarded show that’s currently on the air and will probably stay on the air for another season or two.” (388)
“agents are highly accustomed to dealing with people on the phone, which is why written queries are likely to be less effective with them.” (388)
“Most hiring of writers for prime-time TV shows – sitcoms and son on- tends to take place in the spring.” (390)
“Just be casually witty, good-natured, and enthusiastic. Say some nice things about the writing on the show, maybe about a particular comedy piece that you liked recently. Tell your interviewer that you’d love to work on the show. You don’t have to prove you’re talented; your submission has already done that. You just have to demonstrate that you’d fit comfortably into the staff and not drive everybody nuts.” (392)
“Men can’t go wrong with jeans, sneakers, and a long-sleeved, collared shirt… The idea is to look as though you already work there.” (392)
“Almost every experience I’m writing about here will somehow be used later. You’ll see. And what you’ll also see is that as you go through life as a writer, it’s easier to write thing down than to actually write.” (56)
“Then there are the people who are running shows who have no business doing that because they are not ready to run a show yet. They were on staff of a hit show and sold a pilot. But they don’t know what they’re doing and don’t know what they want and they’re operating from fear and nervousness. Their minds are changing all the time because they just don’t know what they want. Or they’re listening to the network’s or the studio’s notes and assuming they know what they want. you have to know what you want.” (62)
“The single best piece of advice I ever got from anyone about anything. It was from Ed Weinberger. He said, ‘Do the show you want to do, because in the end, they’re going to cancel you anyway.’” (67)
“There are umpteen factors you can’t control. So you have to make sure the ones you can control are so fantastic, they trump the ones you can’t. Your show has to be undeniable.” (70)
“The networks don’t like what’s called a premise pilot – one where the premise of the series is established – because it’s not indicative of what the other episodes will be like. They want an episode that could be episode number two or twelve or thirty.” (80)
“Comedy isn’t just comedy, it’s clarity. Without that clarity, you’re only funny to yourself.” (100)
“We started with a few rules in The Writers’ Room: Could this happen? No topical jokes. No B stories.” (101)
“At the end of the day, you know the best way to reconcile your feelings with people who’ve done you wrong? Just keep this in mind: They have to be them. That’s their punishment.” (125)
“There are dry-erase boards all around us on the walls. One board has the places we order lunch from. One has the places we like to go out to. One board has words that Ray can’t pronounce, and the way he actually does pronounce them, which come out of his mouth sounding like Einsteen and mispronunctuation. Another board is titled “Ray’s Surprise Vocabulary” and has some lofty words Ray has actually used correctly in a sentence, like “sharecropper.” Several boards have the name and number of every episode we’ve done so far, so that when someone has a great idea, someone else can usually point to the board and say, “Number sixty-seven, you moron. We did it already.” And then there are teh boards with the color-coded ideas. And these colors actually mean something, not like the government with its terror alerts. A certain color indicates this is just an idea. Another color might indicate we got somewhere on that story – we have actual notes on it. And another color means it was turned into an outline already, which means we’re doing it. If we’ve already gotten to the outline stage, it’s very rare that we’ll throw it out.” (132-133)
“We were always looking for the deeper meaning in every story, something that would have some kind of resonance with the audience, no matter how silly on the surface.” (140)
“Half the day is working on future shows, and the other half is this week’s show.” (140)
“No matter how seemingly silly the episode was, we felt the need to tie each one down to some sort of emotional underpinning, something that would resonate with the viewer after the show was over.” (167)
“The best note I ever received as an actor I got when I was doing too much on stage – you know, trying to be funny… she said, ‘It was very good, but let them come to you.’ ‘Let them come to you’ means just be. Don’t playact at being the character, just be the character. Just be. Just live. Don’t push. So that applies to everything. It’s one of those notes that applies to everything in life. Let them come to you. Just be. Just be you. Don’t push; they’re going to like you at the party. It’s going to be fine. We tend to like people who are real and believable and are like us. It doesn’t mean you don’t do anything, but you don’t push it. You don’t show the audience that you’re doing an action. ‘Look how I brush my hair away from my face so slowly to show I’m really interested in what the other actor is saying’ – you just are interested. Same in writing.” (170-171)
“Everyone in our cast had it. The deadpan look. To me the golden key in comedy is: They know what you’re thinking. That’s what we take so any pauses in the show. So that the look will get the laugh because the audience, once the characters have been established, knows what Robert is thinking when Ray gets a big homemade cake from Mom. And we know what Debra is thinking. And Frank. And Marie and Raymond.” (171)
“It’s all a struggle toward simplicity and clarity – from the writers’ story, to the show in front of the live audience, to the show as broadcast on television.” (174)
“Sometimes it’s a goddamn struggle to figure out what an episode is about. What is it about? That’s at the bottom of everything. What is it about. What is this scene about? What is this line about? What is this word about? Or, is it worth stopping the scene for that joke? What if it doesn’t advance the story – and not every line has to advance the story – we are in the comedy business – but is it worth stopping for Frank to insult his wife at this moment? Usually, you bet it is. Everyone has his or her part to play. Everyone has his or her character that we look forward to seeing.” (174)
“You have to justify every action and attitude the character takes, or they don’t make sense.” (175)
“It’s good writing if the setup is funny in and of itself. Then the audience doesn’t know they’re being set up – that’ sa good setup. It’s not dry, it’s not boring, it’s not what we call “pipey” – as in, it’s so obviously information that the audience needs to know just to understand what the hell is going on, it’s as if we’re laying pipe. We don’t want the audience to know it’s just exposition, the part they have to sit through before we get to the kitchen burning down.” (178)
“Say it without saying it is a great rule. You don’t want to be so on the nose; you want the subtext to come through. First of all, you have to have text before there can be subtext, right? But the show, what is it about? You don’t want ot say it blatantly in lines; you want it to be there, understood. You never want to say, “I am angry.” That’s bad writing, right? Too on the nose. So you want to say it without saying it. You want to say I love you without saying it.” (180)
“If we want the audience to care about the show, we have to care about it, and we worry and fret over every detail. I have to save for another book the decisions about costume, hair, and set design; personal dramas; how the show is advertised; how the film is developed – there’s a tremendous amount of work that goes into making a half hour look seamless. Fred Astaire would practice dancing until his feet were bleeding. Every move, everything, where to turn, every decision, how to hold his head, his hands, every split second of that dance had been choreographed to within an inch of its life so that when you watch it, it appears effortless. Same with this. Same with any good play, film, TV show, book, painting, vagina sculpture. You shouldn’t think to look under the sucks; you just enjoy the dancing.” (181)
“Everything is tested to death, under unrealistic conditions, and testing’s main use has become ass covering. So that any given executive doesn’t have to take the blame for a decision but can point to the numbers when the thing tanks, and say, “It wasn’t my decision; it tested well.” If every show tests well that the networks put on, there’s clearly something wrong – for instance, the only reason the Stupid Show test “very well” is because the audience recognized the lead. The quality of the show meant nothing. “I know that guy! I turn the knob on my approval meter to the right.” End of testing. And so the show goes on and it stinks because that’s not how anybody watches television, but sometimes enough people watch to justify the process, and then the end of civilization.” (193)
“My attitude was, it all just gets richer. Robert marries Amy, and at first he thinks he has what he thinks Raymond has. However, once he gets married he will see he’s still Robert. He still doesn’t have the place in his mother’s heart that Raymond has, and so he may feel worse. Robert could have everything Raymond has – he could even have twin boys. He could have triplets. He could have a better life in every way than Raymond has, but he will never be Raymond. THe circumstances may change, but not his character. We’re changing the sit, not the com.” (199)
“I want every episode to have some truth revealed so that it’s something that the audience identifies with in their lives, that has resonance. That’s the whole point. And if you work in the sitcom form, which is fast, like a short story, the challenge is: How do you get that emotional punch or meaning in that short form?” (199)
“I can also tell you that while running our show, I learned a helluva lot from the other side of casting. Advice to my fellow actors: Always memorize your audition, and don’t treat it as an audition, treat it as a chance to perform that day. Then, if you don’t get it, it’s not because you weren’t prepared, and you can at least feel good about yourself. And always try to get the first appointment. If you’re good, you’ll be the one to beat. If you’re bad, it wasn’t you, it was the idiot doing the casting.” (217)
“The work is its own reward. I’d heard that from some guy.” (221)
“Things need time to grow. By the way, about reality shows, why are they so popular now, at the expense of comedies? Because a lot of comedies are not writing real people. The characters are not believable as people. So we turn on a reality show and we say, ‘That character is funny!’ That’s a real person that we recognize and relate to, because we understand what it’s like to be a real person. So when we watch a sitcom and the characters speak like nothing on the planet, and don’t act human, and they’re cardboard cutouts of human beings, I’d rather watch the reality show. Even though it’s not reality, the people on them remind me of people. We know this, don’t we? Even if we don’t know it and can’t articulate it all the time, we know it intrinsically. ‘Why am I not relating to his?’ Because this is not dialogue that anyone would say, this not a situation that anyone could believably be in. And here’s a person in a reality show that’s plopped in the middle of an island, and he’s acting more like a person I’m in the office with than this person on a sitcom who is actually in an office setting.” (237)
“We’re looking to connect. That’s all we do as human beings on the planet – look to connect with other human beings. So we look for the most relatable, connectable thing. Subconsciously, not even consciously.” (237)
I recently read “Improv Wisdom: Don’t Prepare, Just Show Up” by Patricia Ryan Madson. Below are the quotes I found most interesting. As usual, if you like the quotes, .
“I had tried to be worthy of receiving tenure. I didn’t understand that this worthiness could come only from honoring my own voice. Making decisions solely to please others is a formula destined to fail. THe people I admired were not looking over their shoulders to see if their peers were applauding. They were heeding their inner promptings. “I do this because I know it needs to be done.” My search for validation has diverted me from discerning what was uniquely mine.” (13)
“Keith Johnstone’s encouraging quotation form Impro reminds us that this habit can be acquired:
There are people who prefer to say “yes,” and there are people who prefer to say “No.” Those who say “Yes” are rewarded by the adventures they have, and those who say “No” are rewarded by the safety they attain. There are far more “No” sayers around than “yes” sayers, but you can train one type to behave like the other.” (18)
“Art is simply what one does, now who one is.” (39)
“All starting points are equally valid. They being where they are, often in the middle.” (53)
“You can improve how you give a lecture by using the principle of improvised speech. Instead of writing out your notes in precise language, try writing questions to yourself.” (57)
“When you try hard to do your best, the effect on your performance is often to jinx it.” (60)
“Getting a laugh is easy – trivial, actually. Anything unexpected seems funny. This kind of humor is like a sugar hit. It gives a temporary lift, but it is a poor diet and won’t nourish artistically. If you give up making jokes and concentrate on making sense, the result is often genuinely mirthful.” (65)
“Life is attention, and what we are attending ot determines to a great extent how we experience the world.” (67)
“The Japanese have a word, arugamama. It is the virtue of abiding with things as they are.” (77)
“The most consistent road to unhappiness that I know comes from turning a blind eye to reality.” (78)
“in the act of balancing, we come alive. Sensations change moment by moment; sometimes we feel secure, sometimes precarious. In the long run we develop tolerance for instability. As we come to accept this insecurity as the norm, as our home ground, it becomes familiar and less frightening. We can stop trying to flee from the wobble. And sometimes this sense of being off balance is exhilarating and reminds us of the impermanence and fragility of life, nudging us to appreciate each imperfect, teetering moment we are alive.” (82)
“99.9 percent of the time, a mistake is just an unanticipated outcome giving us information.” (105)
“When you make a mistake, turn your attention to what comes next. Focus on doing that well, with full mind and heart. Look ahead, not back.” (108)
“The French word bricolage. It’s the art of commandeering the materials at hand – what is most obvious – to solve the problem.” (111)
“Natalie Goldberg’s first rule for writers, “Keep your hand moving.”” (115)
“Keep adjusting to how it is rather than how you’d like it to be.” (129)
“Tom Byers says these five ruls are essential for the successful entrepreneur:
Show up on time.
Be nice to people.
Do what you say you’ll do.
Deliver more than you promise.
Work with enthusiasm and passion.”
“Enjoyment is a way of approaching an activity, not the activity itself.” (138)
“Every skill you acquire doubles your odds of success.” (3)
“Happiness is health plus freedom.” (3)
“Simplicity transforms ordinary into amazing.” (3)
“Making comics is a process by which you strip out the unnecessary noise from a situation until all that is left is the absurd-yet-true core.” (5)
“Good ideas have no value because the world already has too many of them. The market rewards execution, not ideas.” (17)
“For our purposes, let’s say a goal is a specific objective that you either achieve or don’t sometime in the future. A system is something you do on a regular basis that increases your odds of happiness in the long run. If you do something every day, it’s a system. If you’re waiting to achieve it someday in the future, it’s a goal.” (33)
“I figured my competitive edge was creativity. I would try one thing after another until something creative struck a chord with the public. Then I would reproduce it like crazy. In the near term it would mean one failure after another. In the long term I was creating a situation that would allow luck to find me.” (40)
“If you want success, figure out the price, then pay it.” (46)
“When you decide to be successful in a big way, it means you acknowledge the price and you’re willing to pay it. That price might be sacrificing your personal life to get good grades in school, pursuing a college major that is deadly boring but lucrative, putting off having kids, missing time with your family, or taking business risks that put you in jeopardy for embarrassment, divorce, or bankruptcy. Successful people don’t wish for success; they decide to pursue it. And to pursue it effectively, they need a system. Success always has a price, but the reality is that the price is negotiable. If you pick the right system, the price will be a lot nearer what you’re willing to pay.” (46)
“Let your ideas for the future rule your energy today. No matter what you want to do in life, higher energy will help you get there.” (67)
“It’s smarter to see your big-idea projects as part of a system to improve your energy, contacts, and sills. From that viewpoint, if you have a big, interesting project in the works, you’re a winner every time you wake up.” (67)
“I’m better than 99 percent of the world in Scrabble, Ping-Pong and tennis because I put in more practice time than 99 percent of the world. THere’s no magic to it.” (70)
“You shouldn’t hesitate to modify your perceptions to whatever makes you happy, because you’re probably wrong about the underlying nature of reality anyway.” (72)
“Every generation before us believed, like Snickers (my dog), that it had things figured out. We now know that every generation before us was wrong about a lot of it. Is it likely that you were born at the tipping point of history, in which humans know enough about reality to say we understand it? That is another case where humility is your friend. When you can release on your ego long enough to view your perceptions as incomplete or misleading, it gives you the freedom to imagine new and potentially more useful ways of looking at the world.” (72)
“Where there is a tolerance for risk, there is often talent.” (88)
“Things that will someday work out well start out well. Things that will never work start out bad and stay that way. What you rarely see is a stillborn failure that transmogrifies into a stellar success. Small successes can grow into big ones, but failures rarely grow into successes.” (88)
“The quality of the early products was a poor predictor of success. The predictor is that customers were clamoring for the bad versions of the product before the good versions were even invented.” (89)
“Bad luck doesn’t have the option of being that consistent forever.” (90)
“It’s generally true that if no one is excited about your art/product/idea in the beginning, they never will be.” (91)
“If your work inspires some excitement and some action from customers, get ready to chew through some walls. You might have something worth fighting for.” (91)
“You can raise your market value by being merely good – not extraordinary – at more than one skill.” (96)
“When I combined my meager business skills with my bad arts skills and y fairly ordinary writing talent, the mixture was powerful. With each new skill, my odds of success increased substantially.” (98)
“Recapping my skill set: I have poor art skills, mediocre business skills, good but not great writing talent, and an early knowledge of the Internet. And I have a good but not great sense of humor. I’m like one big mediocre soup. None of my skills are world-class, but when my mediocre skills are combined, they become a powerful market force.” (99)
“Everything you learn becomes a shortcut for understanding something else.” (99)
“I don’t read the news to find truth, as that would be a foolish waste of time. I read the news to broaden my exposure to new topics and patterns that make my brain more efficient in general and to enjoy myself, because learning interesting things increase my energy and makes me feel optimistic. Don’t think of the news as information. Think of it as a source of energy.” (100)
“You can’t directly control luck, but you can move from a game with low odds of success to a game with better odds.” (101)
“If you find yourself in a state of continual failure in your personal or business life, you might be blaming it on fate or karma or animal spirits or some other form of magic when the answer is simple math. THere’s usually a pattern, but it might be subtle. Don’t stop looking just because you don’t see the pattern in the first seven years.” (103)
“Today when I see a stage and a thousand people waiting to hear me speak, a little recording goes off in my head that says today is a good day. I’m the happiest person in the room. The audience only gets to listen, but I get to speak, to feel, to be fully alive. i will absorb their energy and turn it into something good. And when I’m done, there’s a 100 percent chance that people will say good things about me.” (106)
“Children are accustomed to a continual stream of criticisms and praise, but adults can go weeks without a compliment while enduring criticism both at work and at home. Adults are starved for a kind word. When you understand the power of honest praise (as opposed to bullshitting, flattery, and sucking up), you realize that withholding it borders on immoral. If you see something that impresses you, a descent respect to humanity insets you voice your praise.” (107)
“Dilbert was the first syndicated comic that focused primarily on the workplace. At the time there was nothing to compare it with. That allowed me to get away with bad artwork and immature writing until I could improve my skills to the not-so-embarrassing level.” (109)
“Quality is not an independent force in the universe; it depends on what you choose as your frame of reference.” (109)
“Animation shows take longer to “tune” than live action because the writers for animation can’t know what worked in a particular show until it is fully animated and too late to change.” (111)
“Success in anything usually means doing more of what works and less of what doesn’t, and for animated TV shows that means you don’t hit your pace until about the third season.” (111)
“i no longer see reason as the driver of behavior. I see simple cause and effect, similar to the way machines operate. If you believe people use reason for the important decisions in life, you will go through life feeling confused and frustrated that others have bad reasoning skills. The reality is that reason is just one of the drivers of our decisions, and often the smallest one.” (117)
“Politicians understand that reason will never have much of a role in voting decisions. A lie that makes a voter feel good is more effective than a hundred rational arguments. That’s even true when the voter knows the lie is a lie. If you’re perplexed at how society can tolerate politicians who lie so blatantly, you’re thinking of people as rational beings. That worldview is frustrating and limiting.” (117)
“View humans as moist machines that are simply responding to inputs with programmed outputs. No reasoning is involved beyond eliminating the most absurd options. Your reasoning can prevent you fro voting for a total imbecile, but it won’t stop you from supporting a half-wit with a great haircut.” (118)
“All you do is introduce yourself and ask questions until you find a point of mutual interest. 1. What’s your name? 2. Where do you live? 3. Do you have a family? 4. What do you do for a living? 5. Do you have any hobbies/sports? 6. Do you have any travel plans?” (123)
“The reality is that everyone is a basket case on the inside. Some people just hide it better.” (130)
“In most groups the craziest person is in control. It starts because no one wants the problems that comet rom pissing off a crazy person.” (140)
“The way fake insanity works in a negotiation is that you assign a greater value to some element of a deal than an objective observer would consider reasonable. For example, you might demand that a deal be closed before the holidays so you can announce it to your family as a holiday present.” (140)
“The biggest component of luck is timing. When the universe and I have been on a compatible schedule – entirely by chance – things have worked out swimmingly. When my timing has been off, no amount of hard work or talent has mattered.” (158)
I stayed in the game long enough for luck to find me.” (158)
“The success of Dilbert is mostly a story of luck. But I did make it easier for luck to find me, and I was thoroughly prepared when it did. Luck won’t give you a strategy or a system – you have to do that part yourself.” (160)
“I find it helpful to see the world as a slot machine that doesn’t ask you to put money in. All it asks is your time, focus, and energy to pull the handle over and over. A normal slot machine that requires money will bankrupt any player int he long run. But the machine that has rare yet certain payoffs, and asks for no money up front, is a guaranteed winner if you have what it takes to keep yanking until you get lucky. In that environment, you can fail 99 percent of the time, while knowing success is guaranteed. All you need to do is stay in the game long enough.” (160)
“Experts are right about 98 percent of the time on the easy stuff but only right 50 percent of the time on anything that is unusually complicated, mysterious, or even new.” (166)
“Simply find the people who most represent what you would like to become and spend as much time with them as you can without trespassing, kidnapping, or stalking. Their good habits and good energy will rub off on you.” (170)
“The single biggest trick for manipulating your happiness chemistry is being able to do what you want, when you want.” (173)
“You need to control the order and timing of things to be happy. It’s important to look at happiness in terms of timing because timing is easier to control than resources.” (173)
“Step one in your search for happiness is to continually work toward having control of your schedule.” (174)
“By any definition, what I’m doing is work, but because I can control the timing of it on this particular day, it doesn’t feel like work. I’ve transformed work into pleasure simply by having control over when I do it.” (174)
“Happiness is the natural state for most people whenever they feel healthy, have flexible schedules, and expect the future to be good.” (175)
“Recapping the happiness formula: Eat right. Exercise. Get enough sleep. Imagine an incredible future (even if you don’t believe it). Work toward a flexible schedule.” (178)
“That’s what I call failing forward. Any time you learn something useful, you come out ahead.” (191)
“You’ll be surprised at how often a bad night of sleep leads to nonstop eating.” (195)
“in the long run, any system that depends on your willpower will fail. Or worse, some other part of your life will suffer as you focus your limited stockpile of willpower on fitness.” (207)
“My worldview is that all success is luck if you track it back to its source.” (218)
“If you think your odds of solving your problem are bad, don’t rule out the possibility that what is really happening is that you are bad at estimating odds.” (224)
