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“Tribe of Mentors” Quotes

I recently read “Tribe of Mentors: Short Life Advice From The Best In The World” by Timothy Ferriss. Below are the quotes I found most interesting. If you like the quotes, buy the book here.

“What would this look like if it were easy? Is such a lovely and deceptively leveraged question. It’s easy to convince yourself that things need to be hard, that if you’re nto redlining, you’re not trying hard enough. This leads us to look for paths of most resistance, often creating unnecessary hardship in the process.
But what happens if we frame thing sin terms of elegance instead of strain? Sometimes, we find incredible results with ease instead of stress. Sometimes, we “solve” the problem by completely reframing it.” (xii)

“”Normal” people are just crazy people you don’t know well enough.” (xviii)

“The secret to winning any game lies in not trying too hard.” (569)

Terry Crews:
“Life is not a “young man’s game.” It is an “inspired person’s game.” The keys belong to whoever is inspired, and no specific age, sex, gender, or cultural background has a monopoly on inspiration.” (22)

Dita Von Teese:
“Sometimes our shortcomings can lead to greatness, because those of us who have intense desire but lack natural God-given talent sometimes find roundabout ways of realizing dreams.” (77)

Neil Strauss:
“The outcome is not the outcome. In other words, what we think of as endpoints to a goal are really just forks in a road that is endlessly forking. In the big picture of our lives, we really don’t know whether a particular success or failure is actually helping or hurting us.” (98)

“The secret to change and growth is not willpower, but positive community.” (98)

Jerzy Gregorek:
“When disaster happens, it means that something is being asked of me.” (114)

“I told one of my clients who blamed her husband for everything to take 100 percent responsibility for her part in their interactions. “This way,” I said, “You will be free of trying to control him, and you will be able to find constructive solutions in your relationship.” When She left, I realized that the same advice could help me as well.” (115)

Annie Duke:
“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.” (174)

Hal Boyle:
“What makes a river so restful to people is that it doesn’t have any doubt – it is sure to get where it is going, and it doesn’t want to go anywhere else.” (184)

Betty Reese:
“If you think you are too small to be effective, you have never been in the dark with a mosquito.” (204)

Eric Hoffer:
“Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.” (204)

Jan L. A. van de Snepscheut
“In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. But, in practice, there is.” (204)

Javier Pascual Salcedo:
“Bureaucracy is the art of making the possible impossible.” (205)

Andy Warhol:
“Don’t pay any attention to what they write about you, just measure it in inches.” (205)

Barry Diller:
“Put one dumb foot in front of the other and course correct as you go.” (206)

Walter Chrysler:
“Whenever there is a hard job to be done, I assign it to a lazy man; he is sure to find an easy way of doing it.” (206)

Yiddish saying:
“Lose an hour in the morning, chase it all day.” (207)

Benjamin Disraeli:
“Action may not always bring happiness, but there is no happiness without action.” (210)

Gary Vaynerchuk:
“Everybody’s impatient at a macro, and just so patient at a micro, wasting your days worrying about years. I’m not worried about my years, because I’m squeezing the fuck out of my seconds, let alone my day. It’s going to work out.” (216)

Tim O’Reilly:
“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.” (221)

“Clayton Christensen discovered that breakthrough technologies that are not yet mature first succeed by finding radically new markets, and only later disrupt existing markets.” (223)

Bear Grylls:
“When it starts to get tough, all it requires is for you to get tougher and hold on. The magic bit is that when it gets like this, it often means you are near the end goal! One big heave of focus, dedication, and grit, and you often pop out the other end. Look around you, though, and you see that most people are gone – they gave up in that final bit of hurting.” (231)

Frank Wilczek:
“If you don’t make mistakes, you’re not working on hard enough problems. And that’s a big mistake.” (253)

Sarah Elizabeth Lewis:
“The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.” (338)

BJ Miller, MD:
“Don’t believe everything you think.” (356)

Maurice Ashley:
“Greatness is not a final destination, but a series of small acts done daily in order to constantly rejuvenate and refresh our skills in a daily effort to become a better version of ourselves.” (370)

Leonardo Da Vinci:
“It had long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them. THey went out and happened to things.” (389)

Darren Aronofsky:
“Most of the game is about persistence. It is the most important trait. Sure, when you get an opportunity, you have to perform and you have to exceed beyond all expectations, but getting that chance is the hardest part. So keep the vision clear in your head and every day refuse all obstacles to get to the goal.” (399)

Evan Williams:
“Be in a hurry to learn, not in a hurry to get validation. In a team environment, you will make a much better impression if it seems like you’re not at all worried about yourself. It’s okay to actually be worried about yourself – everyone is – just don’t seem like it. If you resist asking for too much, you will often get more.” (402)

John Gunther:
“All happiness depends on a leisurely breakfast.” (418)

Sun Tzu:
“Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” (436)

Terry Laughlin:
“The key to that satisfaction is to reach the nirvana in which love of practice for its own sake (intrinsic) replaces the original goal (extrinsic) as our grail. The antithesis of mastery is the pursuit of quick fixes.” (441)

Scott Belsky:
“More often than not, great opportunities look unattractive on the surface. What makes an opportunity great is upside. If the potential upside were explicitly clear, the opportunity would have already been taken.” (459)

Whitney Cummings:
“Don’t waste your time socializing with people who you think can help you. Just get better, and opportunities will naturally present themselves once you deserve them. ONly focus on things within your control. And if you don’t know what those things are, find someone who can tell ou. Don’t network, just work.” (485)

Rick Rubin:
“There are so many elements that go into making something successful – all of which are out of your control. You’re in control of making your project the best it can possibly be for you, but you are powerless over most of what happens after that.” (489)

Ben Silbermann:
“Assume that anything worthwhile is going to take five to ten years.” (496)

Stephanie McMahon:
“Before I go to bed, I try to think of three things that made me happy during the day. It’s an evolution of thinking of three things that I’m grateful for.” (511)

Jocko Willink:
“”Discipline equals freedom.” Everyone wants freedom. We want to be physically free and mentally free. We want to be financially free and we want more free time. But where does that freedom come from? How do we get it? The answer is the opposite of freedom. The answer is discipline. You want more free time? Follow a more disciplined time-management system. You want financial freedom? Implement long-term financial discipline in your life. DO you want to be physically free to move how you want, and to be free from many health issues caused by poor lifestyle choices? Then you have to have the discipline to eat healthy food and consistently work out. We all want freedom. DIscipline is the only way to get it.” (538)

Liked the quotes? Buy the book here.

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“Smarter Faster Better” Quotes

I recently read “Smarter Faster Better: The Secrets of Being Productive in Life and Business” by Charles Duhigg. Below are the quotes I found most interesting. If you like them, buy the book here.

“Motivation is triggered by making choice that demonstrate to ourselves that we are in control. The specific choice we make matters less than the assertion of control. It’s this feeling of self-determination that gets us going.” (20)

“We should reward initiative, congratulate people for self-motivation, celebrate when an infant wants to feed herself. We should applaud a child who shows defiant, self-righteous stubbornness and reward a student who finds a way to get things done by working around the rules.” (36)

“When we start a new task, or confront an unpleasant chore, we should take a moment to ask ourselves “why…” Once we start asking why, those small tasks become pieces of a larger constellation of meaningful projects, goals, and values.” (36)

“Project Oxygen found that a good manager 1) is a good coach; 2) empowers and does not micromanage; 3) expresses interest and concern in subordinates’ success and well-being 4) is results oriented; 5) listens and shares information; 6) helps with career development; 7) has a clear vision and strategy; 8) has key technical skills.” (43)

“They were all behaviors that created a sense of togetherness while also encouraging people to take a chance. We call it ‘psychological safety…’ a shared belief, held by members of a team, that the group is a safe place for taking risks. It is a sense of confidence that the team will not embarrass, reject, or punish someone for speaking up.” (50)

“The right norms could raise the collective intelligence of mediocre thinkers. The wrong norms could hobble a group made up of people who, on their own, were all exceptionally bright.” (60)

“All the members of the good teams spoke in roughly the same proportion… conversations didn’t need to be equal every minute, but in aggregate, they had to balance out.” (60)

“The good teams tested as having “high average social sensitivity” – a fancy way of saying that the groups were skilled at intuiting how members felt based on their tone of voice, how people held themselves, and the expressions on their faces.” (61)

“For psychological safety to emerge among a group, teammates don’t have to be friends. They do, however, need to be socially sensitive and ensure everyone feels heard.” (64)

“Teams need to believe that their work is important.
Teams need to feel their work is personally meaningful.
Teams need clear goals and defined roles.
Team members need to know they can depend on one another.
But, most important, teams need psychological safety.” (66)

“People who know how to manage their attention and who habitually build robust mental models tend to earn more money and get better grades.” (92)

“If you want to make yourself more sensitive to the small details in your work, cultivate a habit of imagining, as specifically as possible, what you expect to see and do when you get to your desk.” (92)

“Narrate your life, as you are living it, and you’ll encode those experiences deeper in your brain.” (92)

“Mental models help us by providing a scaffold for the torrent of information that constantly surrounds us. Models help us choose where to direct our attention, so we can make decisions, rather than just react.” (101)

“Employees work smarter and better when they believe they have more decision making authority and when they believe their colleagues are committed to their success. A sense of control can fuel motivation, but for that drive to produce insights and innovations, people need to know their suggestions won’t be ignored, that their mistakes won’t be held against them. And they need to know that everyone else has their back.” (165)

“At the intermediate level, you want to know as many rules as possible. Intermediate players crave certainty. But elite players can use that craving against them, because it makes intermediate players more predictable.” (173)

“The future isn’t one thing. Rather, it is a multitude of possibilities that often contradict one another until one of them comes true. And those futures can be combined in order for someone to predict which one is more likely to occur.” (179)

“We can always find the right story when we start asking ourselves what feels true,” Del Vecho told me. “The thing that holds us back is when we forget to use our lives, what’s inside our heads, as raw material” (223)

“Creativity can’t be reduced to a formula. At its core, it needs novelty, surprise, and other elements that cannot be planned in advance to seem fresh and new. There is no checklist that, if followed, delivers innovation on demand.
But the creative process is different. We can create the conditions that help creativity to flourish. We know, for example, that innovation becomes more likely when old ideas are mixed in new ways. We know the odds of success go up when brokers – people with fresh, different perspectives, who have seen ideas in a variety of settings – draw on the diversity within their heads. We know that, sometimes, a little disturbance can help jolt us out of the ruts that even the most creative thinkers fall into, as long as those shake-ups are the right size.” (235)

“If you want to become a broker and increase the productivity of your own creative process, there are three things that can help: First, be sensitive to your own experiences. Pay attention to how things make you think and feel. That’s how we distinguish cliches from true insights…
Second, recognize that the panic and stress you feel as you try to create isn’t a sign that everything is falling apart. Rather, it’s the condition that helps make us flexible enough to seize something new. Creative desperation can be critical; anxiety is what often pushes us to see old ideas in new ways. The path out of that turmoil is to look at what you know, to reinspect conventions you’ve seen work and try to apply them to fresh problems. The creative pain should be embraced.
Finally, remember that the relief accompanying a creative breakthrough, while sweet, can also blind us to seeing alternatives. It is critical to maintain some distance from what we create. Without self-criticism, without tension, one idea can quickly crowd out competitors. But we can regain that critical distance by forcing ourselves to critique what we’ve already done, by making ourselves look at it from a completely different perspective, by changing the power dynamics in the room or giving new authority to someone who didn’t have it before. Disturbances are essential, and we retain clear eyes by embracing destruction and upheaval, as long as we’re sensitive to making the disturbance the right size.” (236)

“When Alter conducts experiments, he sometimes gives people instructions in a hard-to-read font because, as they struggle to make out the words, they read the text more carefully. “The initial difficulty in processing the text leads you to think more deeply about what you’re reading, so you spend more time and energy making sense of it.” (247)

“Researchers found that hand writers scored twice as well as the typists in remembering what a lecturer said.” (265)

“Productivity doesn’t mean that every action is efficient. It doesn’t mean that waste never occurs. In fact, as Disney learned, sometimes you have to foster tension to encourage creativity. Sometimes a misstep is the most important footfall along the path to success.” (285)

Liked the quotes? Buy the book here.

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“The Sun & The Moon & The Rolling Stones” Quotes

I recently read “The Sun & The Moon & The Rolling Stones” by Rich Cohen. Below are the quotes I found most interesting. If you like the quotes, buy the book.

“An artist needs a belief. It does not matter whether that belief is Rastafarianism or Communism. It’s the structure of belief that matters – it gives their work coherence, shape. It’s there even when you don’t know it.” (21)

“There’s a moment when your real life starts, when you realize that what came before was prelude. Old friends and mentors – you shed them like baby teeth and you’re free.” (43)

“No more than a handful of people turned out. Gomelsky puts the number at three. When Brian asked, “What should we do?” Giorgio said, “What do you mean? Play!” You don’t punish the people who showed up for the sins of those who stayed home.” (62)

“There’s tremendous power in being first. In birth order, in the mysterious circle of fame. Being first means being free to invent and go it alone. Being in any place but first means riding the wake. It means being defined in comparison. It means being the next Beatles, the anti-Beatles, the new Beatles, or the shitty Beatles.” (66)

“When I was a boy, my father… told me that life is 99 percent marketing. “You’re better off with a great salesman and a mediocre product, than with a masterpiece and a moron to sell it.”” (78)

“Every now and then, a nation experiences a caesura, a pause between eras. To those who recognize such things, it’s an opportunity. Because a death is a birth and an exit is an entrance. Because you can only weep for so long. Because after tears you need laughter. As America emerged from its nightmare, Americans wanted something untainted with tragedy, fresh and new. It’s no coincidence that the Beatles landed in the United States less than three months after the Kennedy assassination.” (85)

“The Beatles had changed the rules; a band had to write songs. Bob Dylan made it even more important. It was about authenticity. A singer singing his own words is an artist; a singer covering someone else’s words is an actor.” (105)

“American rock stars aspire to immortality. They want to be James Dean and die beautifully. British rock stars aspire to aristocracy. They want to acquire titles and houses with names.” (155)

“In art, you have a choice, though you probably won’t realize it at the time. Posterity or right now.” (173)

“Forget the fact that open G had been around for years – if Richards stole the sound from Ry Cooder, why don’t Ry Cooder songs sound anything like the Stones? Why aren’t they nearly as evocative, menacing? IT gets at a deep unfairness: all the skill in the world does not add up to genius. Ry Cooder is a technically better player than Keith Richards, was goofing with open G first, and was after some of the same effects, but he did not have that same artistic soul.” (191)

“Mick’s showbiz, a pop version of the classic Hollywood diva, for whom the show must always go on, for whom obscurity is even more terrifying than death. It’s a special kind of charisma that generates tremendous light but little heat. People crave that light but get no sustenance from it. It destroys them. Life with Mick is life astride a black hole. Time accelerates. Two years ages you immeasurably. Yet none of it touches him. Because no one else matters. He’s the ego that became the world. He stands before the millions but the millions don’t exist. At the center of the universe, Mick Jagger dances alone.” (200)

“As you get older you’ll notice that no matter what direction you walk, you’re walking away.” (200

“Art is not linear; it’s circular. An artist does not improve, nor progress. He simply rides the wheel, waiting for the clouds to break and the sun to appear.” (230)

“Hemingway said: When they attack, they attack precisely what is strong, unique. What critics really want is a slightly different version of what they already love. If you give them something new, they will hate you. At first. But great work invents its own genre.” (277)

“The moment you build a shrine, you’re saying the past is more important than the present.” (307)

Liked the quotes? Buy the book here.

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“Unstoppable: My Life So Far” Quotes

I recently read “Unstoppable: My Life So Far” by Maria Sharapova (and Rich Cohen – which is the reason I started reading the book). Below are the quotes I found most interesting. If you like them, buy the book here.

“By toughness, Yudkin meant persistence, the quality that makes you lock in and focus when asked to do the same thing a million times. If you ask most kids to do something, they will do it once or twice, then get restless, shut down, and walk away. To be great at anything, Yudkin believed, you had to be able to endure a tremendous amount of boredom. That is, you had to be tough.” (17)

“You have a good day, it’s a good day. You put together a string of good days, you have a good career.” (46)

“If you don’t have a mother to cry to, you don’t cry. You just hang in there, knowing that eventually things will change – that the pain will subside, that the screw will turn.” (47)

“That’s what people do not understand about tennis. You do not have to be the best player in the world to win. You only have to be better, on that day, than the person across from you.” (50)

“What made my career possible? IT was not all those times he embraced challenges and said yes. Way too much credit is given to the art or act of saying yes. It was all those times he said no that made the difference. Up to this point, yes – beyond this point, no.” (68)

“At the moment of temptation – by which I mean the appearance of an easier path – he always said no. ANd he did not despair about it. Because he’s determined, and because he believed.” (68)

“Anyone can be composed and cool while winning, when everything is going according to plan. But how do you deal with a losing streak? That’s the big question – that’s what separates the professionals from the cautionary tales.” (117)

“Without those parents, you would not have the Williams sisters or Andre Agassi or me. The tennis parent is the will of the player before the player has formed a will of her own.” (127)

“Having a two-year-old around when you play a big match is great because the two-year-old is interested but does not really care, and that not caring, that happy not caring, reminds you that, in the end, all of this is nothing. There are champions now; in ten years, there will be different champions. It’s fleeting, so have fun – that’s what you get from a two-year old.” (158)

“As hard as I practice, I have learned that doing nothing is just as important as doing everything.” (161)

“I know what losing does to you. I’d learned its lessons on tennis courts all over the world. It knocks you down but also builds you up. It teaches you humility and gives you strength. It makes you aware of your flaws, which you then must do your best to correct. In this way, it can actually make you better. You become a survivor. You learn that losing is not the end of the world.” (195)

“Winning fucks you up. First of all, it brings all kinds of rewards, which, if seen from the proper perspective, reveal themselves for what they really are: distractions, traps, snares. Money, fame, opportunity. Each laurel and offer and ad and pitch takes you further from the game. It can turn your head. It can ruin you, which is why there are many great players who won just a single Grand Slam, then seemed to wander away.” (195)

“It’s the first big test of a long career – yes, you can win, but can you win again? That’s an even tougher task. The history books are littered with names of athletes who got that single big win but never got a second Grand Slam. One-hit wonders. Not because they were not great, or won by luck. But because they never figured out how to adjust after everyone else has made their adjustments.” (202)

“What sets the great players apart from the good players? The good players win when everything is working. The great players win even when nothing is working even when the game is ugly; that is, when they are not great. Because no one can be great every day. Can you get it done on the ugly days, when you feel like garbage and the tank is empty?” (247)

“I’ve worked harder with Sven than I’ve ever worked in my life. That’s how it has to be when you get a little older. You need to go twice as hard to look half as natural. You need to double your effort to get the same result. In other words, practice is everything.” (268)

“There is no perfect justice, not in this world. You can’t control what people say about you and what they think about you. You can’t plan for bad luck. You can only work your hardest and do your best and tell the truth. In the end,it’s the effort that matters. The rest is beyond your control.” (288)

Liked the quotes? Buy the book here.

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“Black Privilege” Quotes

I recently read “Black Privilege: Opportunity Comes to Those Who Create It” by Charlamagne Tha God. Below are the quotes I found most interesting. If you like them, buy the book.

“Opportunity truly does come to those who create it.” (xx)

“When you stop complaining about where you are physically and start focusing on where you are mentally, that’s when you will start to transcend your circumstances.” (1)

“When I’m stuck, I reconnect with my core. That means getting on a plane to Charleston and then heading straight to Moncks Corner. I will literally drive to my mom’s house and go sleep in my old bedroom.” (30)

“When I can reconnect with the dreams my younger self used to have, whatever little drama or doubt that was getting me down quickly becomes irrelevant.” (30)

“During the cultural revolution in China, wearing glasses often got people killed because they were a symbol of elitism>” (40)

“Fuck your dream (If it’s not really yours.)” (98)

“It’s critical that you be able to tell the difference between someone telling you “Fuck you dreams” in order to get you on the right path or simply telling you “Fuck your dreams” because they’ve already given up on their own.” (105)

“You can talk about all the magazines and blogs you’ve read, or discuss what rappers are dissing each other, but ultimately sharing your own life is what will take you to the next level. Honesty and intimacy is what forges a real connection with the audience.” (132)

“Very few things will center you and recharge your spirit like caring for your child.” (136)

“I don’t keep any personal items in my office. Because you just never know.” (When they might fire you) (141)

“When someone offers to help you, tell them exactly what you want. Don’t beat around the bush. If you’re not crystal clear about what your ask is, chances are you won’t get anything.” (148)

“You can never – even if the situation blows up in your face – hurt yourself by helping others.” (151)

“Success is a process: there are no cheat codes, no life hacks, no shortcuts, and no half steps. Opportunity always comes before money, but sadly a lot of us don’t recognize it unless there’s a paycheck attached. Don’t make that mistake.” (153)

“When you’re just starting out, put yourself in the position to be a part of the process, and THEN get that money.” (153)

“If you want to see a person’s true character, watch how they treat people who seemingly can’t help them.” (153)

“Too often we’re given bad advice on what it takes to get from where we are to where we want to be. We’re taught that the only accurate sign that we’re moving toward success is making money. We get caught up sweating the results instead of embracing the process. Even though embracing the process is the only way you’re ever going to get what you want out of life.” (157)

“Tommy Buns was telling them to slow down and focus on the work in front of them, no matter how small the job might seem, instead of immediately looking forward to the big scores. If they couldn’t even put the weed in the bag first, how were they going to go out and become major players/” (157)

“You’re supposed to be busting your ass for “nothing” when you’re in your twenties. And sometimes even your thirties. That doesn’t mean you’re being exploited. It means you’re building up the skills, connections , and reputation to eventually build a platform on your own.” (160)

“If hard work is the best quality an intern can display, ambition is definitely one of the worst. That doesn’t mean you can’t be ambitious… but I guarantee their employers weren’t too aware of that ambition when they were interning. They all knew how to keep that ambition in check until the time was right” (163)

“In order to be a great intern, you must have blinders on and stay focused on the work that’s in front of you, instead of the work you want to be doing down the road. This is because the program directors, managers, producers, and supervisors don’t care about your dreams. They’re focused on their own. So don’t waste their time making noise about what you want or what your master plan is.” (163)

“Your only value to them is the work you put in. If you’ve handled your internship correctly, when it’s time to move on, your superior should come to you and say, “So, what are you trying to do with your career?” And when you tell them, it should be their first time hearing your plans.” (164)

“I’d rather take less money now if it helps set me up to get more in the long run. I’m focused on creating opportunity for myself, not wring every last penny out of a deal.” (166)

“I asked Paul, “Tell me how people who’ve achieved fame manage to fall off?” “Their attitudes and managers,” he replied. “Bad attitude speaks for itself, But you know, you get these managers that speak for you and they take a bunch of your money and they create drama where there is no need for it,” he told me. “The most dangerous thing they do is gas up the talent. They make you feel like you’re bigger than the company, which you never are. I don’t care how famous you are, or how much press you get, you’re never bigger than the company. And if a manager makes you feel like you are, they’re doing you a great disservice.”” (171)

“Measure your success by the opportunities you’re presented with and the opportunities you’re creating for others. Not the amount of zeroes in your paycheck. When that’s your sole measurement, you’re going to come up short in the end.” (172)

“Being active on social media can amplify the work you’re already doing, but it is not work unto itself.” (174)

“He just had that combination of charisma and work ethic that made him stand out despite his surroundings.” (178)

“Too many radio jocks and writers don’t share their true opinions because they’re more concerned with making friends in the industry than being advocates for their audiences.” (216)

“Opening up was the turning point. Instead of dissing me, they began to root for me. They wanted to walk my journey with me.” (219)

“It’s insane to expect to be further along in life if you’re still acting and thinking the same way that you always have.” (243)

“There are a lot of people whose main talent is their ability to coach.” (262)

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