If you want success, figure out the price, then pay it.
Intelligence is a measure of how well you function within your level of awareness.
If you’re going to create, create a lot. Creativity is not like playing the slot machines, where failure to win means you go home broke. With creativity, if you don’t win, you’re usually no worse off than if you hadn’t played.
Everybody is somebody else’s weirdo.
The Dilbert Principle: People are idiots.
The ability to work hard and make sacrifices comes naturally to those who know exactly what they want.
The marketing department uses many advanced techniques to match products and buyers in a way that mximizes profits. For example, they give away keychains.
There is no idea so bad that it cannot be made to look brilliant with the proper application of fonts and color.
There are always deadlines I have to meet. I don’t let myself get too close to the deadlines, so it’s not like I’m just sweating bullets or anything if the clock is ticking. I never let myself get in that situation.
When you hire that first person, then you’re a boss. You’ve got performance reviews. You’ve got complaints about not making enough money. You’ve got people who are just going to sell your story to the tabloids.
The Cheesecake Factory is a great business model, but if you take your wife there for your 25th wedding anniversary, you might not reach your 26th.
The job isn’t done until you’ve blamed someone for the parts that went wrong.
The Success Formula: Every Skill You Acquire Doubles Your Odds of Success.
Barry Schwartz, author of The Paradox of Choice, tells us that people become unhappy if they have too many options in life. The problem with options is that choosing any path can leave you plagued with self-doubt.
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.
Most important, understand that goals are for losers and systems are for winners.
Pessimism is often a failure of imagination.
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.
Reality is overrated and impossible to understand with any degree of certainty. What you do know for sure is that some ways of looking at the world work better than others. Pick the way that works, even if you don’t know why.
If you see something that impresses you, a decent respect to humanity insists you voice your praise.