Today, I turn 33 years old. I don’t know why, but this birthday is hitting me harder than any in recent memory. I didn’t feel “old” when I turned 30. Last year was harder than previous as well, but this one *cough* takes the cake.
Rather than sit and feel bad for myself, I turned, rather, to my moleskin that has all of my notes and thoughts from the last year or so. I opened Evernote, and my voice notes, and my notes app, to search for things that I wanted to remember at a later date.
That said, here are 33 or so of those things that I wrote down, in the case some day in the future I needed them. Turns out today is that day:
1. Don’t get too good at the menial stuff.
2. To optimize a process, there has to be a process.
3. “Discontent is the first necessity of progress” – Ben Franklin
4. “You are what you pretend to be” – Kurt Vonnegut
5. If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing poorly…
6. “There are 3 things you need to be good at hockey: you know what to do, you’re able to do it, you care enough to get hit. And that’s the journey that each of you is on, and that journey is about the same three things” – Seth Godin
7. “Calculate less” – Brian Koppelman
8. Brilliant entrepreneurship is about figuring out that thing that you can do in the marketplace that people are willing to cross the street to get.
9. “Marketing is telling a story about that value that resonates with people enough that they want to give you money. That’s it.” – Seth Godin
10. Want to change? Associate pain with your present pattern.
11. In order to make progress, you first have to accept where you are.
12. “Inspiration is for amateurs. The rest of us have to work.” – Chuck Close
13. “What you know doesn’t mean shit. It’s what you do CONSISTENTLY. It’s the things you MASTER.” – Tony Robbins
14. In order for the endeavor you’ve chosen to work out for you, you have to make constant, relentless effort.
15. Average doesn’t work in any area of life.
16. Challenge the primacy of “experts”
17. Do you have an internal or external locus of control? Internal is a belief that you can influence your destiny through the choices you make.
18. Our choices are not just expressions of control but also affirmations of our values and goals.
19. Some people think ethics and integrity can be separated, that you can have one without the other. That is false.
20. “Every man over 40 is responsible for his face” – Abraham Lincoln
21. You have to not only HAVE priorities but LIVE the priorities.
22. Success is the result of good judgment. Good judgment is the result of experience, and experience is often the result of bad judgment…
23. “Be more concerned with your character than your reputation, because your character is what you really are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are.” – John Wooden
24. “I just started writing” – Christopher McQuarrie
25. [Writing] You don’t need sympathetic characters. You need clarity.
26. Happiness doesn’t flow from success. It causes it.
27. Spend your money on experiences, not things.
28. Overdeliver in everything you do.
29. Put your family first as often as possible.
30. What are the “first principles” of the thing you’re trying to do? Start there.
31. Pareto principle x 4. Take the 20% of the 100%, then 20% of the 20%, then 20% of the 4% to get to the MOST important thing to do right now.
32. Get to work.
33. God loves his children
Yes, this post ended up being a list of notes taken out of context, but I think I’m going to turn a bunch of these into individual posts in the coming weeks. If you want to be notified of new posts in your inbox so you don’t have to check back every day, you can sign up here: