“Then why isn’t it done already?” I paused again, weighing how honest I wanted to be with her, but I figured she’d gone this far with me so I might as well just lay it out. “What if it still sucks? What if I have to rewrite half of it again? Or, what if I publish it and it’s still a disaster?” “Do you really think I’d let you do that, Tim? You thin

“Failure is an event, not a person.”—Zig Ziglar

Always find the direct route. Look for the shortest path between A—where you are—and B—where you want to be. I tend to fill my problems with unneeded complexity and junk that just takes up space. Most problems don’t need an elaborate solution. Most problems are simple.

I needed a handful of people who knew me, knew what I was trying to accomplish, and were willing to tell me the bare, unvarnished truth. I decided early on I’d rather hear how bad my book was from friends, privately, before it was published. That way I could fix it rather than hear from strangers, publicly, after it was published.

“Make a worry list,” he said. “What’s a worry list?” I asked. “Exactly what it sounds like. Make a list of every single thing you’re worried about. From the big, truly scary things, to the small, mundane things. Get it all out and onto paper. Then, once it’s all out, look at the list and promise yourself that you will take care of everything on tha

The mental game has to change as you progress through the stages. Some stages are easy and invigorating. Some stages are devastating and crushing. Some hurt emotionally more than physically. At each step in the process you have to develop a new toolset to overcome them. This is what I had been doing on this run. I overcame the early hurdle of not b

I could relax, be the expert on the things I was good at, and let other people be the expert on things they were good at.

From day one, what amazed me about Dan was his constant assumption that there was probably a better way to do what he was doing. He seemed to step into every situation with a confidence to try something, but also realizing it was probably not the exact right thing. One time I asked him about this. “It’s all experiments, Tim. It’s not about me or my

I STARTED TO UNDERSTAND THAT ALL OF THE SUCCESS I SAW AROUND ME WAS THE EDITED VERSION OF WHAT REALLY HAPPENED.