Work

Environment matters a lot; move to where you flourish maximally. Put yourself in environments where you have to perform to your utmost; if you can get by being average, you probably will. (Greek saying: “A captain only shows during a storm.”)

Bottom Line: Treat your time as a graduate student like a professional musician treats his or her performance repertoire. If you’re not constantly straining yourself to learn more and perform better, you’re in danger of being left behind.

The value of a graduate student (not to mention, an assistant professor), I’ve come to realize, is directly proportional to the quantity and complexity of their technical tool kit. If you study algorithms, for example, the more corners of the literature you’ve mastered, and the more mathematical analysis techniques you’re comfortable with, the more

Your early writing or business will probably suck.

Mine did.

They’ll improve but only if you give yourself permission to suck first.

If a 20 year old could both study Bismarck’s critical decisions in the 1860s (and the principles underlying them) and be given practical experience in some of the best managed organisations in the world, they would be much, much better prepared for senior jobs than our leading politicians are now.

In our busy and distracted society, deep reading is increasingly rare. Deep reading changes people. When you interact with people, you can tell who reads seriously and who doesn’t. This isn’t just a matter of mental ability or intelligence. There is a difference between raw cognitive horsepower and time spent immersed in complex and intricate ideas

“You will not learn anything of lasting importance from TV, movies, podcasts…they’re junk food. Successful people converge on 3 ways to learn: lots of reading time, some exercises and projects, and conversations with people who are slightly ahead of them.”

10.  You really need to prioritize in life, figuring out in what order you should divide up your time and energy. If you don’t get that sort of system set by a certain age, you’ll lack focus and your life will be out of balance. I placed the highest priority on the sort of life that lets me focus on writing.

3. From the age of three to his mid-twenties he learned every aspect of his trade.