Tom Schmidt

People think good decision-making is about being right all the time. It's not. It's about lowering the cost of being wrong and changing your mind.

When the cost of mistakes is high, we're paralyzed with fear. When the cost of mistakes is low, we can move fast and adapt.

Make mistakes cheap, not rare.

It doesn’t matter what position you find yourself in right now. What matters is whether you improve your position today. Every ordinary moment is an opportunity to make the future easier or harder.

“Ladies and gentlemen of the class of 2005 at Emory, real life is not college; real life is not high school. Here is a secret that no one has told you: Real life is junior high. The world that you’re about to enter is filled with junior high adolescent pettiness, pubescent rivalries, the insecurities of 13-year-olds, and the false bravado of... See more

I'm a big fan of the "GPS Theory" when you miss a turn, your GPS doesn't judge you, it recalculates. No matter how many detours you take, it finds another way forward. Life works like that too. You'll make mistakes, but your destination doesn't vanish. The route just changes.

Nobody cares about your product. In fact, your product is an obstacle. It has a cost, it takes time to learn, it is a necessary evil on the way to them getting what they really want .

People think discipline is about saying no to stuff you want, but it's actually just remembering what you really want.

Entire careers are built managing unnecessary mass. But this is the opportunity. While everyone else adds mass to the system, removing it creates an unfair advantage. The lighter you are, the faster you move.

Removing what shouldn't exist creates more value than any addition could.

“Take a human desire, preferably one that has been around for a really long time... identify that desire and use modern technology to take out steps.”

- Evan Williams