How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big: Kind of the Story of My Life

A hammer is good only if you stop pounding after the nail is all the way in. Keep pounding and you break the wood.

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I learned that loneliness isn’t fixed by listening to other people talk. You can cure your loneliness only by doing the talking yourself and—most important—being heard.

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Failure always brings something valuable with it.

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Then he offered me some career advice. He said that every time he got a new job, he immediately started looking for a better one.

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To put it bluntly, goals are for losers.

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In business, making a million dollars is a goal, but being a serial entrepreneur is a system.

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A system is something you do on a regular basis that increases your odds of happiness in the long run.

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The minimum requirement of a system is that a reasonable person expects it to work more often than not.

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I didn’t believe him.

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This is when I learned that one should not seek life-altering advice from a kid named Peter whose primary credentials were that he once lived in a suburb or maybe a city.

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didn’t wish to stay in school; I decided.

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If you want success, figure out the price, then pay it.

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The most important form of selfishness involves spending time on your fitness, eating right, pursuing your career, and still spending quality time with your family and friends.

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Being selfish doesn’t mean being a sociopath. It just means you take the long view of things.

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The way I approach the problem of multiple priorities is by focusing on just one main metric: my energy. I make choices that maximize my personal energy because that makes it easier to manage all of the other priorities.

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I’ll get there soon. And when I do, I’ll feel energized and satisfied and be far more fun to be around. No one will think worse of me in the long run for being thirty minutes behind for a full day of fun that they have already started. But everyone will appreciate that I’m in a better mood when I show up. That’s the trade-off. Like capitalism, some forms of selfishness are enlightened.

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You might not think you’re an early-morning person. I didn’t think I was either. But once you get used to it, you might never want to go back. You can accomplish more by the time other people wake up than most people accomplish all day.

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Simple systems are probably the best way to achieve success. Once you have success, optimizing begins to have more value. Successful

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I would define an asshole as anyone who chooses to make the lives of others less pleasant for reasons that don’t appear productive or necessary.

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Priorities are the things you need to get right so the things you love can thrive.

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I try to have one or more change-the-world projects going at all times.

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A great strategy for success in life is to become good at something, anything, and let that feeling propel you to new and better victories. Success can be habit-forming.

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The pattern I noticed was this: Things that will someday work out well start out well. Things that will never work start out bad and stay that way.

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The Success Formula: Every Skill You Acquire Doubles Your Odds of Success

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I knew about the Internet before most people had even heard of it.

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I was the first syndicated cartoonist to include my e-mail address in every strip. E-mail

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The reality is that everyone is a basket case on the inside.

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Decisiveness looks like leadership.

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Step one in your search for happiness is to continually work toward having control of your schedule.

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Happiness is the natural state for most people whenever they feel healthy, have flexible schedules, and expect the future to be good.

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