highlights
43 highlights saved, filed under leadership.
- 01
LAW 9 ALWAYS PRIORITISE YOUR FIRST FOUNDATION
- 02
This is exactly the position you are in concerning your mind and body. You only get one mind, and you only get one body. And it’s got to last a lifetime. Now, it’s very easy to let them ride for many years. But if you don’t take care of that mind and that body, they’ll be a wreck 40 years later, just like the car would be. It’s what you do right now, today, that determines how your mind and body will operate 10, 20, and 30 years from now. You must take care of it.
- 03
Everything is contingent on the table. Everything is contingent on my health. My health is my first foundation. Therefore my health, logically, must be my first priority, every day, for ever.
- 04
There is no greater form of gratitude than taking care of yourself.
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‘Those who think they have no time for bodily exercise will sooner or later have to find time for illness.’ Edward Stanley
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LAW 10 USELESS ABSURDITY WILL DEFINE YOU MORE THAN USEFUL PRACTICALITIES
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What we believe about ourselves creates our thoughts and feelings, our thoughts and feelings determine our actions, and our actions create our evidence. To create new evidence you must change your actions.
- 08
The most convincing sign that someone will achieve new results in the future is new behaviour in the present. LAW 8 NEVER FIGHT A BAD HABIT
- 09
Questions, unlike statements, elicit an active response – they make people think.
- 10
The great thing about a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ question is it doesn’t give you any wiggle room to deceive yourself. It forces you to commit one way or the other.
- 11
If you want to create positive behaviour, don’t make statements, ask binary yes or no questions. People are more likely to answer ‘yes’ if it will bring them closer to who they want to be, and once they answer ‘yes’, that yes is more likely to come true.
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LAW 7 NEVER COMPROMISE YOUR SELF-STORY
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Stop telling yourself you’re not qualified, good enough or worthy. Growth happens when you start doing the things you’re not qualified to do. LAW 5 YOU MUST LEAN IN TO BIZARRE BEHAVIOUR
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Leaning out, as I define it, isn’t about being ‘wrong’ – it’s about being so arrogantly sure that you’re right that you refuse to listen, learn and pay attention to new information.
- 15
Research has shown that cognitive dissonance is most painful for us when we encounter facts or evidence that destabilise or conflict with how we see ourselves, that undermine our identity and confidence in ourselves, or that make us feel in some way threatened.
- 16
whenever we’ve invested time, money or energy into something and it ends up being a complete waste of time, this creates dissonance, which we try to reduce by finding ways of justifying our bad decision.
- 17
Rory Sutherland, vice chairman of the Ogilvy advertising group, on this very topic, and he told me: ‘All too often, what matters to people is not whether an idea is true or effective, but whether it fits with the preconceptions of a dominant convention or incumbent. New things put ego, status, jobs and identities at stake.’
- 18
Taking no risks will be your biggest risk.
- 19
If you live avoiding risk, you’re risking missing out on life. LAW 6 ASK, DON’T TELL - THE QUESTION/BEHAVIOUR EFFECT
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Don’t try and break or argue with someone’s existing evidence; instead focus on implanting completely new evidence, and make sure you’ve highlighted the incredibly positive impact this new evidence will have on them.
- 21
Asking someone to explain the detail and logic underpinning their strongly held beliefs is a profoundly powerful way to reduce their conviction.
- 22
‘Do the thing you fear, and keep on doing it. That is the quickest and surest way ever yet discovered to conquer fear.’ Dale Carnegie
- 23
TO MASTER IT, YOU MUST CREATE AN OBLIGATION TO TEACH IT
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The late spiritual leader Yogi Bhajan once said, ‘If you want to learn something, read about it. If you want to understand something, write about it. If you want to master something, teach it.’
- 25
The key factor here is that I made learning, then writing/recording and sharing it online, a daily obligation, not just an interest.
- 26
‘Skin in the game’ works because across several global studies it’s been demonstrated that human behaviour is more strongly driven by the motivation to avoid losses than to pursue gains, which is what scientists call ‘loss aversion’. Give yourself something to lose.
- 27
Being able to simplify an idea and successfully share it with others is both the path to understanding it and the proof that you do. One of the ways we mask our lack of understanding of any idea is by using more words, bigger words and less necessary words.
- 28
The Feynman technique is a powerful mental model for self-development. It forces you to strip away unnecessary complexity, distil a concept to its purest essence, and develop a rich, in-depth understanding of whatever discipline you seek to master.
- 29
‘The person who learns the most in any classroom is the teacher.’ James Clear
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You don’t become a master because you’re able to retain knowledge. You become a master when you’re able to release it.
- 31
YOU MUST NEVER DISAGREE
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Healthy conflict strengthens relationships because those involved are working against a problem; unhealthy conflict weakens a relationship because those involved are working against each other.
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if you want to keep someone’s brain lit up and receptive to your point of view, you must not start your response with a statement of disagreement.
- 34
The strength of any carefully reasoned, logical argument isn’t likely to be recognised when you open with disagreement - regardless of how much evidence you have or how objectively correct you are.
- 35
In the midst of a negotiation, debate or heated argument, try and remember that the key to changing someone’s mind is finding a shared belief or motive that will keep their brain open to your point of view.
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Our words should be bridges to comprehension, not barriers to connection. Disagree less, understand more.
- 37
YOU DO NOT GET TO CHOOSE WHAT YOU BELIEVE
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‘For some of our most important beliefs we have no evidence at all, except that people we love and trust hold these beliefs. Considering how little we know, the confidence we have in our beliefs is preposterous - and it is also essential.’ 2002 Nobel Prize laureate Daniel Kahneman
- 39
As Leonardo da Vinci asserted, ‘One can have no smaller or greater mastery than mastery of oneself; you will never have a greater or lesser dominion than that over yourself; the height of your success is gauged by your self-mastery, the depth of your failure by your self-abandonment. Those who cannot establish dominion over themselves will have no dominion over others.’
- 40
Stories are the single most powerful weapon any leader can arm themselves with – they are the currency of humanity. Those who tell captivating, inspiring, emotional stories rule the world.
- 41
Your philosophy is the set of beliefs, values or principles that guide your behaviour – they are the fundamental beliefs that underpin your actions.
- 42
THE FIVE BUCKETS 1. What you know (your knowledge) 2. What you can do (your skills) 3. Who you know (your network) 4. What you have (your resources) 5. What the world thinks of you (your reputation)
- 43
There are only two buckets that any such professional earthquake can never empty - it can take away your network, it can take your resources, it can even impact your reputation, but it can never remove your knowledge and it can never unlearn your skills.