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3 IDEAS FROM ME

I.

“Not taking things personally is a superpower.”


II.

“How to 80/20 your work:

(1) Make a list of the 10 things you spend the most time on.

(2) Circle the two that truly drive your results. Do more of those.

(3) Look at the others. Eliminate ruthlessly. Automate or outsource what you can. Press pause on the rest.

(4) Repeat.”


III.

“The first mistake is never the one that ruins you. It’s the spiral of repeated mistakes that follows.

The problem is not slipping up; the problem is thinking that if you cannot do something perfectly, then you shouldn’t do it at all…”

For more on this idea, see Chapter 16 of Atomic Habits.

2 QUOTES FROM OTHERS

I.

Raymond Joseph Tellerone half of the magic duo Penn & Teller, on the process of mastery:

“Sometimes magic is just someone spending more time on something than anyone else might reasonably expect.”

Source: The Honor System


II.

A proverb on the importance of asking questions:

“The person who asks is a fool for five minutes, but the person who does not ask remains a fool forever.”

Source: This one is tough to pin down. It’s possibly a quote from Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, which has gradually become misattributed as Chinese proverb. There is also a similar Japanese proverb: “To ask is a temporary shame, not to ask a life-long shame.”

1 QUESTION FOR YOU

A simple question that may help reveal the positive side of the current moment:

What does this make possible?

Until next week,

James Clear
Author of the million-copy bestseller, Atomic Habits
Creator of the Habit Journal

P.S. Thanks to John Hulen and Joe Ferraro for sharing today’s question with me.

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