"The Quick and Easy Way to Effective Speaking" by Dale Carnegie

• Every activity of our lives is communication of a sort, but it is through speech that we assert our distinctiveness from other forms of life.
• In every art there are few principles and many techniques.
• I have spent almost all of my teaching career proving to people that is it easy to speak in public, provided they follow a few simple, but important, rules.
• Concentrate your attention on what self-confidence and the ability to talk more effectively will mean to you.
• Public speaking training is the royal road to self-confidence. Once you realize that you can stand up and talk intelligently to a group of people, it is logical to assume that you can talk to individuals with greater confidence and assurance.
• Learn to make your thoughts, your ideas, clear to others, individually, in groups, in public.
• By changing our thoughts, we can change our lives.
• So, to succeed in this work, you need the qualities that are essential in any worthwhile endeavor: desire amounting to enthusiasm, persistence to wear away mountains, and the self-assurance to believe you will succeed.
• Because no on can learn to speak in public without speaking in public any more than a person can learn to swim without getting in the water.
• You will never know what progress you can make unless you speak, and speak, and speak again.
• Emerson said, "Fear defeats more people than any other thing in the world."
• I found that learning to speak in public is nature's own method of overcoming self-consciousness and building up courage and self-confidence.
• Fact number one: You are no unique in your fear of speaking in public.
• Fact number two: A certain amount of stage fright is useful.
• Fact number three: Many professional speakers have assured me that they never completely lose all stage fright.
• Fact number four: The chief cause of your fear of public speaking is simply that you are unaccustomed to speak in public.
• To make this fearful situation simple and easy: practice, practice, practice.
• If our ideas are clear, the words come as naturally and unconsciously as the air we breathe.
• If we memorize our talk word for word, we will probably forget it when we face our listeners. Even if we do not forget our memorized talk, we will probably deliver it in a mechanical way.
• When talking with people privately, we always think of something we want to say, and then we go ahead and say it without thinking of words.
• It is especially important to keep your attention off yourself just before your turn to speak. Concentrate on what the other speakers are saying, give them your wholehearted attention and you will not be able to work up excessive stage fright.
• To develop courage when you are facing an audience, act as if you already had it.
• Overcoming fear of public speaking has a tremendous transfer value to everything that we do.
• Speak about something you have earned the right to talk about through experience or study.
• Speakers who talk about what life has taught them never fail to keep the attention of their listeners.
• If something stands out vividly in your memory after many years have gone by, that almost guarantees that it will be of interest to an audience.
• If you have devoted many hours to the study of issues of importance, you have earned the right to talk about them. But when you do, be certain that you give specific instances for your convictions.
• Be sure you are excited about your subject.
• Here is a question that will help you determine the suitability of topics you feel qualified to discuss in public: if someone stood up and directly opposed your point of view, would you be impelled to speak with conviction and earnestness in defense of your position? If you would, you have the right subject for you.
• Be eager to share your talk with your listeners.
• There are three factors in every speaking situation: the speaker, the speech or the message, and the audience.
• The effective speaker earnestly desires his listeners to feel what he feels, to agree with his point of view, to do what he thinks is right for them to do, and to enjoy and relive his experience with him.
• Once you have selected your topic, the first step is to stake out there area you want to cover and stay strictly within those limits.
• It is impossible for the mind to attend to a monotonous series of factual points.
•  In a shot talk, less than five minutes in duration, all you can expect is to get one or two main points across.
• After you have narrowed your subject, then the next step is to ask yourself questions that will deepen your understanding and prepare you to talk with authority on the topic you have chosen.
• Mediocre speaking very often is merely the inevitable and the appropriate reflection of mediocre thinking, and the consequence of imperfect acquaintance with the subject in hand.
• How can we acquire this most important technique of using illustrative material? There are five ways of doing this: humanize, personalize, specify, dramatize, and visualize.
• You might say at this point, "this is all very fine, but how can I be sure of getting enough detail in to my talk?" There is one test. Use the 5-W formula every reporter follows when he writes a news story: answer the questions When? Where? Who? What? and Why? If you follow this formula your examples will have life and color.
• Dialogue gives your speech the authentic ring of everyday conversation.
• One of the best ways to enrich a talk with detail is to incorporate visual demonstration into it.
• The speaker who is easy to listen to is the one who sets images floating before your eyes.
• Pictures. Pictures. Pictures. They are as free as the air you breathe. Sprinkle them through your talks, your conversation, and you will be more entertaining, more influential.
• The surest way to arouse and hold the attention of the reader is be being specific, definite, and concrete.
• It is detail that makes conversation sparkle.
• Vitality, aliveness, enthusiasm--these are the first qualities I have always considered essential in a speaker.
• Unless you are emotionally involved in the subject matter you have chosen to talk about, you cannot expect to make your audience believe in your message.
• If a speaker believes a thing earnestly enough and says it earnestly enough, he will get adherents to his cause.
• Stoke the fires of your enthusiasm for the subject and you will have no difficulty holding the interest of a group of people.
• One areas of topics is sure-fire: talk bout your convictions!
• Don't repress your honest feelings; don't put a damper on your authentic enthusiasm. Show your listeners how eager you are to talk about your subject, ans you will hold their attention.
• No audience can withhold attention from a speaker who talks in its interests.
• There is nothing so interesting to ourselves as ourselves.
• Audiences are composed of individuals, and they react like individuals. Openly criticize an audience and they resent it. Show your appreciation for something they have down that is worthy of praise, and you win a passport into their hearts.
• An insincere statements may occasionally fool an individual, but it never fools an audience.
• As soon as possible, preferable in the first words you utter, indicate some direct relationship with the group you are addressing.
• Another way to open the lines of communication is to use the names of people in the audience.
• One word of caution: If you are going to work strange names into your talk, having learned them through inquires made for the occasion, be sure you have them exactly right; be sure you understand fully the reason for your use of the names; be sure you mention them only in a favorable way; and use them in moderation.
• Another method of keeping the audience at peak attentiveness is to use the pronoun "you" rather than the third person "they".
• The moment you choose some member of the audience to help yo demonstrate a point or dramatize an idea, you will be rewarded by a noticeable rise in attention.
• One of my favorite methods of getting audience participation is simply to ask questions and to get responses.
• Indeed, one of the best ways for a speaker to endear himself to an audience is to play himself down.
• The surest way to antagonize an audience is to indicate that you consider yourself to be above them. Wen you speak, you are in a showcase and every facet of your personality it on display. The slightest hint of braggadocio is fatal. On the other hand, modesty inspires confidence and good will. You can be modest without being apologetic. Your audience will like and respect you for suggesting your limitations as long as you show you are determined to do your best.
• Audiences like humility. They resent the show-off, the egotist.
• Success in the use of either the extemporaneous or the impromptu method is the most assured when the speaker has clearly formulated in his mind the general purpose of a talk.
• Every talk, regardless of whether the speaker realized it or not, has one of four major goals. What are they?
• To persuade or get action.
• To inform.
• To impress and convince.
• To entertain.
• Because so many speakers fail to line up their purpose with the purpose of the meeting at which they are speaking, they often flounder and come to grief.
• Fit the purpose of your talk to the audience and the occasion.
• Choose one of the four purposes only after you have analyzed the audience and the occasion which brings them together.
• What is the Magic Formula? Simply this: Start your talk by giving us the details of your example, an incident that graphically illustrates that main idea you wish to get across. Second, in specific clear-cut terms give your point, tell exactly what you want your audience to do; and third, give your reason, that is, highlight the advantage or benefit to be gained by the listener when he does what you ask him to do.
• Audiences are composed of busy people who want whatever the speaker has to say in straight forward language.
• The Magic Formula can be used also in writing business letters and giving instructions to fellow employees and subordinates.
• A single personal experience that taught you a lesson you will never forget is the first requisite of a persuasive action talk.
• One of the reasons for starting your talk with the example step is to catch attention at once.
• You must stimulate the visual imagination of your listeners by painting word pictures.
• In addition to using picturesque details, the speaker should relive the experience be is describing.
• The more action and excitement you can put into the retelling of your incident, the more it will make an impression on your listeners.
• Your listeners will remember your talk and what you want them to do only if the example sticks in their minds.
• State your point, what you want the audience to do.
• Be precise in telling the audience exactly what you want them to do. People will do only what they clearly understand.
• Speakers who give detailed action points are more apt to be successful in motivating their audiences than those who rest upon generalities.
• The point is the entire theme of your talk. You should give it, therefore, with forcefulness and conviction.
• Give the reason or benefit the audience may expect.
• But again it is bet to chose one outstanding reason or benefit and rest your case on it.
• Of all the types of talks given every week to audiences everywhere, the talk to inform is second only to the talk to persuade or get action. The ability to speak clearly precedes the ability to move others to action.
• Language is the principle conveyor of understanding, and so we must learn to use it, not crudely but discriminatingly.
• "Everything that can be thought at all," said Ludwig Wittgenstein, "can be thought clearly. Everything that can be said, can be said clearly."
• Restrict your subject to fit the time at your disposal.
• Many a talk fails to be clear because the speaker seems intent upon establishing a world's record for ground covered in the allotted time.
• Hold fast to your main theme.
• Arrange your ideas in sequence.
• Almost all subjects can be developed by using a logical sequence based on time, space, or special topics.
• Enumerate your points as you make them.
• One of the simplest ways to keep a talk shipshape in the minds of your listeners is to mention plainly as you go along that you are taking up first one point and then another.
• Compare the strange with the familiar.
• Visual impressions are like that cannon ball; they come with a terrific impact. They embed themselves. They stick.
• If you belong to a profession the work of which is technical--if you are a lawyer, a physician, an engineer, or are in a highly specialized line of business--be doubly careful when you talk to outsiders, to express yourself in plain terms and to give necessary details.
• It is always best to go from the simple to the complex in giving explanations of any kind.
• Aristotle gave some good advice on the subject: "Think as wise men do, but speak as the common people do." If you must use a technical term, don't use it until you have explained it so everybody in the audience knows what it means.
• There is no reason to avoid a keystone word which you know will not be understood. Just explain is as soon as you use it. Never fail to do this; the dictionary is all yours.
• Use visual aids.
• So, if you wish to be clear, picture your points, visualize your ideas.
• If you use a chart or diagram, be sure it it large enough to see, and don't overdo a good thing.
• Use abbreviations; write largely and legibly; keep talking as you draw or write; and keep turning back to your audience.
• Demonstrate if practicable.
• There is no better way to ensure that your audience will understand what you have to say then to go before them prepared to show as well as to tell them what you have in mind.
• Getting a favorable reaction is every speaker's objective any time, anywhere.
• Win confidence by deserving it.
• Pierpont Morgan said that character was the best way to obtain credit; it is also the best way to win the confidence of the audience.
• We must first be convinced before we attempt to convince others.
• Get a "Yes" response.
• The best argument is that which seems merely an explanation.
• Speak with contagious enthusiasm.
• When your aim is to convince, remember it is more productive to stir emotions than to arouse thoughts. Feelings are more powerful than cold ideas.
• Show respect and affection for your audience.
• Begin in a friendly way.
• One of the rules of the art of effective speaking is to support a statement by an illustration.
• The ability to assemble one's thoughts and to speak on the spur of the moment is even more important, in some ways, than the ability to speak only after lengthy and laborious preparation.
• When you are called on to speak without preparation usually you are expected to make some remarks about a subject upon which you can speak with authority.
• Don't apologize because you are unprepared. This is the expected thing.
• Audiences are interested in themselves and what they are doing. There are three sources, therefore, from which you can draw ideas for an impromptu speech.
• First is the audience itself.
• The second is the occasion.
• Lastly, if you have been an attentive listener, you might indicate your pleasure in something specific anther speaker said before you ad amplify that.
• The most successful impromptu talks are those that are really impromptu. They express things that the speaker feels in his heart about the audience and the occasion.
• You must keep your ideas logically grouped around a central though which might well be the point you want to get across.
• We are evaluated and classified by these four contacts: what we do, how we look, what we say, and how we say it.
• There is something beside the mere words in a talk which counts. It is the flavor with which they are delivered. It is not so much just what you say as how you say it.
• Every new life is a new things under the sun; there has never been anything just like it before, and never will be again. A young man ought to get that idea about himself; he should look for the single spark of individuality that makes him different from other folks, and develop that for all his is worth.
• The audience must feel that there is a message being delivered straight from the mind and heart of the speaker to their minds and their hearts.
• When a man is under the influence of his feelings, his real self comes to the surface.
• The speech of introduction serves the same purpose as a social introduction. It brings the speaker and the audience together, established a friendly atmosphere, and created a bond of interest between them.
• In other words, an introduction ought to "sell" the topic to the audience and it ought to "sell" the speaker. And it ought to do these things in the briefest amount of time possible.
• First you must gather your facts. These will center around three items: the subject of the speaker's talk, his qualifications to speak on that subject, and his name. Often a fourth item will become apparent--why the subject chosen by the speaker is of special interest to the audience.
• Be certain that you know the correct title of the talk and something about the speaker's development of the subject matter.
• Above all, be certain of the speaker's name and begin at once to familiarize yourself with its pronunciation.
• The main purpose of your research is to be specific for only by being specific will the introduction achieve its purpose--to heighten the audience's attention and make it receptive to the speaker's talk.
• For most introductions, the T-I-S formula serves as a handy guide in organizing the facts you have collected in your research:
• T stands for topic. Start your introduction by giving the exact title of the speaker's talk.
• I stands for Importance. In this step you bridge over the area between the topic and the particular interest of the group.
• S stands for speaker. Here you list the speaker's outstanding qualifications, particularly those that relate to his topic. Finally, you give his name, distinctly and clearly.
• An introduction should never be memorized.
• The introduction should be spontaneous, seemingly arising out of the occasion, not strait-laced and severe.
• In making an introduction of a speaker, manner is quite as important as matter. You should try to be friendly, and instead of saying how happy you are, be genuinely pleasant making your talk.
• When you do pronounce the speaker's name at the very end of the introduction it is well to remember the words, "pause", "part", and "punch". By pause is meant that a little silence just before the name is given will give an edge to anticipation; by part is meant that the first and last names should be separated by a slight pause so that the audience gets a clear impression of the speaker's name; by punch is meant that the name should be given with vigor and force.
• There is one more caution: please, I beg of you, when you do enunciate the speaker's name, don't turn to him, but look out over the audience until the last syllable has been uttered; then turn to the speaker.
• When we make a speech of presentation, we reassure the recipient that he really is somebody.
• Here is a time-tested formula:
• Tell why the award is made.
• Tell something of the group's interest in the life and activities of the person to be honored.
• Tell how much the award is deserved and how cordially the group feels toward the recipient.
• Congratulate the recipient and convey everyone's good wishes for the future.
• We also should avoid exaggerating the importance of the gift itself. Instead of stressing its intrinsic value, we should emphasize the friendly sentiments of those where are giving it.
• Here is the suggested format [for accepting an award]:
• Give a warmly sincere "thank you" to the group.
• Give credit to others who have helped you, your associates, employees, friends, or family.
• Tell what the gift or award means to you.
• End with another sincere expression of your gratitude.
• A talk is a voyage with a purpose, and it must be charted. The man who starts nowhere, generally gets there.
• Begin your talk with an incident.
• No stalling. No "warm-up" statements. By launching directly into an incident, you can make it easy to capture an audience's attention.
• Creating suspense is a sure-fire method of getting your listeners interested.
• A danger of the startling opener must be avoided, that is, the tendency to be over-dramatic or too sensational.
• If you want to interest your listeners, don't begin with an introduction. Begin by leaping right into the heart of your story.
• A splendid way to get interested attention is to ask the audience to raise their hands in answer to a question.
• When you ask for a show of hands, usually give the audience some warning that you are going to do so.
• The technique of asking for a show of hands gets a priceless reaction known as "audience participation."
• An almost unfailing way to get alert attention is to promise to tell your listeners how they can get what they want by doing what you suggest.
• All too often speakers neglect to tie their topics to the vital interests of their hearers.
• Perhaps the easiest way in the world to gain attention is to hold up something for people to look at. Almost any creature, from the simplest to the most complex, will give heed to that kind of stimulus. It can be sued sometimes with effectiveness before the most dignified audience.
• Recognize that how you open a talk largely determines whether the audience is going to accept you and your message.
• Do no open with an apology.
• Let your opening sentence capture the interest of your audience. Not the second sentence. Not the third sentence. The first!
• If you have the ability to tickle the sensibilities of your audience by some witty reference to a local situation or to something arising out of the occasion or the remarks of a previous speaker, then by all means do so.
• Audiences open their hearts, as well as their minds, to speakers who deliberately deflate themselves by calling attention to some deficiency or failing on their part, in a humorous sense, of course.
• Statistics, of themselves can be boring. They should be judiciously used, and when used they should be clothed in a language that makes them vivid and graphic.
• Mere numbers and amounts, taken by themselves, are never very impressive. They have to be illustrated; they ought, if possible, to be put in terms of our experiences.
• Before using testimony it should be tested by answering these questions:
• Is the quotation I am about to use accurate?
• Is it taken from the are of the man's expert knowledge?
• Is the quotation from a man who is known and respected by the audience?
• Are you sure that the statement is based on first hand knowledge, not personal interest or prejudice?
• By the use of incidents, comparison and demonstrations, you make your main ideas clear and vivid; by the use of statistics and testimony you substantiate the truth and emphasize the importance of your main points.
• The close is really the most strategic point in a talk, what on says last, the final words left ringing in the ears when one ceases--these are likely to be remembered longest.
• Some anonymous Irish politician is reported to have given this recipe for making a speech: "First, tell them what you are going to tel them; then tell them; then tell them what you have told them." It is often highly advisable to "tell them what you have told them".
• In your final words of a talk to secure action the time has come to ask for the order. So ask for it!
• Be sure to obey these caution signs, however:
• Ask them to do something specific.
• Ask the audience for some response that is within their power to give.
• Make it as easy as you can for your audience to act on your appeal.
• Every supervisor is a teacher to a greater or lesser degree.
• The rules of effective speaking before groups are directly applicable to conference participation and conference leadership.
• Use specific detail in everyday conversation.
• Just think for a moment of the really interesting conversationalists of your acquaintance. Aren't they the ones who fill their talk with colorful, dramatic details, who have the ability to use picturesque speech?
• Before you can begin to develop your conversational skills you must have confidence.
• Once you are eager to express your ideas even on a limited scale, you will begin to search your experience for material that can be converted to conversation.
• Once the drive to learn and to apply what has been learned is stimulated, it starts a whole train of action and interaction that vivifies the entire personality.
• You should seek every opportunity to speak in public.
• As soon as possible, develop a twenty to thirty minute talk. Use the suggestion in this book as a guide.
• When we learn any new thing, like French or gold or speaking in public, we ever advance steadily. We do not improve gradually. We do it by waves, by abrupt starts and sudden stops. Then we remain stationary a time, or we may even slip back and lose some of the ground we have previously gained. These periods of stagnation, or retrogression, are well known by all psychologist; they have been named "plateaus in the curve of learning".
• If he keeps faithfully busy each hour of the working day, he may safely leave the final result to itself.
• "I never undertake anything thinking of defeat." That is the proper psychology for anything from speaking to an assault on Mount Everest.
• How well you succeed is largely determined by thoughts you have prior to speaking.
• If you put enthusiasm into learning how to speak more effectively you will find that the obstacles in your path will disappear.
• You will find that competence in self-expression will lead to competence in other ways as well, for training in effective speaking is the royal road to self-confidence in all the areas of working and living.

THE SUBTLE ART OF NOT GIVING A F*CK by Mark Manson

• Self-improvement and success often occur together. But that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re the same thing.
• Our culture today is obsessively focused on unrealistically positive expectations:
• A confident man doesn’t feel a need to prove that he’s confident.
• The key to a good life is not giving a fuck about more; it’s giving a fuck about less, giving a fuck about only what is true and immediate and important.
• Very few animals on earth have the ability to think cogent thoughts to begin with, but we humans have the luxury of being able to have thoughts about our thoughts.
• We have so much fucking stuff and so many opportunities that we don’t even know what to give a fuck about anymore.
• The desire for more positive experience is itself a negative experience. And, paradoxically, the acceptance of one’s negative experience is itself a positive experience.
• Suffering through your fears and anxieties is what allows you to build courage and perseverance.
• Everything worthwhile in life is won through surmounting the associated negative experience.
• These moments of non-fuckery are the moments that most define our lives.
• To not give a fuck is to stare down life’s most terrifying and difficult challenges and still take action.
• Most of us struggle throughout our lives by giving too many fucks in situations where fucks do not deserve to be given.
• Look, this is how it works. You’re going to die one day. I know that’s kind of obvious, but I just wanted to remind you in case you’d forgotten. You and everyone you know are going to be dead soon. And in the short amount of time between here and there, you have a limited amount of fucks to give. Very few, in fact. And if you go around giving a fuck about everything and everyone without conscious thought or choice—well, then you’re going to get fucked.
• There’s a name for a person who finds no emotion or meaning in anything: a psychopath.
• Not giving a fuck does not mean being indifferent; it means being comfortable with being different.
• There’s no such thing as not giving a fuck. You must give a fuck about something. It’s part of our biology to always care about something and therefore to always give a fuck.
• To not give a fuck about adversity, you must first give a fuck about something more important than adversity.
• I think what most people—especially educated, pampered middle-class white people—consider “life problems” are really just side effects of not having anything more important to worry about.
• Whether you realize it or not, you are always choosing what to give a fuck about.
• Maturity is what happens when one learns to only give a fuck about what’s truly fuckworthy.
• I believe that today we’re facing a psychological epidemic, one in which people no longer realize it’s okay for things to suck sometimes.
• life itself is a form of suffering.
• Happiness is not a solvable equation.
• the greatest truths in life are usually the most unpleasant to hear.
• We suffer for the simple reason that suffering is biologically useful. It is nature’s preferred agent for inspiring change.
• Pain is what teaches us what to pay attention to when we’re young or careless.
• Problems are a constant in life.
• Problems never stop; they merely get exchanged and/or upgraded.
• Happiness comes from solving problems. The keyword here is “solving.”
• The secret sauce is in the solving of the problems, not in not having problems in the first place.
• To be happy we need something to solve. Happiness is therefore a form of action; it’s an activity, not something that is passively bestowed upon you, not something that you magically discover in a top-ten article on the Huffington Post or from any specific guru or teacher.
• True happiness occurs only when you find the problems you enjoy having and enjoy solving.
• Whatever your problems are, the concept is the same: solve problems; be happy.
• Some people deny that their problems exist in the first place. And because they deny reality, they must constantly delude or distract themselves from reality.
• Some choose to believe that there is nothing they can do to solve their problems, even when they in fact could. Victims seek to blame others for their problems or blame outside circumstances.
• People deny and blame others for their problems for the simple reason that it’s easy and feels good, while solving problems is hard and often feels bad.
• Remember, nobody who is actually happy has to stand in front of a mirror and tell himself that he’s happy.
• Emotions evolved for one specific purpose: to help us live and reproduce a little bit better. That’s it.
• Emotions are simply biological signals designed to nudge you in the direction of beneficial change.
• if you feel crappy it’s because your brain is telling you that there’s a problem that’s unaddressed or unresolved.
• In other words, negative emotions are a call to action. When you feel them, it’s because you’re supposed to do something.
• Positive emotions, on the other hand, are rewards for taking the proper action. When you feel them, life seems simple and there is nothing else to do but enjoy it.
• Whatever makes us happy today will no longer make us happy tomorrow, because our biology always needs something more.
• Because happiness requires struggle. It grows from problems.
• Real, serious, lifelong fulfillment and meaning have to be earned through the choosing and managing of our struggles.
• Who you are is defined by what you’re willing to struggle for.
• This is the most simple and basic component of life: our struggles determine our successes.
• we’re not all exceptional.
• It turns out that merely feeling good about yourself doesn’t really mean anything unless you have a good reason to feel good about yourself.
• Entitled people exude a delusional degree of self-confidence.
• The true measurement of self-worth is not how a person feels about her positive experiences, but rather how she feels about her negative experiences.
• This entitlement plays out in one of two ways: 1.   I’m awesome and the rest of you all suck, so I deserve special treatment. 2.   I suck and the rest of you are all awesome, so I deserve special treatment.
• The truth is that there’s no such thing as a personal problem. If you’ve got a problem, chances are millions of other people have had it in the past, have it now, and are going to have it in the future.
• Most of us are pretty average at most things we do. Even if you’re exceptional at one thing, chances are you’re average or below average at most other things. That’s just the nature of life.
• To become truly great at something, you have to dedicate shit-tons of time and energy to it. And because we all have limited time and energy, few of us ever become truly exceptional at more than one thing, if anything at all.
• We’re all, for the most part, pretty average people. But it’s the extremes that get all of the publicity.
• Our lives today are filled with information from the extremes of the bell curve of human experience, because in the media business that’s what gets eyeballs, and eyeballs bring dollars.
• The vast majority of life is unextraordinary, indeed quite average.
• It has become an accepted part of our culture today to believe that we are all destined to do something truly extraordinary.
• Being “average” has become the new standard of failure. The worst thing you can be is in the middle of the pack, the middle of the bell curve.
• The rare people who do become truly exceptional at something do so not because they believe they’re exceptional. On the contrary, they become amazing because they’re obsessed with improvement. And that obsession with improvement stems from an unerring belief that they are, in fact, not that great at all. It’s anti-entitlement.
• People who become great at something become great because they understand that they’re not already great—they are mediocre, they are average—and that they could be so much better.
• Humans often choose to dedicate large portions of their lives to seemingly useless or destructive causes.
• Self-awareness is like an onion. There are multiple layers to it, and the more you peel them back, the more likely you’re going to start crying at inappropriate times.
• We all have emotional blind spots.
• It takes years of practice and effort to get good at identifying blind spots in ourselves and then expressing the affected emotions appropriately. But this task is hugely important, and worth the effort.
• Values underlie everything we are and do.
• Everything we think and feel about a situation ultimately comes back to how valuable we perceive it to be.
• Much of the advice out there operates at a shallow level of simply trying to make people feel good in the short term, while the real long-term problems never get solved.
• Honest self-questioning is difficult. It requires asking yourself simple questions that are uncomfortable to answer. In fact, in my experience, the more uncomfortable the answer, the more likely it is to be true.
• What is objectively true about your situation is not as important as how you come to see the situation, how you choose to measure it and value it.
• We’re apes. We think we’re all sophisticated with our toaster ovens and designer footwear, but we’re just a bunch of finely ornamented apes. And because we are apes, we instinctually measure ourselves against others and vie for status.
• The question is not whether we evaluate ourselves against others; rather, the question is by what standard do we measure ourselves?
• Our values determine the metrics by which we measure ourselves and everyone else.
• If you want to change how you see your problems, you have to change what you value and/or how you measure failure/success.
• Pleasure is great, but it’s a horrible value to prioritize your life around.
• Research shows that once one is able to provide for basic physical needs (food, shelter, and so on), the correlation between happiness and worldly success quickly approaches zero.
• As humans, we’re wrong pretty much constantly, so if your metric for life success is to be right—well, you’re going to have a difficult time rationalizing all of the bullshit to yourself.
• It’s far more helpful to assume that you’re ignorant and don’t know a whole lot.
• While there is something to be said for “staying on the sunny side of life,” the truth is, sometimes life sucks, and the healthiest thing you can do is admit it.
• It’s simple, really: things go wrong, people upset us, accidents happen. These things make us feel like shit. And that’s fine.
• Negative emotions are a necessary component of emotional health.
• The trick with negative emotions is to 1) express them in a socially acceptable and healthy manner and 2) express them in a way that aligns with your values.
• Problems add a sense of meaning and importance to our life. Thus to duck our problems is to lead a meaningless (even if supposedly pleasant) existence.
• Good values are 1) reality-based, 2) socially constructive, and 3) immediate and controllable. Bad values are 1) superstitious, 2) socially destructive, and 3) not immediate or controllable.
• Values are about prioritization.
• This, in a nutshell, is what “self-improvement” is really about: prioritizing better values, choosing better things to give a fuck about. Because when you give better fucks, you get better problems. And when you get better problems, you get a better life.
• If you’re miserable in your current situation, chances are it’s because you feel like some part of it is outside your control—that there’s a problem you have no ability to solve, a problem that was somehow thrust upon you without your choosing.
• There is a simple realization from which all personal improvement and growth emerges. This is the realization that we, individually, are responsible for everything in our lives, no matter the external circumstances.
• We don’t always control what happens to us. But we always control how we interpret what happens to us, as well as how we respond.
• The point is, we are always choosing, whether we recognize it or not. Always.
• The more we choose to accept responsibility in our lives, the more power we will exercise over our lives.
• Accepting responsibility for our problems is thus the first step to solving them.
• A lot of people hesitate to take responsibility for their problems because they believe that to be responsible for your problems is to also be at fault for your problems.
• Responsibility and fault often appear together in our culture. But they’re not the same thing.
• Fault is past tense. Responsibility is present tense. Fault results from choices that have already been made. Responsibility results from the choices you’re currently making, every second of every day.
• Nobody else is ever responsible for your situation but you. Many people may be to blame for your unhappiness, but nobody is ever responsible for your unhappiness but you. This is because you always get to choose how you see things, how you react to things, how you value things.
• Hell, we often fight over who gets to be responsible for success and happiness. But taking responsibility for our problems is far more important, because that’s where the real learning comes from. That’s where the real-life improvement comes from.
• Pain of one sort or another is inevitable for all of us, but we get to choose what it means to and for us.
• People who consistently make the best choices in the situations they’re given are the ones who eventually come out ahead in poker, just as in life. And it’s not necessarily the people with the best cards.
• Right now, anyone who is offended about anything—whether it’s the fact that a book about racism was assigned in a university class, or that Christmas trees were banned at the local mall, or the fact that taxes were raised half a percent on investment funds—feels as though they’re being oppressed in some way and therefore deserve to be outraged and to have a certain amount of attention.
• People get addicted to feeling offended all the time because it gives them a high; being self-righteous and morally superior feels good.
• We should prioritize values of being honest, fostering transparency, and welcoming doubt over the values of being right, feeling good, and getting revenge.
• You are already choosing, in every moment of every day, what to give a fuck about, so change is as simple as choosing to give a fuck about something else. It really is that simple. It’s just not easy.
• Growth is an endlessly iterative process.
• We are always in the process of approaching truth and perfection without actually ever reaching truth or perfection.
• Many people become so obsessed with being “right” about their life that they never end up actually living it.
• Being wrong opens us up to the possibility of change. Being wrong brings the opportunity for growth.
• Don’t trust your conception of positive/negative experiences.
• Our brains are meaning machines. What we understand as “meaning” is generated by the associations our brain makes between two or more experiences.
• Our minds are constantly whirring, generating more and more associations to help us understand and control the environment around us.
• Many or even most of our values are products of events that are not representative of the world at large, or are the result of a totally misconceived past.
• Most of our beliefs are wrong. Or, to be more exact, all beliefs are wrong—some are just less wrong than others.
• Every new piece of information is measured against the values and conclusions we already have. As a result, our brain is always biased toward what we feel to be true in that moment.
• Our mind’s biggest priority when processing experiences is to interpret them in such a way that they will cohere with all of our previous experiences, feelings, and beliefs.
• For individuals to feel justified in doing horrible things to other people, they must feel an unwavering certainty in their own righteousness, in their own beliefs and deservedness.
• Evil people never believe that they are evil; rather, they believe that everyone else is evil.
• the more you try to be certain about something, the more uncertain and insecure you will feel.
• Uncertainty is the root of all progress and all growth. As the old adage goes, the man who believes he knows everything learns nothing. We cannot learn anything without first not knowing something. The more we admit we do not know, the more opportunities we gain to learn.
• The only way to solve our problems is to first admit that our actions and beliefs up to this point have been wrong and are not working.
• The more something threatens your identity, the more you will avoid it.
• This is why people are often so afraid of success—for the exact same reason they’re afraid of failure: it threatens who they believe themselves to be.
• I have both some good news and some bad news for you: there is little that is unique or special about your problems. That’s why letting go is so liberating.
• My recommendation: don’t be special; don’t be unique. Redefine your metrics in mundane and broad ways. Choose to measure yourself not as a rising star or an undiscovered genius. Choose to measure yourself not as some horrible victim or dismal failure. Instead, measure yourself by more mundane identities: a student, a partner, a friend, a creator.
• The narrower and rarer the identity you choose for yourself, the more everything will seem to threaten you. For that reason, define yourself in the simplest and most ordinary ways possible.
• Questioning ourselves and doubting our own thoughts and beliefs is one of the hardest skills to develop.
• Question #1: What if I’m wrong?
• As a general rule, we’re all the world’s worst observers of ourselves.
• It’s worth remembering that for any change to happen in your life, you must be wrong about something.
• Question #2: What would it mean if I were wrong?
• Question #3: Would being wrong create a better or a worse problem than my current problem, for both myself and others?
• That’s simply reality: if it feels like it’s you versus the world, chances are it’s really just you versus yourself.
• Failure itself is a relative concept.
• Improvement at anything is based on thousands of tiny failures, and the magnitude of your success is based on how many times you’ve failed at something.
• We can be truly successful only at something we’re willing to fail at. If we’re unwilling to fail, then we’re unwilling to succeed.
• For many of us, our proudest achievements come in the face of the greatest adversity. Our pain often makes us stronger, more resilient, more grounded.
• Our most radical changes in perspective often happen at the tail end of our worst moments.
• These are VCR questions. From the outside, the answer is simple: just shut up and do it.
• VCR questions are funny because the answer appears difficult to anyone who has them and appears easy to anyone who does not.
• Life is about not knowing and then doing something anyway. All of life is like this. It never changes.
• Don’t just sit there. Do something. The answers will follow.
• Action isn’t just the effect of motivation; it’s also the cause of it.
• Action → Inspiration → Motivation
• If you lack the motivation to make an important change in your life, do something—anything, really—and then harness the reaction to that action as a way to begin motivating yourself.
• Action is always within reach. And with simply doing something as your only metric for success—well, then even failure pushes you forward.
• Freedom grants the opportunity for greater meaning, but by itself there is nothing necessarily meaningful about it.
• Travel is a fantastic self-development tool, because it extricates you from the values of your culture and shows you that another society can live with entirely different values and still function and not hate themselves.
• The point is this: we all must give a fuck about something, in order to value something. And to value something, we must reject what is not that something. To value X, we must reject non-X.
• Rejection is an important and crucial life skill.
• The difference between a healthy and an unhealthy relationship comes down to two things: 1) how well each person in the relationship accepts responsibility, and 2) the willingness of each person to both reject and be rejected by their partner.
• People in a healthy relationship with strong boundaries will take responsibility for their own values and problems and not take responsibility for their partner’s values and problems.
• People can’t solve your problems for you.
• The mark of an unhealthy relationship is two people who try to solve each other’s problems in order to feel good about themselves.
• Acts of love are valid only if they’re performed without conditions or expectations.
• Conflict exists to show us who is there for us unconditionally and who is just there for the benefits. No one trusts a yes-man.
• For a relationship to be healthy, both people must be willing and able to both say no and hear no.
• But more is not always better. In fact, the opposite is true. We are actually often happier with less.
• When you’re pursuing a wide breadth of experience, there are diminishing returns to each new adventure, each new person or thing.
• I’ve found increased opportunity and upside in rejecting alternatives and distractions in favor of what I’ve chosen to let truly matter to me.
• Death scares us. And because it scares us, we avoid thinking about it, talking about it, sometimes even acknowledging it, even when it’s happening to someone close to us.
• Humans are unique in that we’re the only animals that can conceptualize and think about ourselves abstractly.
• Confronting the reality of our own mortality is important because it obliterates all the crappy, fragile, superficial values in life.
• Our culture today confuses great attention and great success, assuming them to be the same thing. But they are not.

"A Rulebook for Arguments" by Anthony Weston

• “To give an argument” means to offer a set of reasons or evidence in support of a conclusion
• Arguments are efforts to support certain views with reasons.
• Arguments is essential, in the first place, because it is a way of finding out which views are better than others. Not all views are equal.
• Some conclusions can be supported by good reasons. Others have much weaker support.
• Once we have arrived at a conclusions that is well supported by reasons, we use arguments to explain and defend it.
• That is how you will convince others: by offering the reasons and evidence that convinced you.
• It is not a mistake to have strong views. The mistake is to have nothing else.
• We have to put aside our desires and our opinions for a while and actually think.
• The very first step in making an argument is to ask yourself what you are trying to proves.
• Remember the conclusion is the statement for which you are giving reasons.
• You may have to try several different arguments before you find one that works well.
• No matter how well you argue from premises to conclusion, your conclusion will be weak if your premises are weak.
• If you find you cannot argument adequately for your premises, then, of course, you need to try some other premise!
• Avoid abstract, vague, and general terms.
• In general, if you can’t imagine how anyone could hold the view you are attacking, you probably just don’t understand it yet.
• [A good] arguments repeats its key terms, while [a bad] argument uses a new phrase for each key idea every time the idea recurs.
• Re-using the same key phrases can feel repetitive, of course, so you may be tempted to reach for your thesaurus. Don’t go there! The logic depends on clear connections between premises and between premises and conclusion.
• It remains essential to use a consistent term for each idea.
• If none of the premises can be supported, there is no argument at all.
• A single example can sometimes be used for the sake of illustration. But a single example offers next to no support for a generalization.
• Generalizations about larger sets of things require picking out a sample. How many examples are required depends partly on how representative they are. It also depends partly on the size of the set being generalized about.
• In general, look for the most accurate cross-section you can find of the population being generalized about.
• To evaluate the reliability of any argument featuring a few vivid examples, then, we need to know the ratio between the number of “hits”, so to speak, and the number of tries.
• Be wary of numbers that are easily manipulated.
• Pollsters know very well that the way a question is asked can shape how it is answered.
• Counterexamples are examples that contradicts your generalizations.
• [Looking for counterexamples] is the best way to sharpen your own generalizations and to probe more deeply into your theme.
• Analogies require relevant similarities.
• No one can be an expert through direct experience on everything there is to know.
• To nail down the argument, you need to call upon a fully cited source.
• Sources must be qualified to make the statements they make.
• Note also that authorities on one subject are not necessarily informed about every subject on which they offer opinions.
• Truly informed sources rarely expect others to accept their conclusions simply because they assert them. Most good sources will offer at least some reasons or evidence--examples, facts, analogies, other kinds of arguments--to help explain and defend their conclusions.
• People who have the most at stake in a dispute are usually not the best sources of information about the issues involved.
• The truth as one honestly sees it can still be biased.We tend to see what we expect to see.
• Look for impartial sources: people or organizations who do not have a stake in the immediate issue, and who have a prior and primary interest in accuracy, such as (some) university scientists or statistical databases.
• For political matters, especially when the disagreements are basically over statistics, look to independent government agencies, such as the Census Bureau, or to university studies or other independent sources.
• Be sure that your sources genuinely independent and not just interest groups masquerading under an independent-sounding name.
• Sources that make extreme or simplistic claims, or spend most of their time attacking and demeaning the other side, weaken their own claims.
• Good arguments cite their sources; look them up. Make sure the evidence is quoted correctly and not pulled out of context, and check for further information that might be helpful.
• Don’t rely on a web site at all unless you have some idea of its source.
• The evidence for a claim about causes is usually a correlation--a regular association--between two events or kinds of events.
• Inverse correlations (that is, where an increase in one factor correlates to a decrease in another) may suggest causality too.
• Exploring correlations is also a scientific research strategy.
• Arguments from correlation to cause are often compelling.
• The problem is simply that any correlation may be explained in multiple ways. It’s often not clear from the correlation itself how best to interpret the underlying causes.
• Don’t assume that every little oddity must have some nefarious explanation. It’s hard enough to get the basics right. Neither you nor anyone else needs to have an answer for everything.
• Causes and effects may interpenetrate as well. Often the most interesting causal stories are loops!
• A (properly formed) deductive argument is an argument of such a form that if its premises are true, the conclusion must be true too. Properly formed deductive arguments are called valid arguments.
• Modus ponens: If P then Q. P. Therefore, Q.
• Modus tollens: If P then Q. Not Q. Therefore, not P.
• Hypothetical syllogism: If P then Q. If Q then R. Therefore, if P then R.
• Hypothetical syllogisms are valid for any number of premises, as long as each premise has the form “If P then Q” and the Q (called the “consequent”) of one premise becomes then P (the “antecedent”) of the next.
• Disjunctive syllogism: P or Q. Not P. Therefore, Q.
• Dilemma: P or Q. If P then R. If Q then S. Therefore, R or S.
• Rhetorically, a dilemma is a choice between two options both of which have unappealing consequences.
• One traditional deductive strategy deserves special mention even though, strictly speaking, it is only a version of modus tollens. This is the reductio ad absurdum, that is, a “reduction to absurdity.”
• Arguments by reductio establish their conclusions by showing that assuming the opposite leads to absurdity: to a contradictory or silly result.Nothing is left to do, the argument suggests, but to accept the conclusions.
• Reductio ad absurdum: To prove: P. Assume the opposite: Not P. Argue that from the assumption we’d have to conclude Q. Show that Q is false/contradictory/absurd/etc. Conclude: P must be true after all.
• Once you have spelled out your basic ideas as an argument, it will need defense and development.
• Always ask: What are the best arguments against the conclusion you are working on?
• Most actions have many effects, not just one. Maybe some of the other effects--ones you haven’t looked at yet--are less desireable.
• Launch straight into the real work. No windy windups or rhetorical padding.
• If you are making a proposal, be specific.
• Similarly, if you are making a philosophical claim or defending your interpretation of a text or event, begin by stating your claim or interpretation simply.
• Writers--at all levels-- need feedback. It is through others’ eyes that you can see best where you are unclear or hasty or just plain implausible. Feedback improves your logic too.
• Feedback is a “reality check” all the way around--welcome it.
• The truth is that every single piece of writing you read is put together by someone who starts from scratch and makes thousands of choices and multiple revisions along the way.
• Development, criticism, clarification, and change are the keys. Feedback is what makes them go.
• Don’t claim more than you’ve shown.
• One way to reach out is through your own enthusiasm. Bring some of your own interest and energy for the topic into your wall early on. It personalizes you and notches up the energy in the room.
• Never give an audience the feeling that you are talking down to them. They may know less than you do about the subject, but they can certainly learn, and it is pretty likely that you have some learning to do too.
• Again, approach your audience from enthusiasm, not some sort of superiority.
• All arguments--not just oral arguments--should try to offer something positive.
• An audience’s optimism and excitement can be infectious, and it can become a power of its own, as can a sense of gloom and disempowerment.
• Fallacies are misleading types of arguments. Many of them are so tempting, and therefore so common, that they even have their own names. This may make them seem like a separated and new topic. Actually, though, to call something a fallacy is usually just another way of saying that it violates one of the rules for good arguments.
• Arguments ad populum are good examples of bad arguments from authority.
• Begging the questions: Implicitly using your conclusion as a premise.
• Real-life circular arguments often follow a bigger circle, but they all eventually end up starting in the same place they want to end.
• Equivocation: Sliding from one meaning of a term to another in the middle of an argument.
• Red herring: Introducing an irrelevant or secondary subject and thereby diverting attention from the main subject.
• Usually the red herring is an issue about which people get heated quickly, so that no one notices how their attention is being diverted.
• Some arguments require attention to the meaning of words. Sometimes we may not know the established meaning of a word, or the established meaning may be specialized.
• Often times, a term may be in popular use but still unclear.
• When terms are unclear, get specific.
• Use concrete, definite terms rather than vague ones. Be specific without narrowing the term too much.
• Sometime s a term is contested. That is, people argue over the proper application of the term itself. In that case, it’s not enough simply to propose a clarification.
• When a term is contested, you can distinguish three relevant sets of things. On set includes those things to which the term clearly applies. The second includes those things to which the term clearly does not apply. In the middle will be those things whose status is unclear--included the things being argued over.
• In short, definitions contribute to clarity, but seldom do they make arguments all by themes.
• Clarify your terms--know exactly what questions you’re asking--but don’t expect that clarity alone will answer them.

THE BOGLEHEADS' GUIDE TO INVESTING by Taylor Larimore, Mel Lindauer, Michael LeBoeuf, John C. Bogle

• In short, the principles that work in most aspects of our daily lives simply lead to failure in investing.
• Without assistance from government programs such as Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, many would literally starve.
• Although you might not be aware of it, you have chosen the financial lifestyle that you currently live.
• “Debt is deadly, and earning to spend gets you nowhere. The people who reach financial freedom focus on accumulating wealth over time.”
• But before we discuss the basics and you begin investing, we strongly recommend that you do the following three things, if you haven’t already done so: Graduate from the paycheck mentality to the net worth mentality. Pay off credit card and high-interest debts. Establish an emergency fund.
• From the time we are old enough to understand, society conditions us to confuse income with wealth.
• Income is how much money you earn in a given period of time. If you earn a million in a year and spend it all, you add nothing to your wealth.
• It’s not how much you make, it’s how much you keep.
• The measure of wealth is net worth: the total dollar amount of the assets you own minus the sum of your debts.
• Make it a habit to calculate your net worth once a year.
• We recommend doing that simply because it’s the highest, risk-free, tax-free return on your money that you can possibly earn. Credit card balances are the most insidious of all.
• there is no federal limit on the interest rate a credit card company can charge.
• Every high-interest debt you don’t pay off is siphoning off dollars from your potential net worth and shifting it to the net worth of lending companies.
• If you’re on the credit card merry-go-round, get off. If the balances are very large and you own your home, consider taking out a home-equity loan to pay off the credit cards. The interest rate will probably be lower and the interest will be tax deductible.
• The final prerequisite to investing is to have a readily accessible source of cash on hand for emergencies.
• How big of an emergency fund you need depends largely on your net worth and job stability.
• For most people, six months’ living expenses is probably adequate.
• Keep your emergency fund in an account that is safe and liquid.
• The Rule of 72 is very simple: To determine how many years it will take an investment to double in value, simply divide 72 by the annual rate of return.
• For most people the most difficult part of the process is acquiring the habit of saving. Clear that one hurdle, and the rest is easy.
• Investing is about buying assets, holding them for long periods of time, and reaping the harvest years later.
• Speculating is similar to gambling.
• When you earn a dollar, try to save a minimum of 20 cents.
• The more you save, the sooner you achieve your financial goals.
• There is no substitute for frugality.
• All good wealth builders have just one thing in common: They spend less than they earn.
• There are two basic ways to find money to invest: You can either earn more money or spend less than you currently earn. We recommend doing both.
• The first rule of saving/investing is to take it off the top of your paycheck.
• There are no magic formulas for acquiring wealth. The earlier you start and the more you invest, the sooner you reach financial freedom.
• Reducing your spending is financially more efficient than earning more money.
• If you make a habit of buying some items used, it’s possible to pay less than half the new price for many of them. Adopting that habit can be better than doubling your salary.
• The habit of buying a new car every few years has the potential to decrease your future net worth more than any other buying habit, including credit card debt.
• The way to lower your cost of driving is to buy a good used car and pay cash for it.
• Lowering the cost of driving over the course of a lifetime can literally be the difference between retiring a millionaire and retiring broke.
• Moving to a smaller home reduces your property taxes, mortgage payment, utility bills, and cost of maintenance.
• Creating additional sources of income is an excellent way to find money to invest.
• In addition to providing investment income, side incomes make us less vulnerable to layoffs, downsizings, office politics, and obnoxious bosses.
• Just as it makes sound economic sense to diversify your investments, it makes sense to diversify your sources of income.
• The secret of any successful business lies in fulfilling unmet needs and wants. Find a need and fill it. Find a problem and solve it. Find a hurt and heal it.
• We’re somewhat biased, of course, and feel that mutual fund investing is the best route for most investors in most situations.
• Stocks represent an ownership interest in a corporation.
• When you purchase individual bonds at initial issue, you’re actually lending a specific amount of your money to the bond issuer.
• So, in reality, a bond is nothing more than an IOU or promissory note that pays interest from time to time (usually semiannually) until maturity.
• Treasury issues are considered the safest bond investments, since they’re backed by the full faith and credit of the U.S. government.
• An easy way to visualize the relationship between interest rates and bond prices is to picture a seesaw with interest rates on one side and bond prices on the opposite side. When one goes up, the other goes down, and vice versa.
• It’s important that you don’t invest in a fund with a duration that’s longer than your time horizon.
• It’s important to understand that bonds and bond funds have a low correlation (they don’t always move in the same direction at the same time) to stocks, so bonds can be a stabilizing force for a portion of your portfolio.
• Mr. Bogle suggests that owning your age in bonds is a good starting point.
• Mutual funds pool money from lots of investors to buy securities.
• As an investor in a mutual fund, you actually own a small fractional interest in the underlying pool of securities purchased by the managers of your mutual fund.
• The mutual fund prospectus is the single best way to find out about the objectives, costs, past performance figures, and other important information about any mutual fund you’re considering investing in.
• We feel strongly that they should be the investment of choice for most individual investors.
• Annuities are an investment with an insurance wrapper.
• An immediate annuity is a contract between you and an insurance company. In exchange for a sum of money from you, the insurance company will promise to pay you a specific amount of money, on a regular basis, for the remainder of your lifetime.
• Exchange-traded funds (ETFs) are basically mutual funds that trade like stocks on an exchange.
• Perhaps one of the biggest benefits of owning ETFs is the low cost. ETF expenses can be as low, or even lower, than many mutual funds that track the same index.
• There are some downsides to ETFs. First, you have to use a broker each time you buy and sell, and that usually means you’ll be charged a commission for each transaction.
• As a result, ETFs are not suited for investors who make a number of smaller purchases, such as with dollar-cost averaging, since they’d have to pay a commission on each purchase.
• It’s important to note that Vanguard offers their low-cost ETFs commission-free, eliminating the previously mentioned downside associated with having to pay commissions to buy and sell ETFs.
• Inflation is like a silent thief in the night that comes, sight unseen, and steals our valuables.
• So what’s really important is not the dollar amount, but rather its purchasing power, or what it will buy.
• It’s much better to have saved a bit too much, rather than not enough.
• Although there are no absolute guarantees with RTM, usually asset classes that have outperformed for a period of time are likely to underperform for another period of time.
• While most won’t publicly admit it, the vast majority of stockbrokers, mutual fund managers, sellers of investment products, and money managers don’t earn their keep.
• The reason why so many common life principles don’t apply to the world of investing is very simple: The short-run performance of the stock market is random, unpredictable, and for most people, nerve-racking.
• Although long-term returns are fairly consistent, short-term returns are much more volatile.
• Instead of hiring an expert, or spending a lot of time trying to decide which stocks or actively managed funds are likely to be top performers, just invest in index funds and forget about it!
• Index funds outperform approximately 80 percent of all actively managed funds over long periods of time. They do so for one simple reason: rock-bottom costs.
• Actively managed funds typically have a yearly expense ratio of 1 to 2 percent.
• Just a 1 percent difference in expenses makes an 18 percent difference in returns when compounded over 20 years.
• diversification is the key to reducing investment risk.
• When it comes to index funds, who’s managing the fund is a nonissue.
• Due to their simplicity, low cost, and ease of manageability, investing in index funds is an excellent choice for nearly every investor.
• Do not buy load index funds with high annual expense ratios.
• Only consider investing in no-load funds with annual expense ratios of 0.5 percent or less, the cheaper the better.
• we believe that the vast majority of investors will be better off buying index mutual funds rather than ETFs.
• As you may suspect, as Bogleheads we are partial to Vanguard due to its rock-bottom costs. However, there are other reputable firms that offer no-load, low-cost index funds.
• Other reputable firms you may want to consider are Fidelity, T. Rowe Price, USAA, and Charles Schwab.
• Another important point to keep in mind: It’s common for actively managed funds to have great before-tax returns and not-so-great after-tax returns, due to the trading that goes on in actively managing the funds.
• Your most important portfolio decision can be summed up in just two words: asset allocation.
• EMT can be described as “an investment theory that states that it is impossible to ‘beat the market’ because existing share prices already incorporate and reflect all relevant information.”
• Efficient markets and random walk are obscenities on Wall Street, where investors are constantly told that Wall Street’s superior knowledge can make it easy to beat the market (for a fee). Nearly all the academic community disagrees, but without advertising dollars their research results are generally unknown by the investing public.
• Stocks are usually unsuitable for short time frames (less than five years).
• Knowing your risk tolerance is a very important aspect of investing, and one that the academics have studied extensively. Their experiments prove that most investors are more fearful of a loss than they are happy with a gain.
• Jack Bogle’s rough guide is that bonds should equal our age.
• Don’t worry about exact percentages. Ten percent more or less of an asset class will not make a significant difference in your portfolio performance.
• The only certainty in investing is that past performance will not repeat.
• It’s important for maximum diversification that our stock allocation contain various subcategories.
• U.S. stocks represent about half the value of world stocks, with foreign stocks representing the other half.
• We believe that investors will benefit from an international stock allocation of 20 percent to 40 percent of their equity allocation.
• Bonds are primarily for safety. Stocks are primarily for higher return (and risk).
• A Young Investor Using Vanguard Funds Total Stock Market Index Fund 80% Total Bond Market Index Fund 20%
• A Middle-Aged Investor Using Vanguard Funds Total Stock Market Index Fund 45% Total International 10% REIT 5% Total Bond Market Index Fund 20% Inflation-Protected Securities 20%
• Every dollar we pay in commissions, fees, expenses, and so on is one dollar less that we receive from our investment. For this reason, it’s critical that we keep our investment costs as low as possible.
• A significant disadvantage of a front-end load is that the load reduces the amount of money actually invested.
• Deferred sales charges are often called back-end loads.
• We recommend that mutual fund investors avoid load funds.
• No-load funds do not charge a commission or sales load. However, all funds (load and no-load) have expenses. To help meet these expenses, funds charge certain fees.
• A capital gain occurs when a stock or bond is sold for a profit. This profit is the difference between the purchase cost of stock or bond shares and their sale price when redeemed (sold). If the stock or bond share is sold below its purchase cost, the difference is a capital loss.
• One of the easiest and most effective ways to cut mutual fund taxes significantly is to hold mutual funds for more than 12 months.
• Buy-and-hold is a very effective strategy in taxable accounts.
• We think the best way for most investors to minimize taxes is to take advantage of IRS tax-favored retirement plans specifically designed to encourage people to save for their retirement (401(k), 403(b), IRA, etc.).
• One of the big problems with many 401(k) plans is their high cost.
• The rule is simple: Place your most tax-inefficient funds into your tax-deferred accounts, then put what’s left into your taxable account.
• In order to diversify your portfolio, you want to try to find investments that don’t always move in the same direction at the same time.
• Index funds, by their very nature, are seldom top performers over short periods of time. More importantly, index funds are almost never bottom performers.
• It’s a simple fact of life: More education usually means higher earnings over a lifetime.
• What really seems to matter most when it comes to expected lifetime earnings is going to college and graduating with a well-chosen major.
• As with all other aspects of investing, the earlier you start saving for your children’s college education, the better chance you have of reaching your goals.
• The 529 education savings plans are offered by every state, and each comes with its own set of rules.
• How people spend their time is a good indication of what they value most.
• The most important secret to preserving a windfall is to not touch it until the emotions subside and you come up with a sound plan for putting the money to work.
• Many people squander windfalls simply because they overestimate what the money is capable of buying.
• A windfall left to compound can have an enormous, positive impact on one’s life.
• Many so-called financial professionals are really financial salespeople.
• There is no foolproof “one-size-fits-all” system for rebalancing your portfolio. Each investor must choose a rebalancing method that’s right for them.
• Rebalancing controls risk.
• The most common method of rebalancing is based on time. The typical time frame is either quarterly, semiannually, or annually.
• A simple solution may be to consider owning a fund of funds that meets your desired asset allocation requirements, such as one of the LifeStrategy or Target Retirement series from Vanguard that automatically handles the rebalancing chore for you.
• Make a plan, pick a rebalance trigger, and stick with it; you’ll be better off for it.
• There are only two ways to outperform the stock market: By choosing superior investments and/or through superior market timing. The research conclusively shows that the ability to do either with any degree of consistency is so rare that it might as well be chalked up to chance.
• In a world where 80 percent of the investment pros fail to beat the market, they collectively spend enormous sums of money trying to convince you that they can.
• If you have read this far, you know that effective investing can be incredibly simple: Create a simple, diversified asset allocation plan. Invest a part of each paycheck in low-cost, no-load index funds according to your plan. Check your investments periodically, rebalance when necessary, then stay the course.
• You can simplify it even more by buying a single fund of funds that will take care of the allocating and rebalancing for you. Do this for a lengthy period of time and you will outperform about 80 percent of investment professionals.
• Study after study has found that trying to forecast the direction of the economy or the stock market in the short-run is largely an exercise in futility.
• All forecasting is noise.
• There are three kinds of investment experts: Those who don’t know what the market will do and know they don’t know Those who don’t know what the market will do but believe they know Those who don’t know what the market will do and get paid to pretend they know
• There’s always a conflict of interest when purchasing investment products and investment advice from the same source.
• Publishers are far more interested in book selling than truth telling.
• The best antidote to noise is knowledge based on empirical research done by competent, unbiased parties who don’t have an interest in selling investment products and services.
• Emotions are extremely important because we all live at the feelings level. Better to be happy and poor than miserable and rich.
• We are the sum of our choices, and most choices are made emotionally.
• The paradox of money is while most people are very emotional about acquiring it, behaving emotionally about money is a recipe for losing it.
• The two very primitive emotions of greed and fear drive many investors as individuals and the stock market in general.
• Despite the statistical impossibility, at least 70 percent of Americans believe they are above average.
• The problem is that taking bold action to solve investment problems usually creates worse problems.
• The more choices people are given, the harder it becomes to choose one.
• Employees pass up billions every year in free money offered by their employer’s matching retirement plans simply because they won’t decide which investment course to take.
• Being human, we feel the need to conform and have an innate tendency to follow the crowd.
• procrastination is the biggest detriment to financial success.
• The surest way to lose money is to pay no attention to it.
• Good planning begins by setting financial goals and target dates.
• Pay off your credit card and high-interest debts and stay out of debt. Formulate a simple, sound, asset allocation plan and stick to it. Systematically save and invest a part of each paycheck in accordance with the asset allocation plan.
• The earlier you start, the richer you become. Invest most or all of your money in index funds. Keep your costs of investing and taxes low. Don’t try to time the market. Tune out the noise, rebalance your portfolio when necessary, and stick with your plan. By doing those things, you will intelligently manage risk.
• Once you have enough money, you can spend your time being excited and passionate about any blessed thing you want.
• Fourth, don’t expect to be perfectly sane and rational all the time about investing. We are all emotional creatures, and sometimes our emotions get the best of us. If you make a poor, emotional investment decision, resolve to learn from it and not repeat it. That’s all you can do.
• Every day you don’t invest is a day less you’ll have the power of compounding working for you.
• Investing is one area where acting on emotions is likely to lead you down the path to financial ruin.
• Retirement is not the time to have an enormous mortgage, expensive car payments, credit card debts, or the like.
• Working part-time keeps you productive, makes you feel like you are a contributing member of society, and keeps you mentally sharp.
• Most of the credible studies of 30-year portfolio survival rates conclude that you can withdraw from 4 to 6 percent of the portfolio value per year with a good chance of not exhausting the portfolio, depending on your portfolio’s asset allocation.
• In summary, the most important key to making your money last is to be financially flexible, particularly in the early years.
• Keep your fixed expenses low and have a viable way to earn extra income if needed.
• Just one bad uninsured mishap can financially ruin you or your family forever. Carrying proper coverage is a must.
• To be a successful investor requires being a good risk manager.
• Managing risk means having a plan to cover the downside.
• Never fail to buy insurance because the odds of something happening are small.
• If the odds of a flood are small, the price of insurance will be cheap.
• Insuring against specific disasters is usually a waste of money.
• You can greatly reduce or eliminate common insurance mistakes by following three simple rules: Only insure against the big catastrophes and disasters that you can’t afford to pay for out of pocket. The cheapest insurance is self-insurance. Carry the largest possible deductibles you can afford. The larger the deductible, the more you are self-insuring and the cheaper the premium will be. Only buy coverage from the best-rated insurance companies. You need insurance companies you can depend on when you need to file a claim.
• The purpose of carrying life insurance is to provide financial support to dependents who would be deprived in the event of a breadwinner’s death.
• If you need life insurance, buy term insurance. Term insurance is basic pay-as-you-go, no-frills insurance. It’s the cheapest way to go and serves the purpose.
• We don’t believe in mixing investing with insurance. Insurance is for protection and investing is for wealth building. Don’t confuse or mix the two.
• Everyone should save and invest their money and not buy life insurance until the situation requires it.
• Buy the longest period that you can afford and need.
• You can reduce the cost of a health insurance policy by taking the highest deductible and co-payment percentage that you can afford.
• Most people’s greatest financial asset is their future earning power.
• The odds of becoming disabled are far greater than the odds of dying prematurely.
• The two words you need to remember when buying this type of coverage are replacement cost.
• You can reduce the cost of homeowner’s, renter’s, and auto insurance by taking the largest possible deductible you can afford.
• If you find yourself with liquid assets of between $200,000 and $2 million when you reach your mid- to late fifties, give serious consideration to buying long-term care policies for you and your spouse.
• It’s a good idea to purchase long-term care before age 60.
• Even though you may not feel rich, the tax collector may disagree with you.
• The accumulation of assets is a lifelong endeavor, and it’s almost always achieved with some level of personal and family sacrifice along the way.
• You should have a will, even if you have a trust.
• Choose and live a sound financial lifestyle. We need to pay off our credit card debt, establish an emergency fund, get our spending under control, and most importantly, learn how to live below our means, since that’s really the key to financial freedom.
• Start to save early and invest regularly. The earlier we start, the longer we’ll enjoy the powerful benefits of compounding.
• Know more about the various investment choices available to us, such as stocks, bonds, and mutual funds. For most investors, mutual funds offer great diversity in a single investment. Don’t invest in things you don’t understand.
• Figure out approximately how much you might need for your retirement, so you’ll know if you’re on track. You can’t reach your goal if you don’t have a target!
• Indexing via low-cost mutual funds is a strategy that will, over time, most likely outperform the vast majority of strategies. If you decide to own actively managed mutual funds, choose managed funds with low expenses and place them in tax-advantaged accounts.
• An asset allocation plan is based on your personal circumstances, goals, time horizon, and need and willingness to take risks. Risk and higher expected returns go hand in hand. There’s no free lunch. Make your investment plan as simple as possible.
• Costs matter. We can’t control market returns, but we can control the cost of our investments. Commissions, fees, and mutual fund expense ratios can rob you of much of your investment returns. Keep costs as low as possible.
• Taxes can be your biggest expense. Invest in the most tax-efficient way possible. Put tax-inefficient funds in your tax-deferred accounts, and select tax-efficient investments for your taxable account. Remember the importance of diversification. You want some investments that zig while others zag.
• Rebalancing is important. Rebalancing controls risk and may reward you with higher returns. Stick with your chosen rebalancing strategy.
• Market timing and performance chasing are poor investment strategies. They can cause investors to underperform the market and jeopardize financial goals.
• Invest for your children’s education. There are several tax-deferred and tax-free options available.
• Know how to handle a windfall, if you receive an inheritance or get lucky and hit the lottery.
• Answer the question of whether you do or don’t need a financial advisor, and some of the reasons for and against.
• Understand the importance of protecting the future buying power of your assets by investing in such things as inflation-protected securities. Remember, inflation is a silent thief that robs you of future buying power.
• Tune out the noise and do not get distracted by daily news events. Avoid hot investment fads and following the herd as it stampedes toward the cliff’s edge. Believing that “It’s different this time” can cause severe financial damage to your portfolio.
• Protect your assets with the proper types and amounts of insurance. Insurance is for protection. It’s not an investment. Don’t confuse the two.
• We need to master our emotions if we want to be successful investors. Letting your emotions dictate your investment decisions can be hazardous to your wealth.
• Make your money last at least as long as you do. Overly optimistic withdrawal rates may cause you to run out of money before you run out of breath.
• Proper estate planning ensures that assets pass to heirs in a reasonable time and with minimum taxes.
• We can’t stress enough how important it is to establish your own personal financial plan, and then carefully follow that plan. Select low-cost mutual funds, preferably index funds, as the core of your investment portfolio. We feel there’s beauty in simplicity.

SPEED READING: THE COMPREHENSIVE GUIDE TO SPEED READING by Nathan Armstrong

• Success requires wisdom, which is the effective application of knowledge.
• Our ability to gain knowledge of important and relevant things is key to becoming wise.
• When we read, our eyes normally stop on each word. We call this fixation. Stopping at every word in the text that we’re reading slows down our reading and, to a great extent, affects our ability to understand the text well.
• The fewer the fixations or stops, the faster we can read.
• Visual reading is much faster than audible reading, even when reading silently.
• Reading isn’t worth a dime without comprehension, and comprehension of a written text isn’t possible without reading.
• Preparation helps you make the most of your time and resources and allows you to speed up your success.
• With smaller and more achievable milestones, you’re encouraged to continue and succeed.
• How can somebody have a grip on the whole book within a few minutes? That’s right, you’ve guessed it, it’s as simple as reading the table of contents. Almost all books have been outlined in this section, and if you read them and form an idea of what the book is about, it’ll make it that much faster in reading and comprehending.
• the more understanding you have of what’s going to be talked about, the faster you’ll read it.
• By knowing what’s essential and what’s not, you can easily ignore material that doesn’t contribute much to the main idea and, thus, spend less time reading.
• Your brain is not capable enough of doing two complex tasks at once.
• Keyword searching is a great technique to help you read faster because it can help train your mind to focus on what’s important and is more efficient in spotting words that can slow you down while reading.
• Chunk reading – also known as chunking – is a reading technique wherein you group together words in a way that forms an idea.
• Reading the words together as a coherent unit makes for faster reading and better comprehension.
• Chunk in such a way that the idea is clear with as few words as possible.
• Skimming is a very useful speed-reading technique and one that can be performed easily. All you have to do is read the first and last paragraph of the text and also read the first lines of each paragraph. Most of the key information will be centered on these areas. Once you read these, you will know what the basic message is and you won’t have to go through the entire text.
• The very first thing to consider is that the skimming technique must only be used when you wish to understand just the gist of something and not the whole thing.
• The answer is, if you skim first, the data present in the text will fall into place easily in your mind when you do tackle it more fully.
• The main advantage of skimming is that it is easier to finish reading a big text in express time.
• All said and done, scanning remains one of the most preferred speed-reading techniques in the world.
• Although different, scanning and skimming are two popular speed-reading techniques that are often confused for each other. When you scan a piece of material, you have a target in mind. When you skim through that material, you’re looking for meaningful ideas.
• In scanning, you already know what you’re looking for – you already have an idea in mind.
• With skimming, you don’t have an idea yet and that’s what you’re looking to find in the material.
• Stop fixating on each word and practice using your peripheral to help you read chunks of words at a time.
• Reading is one of the most complex things humans can do.
• Reading is actually a process that requires you to recognize a set of symbols or a symbol, forming a pattern that connects to another set of meanings stored and learned previously in the mind.
• Literacy requires you to understand the symbol, as well as the underlying meaning behind those symbols.
• Meta Cognition is actually the ability to “think about thinking.”
• The top readers generally read at speeds of above 1,000 wpm with around 85% comprehension; however, they represent just 1% of readers. The majority are average readers with just 200 wpm and a comprehension rate of 60 percent.
• the most efficient way to achieve top reading levels is a speed-reading computer program.
• Whether you like it or not, where you read plays a very huge role in your ability to read and comprehend materials quickly.
• With focus being the single most important ingredient for speed-reading success, you’ll need to read in a place where there is virtually no distraction whatsoever.
• One of the characteristics of a great reading environment is adequate lighting.
• Another aspect of the ideal environment is silence.
• Another important characteristic of the ideal reading environment is that it should offer you enough privacy to read uninterrupted.
• More than just the number of hours, the quality of your sleep is also important.
• Half of the trick to speed-reading is actually having topics that you enjoy reading about.
• Regression is also known as re-reading.
• The main reason for regression to occur is a lack of focus.
• They say that it’s not practice that makes perfect, but perfect practice that makes perfect.
• When practicing, remember to: Read and understand the book through the table of contents Ask questions regarding the book Meta-Guiding Visualization Keyword search Chunk read Skimming Scanning Practice these every day and you’ll increase your reading speed by 300% in no time!
• With Meta-Guiding, you can make use of a pacer or a guide that you will run under the words and sentences.

"Power: Why some people have it—and others don't" by Jeffrey Pfeffer

• Systematic empirical research confirms what these two contrasting stories, as well as common sense and everyday experience, suggest: being politically savvy and seeking power are related to career success and even to managerial performance.
• The evidence showed that this third group, the managers primarily interested in power, were the most effective, not only in achieving positions of influence inside companies but also in accomplishing their jobs.
• There is a lot of zero-sum competition for status and jobs.
• Some of the individuals competing for advancement bend the rules of fair play or ignore them completely.
• Obtaining and holding on to power can be hard work.
• Not being able to control one’s environment produces feelings of helplessness and stress,4 and feeling stressed or “out of control” can harm your health.
• So being in a position with low power and status is indeed hazardous to your health, and conversely, having power and the control that comes with it prolongs life.
• Second, power, and the visibility and stature that accompany power, can produce wealth.
• Third, power is part of leadership and is necessary to get things done—
• To be effective in figuring out your path to power and to actually use what you learn, you must first get past three major obstacles. The first two are the belief that the world is a just place and the hand-me-down formulas on leadership that largely reflect this misguided belief. The third obstacle is yourself.
• STOP THINKING THE WORLD IS A JUST PLACE
• Many people conspire in their own deception about the organizational world in which they live. That’s because people prefer to believe that the world is a just and fair place and that everyone gets what he or she deserves. And since people tend to think they themselves are deserving, they come to think that if they just do a good job and behave appropriately, things will take care of themselves.
• The belief in a just world has two big negative effects on the ability to acquire power. First, it hinders people’s ability to learn from all situations and all people, even those whom they don’t like or respect.
• It is important to be able to learn from all sorts of situations and people, not just those you like and approve of, and certainly not just from people you see as similar to yourself.
• Second, this belief that the world is a just place anesthetizes people to the need to be proactive in building a power base.
• The just-world hypothesis holds that most people believe that “people get what they deserve; that is, that the good people are likely to be rewarded and the bad to be punished.
• The next obstacle you will need to overcome is the leadership literature.
• Most books by well-known executives and most lectures and courses about leadership should be stamped CAUTION: THIS MATERIAL CAN BE HAZARDOUS TO YOUR ORGANIZATIONAL SURVIVAL. That’s because leaders touting their own careers as models to be emulated frequently gloss over the power plays they actually used to get to the top.
• There is no doubt that the world would be a much better, more humane place if people were always authentic, modest, truthful, and consistently concerned for the welfare of others instead of pursuing their own aims. But that world doesn’t exist.
• For most leaders, the path to power bears little resemblance to the advice being dished out.
• But leaders are great at self-presentation, at telling people what they think others want to hear, and in coming across as noble and good. This ability to effectively self-present is why successful individuals reached high levels in the first place.
• Those in power get to write history, to paraphrase an old saw.
• one of the best ways to acquire and maintain power is to construct a positive image and reputation, in part by coopting others to present you as successful and effective.
• lots of research shows evidence of a particular manifestation of the just-world effect: if people know that someone or some organization has been successful, they will almost automatically attribute to that individual or company all kinds of positive qualities and behaviors.
• People distort reality.
• Watch those around you who are succeeding, those who are failing, and those who are just treading water. Figure out what’s different about them and what they are doing differently.
• People are often their own worst enemy, and not just in the arena of building power. That’s in part because people like to feel good about themselves and maintain a positive self-image. And ironically, one of the best ways for people to preserve their self-esteem is to either preemptively surrender or do other things that put obstacles in their own way.
• How you behave and what you should do needs to fit your particular circumstances—the organizational situation and also your own personal values and objectives.
• except for certain laws in the physical sciences, we live in a world of probabilities.
• the learning process—in school and in the rest of life, too—is frequently too passive to be as helpful as it might be.
• There is only one way to become more effective in building power and using influence: practice.
• Regardless of how successful and effective you are, sooner or later you will encounter opposition and setbacks.
• Power brings visibility—public scrutiny—and other costs as well.
• Power tends to produce overconfidence and the idea that you can make your own rules, and these consequences of having power often cause people to behave in ways that cost them their power and their position.
• Just like the principle of compound interest, becoming somewhat more effective in every situation can, over time, leave you in a very different, and much better, place.
• Not only doesn’t good performance guarantee you will maintain a position of power, poor performance doesn’t mean you will necessarily lose your job.
• The lesson from cases of people both keeping and losing their jobs is that as long as you keep your boss or bosses happy, performance really does not matter that much and, by contrast, if you upset them, performance won’t save you.
• One of the biggest mistakes people make is thinking that good performance—job accomplishments—is sufficient to acquire power and avoid organizational difficulties.
• If you are going to create a path to power, you need to lose the idea that performance by itself is enough.
• The data shows that performance doesn’t matter that much for what happens to most people in most organizations.
• job performance matters less for your evaluation than your supervisor’s commitment to and relationship with you.
• Not only may outstanding job performance not guarantee you a promotion, it can even hurt.
• Thus, great performance may leave you trapped because a boss does not want to lose your abilities and also because your competence in your current role does not ensure that others will see you as a candidate for much more senior jobs.
• Doing great doesn’t guarantee you a promotion or a raise, and it may not even be that important for keeping your job.
• You should not assume that your boss knows or notices what you are accomplishing and has perfect information about your activities.
• The importance of standing out contradicts much conventional wisdom.
• For you to attain a position of power, those in power have to choose you for a senior role.
• In advertising, one of the most prominent measures of effectiveness is ad recall—not taste, logic, or artistry—simply, do you remember the ad and the product? The same holds true for you and your path to power.
• Research shows that repeated exposure increases positive affect and reduces negative feelings,12 that people prefer the familiar because this preference reduces uncertainty,13 and that the effect of exposure on liking and decision making is a robust phenomenon that occurs in different cultures and in a variety of different domains of choice.14
• The simple fact is that people like what they remember—and that includes you! In order for your great performance to be appreciated, it needs to be visible.
• Simply put, in many cases, being memorable equals getting picked.
• You can’t select what you can’t recall.
• One of the reasons that performance matters less than people expect is that performance has many dimensions. Furthermore, what matters to your boss may not be the same things that you think are important.
• It is much more effective for you to ask those in power, on a regular basis, what aspects of the job they think are the most crucial and how they see what you ought to be doing.
• You can almost always tell at least one aspect of your job performance that will be crucial: do you, in how you conduct yourself, what you talk about, and what you accomplish, make those in power feel better about themselves?
• The surest way to keep your position and to build a power base is to help those with more power enhance their positive feelings about themselves.
• The lesson: worry about the relationship you have with your boss at least as much as you worry about your job performance.
• If your boss makes a mistake, see if someone else other than you will point it out.
• The last thing you want to do is be known as someone who makes your boss insecure or have a difficult relationship with those in power.
• One of the best ways to make those in power feel better about themselves is to flatter them. The research literature shows how effective flattery is as a strategy to gain influence.
• Most people underestimate the effectiveness of flattery and therefore underutilize it.
• your relationship with those in power is critical to your own success.
• The people responsible for your success are those above you, with the power to either promote you or to block your rise up the organization chart.
• It is performance, coupled with political skill, that will help you rise through the ranks. Performance by itself is seldom sufficient, and in some instances, may not even be necessary.
• First, you must come to believe that personal change is possible; otherwise, you won’t even try to develop the attributes that bring power—you will just accept that you are who you are rather than embarking on a sometimes difficult path of personal growth and development.
• Second, you need to see yourself and your strengths and weaknesses as objectively as possible.
• And third, you need to understand the most important qualities for building a power base so you can focus your inevitably limited time and attention on developing those.
• Just as people learn to play musical instruments, speak foreign languages, and play sports like golf or soccer, they can learn what personal attributes provide influence and they can cultivate those qualities.
• If you are going to develop yourself, you need to begin with an honest assessment of where your developmental needs are the greatest—where you have the biggest opportunity for improvement.
• get advice from others who are more skilled than you and will tell you the truth about yourself.
• The two fundamental dimensions that distinguish people who rise to great heights and accomplish amazing things are will, the drive to take on big challenges, and skill, the capabilities required to turn ambition into accomplishment.
• The three personal qualities embodied in will are ambition, energy, and focus.
• The four skills useful in acquiring power are self-knowledge and a reflective mind-set, confidence and the ability to project self-assurance, the ability to read others and empathize with their point of view, and a capacity to tolerate conflict.
• Success requires effort and hard work as well as persistence. To expend that effort, to make necessary sacrifices, requires some driving ambition.
• Ambition—a focus on achieving influence—can help people overcome the temptation to give up or to give in to the irritations.
• That’s because energy does three things that help build influence. First, energy, like many emotional states such as anger or happiness, is contagious.14 Therefore, energy inspires more effort on the part of others.
• Your hard work signals that the job is important; people pick up on that signal, or its opposite. And people are more willing to expend effort if you are, too.
• Second, energy and the long hours it permits provide an advantage in getting things accomplished.
• Research on genius or talent—exceptional accomplishment achieved in a wide range of fields—consistently finds that “laborious preparation” plays an important role.
• Obviously, having the energy that permits you to put in long hours of hard work helps you to master subject matter more quickly.
• And you are more likely to have energy if you are committed to what you are doing, so in that sense, energy goes along with ambition.
• Focus turns out to be surprisingly rare.
• the evidence suggests that you are more likely to acquire power by narrowing your focus and applying your energies, like the sun’s rays, to a limited range of activities in a small number of domains.
• There is no learning and personal development without reflection.
• Because power is likely to cause people to behave in a more confident fashion, observers will associate confident behavior with actually having power.
• Coming across as confident and knowledgeable helps you build influence.
• This ability to put yourself in another’s place is also useful for acquiring power.
• Because most people are conflict-averse, they avoid difficult situations and difficult people, frequently acceding to requests or changing their positions rather than paying the emotional price of standing up for themselves and their views.
• If you can handle difficult conflict-and stress-filled situations effectively, you have an advantage over most people.
• The research shows that intelligence is the single best predictor of job performance.
• Being recognized as exceptionally smart can cause overconfidence and even arrogance, which, as we will see in more detail later, can lead to the loss of power.
• WHERE YOU begin your career affects your rate of progress as well as how far you go.
• We intuitively know that not all career platforms are equal in value as a path to power, and research supports that intuition.
• The most common mistake is to locate in the department dealing with the organization’s current core activity, skill, or product—the unit that is the most powerful at the moment. This turns out to not always be a good idea because the organization’s most central work is where you are going to encounter the most talented competition and also the most well-established career paths and processes. Moreover, what is the most important function or product today may not be in the future.
• So if you want to move up quickly, go to underexploited niches where you can develop leverage with less resistance and build a power base in activities that are going to be more important in the near future than they are today.
• It is always useful to be able to diagnose the political landscape, whether for plotting your next career move or for understanding who you need to influence to get something done.
• Skill at diagnosing power distributions is useful.
• Both starting salaries and the pay of more senior positions in departments connote relative power.
• Being physically close to those in power both signals power and provides power through increased access.
• One way of seeing the power of finance is to look at the salary of the head of that function. But another would be to look at who, besides the CEO, is the insider most likely to serve on a company’s board of directors.
• Paying attention to what departments are represented in powerful positions provides an important clue as to where the power lies.
• Being in a powerful department provides advantages for your income and your career. But for that very reason, lots of talented people want to go to the most powerful units.
• People often don’t ask for what they want and are afraid of standing out too much because they worry that others may resent or dislike their behavior, seeing them as self-promoting.
• You need to get over the idea that you need to be liked by everybody and that likability is important in creating a path to power, and you need to be willing to put yourself forward.
• Asking often works.
• One reason why asking works is that we are flattered to be asked for advice or help—few things are more self-affirming and ego-enhancing than to have others, particularly talented others, seek our aid.
• People love to give advice as it signals how wise they are,
• Asking for help is inherently flattering, and can be made even more so if we do it correctly, emphasizing the importance and accomplishments of those we ask and also reminding them of what we share in common.
• Your success depends not only on your own work but also on your ability to get those in a position to help your career, like your boss, to want to make you successful and help you in your climb.
• It’s early in your career when you are seeking initial positions that differentiating yourself from the competition is most important.
• In advertising, the concept of standing out to become memorable is called “brand recall,” which is an important measure of advertising effectiveness.
• What works for products can work for you too—you need to be interesting and memorable and able to stand out in ways that cause others to want to know you and get close to you.
• As Malcolm Gladwell has insightfully noted, the rules tend to favor—big surprise—the people who make the rules, who tend to be the people who are already winning and in power.
• to appear competent, it is helpful to seem a little tough, or even mean.
• There is lots of evidence that people like to be associated with successful institutions and people—to bask in the reflected glory of the powerful.
• Research shows that attitudes follow behavior—that if we act in a certain way, over time our attitudes follow.
• Standing out helps you get the jobs and power you may seek.
• Asking for what you need and being less concerned about what others are thinking about you can help in launching your path to power.
• IN VIRTUALLY all organizational domains, controlling access to money and jobs brings power.
• Resources are great because once you have them, maintaining power becomes a self-reinforcing process.
• People with money or with control over organizational money get appointed to various for-profit and nonprofit boards where they are in contact with others who have business and investment ideas and social and political influence.
• It’s an old but accurate and important story: power and resources beget more power and resources.
• There are two simple but important implications of resources as a source of power.
• The first is that in choosing among jobs, choose positions that have greater direct resource control of more budget or staff. That generally means preferring line to staff positions, since line positions typically control more staff hiring and more budgetary authority.
• Most headhunters will tell you that when they seek candidates for senior general management positions, including the CEO job, they look to people who have had responsibility running operations, and the larger the division or operation the potential candidate has run, the better, other things being equal.
• Getting control of resources is an important step on your path to power.
• The second straightforward implication is that your power comes in large measure from the position you hold and the resources and other things you control as a consequence of holding that position.
• A resource is anything people want or need—money, a job, information, social support and friendship, help in doing their job. There are always opportunities to provide these things to others whose support you want.
• Being nice to people is effective because people find it difficult to fight with those who are being polite and courteous.
• So here’s some simple and practical advice: most people like to talk about themselves—give them the opportunity to do so. Being a good listener and asking questions about others is a simple but effective way to use a resource everyone has—time and attention—to build power. And here’s some more advice: if you don’t have much power, you probably have time. Use that time to befriend others and go to events that are important to them.
• People appreciate help with doing some aspect of their job, and they particularly appreciate assistance with tasks that they find boring or mundane—precisely the kinds of tasks great for beginning to build a power base.
• Taking on small tasks can provide you with power because people are often lazy or uninterested in seemingly small, unimportant activities. Therefore, if you take the initiative to do a relatively minor task and do it extremely well, it’s unlikely that anyone is going to challenge you for the opportunity. Meanwhile, these apparently minor tasks can become important sources of power.
• If you’re in a place that has status, you can use that status to your advantage.
• Power accrues to people who control resources that others cannot access.
• Networking skills are important and the networks you create are an important resource for creating influence,
• some jobs are mostly about networking and everyone can benefit from developing more efficient and effective social networks and honing networking skills.
• In general, jobs high in networking content require bridging separate organizations, brokering deals, and relationship building to influence decision making.
• Inside companies, the job of project or product manager entails getting disparate groups to cooperate in making information technology projects work and in managing consumer products successfully.
• There are many leadership tasks where the essence of the work is bringing people and organizational units with different competencies and perspectives together to complete a task or consummate a transaction.
• Although your social network—sometimes referred to as social capital—is more or less important depending on the specifics of your job, the evidence shows that networking is important for people’s careers, period.
• The effect of mere exposure on preference and choice is important and well demonstrated.
• Networking makes you more visible; this visibility increases your power and status; and your heightened power and status then make building and maintaining social contacts easier.
• The evidence shows that networking is important in affecting career progress, and you need to get over qualms about engaging in strategic behavior to advance your career—and that includes who you are in touch with.
• Networking actually does not take that much time and effort. It mostly takes thought and planning.
• So go out of your way to meet new people.
• Not everyone is going to be equally useful to you and you should account for that fact in how you spend your networking time.
• managerial jobs were more likely to be found through personal contacts rather than through more formal means such as responding to newspaper advertisements or making a formal application, whereas lower-level or even well-paid but technical jobs tended to rely on more formal means of hiring.
• Providing any information lets the provider feel good about herself and is consistent with social norms of benevolence.
• One way to acquire status is to start an organization that is so compelling in its mission that high-status people join the project and you build both status and a network of important relationships.
• The fact that status hierarchies are stable means not only that it is difficult to move up but also that it is difficult to move down. Once you have achieved power and status through the network of your relationships, you will be able to maintain your influence without expending as much time and effort.
• People like to bask in reflected glory and associate with high-status others.
• Power and influence come not just from the extensiveness of your network and the status of its members, but also from your structural position within that network. Centrality matters.
• Network position matters a great deal for your influence and career trajectory.
• If virtually all information and communication flows through you, you will have more power.
• One source of your power will be your control over the flow of information, and another is that people attribute power to individuals who are central.
• One way of building centrality is through physical location.
• Centrality provides power within a network, but it is also important to have power through connections across diverse networks.
• by connecting units that are tightly linked internally but socially isolated from each other, the person doing the connecting can profit by being the intermediary who facilitates interactions between the two groups.
• Social capital, measured by how many structural holes an individual bridges, positively affects promotions, salary, and organizational level attained.
• You have to do the network “work” yourself if you want to accrue the benefits.
• The research literature typically divides knowledge into two types: explicit, codified knowledge such as that represented in diagrams, formulas, or “recipes” for task performance; and implicit, tacit knowledge such as that possessed by good clinicians who understand not only the scientific basis of job performance but also know, based on their experience, when to do what.
• We choose how we will act and talk, and those decisions are consequential for acquiring and holding on to power.
• the secret of leadership was the ability to play a role, to pretend, to be skilled in the theatrical arts.
• Differences in the ability to convey power through how we talk, appear, and act matter in our everyday interactions, from seeking a job to attempting to win a vital contract to presenting a company’s growth prospects before investment analysts.
• To come across effectively, we need to master how to convey power. We need to act, and speak, with power.
• Authority is 20 percent given, 80 percent taken.
• If you are going to take power, you need to project confidence,
• You need to project assurance even if—or maybe particularly if—you aren’t sure what you’re doing.
• Attitudes follow behavior,
• the emotions you express, such as confidence or happiness, influence those around you—emotions are contagious.
• emotions and behaviors become self-reinforcing:
• If acting is important as a leadership skill and for acquiring power, it is important to know how to perform. One principle is to act confident.
• You are on stage more than you think, and not just as a senior leader.
• Sometimes you will work with peers and colleagues of about equal rank whom you want to influence. Sometimes your actual power will be ambiguous. In such situations, displaying anger is useful.
• Research shows that people who express anger are seen “as dominant, strong, competent, and smart,” although they are also, of course, seen as less nice and warm.
• If you express anger, not only do you receive more status and power and appear more competent but others are reluctant to cross you.
• But if you have to choose between being seen as likable and fitting in on the one hand or appearing competent albeit abrasive on the other, choose competence.
• Self-deprecating comments and humor work only if you have already established your competence.
• There is evidence that taller people earn more and are more likely to occupy high power positions.20 There is also ample evidence that physical attractiveness results in higher earnings.
• Get professional help in enhancing the influence you convey by how you look.
• Moving forward and toward someone is a gesture that connotes power, as does standing closer to others, while turning your back or retreating signals the opposite.
• Moving your hands in a circle or waving your arms diminishes how powerful you appear. Gestures should be short and forceful, not long and circular.
• Looking people directly in the eye connotes not only power but also honesty and directness, while looking down is a signal of diffidence. Looking away causes others to think you are dissembling.
• Settings can convey power and status.
• One reason people don’t come across as forcefully or effectively as they might is that they begin to speak while they are flustered or unsure of the situation.
• Breathe and take time to collect yourself—you will be much more effective than if you just rush into the situation.
• The language people use and how they construct presentations and arguments help determine their power.
• One source of power in every interaction is interruption. Those with power interrupt, those with less power get interrupted.
• Language that influences is able to create powerful images and emotions that overwhelm reason.24 Such language is evocative, specific, and filled with strong language and visual imagery.
• Use us-versus-them references.
• Pause for emphasis and invite approval or even applause through a slight delay.
• Use a list of three items, or enumerations in general.
• Use contrastive pairs, comparing one thing to another and using passages that are similar in length and grammatical structure. The contrast is strategically chosen to make a point.
• Avoid using a script or notes.
• Humor is disarming and also helps create a bond between you and your audience through a shared joke.
• Sentence structure is also important for making language persuasive.
• one important strategy for not only creating a successful path to power but also maintaining your position once you have achieved it is to build your image and your reputation.
• if you have a stellar reputation, companies will be fighting to hire you.
• The fundamental principles for building the sort of reputation that will get you a high-power position are straightforward: make a good impression early, carefully delineate the elements of the image you want to create, use the media to help build your visibility and burnish your image, have others sing your praises so you can surmount the self-promotion dilemma, and strategically put out enough negative but not fatally damaging information about yourself that the people who hire and support you fully understand any weaknesses and make the choice anyway.
• people start forming impressions of you in the first few seconds or even milliseconds of contact.
• these fast first impressions are remarkably accurate in predicting other more durable and important evaluations.
• Research has identified several processes that account for the persistence of initial reputations or, phrased differently, the importance of the order in which information is presented.
• One process, attention decrement, argues that because of fatigue or boredom, people don’t pay as close attention to later information as they do to information that comes early, when they first form judgments.
• A second process entails cognitive discounting—once people have formed an impression of another, they disregard any information that is inconsistent with their initial ideas.
• Third, people engage in behavior that helps make their initial impressions of others come true.
• Impressions and reputations endure, so building a favorable impression and reputation early is an important step in creating power.
• First, if you find yourself in a place where you have an image problem and people don’t think well of you, for whatever reason, it is often best to leave for greener pastures.
• Second, because impressions are formed quickly and are based on many things, such as similarity and “chemistry” over which you have far from perfect control, you should try to put yourself in as many different situations as possible—to play the law of large numbers.
• The best way to build relationships with media people is to be helpful and accessible.
• Reach out to the media and academics who write cases and articles, and write your own articles or blogs that enhance your visibility.
• People benefit, or suffer, from the self-reinforcing aspect of reputations.
• A great reputation can help you achieve great performance and vice versa.
• Seeking to dominate the conversation and the decision making and totally control the situation may work on some of your adversaries, but probably not too many. Most will seek to push back, very hard—they will react to your attempts to overpower them by doing things to maintain their power and autonomy.
• To be successful, you have to get over resentments, jealousies, anger, or anything else that might get in the way of building a relationship where you can get the resources necessary for you to get the job done.
• The ability to not take opposition or slights personally, think about whose support you need and go after it, regardless of their behavior toward you or your own feelings, and remain focused on the data and impartial analysis requires a high level of self-discipline and emotional maturity. It is a rare skill. But it is crucial in surmounting and disarming opponents.
• Persistence works because it wears down the opposition. Much like water eroding a rock, over time keeping at something creates results. In addition, staying in the game maintains the possibility that the situation will shift to your advantage. Opponents retire or leave or make mistakes. The environment changes.
• If you move quickly, you can often catch your opponents off guard and secure victory before they even know what is happening.
• Don’t wait if you see a power struggle coming. While you are waiting, others are organizing support and orchestrating votes to win.
• In companies, in government, even in nonprofits, people who have any resource control use it to reward those who are helpful and punish those who stand in their way.
• Your path to power is going to be easier if you are aligned with a compelling, socially valuable objective.
• The best way to overcome the embarrassment is to talk about what happened to as many people as possible as quickly as possible.
• CONTINUE TO DO WHAT MADE YOU SUCCESSFUL
• Situations are often ambiguous.
• One of the ways others are going to ascertain how things turned out is by how you present yourself.
• This is why developing the ability to act in ways that you may not feel at the moment, described in chapter 7, is such an important skill. You want to convey that everything is fine and under your control, even under dire circumstances.
• People want to associate with winners. At the very moment when you have suffered a reversal in fortune and most need help, the best way to attract that help is to act as if you are going to triumph in the end.
• An important lesson: if you are going to misbehave in any way, do so before you achieve a high-level position that makes you the object of constant attention by peers, subordinates, superiors, and the media.
• holding a position of power means that more than your job performance is being carefully watched—although that happens, too. Every aspect of your life, including how you dress, where you live, how you spend your time, who you choose to spend time with, what your children do, what you drive, how you act in completely non-job-related domains, will draw scrutiny.
• Another cost of visibility is distraction of effort. People are interested in their reputation and image. Consequently, they spend time on impression management.
• Building and maintaining power requires time and effort, there are no two ways about it.
• Research shows that being married and having children has either no effect or a positive effect on men’s careers, while most studies show a negative impact on the careers of women from being married and having children.
• Put simply, you can’t have it all, and the quest for power entails trade-offs, including in one’s personal life.
• Here’s a simple truth: the higher you rise and the more powerful the position you occupy, the greater the number of people who will want your job. Consequently, holding a position of great power creates a problem: who do you trust?
• the higher you rise in an organization, the more people are going to tell you that you are right. This leads to an absence of critical thought and makes it difficult for senior leaders to get the truth—a problem both for the company and its leaders, as you can’t address problems if you don’t know about them.
• When you are in power, you should probably trust no single person in your organization too much, unless you are certain of their loyalty and that they are not after your job.
• In the center of frenetic energy and attention, it is difficult not to lose one’s identity and values.
• Power is addictive, in both a psychological and physical sense.
• The CEO position, particularly in the United States, has become extremely powerful.
• The old saying “Power corrupts” turns out to be mostly true, although “corrupt” is probably not quite the right word.
• One lesson from the growing number of studies on the effects of power is how little it takes to get people into a power mind-set where they engage in all kinds of disrespectful and rude behavior.
• Overconfidence and insensitivity lead to losing power, as people become so full of themselves that they fail to attend to the needs of those whose enmity can cause them problems. Conversely, not letting power go to your head and acting as if you were all-powerful can help you maintain your position.
• Having a position of formal authority or even being right is not going to win you the support of those whose mistakes you have called out.
• When you are powerful and successful, you are overconfident and less observant—and one specific manifestation of such tendencies is to trust what others tell you and rely on their assurances. As you become less vigilant and paranoid about others’ intentions, they have the opportunity to take you out of your position of power.
• One way to figure out how much to trust people is to look at what they do. As the saying goes, “Actions speak louder than words.”
• It’s easier to lose your patience when you are in power—power leads to disinhibition, to not watching what you say and do, to being more concerned about yourself than about the feelings of others. But losing patience causes people to lose control and offend others, and that can cost them their jobs.
• If you feel yourself getting tired or burned out and you hold a position of substantial power, you might as well leave.
• People—and companies—fall into competency traps.
• The combination of diminished vigilance and changed circumstances often leads to the loss of power.
• You cannot always completely control how much power you maintain, but you can leave your position with dignity and thereby influence your legacy.
• there is lots of data to suggest that organizations don’t care very much about you.
• Research shows what common sense suggests is true: political struggles are more likely to occur and to be more fierce and power is used more often when resources are scarcer and therefore there is more struggle over their allocation.
• The lesson is clear: you should always watch your back, but be particularly wary and sensitive to what is occurring during times of economic stress. That is when political turmoil and the use of power are likely to be at their peak.
• The employer-employee relationship has profoundly changed over the past several decades, not just in the United States but in many countries. In ways big and small, both implicitly and explicitly, employers and their leaders have told their employees that they themselves are responsible for their own careers and, in many instances, their own health care and retirement.
• You need to take care of yourself and use whatever means you have to do so—after all, that has been the message of companies and business pundits for years. Take those admonitions seriously.
• The prestige and power that come from achieving a senior position will generalize to some extent to other contexts, providing you with status there as well.
• Getting things done under circumstances where you lack direct line authority requires influence and political skills—a knowledge of organizational dynamics—not just technical skills and knowledge.
• There are only two ways to resolve the inevitable disagreements about what to do and how to do it—through the imposition of hierarchical authority in which the boss gets to make the decision, or through a more political system in which various interests vie for power, with those with the most power most affecting the final choices.
• Building power does not require extraordinary actions or amazing brilliance. Instead, as comedian, actor, and movie director Woody Allen has noted, “Eighty percent of success is showing up.”
• Once you engage in activities, including activities involved in acquiring power, those things become part of your identity and repertoire of skills.
• It’s important for you to find the right place given your aptitude and interests. Some jobs require more political skill than others.
• As decades-old research in social psychology illustrates, conformity pressures are strong. And so are the pressures of informational social influence: if everyone else is doing something, it must be because that is the right or smart thing to do. For you to do something else is to turn your back on their collective wisdom.
• to pick the right place for yourself, you must be objective not only about yourself but about the job and its risks and opportunities.
• Because we see what we want to see, we may not accurately assess the political risks of a job—and suffer the consequences.
• You need to be realistic about the political risks, not just to you but to those to whom you are tied, if you want to build a path to power.
• You need to be in a job that fits and doesn’t come with undue political risks, but you also need to do the right things in that job. Most important, you need to claim power and not do things that give yours away.
• If you feel powerful, you will act and project power and others will respond accordingly. If you feel powerless, your behavior will be similarly self-confirming.
• one of the ways in which you can claim power is through your demeanor and voice—how you come across.
• When we tell ourselves that our problems are caused by others, we spend time on why we can’t be successful. When instead we focus on what we can do, we spend time on being successful.”
• People give away their power by not trying. If you don’t try, you can’t fail—which protects your self-esteem. But not trying guarantees failure to win the competition for power and status.
• I am convinced that we are frequently our own biggest barriers to having as much power as we would like simply because we don’t make sufficient effort to build ourselves up.
• Taking care of yourself sometimes means acting in ways that may seem selfish.
• People align with who they think is going to win. If you don’t stand up for yourself and actively promote your own interests, few will be willing to be on your side.
• Throughout this book we have seen that it’s often the little things that matter.
• The people who pay attention to these small things have an edge in creating power.
• Stop waiting for things to get better or for other people to acquire power and use it in a benevolent fashion to improve the situation. It’s up to you to find—or create—a better place for yourself. And it’s up to you to build your own path to power.
• So seek power as if your life depends on it. Because it does.
• Each year during the winter quarter I teach a class titled “The Paths to Power.” The course outline is publicly available. Go to my personal home page, http://faculty-gsb.stanford.edu/pfeffer/. There is a link on the left-hand side of the page that will take you directly to the most recent version of the course.