Key Takeaways:
Three ideas from me:
- “Stop worrying about how long it will take and get started. Time will pass either way.”
- “What is the real goal? The real goal is not to “beat the market.” The goal is to build wealth. The real goal is not to read more books. The goal is to understand what you read. Don’t let a proxy become the target. Don’t optimize for the wrong outcome.”
- “Without hard work, a great strategy remains a dream. Without a great strategy, hard work becomes a nightmare.”
Two quotes from others:
Focus:
“Concentrate all your thoughts upon the work at hand. The sun’s rays do not burn until brought to a focus.”
Perseverance:
“‘History has failed us, but no matter’ serves as my thesis statement. I believe history has failed almost everybody who is ordinary in the world … I am also arguing that the discipline of history has failed. It is not that historians aren’t doing their jobs but rather that the memory of history has been reconstructed by the elite, because the overwhelming majority of ordinary people rarely leave sufficient primary documents; they do not have others recording their lives in real time. The phrase ‘but no matter’ is a statement of defiance. It doesn’t matter that history has failed us because ordinary people have persisted anyway. This idea gives me an enormous amount of strength and hope as a writer because I am an ordinary person. Those of us who may be women of color, immigrants, or working class aren’t often meant to be people who write novels about ideas, but no matter.”
One question for you:
- Am I being good to myself?