Here’s how to live: Be independent.

Crowds are hysterical, and inbreed opinions. Don’t be a part of any group. Don’t take sides on any fight. Instead of standing out from the crowd, just avoid and ignore the crowd. Avoid social media and the zeitgeist. Its stupidity will infect you. Don’t align with any religion, philosophy, or political stance. Stay unlabeled and unbound.

You don’t see things as they are. You see them as you are. Change yourself and you change the world.

Learn the skills you need to be self-reliant. Learn to drive, fly, sail, garden, fish, and camp. Learn emergency medical and disaster preparedness. Assume nobody will help you.

Don’t depend on any company, especially not the big tech giants. Use only open-source software and open communication protocols. Keep your own backups. Get your own domain. Run your own server.

Make friends wherever you go, so that no one place has all of your friends.

Own your own business with many small customers to avoid depending on any big client. Offer products, not a personal service, so your business can run without you. Create many sources of income like this.

Eventually, you will have done it. You’ll be absolutely free and independent. It’s the ultimate liberation. Then you can appreciate everything from a healthy distance. You can appreciate your country from abroad, once it’s not your only option. You can appreciate family, once they’re not forced upon you. You can laugh at the hysteria of the crowd, and learn from it too. You can take sides in a fight, with a smirk. You can even take responsibility for someone else.

Here’s how to live: Commit.

You’ve been looking for the best person, place, or career. But seeking the best is the problem. No choice is inherently the best. What makes something the best choice? You. You make it the best through your commitment to it. Your dedication and actions make any choice great. This is a life-changing epiphany. You can stop seeking the best option. Pick one and irreversibly commit. Then it becomes the best choice for you. Voilà.

When a decision is irreversible, you feel better about it. When you’re stuck with something, you find what’s good about it. When you can’t change your situation, you change your attitude towards it. So remove the option to change your mind.

Ignore other aspects of your life. Let go of every unnecessary obligation. Each one seems small, but together, they’ll drain your soul. Focus your attention on the few things you’re committed to, and nothing else.

Once you decide what’s important to you, you know how your ideal self will act and what your ideal day will be. So why not act that way and live that day every day? Commit to your habits to make them rituals. If it’s not important, never do it. If it’s important, do it every day.

Here’s how to live: Fill your senses.

Never have the same thought twice. Keep nothing on your mind. Just take in what’s around you now. Have no expectation of how something should be, or you won’t see how it really is.

Here’s how to live: Do nothing.

Change your need to change things. In your most peaceful moments, your mind is quiet. You’re not thinking you should be doing anything else. When everything feels perfect, you say, “I wouldn’t change a thing.” So, live your whole life in this mindset.

Most actions are a pursuit of emotions. You think you want to take action or own a thing. But what you really want is the emotion you think it’ll bring. Skip the actions. Go straight for the emotion. Practice feeling emotions intentionally, instead of using actions to create them. You don’t need marriage to feel security. Marriage doesn’t make you secure. You don’t need recognition to feel pride. Recognition doesn’t give you pride. You don’t need a beach to feel tranquility. Places don’t make emotions. You do.

Here’s how to live: Think super-long-term.

Serve the future. Do small things now with huge benefits for your older self, your descendants, and future generations. Actions amplify through time to have a massive impact on the future. Let this fact guide your life. Use a time machine in your mind, constantly picturing your future self and your great-grandchildren’s world. Act now to influence that time.

Imagine your future self judging your current life choices. When making a decision, ask yourself how you’ll feel about it when you’re old. What would your future self and family thank you for? Simple actions now will compound to give them a better life. Delay

We overestimate what we can do in one year. We underestimate what we can do in ten years. If you take up a new hobby at the age of forty, or whatever age you think is too late, you’ll be an expert by the age of sixty.

You owe your quality of life to people in past generations. We say someone is lucky if they are born into a rich family, in a stable country, full of opportunity. But that luck was created by the grandparents that moved to that promising place, then worked hard and saved money for the next generation instead of spending it themselves. Make your grandchildren lucky like this. Move to a place with good values that’s headed in the right direction.

Plan your death. Write your will now. Make sure your heirs know where everything is, and who to contact.

Here’s how to live: Intertwine with the world.

You have kindreds scattered around the world. People who are weird like you are spread out everywhere. One of the best feelings in life is to meet someone who grew up in an opposite culture but has your same humor, thoughts, or taste.

You can’t see your own culture while you’re inside of it. Once you get out and look back, you can see which parts of your personality actually come from your environment.

Ask questions until you understand why things are the way they are. Culture is often historical. Like a person’s outlook on life is shaped by what they’ve been through, a culture’s values are shaped by its recent history. Learn the local mindset.

If you eventually need a permanent home, choose the place you’d want to be if everything goes wrong. Choose a culture that values what you value.

Here’s how to live: Make memories.

You recently had a day, or even a month, that you can’t remember. If I asked what you did then, you couldn’t say. There was nothing unusual about it. What if you have many more of those? What if, when you’re older, you can’t recall entire years? If you can’t remember something, it’s like it never happened. You could have a long healthy life, but if you can’t remember it, it’s like you had a short life. What a horrible way to live.

When you’re young, time goes slowly because everything is new. When you get older, time flies by, forgotten, because you’re not having as many new experiences. You need to prevent this. Monotony is the enemy. Novelty is the solution. Go make memories.

Journal every day. Write down your activities, thoughts, and feelings for future reference.

Turn your experiences into stories. A story is the remains of an experience. Make your stories entertaining, so people like to hear them. By telling good stories, your memories can last longer, because people will echo them back to you occasionally, or ask you to tell them again.

Your memories are a mix of fact and fiction. Your story about an experience overwrites your memory of the actual experience. So use this in your favor. Re-write your past. Embellish adventures. Disempower trauma. Re-write your stories into whatever works for you. Remember only what you want to remember. You have the right to reframe.

Here’s how to live: Master something.

Mastery is the best goal because the rich can’t buy it, the impatient can’t rush it, the privileged can’t inherit it, and nobody can steal it. You can only earn it through hard work. Mastery is the ultimate status.

Striving makes you happy. Pursuit is the opposite of depression. People at the end of their life, who said they were the happiest with their life, were the ones who had spent the most time in the flow of fascinating work.

The more you learn about something, the more there is to learn. You see what normal people don’t see. The path gets more and more interesting as you go.

If you haven’t decided what to master, pick anything that scares you, fascinates you, or infuriates you. Don’t ask, “Is this the real me?” or “Is this my passion?” Those questions lead to endless searching and disappointment. People don’t fail by choosing the wrong path — they fail by not choosing. Make your choice, then make a lifetime commitment to constant improvement. The passion comes after you start getting good.

You need ritual, not inspiration. Every day, no matter what, you must practice. Your practice ritual is your highest priority — an unbreakable commitment. Stubbornly protect this time against the demands of the world.

Once you get momentum, never stop. It’s easy to continue, but if you stop, it’s hard to start again. Never miss a day.

Focus means head down. Big picture means head up. The more you’re doing of one, the less you’re doing of the other. If you’ve been head-down on a task for too long, lift your head up to make sure you’re going the right way. Don’t do well what you shouldn’t do at all.

Pursuing mastery is ambitious, which helps your chance of success. Most people fail in life not by aiming too high, but by aiming too low. If you aim high and miss, you don’t actually fail.

Don’t live somewhere pleasant surrounded by normal people. Live among your fellow freaks, where obsession is normal and ambition is rewarded.

Here’s how to live: Let randomness rule.

Randomize your life. Use a random generator — an app, a roll of the dice, or a shuffled deck of cards — to make all of your life’s decisions. Choose a life where you choose nothing. Let the random generator decide what you do, where you go, and who you meet. It’ll scramble your habits. It’ll break the myth of causality. It’ll guide you to see places you’d never ordinarily see, and do what you never would have done. Randomness keeps your mind open and observant. You can’t predict, so you see clearly. You can’t use old solutions and rules-of-thumb. You can’t blame karma, astrology, demons, saints, anyone or anything else. You can’t think there’s a master plan. Instead, you’ll calculate probability. You’ll be hyper-aware that statistics apply to all of us, and we’re more average than we think. Life is determined not by causes, but by randomness and odds. By taking a minute to do the math, you’ll have a clearer understanding of why things are the way they are.

Randomness helps you learn acceptance. You can’t take the blame for failures. You can’t take credit for successes. You can’t regret what you didn’t cause. How liberating to not decide and not predict anything. Stoics and Buddhists work hard to feel indifferent to outcomes. But you’ll feel detachment as a natural side effect of every day being random. Since nothing has consequences, you’ll greet everything with healthy indifference. Neither upset nor joy — just seeing it as it is. Thanks to randomness, you’ll know that none of it has meaning. You’ll be living a lesson that everyone should learn. Random stuff happens. All you can control is your response. Every day, you’ll practice how to react to chaos: with dignity, poise, and grace.

Here’s how to live: Pursue pain.

Everything good comes from some kind of pain. Muscle fatigue makes you healthy and strong. The pain of practice leads to mastery. Difficult conversations save your relationships. But if you avoid pain, you avoid improvement. Avoid embarrassment, and you avoid success. Avoid risk, and you avoid reward.

Choose pain in small doses to build your resistance to it. A daily ritual of hard exercise gives a great perspective on life’s other pains. Put yourself into stressful situations. Eventually, almost nothing will seem stressful.

Socially, try to get rejected. Learn about “rejection therapy”. Make audacious requests that you think will be denied. This removes the pain of rejection. And you’ll be surprised how often they say yes.

Be absolutely honest with everyone. Stop lying, completely. You lie when you’re afraid. You lie to avoid consequences. Always say the truth. Take the painful consequences.

Since you can’t avoid problems, just find good problems. Happiness isn’t everlasting tranquility. Happiness is solving good problems. That’s why we play games. Games are challenges. Any challenge can be turned into a game.

The easy road leads to a hard future. The hard road leads to an easy future. Steering towards the pain is how to live.

Here’s how to live: Do whatever you want now.

People think they’ll do something later. They think they’ll have more time in the future than they do today, as if later is a magical time when everything will happen. Forget the whole notion of the future. There is only today. If you want to do something, do it now. If you don’t want to do it now, then you don’t want to do it at all, so let it go.

Happiness is something to do, someone to love, and something to desire. Heaven is not what’s at the end of the path. Heaven is the path itself. Doing whatever you want, at every moment, is how to live.

Here’s how to live: Be a famous pioneer.

This is the power of the pioneer: To enable the impossible. To open a new world of possibility. To show others that they can do it too, and take it even further. Explorers used to find unknown lands and bring back stories of unfamiliar cultures, which encouraged others to go exploring. The old finish line becomes the new starting line.

So if you want to help humanity while having the most exciting life, then the way to live is to be a famous pioneer. Go to new extremes. Try new ideas. Visit undiscovered cultures. Show what can be done. Your job is not just to act, but to tell a fascinating story of how you did so, and inspire others to do it. Make great adventures, but tell greater stories. Pursue massive media attention, not for vanity or ego, but so your stories can open minds, spark imaginations, and lead to further explorations.

Here’s how to live: Chase the future.

Live in the world of tomorrow. Surround yourself only with what’s brand new and upcoming. That’s where life is made. It’s the most optimistic environment, full of hope and promises. It’s the smartest way to live. You’re moving forward in time, so you should watch where you’re headed. Go where things are going. It’s the most exciting way to live. Every day will be like a child’s birthday, with surprising new breakthroughs. It keeps your brain healthy, young, and active. Since everything will always be new, you won’t rely on assumptions or habits. You’ll pay full attention and keep learning every day.

Oppose convention because that’s how things were. Slavery was a convention. Human sacrifice was a convention. Denying human rights to women was a convention. Some day our current conventions will seem as wrong as these. Since you live in the future, start condemning them now.

Here’s how to live: Value only what has endured.

Only the strong survive, so what’s still here after decades is proven to be well-made and well-loved. The longer something lasts, the more people know and depend on it, solidifying its place in our world. Only these proven things are worth your time and attention.

The pleasure of buying a new thing disappears in days, even hours. So much misery comes from indulgences in current junk. So the way to live is to ignore everything new. All of it. Let the test of time filter everything. Value only what has endured.

Ignore all news. If it’s important, there will eventually be a good book about it. When people ask you about current news, proudly have no opinion. Admit you’ve given it no thought at all — and don’t plan to — because it’s not important. Indulging is common. Refraining is rare.

Live in the past. Watch the greatest movies of all time. Read the classics. Listen to the legends. These things have lasted because they work so well. Time is the best filter.

Before trying to improve something old, find out why it is the way it is. Never assume people in the past were ignorant. They did it that way for good reasons. Study the past — understand Chesterton’s fence — before thinking you know better.

Learn time-tested skills that were just as useful in your grandparents’ time as they are today. Speaking, writing, gardening, accounting, persuasion, and survival skills. These skills have hardly changed in a century. They’re unlikely to change in your lifetime.

Master the fundamentals, not new tricks. Learn the timeless aspects of your craft. This knowledge will never lose its value. In any given field, learn the oldest thing still around, since it’s the one most likely to last.

Here’s how to live: Learn.

You get healthy by learning healthy habits. You get wealthy by learning valuable skills. You build a great interpersonal life by learning people skills. Most misery comes from not learning these things.

The biggest obstacle to learning is assuming you already know. Confidence is usually ignorance. Never consider yourself an expert. It’s the strong swimmers who drown. Don’t believe what you think. Have questions, not answers. Doubt everything. The easiest person to fool is yourself.

If you’re not embarrassed by what you thought last year, you need to learn more and faster. When you’re really learning, you’ll feel stupid and vulnerable — like a hermit crab between shells.

Whatever scares you, go do it. Then it won’t scare you anymore. Whatever you hate, get to know it. Then you won’t hate it anymore. Talk with people you usually avoid. Pursue subjects you know nothing about, and experiences unlike anything you’ve done before. If you’re not surprised — if you didn’t feel your brain changing — then you didn’t really learn.

Take notes. Review them often. Make flash cards to remind your future self what you learned today. Quiz yourself with spaced repetition. Knowledge fades and eventually disappears unless you keep it refreshed.

Communicate knowledge to others to make sure you understand. Don’t quote. Put it in your own words without looking up or referencing what others said. If you can’t explain it yourself, you don’t know it.

To communicate clearly, you have to think clearly. Writing is refined thinking. Public speaking tests your writing on a real audience. Great public speaking comes from great private thinking.

Here’s how to live: Follow the great book.

You know what your great book is. Whether the Bible, Tanakh, Upanishads, Quran, Think and Grow Rich, Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, or another, follow it diligently. Your book is wiser than you. It’s describing natural law — the way our world works. It’s not just someone’s opinion. It has the definitive answers to the choices you’re confronted with each day. Don’t think you know better.

Your book was meant for people exactly like you. You’re not an exception to humanity. Its rules apply to you. It guides you on a good life.

You don’t lack direction. You have too many directions. An open mind, like an open mouth, needs to eventually close on something. Stop swerving and chasing new leaders. Stay on a single steady path. Following your book is how to live.

Following rules is smart. It’s efficient. You don’t need to stop and re-think every situation.

Rules must be absolutely unbreakable. If you try to decide, each time, whether it’s OK to break the rule or not, then you’ve missed the whole point of rules. Rules are to save you from deciding. That’s why hard rules are easier to keep.

Here’s how to live: Laugh at life.

Humor is the spirit of life — a sign of a healthy, vibrant mind and soul. Humor means using your mind beyond necessity, beyond reality, for both noticing and imagining. That’s why we admire a quick wit. It shows you quickly looked at something from many angles, found the one that amused you the most, and considerately expressed it to someone else. Observation, creativity, and empathy, all in an instant. What could be a better sign of a healthy mind?

To laugh at something is to be superior to it. Humor shows internal control.

No matter what you need to do, there’s a playful, creative way to do it. Playing gives you personal autonomy and power.

A bad situation can feel all-consuming. A laugh shows you’ve escaped. Humor puts distance between an event and yourself. Comedy is tragedy plus time. Time belittles anything by showing it’s not as bad as it seemed. Humor does that instantly.

Besides, it makes you very appealing. Everyone wants to be with someone who’s having more fun.

Here’s how to live: Prepare for the worst.

Things are going to get harder. The future will test your strength. So far, you’ve lived in a time of prosperity. You haven’t experienced massive devastation, but you probably will. It’ll be harder to make money. It’ll be harder to be happy. Much of what you love now will be gone. You’ll look back at this year as one of the easiest you ever had. You’ll get injured or sick, losing some of your ability to see, hear, move, or think. You’ll wish for the health you have now. How can you thrive in an unknowable future? Prepare for the worst. Train your mind to be ready for whatever may come. This is how to live.

The future is unpredictable and uncontrollable. Picture all the things that could go wrong. Prepare for each, so they won’t surprise or hurt you. Never worry. This isn’t emotional. Just anticipate and prepare.

Vividly imagine the worst scenarios until they feel real. Accepting them is the ultimate happiness and security. Realize that the worst is not that bad.

To appreciate something fully, picture losing it. Imagine losing your freedom, reputation, money, and home. Imagine losing your ability to see, hear, walk, or talk. Imagine the people you love dying tomorrow. Never take them for granted.

Luxury is the enemy of happiness because you adapt to its comforts. Luxury makes you soft, weak, and harder to satisfy. (Pity people who can’t enjoy anything less than the best.) Never accept luxury, or you’ll find it hard to do without because it will feel like loss.

Practice being uncomfortable, even in small ways. Take the stairs instead of the elevator. Skip eating for a day, or sugar for a month. Go light-weight camping for a week. Befriend discomfort so that you’ll never fear it.

Your circumstances in life don’t actually change your happiness. People who become paralyzed or win the lottery go back to being as happy as they were before. So don’t depend on circumstances. Everything that happens is neutral. Your beliefs label it as good or bad. The only way to change your happiness is to change your beliefs.

Did someone make you angry? Did a situation make you sad? No. It’s all you. Nothing is good or bad. You just reacted as if it was. When something bad happens, ask, “What’s great about this?” Instead of changing the world, just change your reactions.

When something happens, don’t interpret. No story, no “should have”, no judgment, not even an opinion. This is seeing clearly. Your goal is grateful indifference. Win the lottery? Go to jail? Get famous? Go blind in an accident? It doesn’t matter because you’re fine either way. Detach from the outcome and be OK no matter what happens.

Here’s how to live: for others.

Even if you prefer solitude, you have to admit that being a valuable member of a group is smarter. The best way to be safe is to help others be safe. The best way to be connected is to help others be connected. People look out for each other. But nobody helps the unhelpful. You can’t actually pull yourself up by your bootstraps. Ultimately you are lifted by those around you.

Psychologists, philosophers, and religions all agree on one thing. Helping others is a better path to happiness than helping only yourself. Giving makes you happier than receiving. People with strong social ties live longer, healthier, happier lives. The most miserable people are self-absorbed. So aim to be the opposite.

After age twenty, you need deliberate effort to make new friends. Friends are made, not found. If you sincerely appreciate someone, and really engage with their interests, you will become friends. Ask open-ended questions, asking people’s thoughts. Ask them to elaborate on whatever they’ve said. Show that you’re interested. Allow silence. Don’t fill it. Silence gives space to think, and an invitation to contribute without pressure. Small talk is just a way of matching the other person’s tone and mood. It helps them be comfortable with you.

Be warm, open, and fully present with everyone you encounter. Confidence attracts. Vulnerability endears. Assume everyone is just as smart and deep as you. Assume their temperament is just their nature, and not their fault. Don’t be mad at them for being that way, for the same reason you can’t be mad at someone for being tall.

Whenever you’re thinking something nice about someone, tell them. A sincere compliment can put a lot of fuel in someone’s tank. People don’t hear enough compliments.

Here’s how to live: Get rich.

Money is nothing more than a neutral exchange of value. Making money is proof you’re adding value to people’s lives. Aiming to get rich is aiming to be useful to the world. It’s striving to do more for others. Serving more. Sharing more. Contributing more. The world rewards you for creating value. Pursue wealth because it’s moral, good, and unlimited.

Numbers reveal truth and opportunity. With every business idea you have or hear, do the math to run the projections and implications. Study profitable companies the way an artist studies great art. Apply their best techniques to your own pursuit. Doing the math helps you think critically, be realistic, and make better decisions.

The world is full of money. There’s no shortage. So capture the value you create. Charge for what you do. It’s unsustainable to create value without asking anything in return. Remember that many people like to pay. The more something costs, the more people value it. By charging more, you’re actually helping them use it and appreciate it. Charge more than is comfortable to your current self-image. Value yourself higher, then rise to fit this valuation.

Don’t aim to just be comfortable. You don’t make the world a better place by just getting by. If you aim to be comfortable, you won’t get rich. But if you aim to be rich, you’ll also be comfortable. Aiming to be rich makes you think bigger, which is more exciting, more fun, and less conventional since most people don’t think big. The world needs more boldness. Refuse the comfortable addiction of a steady paycheck. Boldly jump on opportunities. Take risky action.

Boring industries have little competition, since most people are seeking status in glamorous new fields. Find an old industry and solve an old problem in a new way. Your innovation might be behind the scenes, like owning the entire supply chain.

Avoid competition. Never be another contender in the crowd, fighting for scraps. It doesn’t pay to do something anyone can do. Be separate — in a category of your own. Invent something completely new. Instead of fighting to split an existing dollar, inventing creates a dollar out of thin air. Invent for a very small niche of people who need something that doesn’t exist. Instead of making a key, then looking for a lock, find something locked, then make its key.

Follow the rising tides of where profits are going. Get in early on an industry that’s developing quickly. More risk, more opportunity, more investors, more rewards.

Money is your servant, not your master. Don’t act rich. Don’t lose touch with regular people. Stay frugal. Reducing your expenses is so much easier than increasing your income. You don’t need to tell anyone you have money. You don’t even need to spend it. Don’t buy too many things, too big of a house, or hire too many people. Rich people who do this feel trapped and miserable. The less you buy, the more you’re in control. Forget lifestyle. Forget yourself. Stay 100% focused on creating value. Everything else is a corrupting distraction.

Here’s how to live: Reinvent yourself regularly.

“I’m an introvert, so that’s why I can’t.” No. Definitions are not reasons. Definitions are just your old responses to past situations. What you call your personality is just a past tendency. New situations need a new response. Are you more emotional or intellectual? Early bird or night owl? Liberal or conservative? No. Disagree with the question. You aren’t supposed to be easy to explain.

The way to live is to regularly reinvent yourself. Every year or two, change your job and move somewhere new. Change the way you eat, look, and talk. Change your preferences, opinions, and usual responses. Try the opposite of before.

At every little decision, ten times a day, choose the thing you haven’t tried. Act out of character. It’s liberating. Get your security not from being an anchor, but from being able to ride the waves of change.

Here’s how to live: Love.

Not love, the feeling, but love the active verb. It’s not something that happens to you. It’s something you do. You choose to love something or someone. You can love anything or anyone you decide to love.

Love is a combination of attention, appreciation, and empathy. To love something, first you have to connect with it. Give it your full attention. Deliberately appreciate it. Try this with places, art, and sounds. Try this with activities and ideas. Try this with yourself. Many times a day, you have the opportunity to connect. You can dash through a place, or stop to appreciate it. You can do an activity absent-mindedly, or pay full attention to every detail of it. (Work is love in action.) You can make shallow small-talk, or really get to know someone. Choose to connect every time. Sharing is connecting. Share your knowledge. Share your home. Share your time.

Learning is loving. The more you learn about something, the more you can love it. Learn about a place to appreciate it. Learn about people to empathize with them. Not just individuals, but cultures, mindsets, and worldviews. If you are apathetic about or against something, learn more about it. Actively listen to people. When they’re succinct, ask them to elaborate. People aren’t used to someone being sincerely interested, so they’ll need some coaxing to continue. But never try to fix them.

Break down the walls that separate you from others and prevent real connections. Take off your sunglasses. Don’t text when you should talk. Avoid habitual comebacks and clichés. Admit what you’re really feeling, even when it’s uncomfortable. Keep communicating instead of shutting down. We think walls protect us from enemies, but walls are what create enemies in the first place.

Between any two people is a third thing: the relationship itself. Actively nurture it. If you improve it, it will improve you. Once you’re in a relationship, avoid harming it. It’s easy to love someone’s best qualities, but it’s work to love their flaws. Don’t try to change someone, or teach them a lesson, unless they ask you to. When one of you is being childish, the other needs to be the adult. Like a dance, you can’t both dip at the same time. One of you has to stay upright to keep the other from collapsing.

Here’s how to live: Create.

The way to live is to create. Die empty. Get every idea out of your head and into reality. Calling yourself creative doesn’t make it true. All that matters is what you’ve launched. Make finishing your top priority. When most people see modern art, they think, “I could do that!” But they didn’t. That is the difference between consumer and creator. Which would you rather be? Someone who hasn’t created anything in years because you’re so busy consuming? Or someone who hasn’t consumed anything in years because you’re so busy creating?

Don’t wait for inspiration. Inspiration will never make the first move. She comes only when you’ve shown you don’t need her. Do your work every day, no matter what. Suspend all judgment when creating the first draft. Just get to the end. It’s better to create something bad than nothing at all. You can improve something bad. You can’t improve nothing. Most of what you make will be fertilizer for the few that turn out great. But you won’t know which is which until afterward. Keep creating as much as you can. Creativity is a magic coin. The more you spend, the more you have.

Stay in situations where you’re forced to show your work to others.

Here’s how to live: Don’t die.

There’s only one law of nature: if you survive, you win. Be paranoid. Avoid failure to survive. For something to succeed, everything needs to go right. For something to fail, only one thing needs to go wrong. Don’t try to be more right. Just be less wrong. Avoiding failure leads to success. The winner is usually the one who makes the least mistakes. This is true in investing, extreme skiing, business, flying, and many other fields. Win by not losing.

Here’s how to live: Make a million mistakes.

You learn best from your mistakes. This is true. So you should deliberately make as many mistakes as possible. Try absolutely everything, all the time, expecting everything to fail. Just make sure that you capture the lessons from each experience. And never make the same mistake twice.

Writers say you should quickly finish a bad first draft, because it gets the idea out of your head and into reality, where it can then be improved. Live your whole life this way. Jump into action without hesitation or worry. You’ll be faster and do more than everyone else. What takes them a month will take you an hour, so you can do it ten times a day.

Just keep a log. A mistake only counts as experience if you learn from it. Record what you learned, and review it. Otherwise, it was a waste.

Create predicaments. Get into trouble. Being desperate leads to creative solutions.

This gives you emotional stability. No mistake will upset you. You’ll never think that a failed attempt means you’re a failure. The people devastated by failure are the ones who didn’t expect it. They mistakenly think failure is who they are instead of the result of one attempt. If you’re prepared for endless failures, you’ll never think of yourself as a failure.

Your growth zone is your failure zone. Both are at the edge of your limits. That’s where you find a suitable challenge. Aim for what will probably fail. If you aim for what you know you can do, you’re aiming too low.

Here’s how to live: Make change.

People dream or complain about how the world should be, but nothing improves without action. You have to go change things yourself. People say the world is the way it is, and that’s just how it’s going to be. They’re hopeless, complacent, or entrenched. They expect life to stay within its current boundaries and rules. But all progress comes from those who ignore the boundaries, break the rules, or make a whole new game.

This gives you a new perspective on work. Work is whatever you want to change.

Go where there’s a revolution. That’s where people are questioning old norms, and looking for new solutions. Creativity comes from shaking things up. People that were left out of the old game can get in early on the new game.

Changing culture makes revolution. But it’s not a revolution if nobody loses. Someone will have to lose. People will be furious. When the bad people are mad, you’re doing it right. In

Here’s how to live: Balance everything.

Virtue is in the balance between extremes. Between the insecure and the egomaniac: confidence. Between the uptight and the clown: grace. Between the coward and the daredevil: courage. Between selfishness and sacrifice: generosity. So, the way to live is to balance everything. Imagine the different aspects of your life as the spokes in a wheel: health, wealth, intellectual, emotional, spiritual, or however you divide it. If any of these are lacking, it makes a lopsided, wobbly wheel, causing you to crash. But if you keep the parts of your life balanced, your wheel is round, and you can roll easily.

Schedule everything to ensure balance of your time and effort. Scheduling prevents procrastination, distraction, and obsession. A schedule makes you act according to the goals of your highest self, not your passing mood. Schedule quality time with dear friends. Schedule preventative health checkups. Schedule focused time to learn. Schedule each aspect of your life, ignoring none. List what makes you happy and fulfilled, then schedule those things into your year. The balanced schedule protects you from hurting yourself, from getting overwhelmed and ignoring important needs. You won’t over-work, over-play, or over-indulge.

Even creative work needs scheduling. The greatest writers and artists didn’t wait for inspiration. They kept a strict daily schedule for creating their art. A routine triggers inspiration because your mind and body learn that ideas emerge at that time. The world’s greatest achievements were squeezed into existence by deadlines. Set an alarm to start and stop on time. Obey your schedule, no matter how you feel. Schedule every hour of your day. Distraction steals what’s not locked down.

By balancing everything in your life, you postpone nothing. You won’t postpone happiness, dreams, love, or expression. You could die happy at any time. Balancing everything is how to live.