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3 IDEAS FROM ME

I.

“Instead of working toward retirement, work toward your ideal lifestyle. There is usually a path to get there in a few years instead of a few decades.”



II.

“It’s usually more important to be in the right room than to be the smartest person in the room.

A person with great judgment and average intelligence will usually beat someone with great intelligence and average judgment.

Judgment is knowing what room to be in.”



III.

“Improvement is a battle that must be fought anew each day.

Your next workout doesn’t care how strong your last one was.

Your next essay doesn’t care how popular your last one was.

Your next investment doesn’t care how smart your last one was.

Your best effort, again.”

2 QUOTES FROM OTHERS

I.

Poet Lucille Clifton on confidence:

“What they call you is one thing. What you answer to is something else.”

Source: Fooling With Words



II.

The painter Vincent van Gogh on taking action:

“I tell you, if one wants to be active, one mustn’t be afraid to do something wrong sometimes, not afraid to lapse into some mistakes. To be good — many people think that they’ll achieve it by doing no harm — and that’s a lie, and you said yourself in the past that it was a lie. That leads to stagnation, to mediocrity…

You don’t know how paralyzing it is, that stare from a blank canvas that says to the painter, “You can’t do anything.” The canvas has an idiotic stare, and mesmerizes some painters so that they turn into idiots themselves. Many painters are afraid of the blank canvas, but the blank canvas is afraid of the truly passionate painter who dares — and who has once broken the spell of “You can’t.”

Life itself likewise always turns towards one an infinitely meaningless, discouraging, dispiriting blank side on which there is nothing, any more than on a blank canvas. But however meaningless and vain, however dead life appears, the man of faith, of energy, of warmth, and who knows something, doesn’t let himself be fobbed off like that. He steps in and does something…”

Source: Ever Yours: The Essential Letters

1 QUESTION FOR YOU

What are you working on when time fades away?

Until next week,

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

p.s. When one door closes…

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