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INTRODUCTION

Who is this book for?

This book is ideal for everyone who wants to learn practical skills and knowledge faster than formal schooling, at the fraction of the expected college tuition fees.

About the author

Scott Young is the author of Wall Street Journal and National best selling book Ultralearning. He has been a prolific writer on his blog since 2006, where he writes about learning, productivity, career, habits and living well. He is known for documenting learning challenges such as learning a 4-year MIT computer science degree in one year, learning four languages in one year and learning to draw portraits in 30 days. His work has been featured in TEDx, The New York Times, Lifehacker, Popular Mechanics and Business Insider.

In this summary

Ultralearning is a fascinating and inspiring read. Scott Young has compiled a gold mine of 9 actionable strategies for learning hard things faster. Ready to explore them and find out how we could, too, become an Ultralearner?

Let’s dive in!

Introduction

Ultralearning means pursuing intense, self-directed learning projects, to acquire skills & knowledge fast. It isn’t easy. You’ll need to make time for it (I know you’re busy) and be forced to meet frustrations associated with change & personal growth.

Ultralearning will strain you mentally, emotionally, and possibly even physically. Let’s face, though…

Your deepest moments of happiness don’t come from doing easy things. Ultralearning offers a path to master those things that will bring you deep satisfaction and self-confidence. Ultralearning can help you accelerate, transition, or even save your career in an ever-evolving, competitive world.

Above all, ultralearning helps you expand. It gives you confidence that you might be able to do things that you couldn’t do before. There are 9 universal principles that underlie an ultralearning project.

Ready to explore them?

1. Metalearning: First Draw A Map

Start by learning how to learn the subject or skill you want to tackle. Discover how to do good research and how to draw on your past competencies to learn new skills more easily.

Did you know that understanding how vocabulary acquisition works in French will likely also help with learning Chinese?

Over the long term, the more ultralearning projects you do, the more you’ll know your learning capacity, how to manage your schedule, time, & motivation, and you’ll have well-tested strategies for dealing with common problems.

For short-term improvements, break down metalearning research into three questions:

1. Why – Understanding your motivation to learn. Is it instrumental (learning with the purpose of achieving a non-learning result, such as acquiring a skill for a job) or intrinsic (pursuing learning for its own sake, such as playing the guitar for pleasure)? If instrumental, will learning the skill actually help you achieve your goal? Talk to people who have already done what you want to achieve.
2. What – Knowledge and abilities you’ll need to acquire in order to be successful. Create three columns & write down: Concepts: Ideas that need to be understood in flexible ways (not memorised) in order for them to be useful. Facts: Anything that needs to be memorised. Procedures: Actions that need to be performed and may not involve much conscious thinking at all….and underline the bottlenecks & search how to overcome them.
3. How – Resources, environment, and methods you’ll use when learning. Use the methods called Benchmarking (as a default strategy, find common ways in which people already learn the skill or subject) and Emphasise/Exclude (find what aligns with your goals and make modifications to the benchmark strategy”).

Invest 10% of your expected learning time into research prior to starting and continue to research as more bottlenecks appear.2. Focus: Sharpen Your Knife

Cultivate the ability to concentrate. Carve out chunks of time when you can focus on learning, and make it easy to just do it.

People generally struggle with focus in three broad varieties: starting, sustaining, and optimising the quality of their focus.

Not the ultralearners. Here’s how they do it.

1. Failing to Start Focusing (aka Procrastinating)When you procrastinate, instead of doing the thing you’re supposed to, you work on something else or slack off.To solve the issue:

• Recognise when you are procrastinating & keep track of it.
• Ask yourself which strong urge is more powerful in that moment: to do a different activity (e.g. eat something, check your phone, take a nap etc.) or to avoid the thing you should be doing (because you imagine it will be uncomfortable, painful, or frustrating etc.)?
• Start working. It usually only takes a couple of minutes until the worry starts to dissolve, even for fairly unpleasant tasks.

2. Failing to Sustain Focus (aka Getting Distracted)People retain more of what they learn when practice is broken into different studying periods than when it is crammed together.50 minutes to an hour is a good length of time for many learning tasks.

   If you have several hours to study, it’s better to alternate between a few topics rather than focus exclusively on one.

   Finally, beware the distractions from the surrounding environment and negative emotions, restlessness, or daydreaming. Avoid them at all cost.

3. Failing to Create the Right Kind of FocusFor simple tasks or ones that require intense concentration toward a small target (e.g. to throw a dart or shoot a basketball), you need high mental arousal, which creates a feeling of keen alertness.For more complex tasks, such as solving math problems or writing essays, tend to benefit from a more relaxed kind of focus. Working in a quiet room at home might be the ideal environment.

3. Directness: Go Straight Ahead

Learn by doing the thing you want to become good at. Don’t trade it off for other tasks, just because those are more convenient or comfortable.

We study through books, lectures, or apps, hoping they’ll eventually make us better at the real thing.

The easiest way to learn directly is to simply spend a lot of time doing the thing you want to become good at.

Consider the following 4 tactics:

1. Project-Based Learning

If you organise your learning around producing something, you’re guaranteed to at least learn how to produce that thing. Learning to program by creating your own computer game is a perfect example.

2. Immersive Learning

Immersion is the process of surrounding yourself with the target environment in which the skill is practiced. E.g. going to France to learn French.

3. The Flight Simulator Method

For many skills, there’s no way to actually practise the skill directly. In these cases, a simulation of the environment will do the trick.

4. The Overkill Approach

With this approach, you put yourself into an environment where the demands are extremely high, so you’re unlikely to miss any important lessons or feedback. E.g. Competing in the World Championship of Public Speaking.

4. Drill: Attack Your Weakest Point

Be ruthless in improving your weakest points. Break down complex skills into small parts; then master those parts and build them back together again. By identifying a rate-determining step in your learning, you can isolate it and work on it specifically.

For example, when learning a foreign language, vocabulary is a rate-determining step; the number of sentences and ideas you can successfully utter depends on how many words you know. Alternate between learning directly and doing drills on rate-determining steps, and you’ll be approaching mastery with each cycle.

Consider these 5 drills:

1. Time Slicing – The easiest way to create a drill is to isolate a slice in time of a longer sequence of actions. Musicians often do this. They identify the hardest parts of a song, practise them until they’re perfect, and then integrate them back into the whole song.
2. Cognitive Components – Sometimes you’ll want to practise a particular cognitive component, not a slice in time. In this case, drill only one component when, in practice, others would be applied at the same time. For instance, focusing on pronunciation, without applying proper grammar in a sentence or remembering what the words mean.
3. The Copycat – Sometimes it’s impossible to practise one component without also doing the work of the others. By copying the parts of the skill you don’t want to drill (either from someone else or your past work), you can focus exclusively on the component you want to practice.
4. The Magnifying Glass Method – This method is to spend more time on one component of the skill than you would otherwise. E.g. writing 20 alternative subject lines for a sales email, when practising email marketing.
5. Prerequisite Chaining – Many ultralearners start with a skill that they don’t have all the prerequisites for. Then, when they inevitably do poorly, they go back a step, learn one of the foundational topics, and repeat the exercise. This occurs when you start learning pixel art simply by making it. If you start struggling with colours, you learn colour theory, and repeat your work.

6. Retrieval: Test To Learn

Testing isn’t simply a way of assessing knowledge but a way of creating it. Test yourself before you feel confident, and push yourself to actively recall information rather than passively review it.

The research is clear: if you need to recall something later, you’re best off practising retrieving it.

Free recall tests, in which you need to recall as much as you can remember without prompting, tend to result in better retention than cued recall tests, in which you are given hints about what you need to remember.

Cued recall tests, in turn, are better than recognition tests, such as multiple-choice answers, where the correct answer needs to be recognised but not generated.

To practise retrieval, use:

1. Flash Cards – Flash cards are an amazingly simple, yet effective, way to learn paired associations between questions and answers.
2. Free Recall – After reading a section from a book or sitting through a lecture, try to write down everything you can remember on a blank piece of paper.
3. The Question-Book Method – Rephrase what you’ve recorded as questions to be answered later. Instead of writing that the Magna Carta was signed in 1215, write the question “When was the Magna Carta signed?”, with a reference to where to find the answer.
4. Self-Generated Challenges -As you go through your passive material, you can create challenges for yourself to solve later.
5. Closed-Book Learning – Cut off the ability to look things up from the source, and any learning activity can become an opportunity for retrieval.

6. Feedback: Don’t Dodge The Punches

Feedback is harsh and uncomfortable. Know how to use it without letting your ego get in the way. Extract the signal from the noise, so you know what to pay attention to and what to ignore.

Feedback is uncomfortable. However, once you get into the habit of receiving it, it becomes easier to process without overreacting emotionally.

Feedback works well when it provides useful information that can guide future learning.

Here’s 3 different types of feedback ultralearners seek:

1. Outcome Feedback: Are You Doing It Wrong?

This tells you something about how well you’re doing overall but offers no ideas as to what you’re doing better or worse. This kind of feedback can come in the form of a grade—pass/fail, A, B, or C.

Every entrepreneur experiences this kind of feedback when a new product hits the market.

2. Informational Feedback: What Are You Doing Wrong?

This tells you what you’re doing wrong, but it doesn’t necessarily tell you how to fix it. This kind of feedback is easy to obtain when you can get real-time access to a feedback source.

Practising Italian in Italy provides informational feedback: that person’s confused stare when you misuse a word won’t tell you what the correct word is, but it will tell you that you’re getting it wrong.

3. Corrective Feedback: How Can You Fix What You’re Doing Wrong?

This is the best kind of feedback; it shows you not only what you’re doing wrong but how to fix it.

This kind of feedback is often available only through a coach, mentor, or teacher. Flash cards also provide corrective feedback by showing you the answer to a question after you make your guess.

7. Retention: Don’t Fill A Leaky Bucket

Understand what you forget and why. Learn to remember things not just for now but forever.

Being able to understand how something works or how to perform a particular technique is useless if you cannot recall it.

Ebbinghaus’s forgetting curve shows that we tend to forget things incredibly quickly after learning them.

Forgetting is the default, not the exception. Thus, ultralearners developed 4 mechanisms to win the war against forgetting:

Spacing: Repeat to Remember

Spreading learning sessions over more intervals over longer periods of time tends to cause much better performance in the long run.

Many ultralearners apply spaced-repetition systems (SRS) as a tool for retaining facts, trivia, vocabulary words, or definitions.

Spacing does not require complex software; simply printing lists of words, reading them over, and then rehearsing them mentally will do.

Proceduralisation: Automatic Will Endure

Most skills proceed through stages – starting declarative but ending up procedural as you practice more. A perfect example of this is typewriting.

To apply this concept, ensure that a certain amount of knowledge is completely proceduralised before practice concludes, or spend extra effort to proceduralise some skills, which will serve as cues or access points for other knowledge.

Overlearning: Practice Beyond Perfect

Additional practice, beyond what is required to perform adequately, can increase the length of time that memories are stored. Practising a little longer in one session produces an additional week or two of recall.

Mnemonics: A Picture Retains a Thousand Words

Mnemonics are designed to remember very specific patterns of information. They usually involve translating abstract or arbitrary information into vivid pictures or spatial maps.

8. Intuition: Dig Deep Before Building Up

Develop your intuition through play and exploration of concepts and skills. Understand how understanding works, and don’t recourse to cheap tricks of memorisation to avoid deeply knowing things.

Intuition sounds magical, but it’s just the product of a large volume of organised experience & patterns dealing with the problem.

Simply spending a lot of time studying something isn’t enough to create a deep intuition. Here’s a few rules to build your intuition:

1. Don’t Give Up on Hard Problems Easily

Give yourself a “struggle timer” as you work on problems. When you feel like giving up and that you can’t possibly figure out the solution to a difficult problem, set a timer for another ten minutes to push yourself a bit further.

2. Prove Things to Understand Them

You can’t always master things by following other people’s results. Instead, mentally try to re-create those results to deeply understand how they work. Use the Feynman technique to see how well you understand the subject.

3. Always Start with a Concrete Example

Most people learn abstract, general rules only after being exposed to many concrete examples. When it’s not possible to imagine an appropriate example, that’s evidence that you don’t understand something well enough.

4. Don’t Fool Yourself

When you lack knowledge about a subject, you also tend to lack the ability to assess your own abilities. One way to avoid this problem of fooling yourself is simply to ask lots of questions.

9. Experimentation: Explore Outside Your Comfort Zone

True mastery comes not just from following the path trodden by others but from exploring possibilities they haven’t yet imagined.

As your skills develop, you need to experiment and find your own path.

There are three types of experimentation:

1. Experimenting with Learning Resources – Experiment with methods, materials, and resources you use to learn. It is useful in helping you discover what works best for you.
2. Experimenting with Technique – Pick some subtopic within the skill you’re trying to cultivate, spend some time learning it aggressively, and then evaluate your progress. Should you continue in that direction or pick another?
3. Experimenting with Style – Spend time studying and discussing the works of other experts in your field to create a large library of possible styles and ideas you could adapt to your own work.

Conclusion

Key Takeaways

• Ultralearning helps master things that bring deep satisfaction and self-confidence.
• Start by learning how to learn the subject or skill you want to tackle.
• Learn by doing the thing you want to become good at.
• Break down complex skills into small parts; then master those parts and build them back together again.
• Forgetting is the default, not the exception.
• Intuition is the product of a large volume of organised experience & patterns dealing with the problem.
• Carve your own path of mastery through experimentation.

Further Reading

Range by David Epstein. What's the most effective path to success in any domain? The author discovered that in most fields, generalists, not specialists, are primed to excel.

Atomic Habits by James Clear. Atomic Habits will reshape the way you think about progress and success, and give you the tools and strategies you need to transform your habits.

Guidelines is my eBook that summarises the main lessons from 33 of the best-selling self-help books in one place. It is the ultimate book summary; Available as a 80-page ebook and 115-minute audio book. Guidelines lists 31 rules (or guidelines) that you should follow to improve your productivity, become a better leader, do better in business, improve your health, succeed in life and become a happier person.

Action Steps

1. Decide what your first ultralearning project would be and start doing your research.
2. Schedule time in your calendar for your project.
3. Focus and start learning, getting feedback from a coach or mentor.
4. Download the complete book on Amazon.

This summary is not intended as a replacement for the original book and all quotes are credited to the above mentioned author and publisher.

DOWNLOAD THE SUPER HUMAN PDF FOR FREE!

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INTRODUCTION

Who is this book for?

Do you want to dramatically extend your lifespan, get more energy and brainpower than ever, or even… age backwards? This book is written with you in mind.

About the author

Dave Asprey is a Silicon Valley investor, computer security expert, and entrepreneur who spent 15 years and $250,000 to hack his own biology. The Financial Times calls him a “bio-hacker who takes self-quantification to the extreme of self-experimentation.” His writing has been published by the New York Times and Fortune, and he's presented at Wharton, Kellogg, the University of California, and Singularity University. (less)

In this summary

Despite being an experienced biohacker, Asprey’s interventions in Super Human are simple and accessible to all of us: healthy diet, quality sleep, harmful light avoidance, regular exercise, and more. In this summary, we’ll also explore little-known but powerful hacks, from ozone therapy to proper jaw alignment, that can decelerate cellular aging and supercharge your body’s ability to heal and rejuvenate.

Let’s go!

BOOK SUMMARY

INTRODUCTION

What is the first thing you would do if you ever gained control of our own biology? Not die, probably.

The author wants to take things further, aiming to age backward and, finally, heal like a deity, so he can keep getting better with age instead of suffering an inevitable decline.

He wants to go from a mere mortal to a 180-year-old Super Human:

“Someone with the wisdom of age but who heals and regenerates like a teenager.”

Let’s see how he plans to achieve that.

(Disclaimer: before you try any experiment or unlicensed medical approach suggested in the book, first consult with a doctor.)

PART 1. DON’T DIE

The Four Killers

“Aging is death by a thousand cuts”, the author says.

These are the four diseases most likely to leave the deepest cuts as you age:

1. Heart disease (23% risk dying from it),
2. Diabetes (25% risk dying from it),
3. Alzheimer’s (10% risk developing it), and
4. Cancer (40% risk getting it and 20% risk dying from it).

As you age, your mitochondria (responsible for producing lots of energy from the food you eat) become damaged and begin producing an excess of free radicals, which leak into the surrounding cells and lay the groundwork for the Four Killers.

To stop damaging your own body with thousands of (big or small) cuts, focus on the basics:

1. Good nutrition,
2. Quality sleep, and
3. A healthy environment free of toxins that cause more cuts.

Take action now to stop this damage before it stacks up. It’s a lot easier to avoid damage to your mitochondria than it is to reverse it later.

What if you made better choices throughout your life, so you took fewer hits over the course of decades? This is the premise of this book.

THE SEVEN PILLARS OF AGING

PILLAR 1 – Shrinking tissues

Loose skin… no muscle tone… shaky hands… foggy memory… that’s what you think when you picture an old person, right? This is what happens as we age when cells die and are not replaced. Brainwise, this causes cognitive decline and dementia. To avoid a lot of unnecessary cell loss, keep your mitochondria healthy.

PILLAR 2 – Mitochondrial mutations

Your mitochondrial DNA is a lot more susceptible to mutations than your human DNA because mitochondrial DNA has a limited ability to repair itself when it is damaged. Again, you’re going to want to take fewer hits to your mitochondria.

PILLAR 3 – Zombie cells

Some cells eventually no longer divide or function properly, yet they persist and secrete inflammatory proteins, causing all the problems that stem from chronic inflammation. Over time, the accumulation of the damage they create is a major cause of aging and disease.

PILLAR 4 – Cellular strait jackets

The extracellular matrix holds your cells together and gives your tissues their elasticity. When these tissues lose their elasticity, they become stiff and your body has to work harder to push blood throughout your circulatory system.

This can lead to aging, high blood pressure, and heart disease.

PILLAR 5 – Extracellular junk

As you age, waste products build up both inside and outside your cells, they stick together and form plaques that cause aging and disease by getting in the way of healthy cellular interaction.

PILLAR 6 – Junk buildup inside cells

Each cell’s own built-in waste disposal system incinerates unwanted materials of all kinds, keeping your cells free of junk and able to function optimally. When the system malfunctions, the waste products end up just sitting there, clogging up the cell until it can no longer function.

PILLAR 7 – Telomere shortening

Just like your shoelaces, there are endcaps for your DNA to protect your chromosomes from fraying with wear and tear (aka age). These caps naturally deteriorate over time, until they can no longer protect the cell.

The simple interventions to avoid the Four Killers – good food (no fried, grilled, or charred meat!!!), the right environment, moderate exercise, stress control (do you meditate?), and quality sleep – are also the best and most effective ways of slowing down or reversing many of the Seven Pillars of Aging.

FOOD IS AN ANTI-AGING DRUG

When it comes to aging, grains are bad, sugar is bad, charred or fried stuff is bad, and too much or too little protein is bad.

Instead, opt for tons of organic vegetables, limited organic fruit, and meat only from pastured animals.

When you eat enough of the right fats without excess carbs or protein, your body learns to efficiently burn fat for fuel. If you eat excess carbs or protein, your body burns those first.

Ideally, get your protein from gently-cooked grass-fed animals, wild fish, or plants like hemp. Limiting how much protein you eat or intermittent fasting are two of the most painless high-impact ways to live longer.

SLEEP OR DIE

A lack of good sleep directly increases your risk of dying from one of the Four Killers, while good quality sleep promotes skin health and youthful appearance, and healthy cell division.

To improve your sleep, get a sleep tracker. Did it take you a long time to fall asleep? Are you wasting your night with light sleep? Did you snore (sign of inflammation)?

The more time you spend in either REM or deep sleep, the more restorative your sleep will be.

You can increase your sleep quality by meditating, taking a hot bath before sleep, eating better, consuming fewer toxins (including alcohol), reducing blue light exposure at night, or taking the right supplements for your biology.

USING LIGHT TO GAIN SUPERPOWERS

To harness the power of light, first reduce junk light at home by installing dimmers and wearing glasses that filter out blue light.

To look better and have more energy, make sure you are exposed to some red or infrared light every day, or aim for fifteen to twenty minutes of natural sun exposure a day.

For the brave ones, consider trying an infrared sauna to aid in detoxification and boost your mitochondrial function.

For help with wound healing, muscle fatigue, or tissue repair, look into red and infrared light therapy. And if your concerns are primarily skin-deep, yellow light therapy may be an easy fix.

PART II. AGE BACKWARD

Turn Your Brain Back On

It’s pretty hard to concentrate or improve your decision-making skills if your brain is constantly and easily panicked – even if the source of panic is a simple text message.

An hour of neurofeedback can help you learn to self-regulate so your fight-or-flight response isn’t activated quite so easily.

Also shining the invisible LED light down your brain for two minutes a day can dramatically improve your brain function, focus, and mood.

When it comes to food, start a diet that consistently keeps your blood sugar low, avoids spikes, and keeps ketones present in your blood.

There are also plenty of pharmaceuticals and supplements that can help you enhance cognitive function as you age, such as:

1. Piracetam: Reduces cognitive decline with age
2. CoQ10: Helps your mitochondria produce energy
3. PQQ: A powerful antioxidant for anti-aging
4. Curcumin: Improves memory and attention while acting as an antioxidant

METAL BASHING

Arsenic, cadmium, lead, and mercury are the most toxic and present metals in our environment. Although the EPA has classified each of them as carcinogens, today we are consuming them in considerable quantities.

Toxic metals, such as lead, thallium, and mercury, have a direct impact on mitochondrial cellular function, leading to premature aging and decline.

1. It is essential to periodically see a functional medicine doctor, get your urine levels tested for heavy metals, and then purge them from our system:Get an IV of glutathione,
2. Talk to your doctor about activated charcoal treatment,
3. Eat chlorella tablets along with fish (a common source of mercury),
4. Consistently use digestive fiber (15 grams every other day for a year),
5. Sweat it out in an infrared sauna or by exercising.

POLLUTING YOUR BODY WITH OZONE

Ozone therapy can strengthen your immune system and your mitochondrial function.

Weak cells that are vulnerable to invasion from bacteria or viruses are more susceptible to oxidation. Ozone therapy kills off these weak and damaged cells, while it destroys harmful bacteria, yeast, viruses, fungi, and protozoa.

However, please don’t try ozone gas before consulting a doctor! Accidentally inhaling it can cause permanent lung damage or even kill you.

FERTILITY = LONGEVITIY

Before getting any hormone replacement, get a lab test to learn your current hormone levels. The author has supplemented many of his hormones, i.e.:

1. Testosterone – necessary for muscles and sexual function
2. DHEA – a pre-hormone
3. Oxytocin – best known for its role in making you feel good and bond with others

There are many simple ways to hack your hormones besides hormone replacement therapy:

1. Get good quality sleep consistently,
2. Eat the right foods (stop eating sugar, soy, excess omega-6 fats, and refined carbs, and replace these foods with additional healthy saturated fat from grass-fed meat, pastured eggs, and energy fats.),
3. Go through your toiletries and personal care products and get rid of everything containing phthalates and parabens, which mimic hormones in the body and disrupt your natural hormone function,
4. Exercise regularly, and
5. Avoid junk light and other environmental toxins.

YOUR TEETH ARE A WINDOW TO THE NERVOUS SYSTEM

When your bite is misaligned, your jaw is always on guard, trying to keep you from banging your teeth into one another.

This causes the trigeminal nerve to send a threat message to your autonomic nervous system, triggering a fight-or-flight response and releasing cortisol, the stress hormone which is highly inflammatory and has its own profound aging effects.

A corrected bite through something as simple as a plastic bite guard can allow your lower jaw to relax, making a big difference in your nervous system.

In other words, proper jaw alignment can help your entire body feel better and become younger.

HUMANS ARE WALKING PETRI DISHES

There are approximately 39 trillion bacterial cells in the human body. If our balance of microorganisms is off (especially in our gut), we age rapidly, develop disease, and die.

The trick is to focus on eating the foods that help good bacteria grow and reproduce: prebiotic fiber and resistant starch.

You can get prebiotics from vegetables that are rich in soluble fiber like sweet potatoes, Brussels sprouts, and asparagus. There is a little prebiotic fiber in coffee and chocolate, too.

The best way for anyone to starve the bad bacteria and feed the good ones is by cleaning up your diet:

1. Don’t eat grains, legumes, or nightshade vegetables, all of which lay the groundwork for leaky gut syndrome.
   2. Quit eating sugar – bad bacteria love sugar and feed off it.
   3. Never eat industrially-raised animals again, because the antibiotics they receive and the glyphosate in their food will end up in your gut and harm your gut bacteria.Part III. Heal Like A Deity

Finally, although many of the techniques the author mentions in the last part of the book are unregulated and often untested by him, here’s a few ways to practically and realistically heal like a deity:

1. Spend more time in nature to boost your own natural killer cells and enhance your immune system. Bonus points for frequently visiting a forest with lots of evergreen trees.
2. Get your hormone levels checked and look at any prescription meds that may be causing a problem. To improve sexual function, simply practice Kegel exercises on a daily basis.
3. For your skin to look younger than ever:a. Supplement with grass-fed or pastured collagen protein – at least 10 grams per day. You can also make bone broth if you don’t like collagen protein. b. Eat more foods containing polyphenols and antioxidants: vegetables, coffee, tea, and chocolate.
4. For your hair to look shinier than ever:a. Stop using chemical-laden personal care products and switch to all-natural versions. Throw out anything containing phthalates, parabens, and benzophenones. For women, consider alternatives to hormonal birth control. b. Deal with your stress, already! c. To stimulate blood flow to the scalp, get a head massage or purchase an at-home massager.

Conclusion

Key takeaways

• As a general rule, always aim for good nutrition, quality sleep, and a healthy environment free of toxins.
• Quit eating grains & sugar, and never eat industrially-raised animals again.
• The health and diversity of your gut bacteria is the most important part of your system.
• Before trying any advanced biohacking technique or drug, always consult with a doctor.

Further reading

Metahuman by Deepak Chopra. New York Times bestselling author Deepak Chopra unlocks the secrets to moving beyond our present limitations to access a field of infinite possibilities.

Lifespan by David A. Sinclair. In this groundbreaking book, Dr. David Sinclair, leading world authority on genetics and longevity, reveals a bold new theory for why we age.

For Small Creatures Such as We by Sasha Sagan. Part memoir, part guidebook, and part social history, this is a luminous exploration of Earth's marvels that require no faith in order to be believed.

Action steps

1. Clean up your diet for your good gut bacteria to thrive.
2. Invest in a sleep tracker and improve your quality of sleep.
3. Listen to the author’s podcast for advanced biohacking techniques: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/bulletproof-radio/id451295014
4. Download the complete book on Amazon.

DOWNLOAD THE START FINISHING PDF FOR FREE!

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[toc]

INTRODUCTION

Who is this book for?

This book is ideal for everyone who struggles to find time for things that matter in their lives and want to start living more meaningfully.

About the author

Charlie Gilkey helps people start finishing the stuff that matters. He's the founder of Productive Flourishing, author of Start Finishing and The Small Business Lifecycle, and host of the Productive Flourishing podcast. Prior to starting Productive Flourishing, Charlie was a Joint Force Military Logistics Coordinator while simultaneously pursuing a PhD in Philosophy.

In this summary

Take a moment and think about the last two weeks of your life. How much of your time and attention has been focused on things that truly matter to you? Most people’s honest answer is, “Not enough.” This book will get you to decide that today is the day you stop waiting and start finishing. Let’s dive in!

BOOK SUMMARY

CLEARING THE DECKS FOR YOUR BEST WORK

“Someday” Can Be Today

People love to share their ideas. But more often than not, they never act upon them.

The reality is, we don’t do ideas — we do projects. A project is anything that requires time, energy, and attention to complete.

But why should we make our ideas a reality through projects?

Sages from Aristotle to the Dalai Lama have asserted that the goal of human action is to thrive. And we thrive by doing our best work.

Your best work could be raising your kids, a side business or starting a full-time business, working with a nonprofit, volunteering at your church, coaching Little League, or mentoring teenagers. It could even be a hobby.

Your best work makes the world and your life more meaningful.

And we can create new realities for ourselves today.

GETTING TO YOUR BEST WORK

Imagine your life as if it were two slices of bread. Your vision, mission, purpose, and big goals compose the top slice of bread; your day-to-day reality is the bottom slice of bread.

For many people, there’s a big gap between the two, leading to an air sandwich.

The air in this sandwich is filled by 5 challenges that keep you from doing your best work:

1. Competing priorities – “Action expresses priority”;
2. Head trash – General aspersions, self-limiting stories, and personal experiences, histories, and contexts, usually rooted in our childhood;
3. No realistic plan – self-explanatory;
4. Too few resources – “Do what you can, with what you’ve got, where you are”; and
5. Poor team alignment – we’re not communicating to our team what we want, need, and dream to be.

There are 5 keys to doing your best work:

1. Intention – Start with why, begin with the end in mind, and consider where you want your life to be in three years;
2. Awareness – Know what your best work is and notice how your emotions and presence shift when you’re doing your best work;
3. Boundaries – Positive boundaries are creating space for something and negative boundaries are creating space from something.
4. Courage – Courageous action can build talent, but fear keeps us stuck in the confines of yesterday; and
5. Discipline – It channels our energy into purposeful, constructive action, while a lack of discipline diffuses our energy into destructive outlets.

The 5 keys are practices that can be cultivated, and we’re often well-cultivated in some but not in others.

PICK AN IDEA THAT MATTERS TO YOU

It’s time to embrace the thrashing you’re doing. The more something matters to you, the more you’ll thrash, precisely because its success or failure is deeply important to you.

However, not doing your best work leads to creative constipation — at a certain point, you’ll be too toxic to take new ideas in because you’re not getting them out. Don’t be discouraged, though.

First of all, we are made to slay dragons. We have survived for hundreds of thousands of years using our creativity, grit, imagination, and cooperative spirit.

Secondly, we’re resilient, adaptable, ingenious, and triumphant. Dragons aren’t a signal that we’re on the wrong road but rather that we’re on the right road.

Finally, the gift of failure is that it reveals what matters to you, shows you when you’re out of alignment, and reveals a growth edge.

Simply let go of projects and ideas that aren’t allowing you to thrive, so you can trade up to the projects that do. This is what the author calls ‘displacement’: the fact that doing something now excludes doing anything else.

It can help you focus on what matters, but only after you accept the limitations of time and energy.

PLANNING YOUR PROJECT

Convert Your Idea Into A Project

Now that you’ve chosen an idea that matters, you’re much closer to doing your best work.

Consider the following two formulations of the same goal:

• Book
• Complete a book on the history of cappuccino by the end of 2019

Which of the two are more likely to get done? Probably the second one, because it’s a SMART goal. A SMART goal is simple, meaningful, actionable, realistic, and trackable. Now, let’s talk about the different types of success.

Consider the fuzzy goal of running a marathon. Finishing the marathon, which could include walking parts of it and finishing before the event ends, could be classified as small success.

A moderate success might be running the whole way. An epic success might be winning your category.

The three levels of success — small, moderate, and epic — require a corresponding amount of effort and focus, and you can’t do everything at the epic level.

Remember: what other people achieve is irrelevant to where you are and what level of success makes the most sense for you.

Finally, if a project doesn’t have a start and completion date, it’s not likely that it’s going to get done.

Consider “We should hang out soon!” vs. “Would you like to get drinks Friday evening?” The gift of dating items is that it helps us get real with displacement, and displacement channels our energy and attention.

MAKE SPACE FOR YOUR PROJECT

To start doing your best work, create space for a specific project and build from there.

Chunking (splitting projects into coherent, doable parts), linking (joining chunks together so that they hang together), and sequencing (linking chunks together into a logical order in space and time) are the key skills that will help you create space and build plans that work.

A chunk of work that can be done in 15 minutes is a task and a chunk that can be done in 2 hours is a block. (Try it. Think about an item on today’s to-do list. Does it seem like it’s going to be a fifteen-minute task (or two) or a two-hour block?)

When we articulate chunks as verb-noun constructs, we see that the verb gives us an idea of the size of the work. Here are some conventional verbs as well as what size of a chunk they relate to:

1. Quarter- or month-sized project verbs: Rework – Develop – Strategise – Launch/Ship – Build – Publish (books, articles) – Kick off – Move/Relocate
2. Week-sized project verbs: – Research – Decide on – Collaborate with – Create – Plan – Design – Analyze/evaluate – Coordinate – Promote – Edit – Apply
3. Task verbs (for work that can be done in fifteen minutes): – Email – Call – Sort – Read – Send – Check – Review – Find – Compile – Schedule – Make – Text – Print

These verbs help us better understand how projects are chunked, linked, and sequenced, and how some chunks will naturally go with others, while some chunks go in others.

Mastering quarter-sized projects is the secret sauce of doing your best work.

The author’s Five Project Rule is shorthand for “no more than five active projects per timescale” and helps prioritise and plan projects.

The weekly perspective is the longest level of perspective that people feel comfortable shaping and planning. At the weekly perspective, there are four basic blocks that we can build into our days:

1. Focus blocks. 90–120-minute blocks of time when we’re especially creative, inspired, and able to do high-level work that requires focus.
2. Social blocks. 90–120-minute blocks of time when we’re primed and energetically in the right space to meet other people.
3. Admin blocks. 30–60-minute lower-energy blocks of time when we’re not in the zone to do the work that requires heavy lifting but there are still other types of work we can do effectively.
4. Recovery blocks. Variable-length blocks of time that we use for activities that recharge us, such as exercise, meditation, self-care, and intentional idling.

Three focus blocks per week per best-work project helps you maintain momentum, efficiency, and focus.

Now, you know you’re not going to find the time somewhere for your best work; you have to make the time for your best work.

When you use the Five Projects Rule and weekly block planning, you end up with defaults and constraints that aid your planning and prioritisation.

BUILD YOUR PROJECT ROAD MAP

A project road map is a project plan that places chunks of a project on a timeline.

Playing to your strengths makes the project easier to do, and you’ll find flow more often when you’re using your strengths. Build projects from your GATES — genius, affinities, talents, expertise, and strengths.

Then, create a budget for your project to avoid snags and stall-outs. Even when a project doesn’t require money, funding a project can make it better.

Use deadlines to guide your project, but remember that it’s your capacity that drives your project no matter what the deadline is.

Finally, when you’re working with collaborators — and almost all best work projects have collaborators — make sure to build relay time into your road map.

As you work through building your road map, write in pencil and embrace the mistakes you’re going to make.

KEEP FLYING BY ACCOUNTING FOR DRAG POINTS

Drag points are the natural places where reality will push against your plans.

For example, we often choose mediocrity (in the short term) because we don’t want to succeed due to the no-win scenarios (the Success Will Wreck My Relationships tale, the Success Versus Virtue myth, and the What If I Can’t Do It Again? trap), but we also don’t want to fail — mediocrity is the space between success and failure.

Or we let derailers & naysayers drag us down: derailers are well-meaning people whose “help” and “feedback” throw you off course, and naysayers are people who are actively against you and your project.

To identify and avoid the challenges that may kill or slow your projects, use project pre-mortems: the process of considering all the ways that a project might go south so you can actively work to prevent those things.

Use the following questions to do your project premortem:

• Have you created any no-win scenarios for yourself? How might you detangle them?
• Have you picked a method of doing your project that’s especially hard for you? How might you start from and leverage your GATES?
• Are there any derailers and (real) naysayers you need to account for? List them by name and how you’ll address them.
• Are you carrying any projects that you can let go of to keep them from bogging you down?
• Are there any bad or unhelpful stories you’re telling yourself — you’re a flake, you’re not good at planning, who are you to think you can do it, and others — and what will you do to counteract those stories?

WORKING YOUR PLAN

Weave Your Project Into Your Schedule

Make sure your environment helps you work focused on your projects.

The 7 environmental factors to make work for you are sound, smell, sunlight, clothing, clutter/organisation, amount of space, and music.

Batching and stacking are strategies that help you work more efficiently. Batching work is the process of doing similar kinds of work in a contiguous stretch of time; stacking work is the process of doing dissimilar but compatible kinds of work in the same stretch of time.

A few easy examples of task stacking are:

• Doing laundry while listening to an audiobook
• Doing an audio or real-time meeting while hiking
• Exercising in the park while spending time with the kids

Frogs are the tasks and chunks of projects that we really don’t want to do (e.g. paying a bill, even though we have the money to pay, or responding to an email that might take three minutes to do, if we’d just make up our mind and do it.)

Addressing them more frequently helps keep the dread-to-work ratio lower.

For more productive output, put the work that requires the most effort — decisions, analysis and evaluation, and deep work — on the days when you have the most creative, positive energy. Those days should also have the most focus blocks.

In terms of planning, here’s what tends to work well for people:

1. Daily planning — the night before or the first thing in the morning before checking email. This can typically be done in less than fifteen minutes.
2. Weekly planning — Sunday night or first thing Monday morning before checking email. This can typically be done in less than thirty minutes.
3. Monthly planning — the weekend before the month starts or the first Monday of the month. This may require a focus block if you haven’t been doing your weekly momentum planning.
4. Quarterly planning — the week before the quarter starts. Quarterly planning often takes multiple passes if you haven’t been doing your monthly momentum planning.
5. Annual planning — the month before the year starts. Annual planning may take multiple passes.

BUILD DAILY MOMENTUM

Celebrating the small wins of progress enables us to celebrate big finishes.

To boost daily momentum, create habits and routines that minimise decision fatigue and create longer periods of flow.

Leaving crumb trails for projects (e.g. leaving a quick note to yourself about where to pick up) makes getting back into projects more enjoyable and efficient.

Interruptions are external diversions that keep us from doing our best work; distractions are internal diversions that we allow ourselves to do. Minimise them to build momentum.

Other ways that can sabotage your momentum are project cascades (when a project falling behind makes others fall behind); project logjams (when you have too many concurrent projects); and tarpits (when a stuck project gets more stuck the longer it stays stuck.) Make sure you’re aware of them and deal with them swiftly.

The creative red zone is the last stretch of the project where the closer you get to the finish line, the harder it is to cross the finish line. To get through it, return often to the why of the project.

FINISH STRONG

Finishing a best-work project unlocks new realities. After-action reviews make every project a learning experience at the same time that they set you up for greater success in future projects.

The more a project matters to you, the greater the need for downtime and transition time after finishing it.

Give yourself CAT (clean up, archive, and trash) time to make the next project easier to do.

CONCLUSION

Key takeaways

• We thrive by doing our best work.
• The more something matters to you, the more you’ll thrash, precisely because its success or failure is deeply important to you.
• You have to let go of projects and ideas that aren’t allowing you to thrive so you can trade up to the projects that do.
• Project without start & completion dates are unlikely to get done.
• Create space for your best work and build from there.
• Three focus blocks per week per best-work project helps you maintain momentum, efficiency, and focus.
• Project premortems help identify and avoid the challenges that may kill or slow your projects.
• After-action reviews make every project a learning experience at the same time that they set you up for greater success in future projects.

Further reading

Getting Things Done by David Allenis arguably the world's most well known book on productivity. The lessons in this book should be considered essential reading for anyone looking to pursue a more productive lifestyle.

Declutter Your Mind will teach you the habits, actions, and mindsets you can use to clean up the mental clutter that might be holding you back from being more focused and mindful in your daily life. Let’s discover how to get a simplified, calm mental life – and how to reclaim the time and emotional energy we give up to overthinking and anxiety!

Guidelines is my eBook that summarises the main lessons from 33 of the best-selling self-help books in one place. It is the ultimate book summary; Available as a 80-page ebook and 115-minute audio book. Guidelines lists 31 rules (or guidelines) that you should follow to improve your productivity, become a better leader, do better in business, improve your health, succeed in life and become a happier person.

Action steps

1. Identify the projects that are worth pursuing in your life.
2. Go to https://www.productiveflourishing.com/start-finishing for more resources.
3. Add focus blocks in your week and start your new project!
4. Download the complete book on Amazon.

DOWNLOAD THE INTELLIGENT INVESTOR PDF FOR FREE!

DOWNLOAD PDF

[toc]

INTRODUCTION

Who is this book for?

The purpose of this book is to supply, in a form suitable for laymen, guidance in the adoption and execution of a successful investment policy. This book is not addressed to speculators (those who trade daily in the market) and it doesn’t aim to show you how to beat the market.

About the author

Benjamin Graham was an American economist and professional investor. Graham is considered the first proponent of value investing. Warren Buffett, who credits Graham as grounding him with a sound intellectual investment framework, described him as the second most influential person in his life after his own father.

In this summary

Through arguments, examples, and practical principles, The Intelligent Investor aids the readers to establish the proper mental and emotional attitudes toward their investment decisions. It will show you that a creditable result can be achieved by the lay investor, with a minimum of effort and capability. Ready to explore the book?

BOOK SUMMARY

1. WHO IS AN INTELLIGENT INVESTOR?

Let’s start with the most important question: why invest?

Because of inflation. It takes away our wealth (specifically, about 3% per annum) and it’s so easy to overlook.

Those with a fixed-dollar income will suffer when the cost of living advances (almost yearly), and the same applies to a fixed-amount-of-dollar principal.

Holders of sound investments, on the other hand, have the possibility that a loss of the dollar’s purchasing power may be offset by advances in their dividends and the prices of their investment portfolio value.

So, what exactly does Graham mean by an “intelligent” investor?

“It simply means being patient, disciplined, and eager to learn. You must also be able to harness your emotions and think for yourself.”

No matter how careful you are, the price of your investments will go down from time to time. You can’t eliminate that risk; you can only manage it and get your fears under control.

In other words, an investor’s chief problem and worst enemy is likely to be their own self. That’s why Graham constantly emphasises three things:

1. How you can minimise the odds of suffering irreversible losses;
2. How you can maximise the chances of achieving sustainable gains;
3. How you can control the self-defeating behaviour that keeps most investors from reaching their full potential.

The first principle intelligent investors have to learn is that stocks become more risky, not less, as their prices rise, and less risky as their prices fall.

• The intelligent investor dreads a bull market (when it goes up), since it makes stocks more costly to buy.
• Conversely, you should welcome a bear market (when it goes down), since it puts stocks back on sale.

Graham’s “margin of safety” concept helps: by refusing to pay too much for an investment, you minimise the chances that your wealth will ever disappear or suddenly be destroyed.

It’s also important to notice: Graham uses the term “investor” in contradistinction to “speculator.” People who invest make money for themselves; people who speculate make money for their brokers.

“An investment operation is one which, upon thorough analysis, promises safety of principal and an adequate return. Operations not meeting these requirements are speculative.”

In the rest of this summary, we’ll explore two types of investors:

1. The defensive (or passive) investor: They seek the avoidance of serious mistakes or losses, and aim at freedom from effort, annoyance, and the need for making frequent decisions.
2. The enterprising (or active, or aggressive) investor: They are willing to devote time and care to the selection of securities that are both sound and more attractive than the average, expecting a better average return than the passive investor.

For both types, Graham emphasises the virtues of a simple portfolio policy:

The purchase of high-grade bonds, plus a diversified list of leading common stocks, which any investor can carry out with little or no expert assistance.

Let’s explore the two types of intelligent investors.

2. THE DEFENSIVE INVESTOR

“A defensive investor runs – and wins – the race by sitting still.”

Don’t buy more because the stock market has gone up; don’t sell because it has gone down. The heart of Graham’s approach is to replace guesswork with discipline.

A 50% bonds – 50% common stocks approach makes good sense here. Any deviation depends on your attitude, appetite for risk, and life circumstances:

If you can take higher risks, go for a minimum of 25% in bonds/cash.

If you’re risk-averse, aim at a maximum of 75% in bonds/cash.

Change these percentages only as your life circumstances change.

Rebalance every 6 months on easy-to-remember dates (e.g. New Year’s & the 4th of July).

Bonds

Bonds offer lower returns but secure & stabilise your portfolio. Thus, it is wiser to keep away from low-quality, high-yield bonds.

The major type of bonds that deserve investor consideration are U.S. Savings Bonds, Series E & Series H.

Bond funds offer cheap & easy diversification, along with the convenience of monthly income, which you can reinvest right back into the fund at current rates without paying a commission. For most investors, bond funds beat individual bonds hands down.

Major firms like Vanguard, Fidelity, Schwab, and T. Rowe Price offer a broad menu of bond funds at low cost.

Common Stocks

You cannot afford to be without an appreciable proportion of high-quality common stocks in your portfolio, because they offer a considerable degree of protection against inflation & higher average returns over the years.

Graham’s rules for the common stock component:

1. Adequate but not excessive diversification: a minimum of 10 different issues & a maximum of 30.
2. Confine yourself to the shares of important companies with a long record of profitable operations and in strong financial condition, with a long record of continuous dividend payments.
3. Limit the price you’ll pay for an issue, set at 25 times its average earnings over the past 7 years, and not more than 20 times those of the last year. (Such a strategy eliminates the strongest and most popular companies and the entire category of “growth stocks”.)

A quick explanation for rule #3: the benefits in your portfolio can be lost if you pay a high price for your shares.

In contrast, large, relatively unpopular companies (and therefore obtainable at reasonable earnings multipliers) are a sound choice. Never invest in any company, however, without first studying its financial statements and estimating its business value.

Mutual funds are the ultimate way for a defensive investor to capture the upside of stock ownership without the downside of having to police your own portfolio:

• At relatively low cost, you can buy a high degree of diversification and convenience
• You’re letting a professional pick and watch the stocks for you
• Every week, month, or calendar quarter, you buy more – whether the markets have gone up or down.

Index Funds

The ideal approach, however, is owning a portfolio of index funds.

Index funds own every stock or bond worth having. That way, you renounce the guessing game of where the market is going.

Practically, let’s say you can spare $500 a month. By owning just 3 index funds ($300 in one that holds the total U.S. stock market, $100 in one that holds foreign stocks, and $100 in one that holds U.S. bonds) you can ensure that you own almost every investment on the planet that’s worth owning!

Every month, like clockwork, you buy more. If the market has dropped, your preset amount goes further, buying you more shares than the month before. If the market has gone up, then your money buys you fewer shares.

With your portfolio on permanent autopilot, you prevent yourself from either flinging money at the market that goes up (and is actually more dangerous, because it’s more expensive to buy) or refusing to buy more after a market crash has made investments truly cheaper (but seemingly more “risky”).

Expecting an average overall return of 7% on the performance of an index fund portfolio, which will cost about 0.3% of the portfolio’s value, you should be expecting a total of 6.7% return per annum.

A low-cost index fund is the best tool ever created for low-maintenance stock investing – and any effort to improve on it takes more work (and incurs more risk and higher costs) than a truly defensive investor can justify.

Hold an index fund for 20 years or more, adding new money every month, and you are all but certain to outperforms the vast majority of professional and individual investors alike. Both Graham and Buffet praised index funds.

“That’s the power of disciplined buying – even in the face of the Great Depression and the worst bear market of all time.”

Some defensive investors enjoy the diversion and intellectual challenge of picking individual stocks. In that case:

• Keep 90% of your stock money in an index fund, leaving 10% with which to try picking your own stocks.
• Never allow your speculative thinking to spill over into your investing activities & never mingle the money in your speculative account with what’s in your investment accounts.

3. THE ENTERPRISING INVESTOR

The “aggressive” investor will start from the same base as the defensive investor, but will also branch out to other kinds of securities, if proven to be attractive as established by intelligent analysis.

Remember: if you bring just a little extra knowledge and cleverness upon your investment program, instead of getting a little better than normal results, you may find that you’ve actually done much worse.

Graham lists his ‘don’ts’ for aggressive investors:

1. High-yield bonds
2. Foreign bonds (may be appealing if you can withstand plenty of risk)
3. Day trading (holding stocks for a few hours at a time): “The more you trade, the less you keep.”

Instead, an enterprising investor should focus on buying:

1. In low markets and selling in high markets: “A great company is not a great investment if you pay too much for the stock.”
2. Carefully chosen “growth stocks”: “Look into growth stocks not when they are at their most popular, but when something goes wrong.”
3. Various bargain issues: “Temporary unpopularity creates lasting wealth by enabling you to buy a great company at a good price.”

Even for aggressive investors, however, it’s worth repeating: selecting individual stocks is unnecessary – if not inadvisable. A small percentage of investors can excel at picking their own stocks. Everyone else would be better off getting help, ideally through an index fund.

If you insist, Graham advised investors to practice first. Start off by spending a year tracking and picking stocks (but not with real money):

• By test-driving your techniques before trying them with real money, you can make mistakes without incurring any actual losses, develop the discipline to avoid frequent trading, compare your approach against those of leading money managers, and learn what works for you.
• If you didn’t enjoy the experiment or your picks were poor, no harm done. Get yourself an index fund and stop wasting your time on stock picking.
• If you enjoyed the experiment and earned sufficiently good returns, gradually assemble a basket of stocks, but limit it to a maximum of 10% of your overall portfolio (keep the rest in an index fund). And remember: stop if it no longer interests you or your returns turn bad.

A last note on being an aggressive investor.

Ultimately, financial risk resides not in what kinds of investments you have, but in what kind of investor you are. Risk exists inside you.

“If you want to know what risk really is, go to the nearest bathroom and step up to the mirror. That’s risk, gazing back at you from the glass.”

Successful investing is about managing risk, not avoiding it.

CONCLUSION

Key takeaways

• We invest because of inflation, which erodes our wealth.
• An intelligent investor is patient, disciplined, and eager to learn, harnessing their emotions and managing risk & fear.
• Stocks become more risky as their prices rise & less risky as they fall.
• By refusing to pay too much for an investment, you minimise the chances that your wealth will be lost.
• A 50% bonds – 50% common stocks approach makes good sense for a defensive investor.
• Hold an index fund for 20 years or more, adding new money every month, and you’ll outperform the vast majority.

Further reading

I Will Teach You to be Rich helps you identify where your money is going and gets it working for you so that you can save for the things that will bring you true happiness and lead a rich life. The six-week program identifies how to create a system for optimising your bill payments, savings, and investments so that your money goes to all the right places with less than an hour of maintenance a month. Now, who wouldn't want to spend less time managing their bank accounts while at the same time knowing that your money is going to the places it needs to be. Automating your finances like this is incredibly rewarding and will save you heaps of time every month.

Unshakeable is another excellent book from Tony Robbins. In this book, Robbins examines the current financial conditions and takes you through facts, figures and historical patterns to help you understand the market and its fluctuations. Robbins has tips for anyone looking to invest money and invest in your own future. Common misconceptions and mistakes are discussed so you know what not to do. Using his hand-selected financial ‘masters' Robbins supplements the information with plenty of real-life examples. The last section of the book is perhaps the most important – it's about how money doesn't bring happiness and fulfillment. Robbins has tips on how to master your mind and find inner peace.

Guidelines is my eBook that summarises the main lessons from 33 of the best-selling self-help books in one place. It is the ultimate book summary; Available as a 80-page ebook and 115-minute audio book. Guidelines lists 31 rules (or guidelines) that you should follow to improve your productivity, become a better leader, do better in business, improve your health, succeed in life and become a happier person.

Guidelines is my eBook that summarises the main lessons from 33 of the best-selling self-help books in one place. It is the ultimate book summary; Available as a 80-page ebook and 115-minute audio book. Guidelines lists 31 rules (or guidelines) that you should follow to improve your productivity, become a better leader, do better in business, improve your health, succeed in life and become a happier person.

Action steps

1. Identify your appetite and endurance to risk.
2. Consistently set aside a monthly lump sum to invest in an index fund.
3. If an aggressive investor, experiment with 10% of your investment money on picking your own stocks.
4. Download the complete book on Amazon.

DOWNLOAD THE STILLNESS IS THE KEY PDF FOR FREE!

DOWNLOAD PDF

[toc]

INTRODUCTION

Who is this book for?

The book is an attainable path to enlightenment and excellence, greatness and happiness, performance as well as presence, for every kind of person.

About the author

Ryan Holiday is an American author, marketer, entrepreneur and founder of the creative advisory firm Brass Check. He is a media strategist, the former director of marketing for American Apparel, and a media columnist and editor-at-large for the New York Observer.

In this summary

The aim of Stillness Is The Key is to show why slowing down is the secret weapon for those charging ahead, how to uncover and draw upon the stillness we already possess, and examines figures who exemplified its power.

Let’s dive into it!

BOOK SUMMARY

AN INTRODUCTION TO STILLNESS

Car horns, stereos, cell phone alarms, social media notifications, chainsaws, airplanes, personal & professional problems.

Who has the power to stop? Who has time to think or fight that deafening noise?

It’s impossible, however, to find a philosophical school or religion that does not regard the opposite of noise as the highest good and the key to a happy life.

“You may be sure that you are at peace with yourself,” Seneca wrote, “when no noise reaches you, when no word shakes you out of yourself, whether it be flattery or a threat, or merely an empty sound buzzing.”

In other words, stillness:

“To be steady while the world spins around you. To act without frenzy. To hear only what needs to be heard. To possess quietude – exterior and interior – on command.”

If you’ve given your best to something, knowing you’ve left absolutely nothing in reserve – that’s stillness.

If you’ve poured all of your training into a single, decisive moment of performance – that’s stillness.

If you’ve walked out alone on a quiet street at night as the snow fell, content of being alive – that, too, is stillness.

The poet Rainer Maria Rilke articulated stillness as being “full, complete” where “all the random and approximate were muted.”

Let’s explore the three domains of stillness.

1. THE DOMAIN OF THE MIND

We all face crisis. A business on the brink of collapse. An acrimonious divorce. A decision about the future of our career. A moment where the whole game depends on us.

In these situations we must:

• Be fully present.
• Empty our mind of preconceptions.
• Take our time.
• Sit quietly and reflect.
• Reject distraction.
• Weigh advice against the counsel of our convictions.
• Deliberate without being paralysed.

Become Present

Being present demands all of us. It may be the hardest thing in the world.

As we struggle with a crisis, our mind repeats on a loop just how unfair this is, how insane it is that it keeps happening and how it can’t go on.

Don’t reject a difficult or boring moment because it is not exactly what you want. Don’t waste a beautiful moment because you are insecure or shy.

“This moment we are experiencing right now is a gift (that’s why we call it the present).”

Limit Your Inputs

Each of us has access to more information than we could ever reasonably use. We tell ourselves that it’s part of our job, that we have to be “on top of things,” and so we give up precious time to news, reports, meetings, and other forms of feedback.

To think clearly, it is essential to figure out how to filter out the inconsequential from the essential.

The important stuff will still be important by the time you get to it.

Empty The Mind

We’ve all experienced that: “Don’t mess up. Don’t mess up. Don’t forget.”

And what happens? We do exactly what we were trying not to do!

Whatever you face, don’t make it harder by overthinking, by needless doubts, or by second-guessing.

Be the librarian who says “Shhh!” to the rowdy kids, or tells the jerk on his phone to please take it outside.

Keep your mind clean and clear. Slow Down, Think Deeply. First impressions are misleading.

“The world is like muddy water. To see through it, we have to let things settle.”

So much of the distress we feel comes from reacting instinctively instead of acting with conscientious deliberation.

If we slow down, being patient and still, the truth will be revealed to us.

Start Journaling

Instead of carrying that baggage around in your head or heart, put it down on paper.

Instead of letting racing thoughts run unchecked or leaving half-baked assumptions unquestioned, force yourself to write and examine them.

Putting your own thinking down on paper lets you see it from a distance.

It gives you objectivity that is so often missing when anxiety and fears and frustrations flood your mind.

Cultivate Silence

If we want to think better, we need to seize the moments of quiet.

If we want more revelations – more insights, breakthroughs, or ideas – we have to create more room for them.

Limit your inputs and turn down the volume, so that you can access a deeper awareness of what’s going on around you.

By shutting up, we can finally hear what the world has been trying to tell us. Or what we’ve been trying to tell ourselves.

Seek Wisdom

Each school of thought agrees: we need to ask questions, study and reflect, be intellectually humble, experience failure and mistakes.

Wisdom is a sense of the big picture, the accumulation of experience and the ability to rise above the biases, the traps that catch lazier thinkers.

Find people you admire and ask how they got where they are. Seek book recommendations. Put yourself in tough situations. Accept challenges.

Find Confidence, Avoid Ego

Ego is unsettled by doubts, afflicted by hubris, exposed by its own boasting and posturing.

Confidence is the freedom to set your own standards and release yourself from the need to prove yourself.

A confident person doesn’t fear disagreement and doesn’t see swapping an incorrect opinion for a correct one as an admission of inferiority.

Let Go

The desire to be in control and to dictate the schedule and the process of everything we’re a part of holds us back from really mastering the subject we pursue.

Looseness will give you more control than gripping tightly to a method or a specific outcome.

Entrepreneurs don’t walk the streets deliberately looking for opportunities – they open themselves up to noticing the little things around them.

2. THE DOMAIN OF THE SOUL

“On the surface of the ocean there is stillness,” the monk Thich Nhat Hanh has said of the human condition, “but underneath there are currents.”

Tiger Woods was mentally tough, cold-blooded, and talented. But that stillness existed only on the golf course; everywhere else he was at the mercy of his passions and urges.

Those who seek stillness must come to:

• Develop a strong moral compass.
• Steer clear of envy and jealousy and harmful desires.
• Come to terms with the painful wounds of their childhood.
• Practice gratitude and appreciation for the world around them.
• Cultivate relationships and love in their lives.
• Place belief in the hands of something larger than themselves.
• Understand that there will never be “enough”.

Choose Virtue

Virtue is moral and civic excellence in the course of daily life.

It’s a sense of pure rightness that emerges from our souls and is made real through the actions we take.

From virtue comes good decisions and happiness and peace. It emanates from the soul and directs the mind and the body.

What’s important to me? What would I rather die for than betray? These questions lead us to virtue.

Heal The Inner Child

Many of us carry wounds from our childhood. It’s dangerous business, though, creating a monster to protect your wounded inner child.

It will take patience and empathy and real self-love to heal the wounds in your life. Take the time to think about the pain you carry from your early experiences. Your inner child needs a hug from you.

They need you to say:

“Hey, buddy. It’s okay. I know you’re hurt, but I am going to take care of you.”

Beware Desire

Lust is a destroyer of peace in our lives. A person enslaved to their urges is not free.

Only those of us who take the time to explore, question, extrapolate the consequences of our desires have an opportunity to overcome them and to stop regrets before they start.

Only they know that real pleasure lies in having a soul that’s true and stable, happy and secure.

Enough

No one achieves excellence or enlightenment without a desire to get better. Yet, the desire – or the need – for more is often at odds with happiness.

The mentality that gets an athlete to the top so often prevents them from enjoying the thing they worked so hard for.

The creep of more, more, more is like a hydra; satisfy one, and two more grow in its place.

Bathe In Beauty

Not that all beauty is so immediately beautiful. We’re not always on the farm or at the beach or gazing out over sweeping canyon views.

Which is why you must cultivate the poet’s eye – the ability to see beauty everywhere, even in the banal or the terrible.

Marvel at the fact that anything in life exists – that you exist!

Accept A Higher Power

The common language for accepting a higher power is about “letting Him or Her or It into your heart.” That’s it.

This is about rejecting the tyranny of our intellect, of our immediate observational experience, and accepting something bigger, something beyond ourselves.

Just know that this step is open to you. It’s waiting. And it will help restore you to sanity when you’re ready.

Enter Relationships

Anyone can be rich or famous. Only you can be Dad or Mom or Daughter or Son or Soul Mate to the people in your life.

Relationships take time. They expose and distract us, cause pain, and cost money. A good relationship requires us to be virtuous, faithful, present, empathetic, generous, open, and willing to be a part of a larger whole.

No one would say that’s easy. But rising to this challenge transforms us.

Stillness is best not sought alone. And, like success, it is best when shared.

Conquer Your Anger

Leaders, artists, generals, and athletes who are driven primarily by anger not only tend to fail over a long enough timeline, but they tend to be miserable even if they don’t.

Our stillness depends on our ability to slow down and choose not to be angry, to run on different fuel. Fuel that doesn’t hurt other people, our cause, or our chance at peace.

The leaders we truly respect have been fueled by love. Country. Compassion. Destiny. Reconciliation. Mastery. Idealism. Family.

All Is One

Whether it comes from the perspective of space, a religious epiphany, or the silence of meditation, the understanding that we are all connected – that we are all one – is a transformative experience.

Everyone is necessary. Even the people you don’t like.

No one is alone, in suffering or in joy. Down the street, across the ocean, in another language, someone else is experiencing nearly the exact same thing.

Still, too often we forget it, and we forget ourselves in the process.

3. THE DOMAIN OF THE BODY

“Sir, to what do you attribute your success in life?”

Immediately, Churchill replied, “Conservation of energy. Never stand up when you can sit down, and never sit down when you can lie down.”

To turn our bodies into allies, we need to:

• Rise above our physical limitations.
• Find hobbies that rest and replenish us.
• Develop a reliable, disciplined routine.
• Spend time getting active outdoors.
• Seek out solitude and perspective.
• Learn to sit – to do nothing when called for.
• Get enough sleep and rein in our workaholism.
• Commit to causes bigger than ourselves.

Say No

Each of us needs to get better at saying no. As in:

• “No, sorry, I’m not available.”
• “No, I’m going to wait and see.”
• “No, I don’t like that idea.”
• “No, I don’t need that – I’m going to make the most of what I have.”

You’re often being asked to give a piece of your life, usually in exchange for something you don’t even want.

Remember, it’s your life & time that you can never get back.

“When we know what to say no to, we can say yes to the things that matter.”

Take A Walk

“Every day I walk myself into a state of well-being and walk away from every illness; I have walked myself into my best thoughts, and I know of no thought so burdensome that one cannot walk away from it.”

These are the words of the first existentialist philosopher, Søren Kierkegaard.

A good walk is an embodiment of the concepts of presence, of detachment, of emptying the mind, of noticing and appreciating the beauty of the world around you.

Build A Routine

Most people wake up to face the day as an endless barrage of bewildering and overwhelming choices, one right after another. This is exhausting.

When we automate and routinise the trivial parts of life, we free up resources to do important and meaningful exploration.

We buy room for peace and stillness, and thus make good work and good thoughts accessible and inevitable.

Get Rid Of Your Stuff

“Mental and spiritual independence matter little if the things we own in the physical world end up owning us.”

We don’t need to get rid of all our possessions, but we should constantly question what we own, why we own it, and whether we could do without.

The more we own, the more we oversee, the less room we have to move and, ironically, the less still we become.

Give away what you don’t need.

Seek Solitude

It’s difficult to understand yourself if you are never by yourself. Solitude allows you to reflect while others are reacting.

We need solitude to refocus on prospective decision-making, rather than just reacting to problems as they arise.

Grab these moments. Schedule them. Cultivate them.

Be A Human Being

In Japan they have a word, karōshi, which translates to death from overwork.

Do you want to be a workhorse that draws its load until it collapses and dies? Is that what you were put on this planet for?

We’re not going to be able to do that if we have stretched ourselves to the breaking point.

Our body is a gift. Don’t work it to death. Don’t burn it out.

Go To Sleep

The philosopher and writer Arthur Schopenhauer used to say that “sleep is the source of all health and energy.”

We have only so much energy for our work, for our relationships, for ourselves. A smart person understands this and guards it carefully.

The greats protect their sleep, because it’s where the best state of mind comes from. They say no to things. They turn in when they hit their limits. They don’t let the creep of sleep deprivation undermine their judgment.

They are aware that everyone functions better when well-rested.

Find A Hobby

Josef Pieper wrote that “the ability to be ‘at leisure’ is one of the basic powers of the human soul.”

You can’t do leisure for pay, you can’t do it to impress people, no one is making us do it. You have to do it for you – assembling a puzzle, struggling with a guitar lesson, ladling soup in a homeless shelter.

There is nourishment in pursuits that have no purpose – that is their purpose.

Beware Escapism

Too often, the miserable think that an escape – literal or chemical – is a positive good. You can’t escape, with your body, problems that exist in your mind and soul. You can’t run away from your choices; you can only fix them with better choices.

What you seek will come only if you sit and do the work, if you probe yourself with real self-awareness and patience.

The next time we feel the urge to flee, travel inside your heart and your mind, and let the body stay put.

Build a life that you don’t need to escape from.

Act Bravely

“To see people who will notice a need in the world and do something about it… Those are my heroes.” – FRED ROGERS

Action is what matters.

• Pick up the phone and tell someone what they mean to you.
• Share your wealth.
• Pick up the trash you see on the ground.
• Step in when someone is being bullied – even if you might get hurt.
• Tell the truth.
• Maintain your vows, keep your word.
• Stretch out a hand to someone who has fallen.
• Do the hard good deeds.

CONCLUSION

Key takeaways

• Stillness means to be steady while the world spins around you.
• The three domains of stillness are the mind, the soul, and the body.
• Mental stillness means to be fully present, to empty our mind, to sit quietly and reflect, and to reject distraction.
• Stillness of the soul means to develop a strong moral compass, to avoid harmful desires, to practice gratitude, to cultivate relationships, and to understand when you’ve got enough.
• To be still with your body, learn to say no, find hobbies, develop a disciplined routine, seek out solitude and perspective, get enough sleep, and commit to causes bigger than yourself.

Further reading

Peak Performance by Brad Stulberg. It combines the inspiring stories of top performers across a range of capabilities with the latest scientific insights into the predominant factors that drive performance in all domains.

Deep Work by Cal Newport. It is an indispensable guide to anyone seeking focused success in a distracted world, in a mix of cultural criticism and actionable advice.

Guidelines is my eBook that summarises the main lessons from 33 of the best-selling self-help books in one place. It is the ultimate book summary; Available as a 80-page ebook and 115-minute audio book. Guidelines lists 31 rules (or guidelines) that you should follow to improve your productivity, become a better leader, do better in business, improve your health, succeed in life and become a happier person.

Action steps

1. Start journaling day (planning) & night (reflecting).
2. Find leisure activities that nourish your soul and challenge your body.
3. Sign up for Ryan Holiday’s daily newsletter at DailyStoic.com/email
4. Download the complete book on Amazon.

This summary is not intended as a replacement for the original book and all quotes are credited to the above-mentioned author and publisher.