First Light.

Success is 99 percent failure.

We are living progressively sheltered, sterile, temperature-controlled, overfed, underchallenged, safety-netted lives.

Prestige is like a powerful magnet that warps even your beliefs about what you enjoy. It causes you to work not on what you like, but what you'd like to seem to like.

Treat AI like a person, but tell it what kind of person it is.

Don't undertake a project unless it is manifestly important and nearly impossible.

If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid.

The advice you give most easily is the advice you have taken least. You are not being wise for your friend — you are talking to yourself with better manners.

Exercise is by far the most potent longevity 'drug.'

The ability to perform deep work is becoming increasingly rare at exactly the same time it is becoming increasingly valuable.

Assume this is the worst AI you will ever use.

There are more things likely to frighten us than there are to crush us; we suffer more often in imagination than in reality.

The uncle who still cycles to the wet market at eighty-two did not get lucky at eighty-one. He got stubborn at fifty.

Don't follow your passion; rather, let it follow you in your quest to become so good that they can't ignore you.

The more labels you have for yourself, the dumber they make you.

Be the human in the loop.

I never dreamed about success. I worked for it.

Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be. Be one.

Keeping every door open is not freedom. It is a decision to stand in the hallway — and the hallway is where the years go.

You are in danger of living a life so comfortable and soft that you will die without ever realizing your true potential.

Clarity about what matters provides clarity about what does not.

It's hard to do a really good job on anything you don't think about in the shower.

Assume this is the worst AI you will ever use.

I made 5,127 prototypes of my vacuum before I got it right. There were 5,126 failures. But I learnt from each one.

You could leave life right now. Let that determine what you do and say and think.

Exercise is the most potent longevity drug we have.

Efforts to deepen your focus will struggle if you don't simultaneously wean your mind from a dependence on distraction.

The most dangerous way to lose time is not to spend it having fun, but to spend it doing fake work.

Always invite AI to the table.

Don't undertake a project unless it is manifestly important and nearly impossible.

We suffer more often in imagination than in reality.

Envy is a map you are too proud to read. It points, with embarrassing accuracy, at the life you actually want.

Human beings, it seems, are at their best when immersed deeply in something challenging.

Keep your identity small. The more labels you have for yourself, the dumber they make you.

This is the worst AI you will ever use.

The details are not the details. They make the design.

You could leave life right now. Let that determine what you do and say and think.

You are not running out of time. You are running out of attention, and you keep spending it on the things that will never send you a bill.

The obstacle is the way.

The best founders I know are in a permanent state of mild discomfort, and they've learned to interpret that as evidence they're working on the right thing.

The way to have good ideas is to have lots of ideas and throw away the bad ones.

Most people spend more time planning their vacation than they spend planning their lives.

The best founders don't have better ideas. They have better tolerances for discomfort.

Most people overestimate what they can do in one day, and underestimate what they can do in a year.

Every sentence you write is a test of how clearly you understand the thing you're trying to say.

Clear writing is clear thinking. You can't write well what you don't understand well.

Your first thought is rarely your best thought. The work is training yourself to wait for the second one.

You can't think yourself into a new way of acting, but you can act yourself into a new way of thinking.

The best founders are not visionaries. They are curators of problems worth solving.

The way to get startup ideas is not to try to think of startup ideas. It's to look for problems, preferably problems you have yourself.

Deep work is the ability to focus without distraction on a cognitively demanding task.

The most valuable real estate is the top of your to-do list.

The best way to complain is to make things.

The person avoiding the work will always find time to explain why the work is impossible.

The cost of being wrong is less than the cost of doing nothing.

The gym is the simplest place to practice discipline because the consequences of quitting are immediate and visible.

The person doing the work knows more than the person watching the work.

The obstacle in the path becomes the path. Never forget, within every obstacle is an opportunity to improve our condition.

Clarity about what matters provides clarity about what does not.

How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.