"One of the many life skills that you want to learn at a fairly young age is the skill of being an ultra-thrifty, minimal kind of little wisp that's traveling through time…in the sense of learning how little you actually need to live, not just in a survival mode, but in a contented mode…That gives you the confidence to take a risk, because you say, 'What's the worst that can happen? Well, the worst that can happen is that I'd have a backpack and a sleeping bag, and I'd be eating oatmeal. And I'd be fine.'"
"It's just an interesting little trick. For 28 days, when I met someone, whether it's the lady at the DMV who's making me wait 2 hours [or someone else], I would just assume everybody is doing the best they can with what they have, which is really hard for a lot of us to accept."
Bad decisions make good stories.
Choose time over money, since you can always make more money. And I've always understood that the best investment of my limited time on earth is to spend it with people I love.
You can't reason someone out of something they didn't reason themselves into.
"Anger is a hot coal that you hold in your hand while waiting to throw it at someone else" Buddhist saying
Are you spending all your time and exhausting all your energy catching field mice? In the short term it might give you a nice, rewarding feeling. But in the long run you're going to die. So ask yourself at the end of the day, "Did I spend today chasing mice or hunting antelope?"
Which task, if done, would render all the rest either easier or irrelevant?
What would this look like if it were easy?
If you've got enough money to solve the problem, you don't have the problem.
I routinely write "No hurry, no pause" at the top of my notebooks as a daily reminder. In effect, it's shorthand for Derek Sivers's story of the 45-minute versus 43-minute bike ride—you don't need to go through life huffing and puffing, straining and red-faced. You can get 95% of the results you want by calmly putting one foot in front of the other. One former Navy SEAL friend recently texted me a principle used in their training: "Slow is smooth. Smooth is fast." Perhaps I'm just getting old, but my definition of luxury has changed over time. Now, it's not about owning a lot of stuff. Luxury, to me, is feeling unrushed. No hurry, no pause.
