Grads from top schools are funneled into high-income 80-hour-per-week jobs, and 15–30 years of soul-crushing work has been accepted as the default path.

the currency of the New Rich: time and mobility.

How do your decisions change if retirement isn’t an option?

Doing less meaningless work, so that you can focus on things of greater personal importance, is NOT laziness.

Most things make no difference. Being busy is a form of laziness—lazy thinking and indiscriminate action.

Being overwhelmed is often as unproductive as doing nothing, and is far more unpleasant. Being selective—doing less—is the path of the productive. Focus on the important few and ignore the rest.

lack of time is actually lack of priorities.

Parkinson’s Law dictates that a task will swell in (perceived) importance and complexity in relation to the time allotted for its completion.

Am I being productive or just active?

Am I inventing things to do to avoid the important?

If you had a gun to your head and had to stop doing 4/5 of different time-consuming activities, what would you remove?

What are the top-three activities that I use to fill time to feel as though I’ve been productive?

“If this is the only thing I accomplish today, will I be satisfied with my day?”

More is not better, and stopping something is often 10 times better than finishing it. Develop the habit of nonfinishing that which is boring or unproductive if a boss isn’t demanding it.

Meetings should only be held to make decisions about a predefined situation, not to define the problem.

That sounds doable. So I can best prepare, can you please send me an e-mail with an agenda? That is, the topics and questions we’ll need to address? That would be great. Thanks in advance.

“OK, I only have two minutes before a call, but what’s the situation and what can I do to help?”

hate that I have to interrupt you so much and pull you away from more important things I know you have on your plate. I was doing some reading and had some thoughts on how I might be more productive. Do you have a second?”

Eliminate before you delegate.

Never automate something that can be eliminated, and never delegate something that can be automated or streamlined.

cash flow and time. With these two currencies, all other things are possible. Without them, nothing is possible.

the more competing resellers there are, the faster your product goes extinct.

It is more profitable to be a big fish in a small pond than a small undefined fish in a big pond.

Presenting the truth in the best light, but not fabricating it, is the name of the game.

The initial positive responses, given by people who want to be liked and aim to please, become polite refusals as soon as real money is at stake.

Hire trained groups of people who can provide detailed reporting and replace one another as needed.

The new mantra is this: Work wherever and whenever you want, but get your work done.

just because something has been a lot of work or consumed a lot of time doesn’t make it productive or worthwhile.

Human beings have the capacity to learn to want almost any conceivable material object. Given, then, the emergence of a modern industrial culture capable of producing almost anything, the time is ripe for opening the storehouse of infinite need! … It is the modern Pandora’s box, and its plagues are loose upon the world. —JULES HENRY

Questions about things beyond your sphere of influence like “What if the train is late tomorrow?” fail the second and should thus be ignored.

Everything out there needs help, so don’t get baited into “my cause can beat up your cause” arguments with no right answer. There are no qualitative or quantitative comparisons that make sense. The truth is this: Those thousands of lives you save could contribute to a famine that kills millions, or that one bush in Bolivia that you protect could hold the cure for cancer. The downstream effects are unknown. Do your best and hope for the best. If you’re improving the world—however you define that—consider your job well done.

Just so I don’t leave you hanging, let’s assume I can’t make it, but can I let you know if that changes?”