you want to be a better player, you have to prepare, prepare, and prepare some more.

Kobe knew that to be the best you need a different approach from everyone else.

“basketball is an easy game to play, but a difficult game to master.”

always kept the end result, the long game, in my mind. I always focused on the fact that I had to try something to get it, and once I got it, I’d have another tool in my arsenal. If the price was a lot of work and a few missed shots, I was OK with that.

Stick with what works, even if it’s unpopular.

Some people, after all, enjoy looking at a watch; others are happier figuring out how the watch works.

By reading, by paying attention in class and in practice, by working, I strengthened my focus. By doing all of that, I strengthened my ability to be present and not have a wandering mind.

Just as important as reading was cultivating relationships with the greats who’d come before me.

That’s why I think it’s so important to have those mentors, those north stars, who you learn from and look up to.

The key, though, is being aware of how you’re feeling and how you need to be feeling. It all starts with awareness.

you really want to be great at something, you have to truly care about it. If you want to be great in a particular area, you have to obsess over it. A lot of people say they want to be great, but they’re not willing to make the sacrifices necessary to achieve greatness. They have other concerns, whether important or not, and they spread themselves out. That’s totally fine. After all, greatness is not for everybody.

you have to have an understanding circle of family and friends.

People don’t always understand just how much effort from how many people goes into one person chasing a dream to be great.

There’s a fine balance between obsessing about your craft and being there for your family.

You can’t achieve greatness by walking a straight line.

I always listened to my body. That’s the best advice I can give: listen to your body, and warm up with purpose.

My cardio workouts centered around recovery—that is, the time it takes to recover in between sprints.

always found that short 15-minute catnaps gave me all the energy I’d need for peak performance.

Pain in one area of your body often stems from an imbalance somewhere else. With that in mind, it’s important to treat the root cause and not the effect.

MY ROUTINE CHANGED OVER TIME; MY APPROACH DIDN’T.

The only aspect that can’t change, though, is that obsession. You have to enter every activity, every single time, with a want and need to do it to the best of your ability.

One of the most important aspects of the game is listening to your body, and preparing it accordingly. I always kept that in mind.

have to work hard in the dark to shine in the light.

The mindset isn’t about seeking a result—it’s more about the process of getting to that result. It’s about the journey and the approach. It’s a way of life. I do think that it’s important, in all endeavors, to have that mentality.

What separates great players from all-time great players is their ability to self-assess, diagnose weaknesses, and turn those flaws into strengths.

A book about hard work, attention to detail and total obsession to ones craft.

The Mamba Mentality: How I Play

Economists call this the ‘hedonic treadmill’; the rest of us call it ‘keeping up with the Joneses’.

Ruut Veenhoven finds that ‘the more individualized the nation, the more citizens enjoy their life.’

It is certainly true that your mortgage is borrowed (via a saver somewhere else, perhaps in China) from your future self, who will pay it off. It is also true on both sides of the Atlantic that your state pension will be funded by your children’s taxes, not by your payroll contributions as so many think.

More than any other animal, human beings borrow against their future capabilities by depending on others in their early years.

the entire concept of food miles is ‘a profoundly flawed sustainability indicator’. Getting food from the farmer to the shop causes just 4 per cent of all its lifetime emissions. Ten times as much carbon is emitted in refrigerating British food as in air-freighting it from abroad, and fifty times as much is emitted by the customer travelling to the shops.

Trade is often unequal, but still benefits both sides. This is a point that nearly everybody seems to miss.

Everybody gains – gains from trade. It is as if the species now has two brains and two stores of knowledge instead of one – a brain that learns about hunting and a brain that learns about gathering.

If you are not self-sufficient, but are working for other people, too, then it pays you to spend some time and effort to improve your technology and it pays you to specialise.

Human beings have a deep capacity for isolationism, for fragmenting into groups that diverge from each other.

If you have a single fishing harpoon to make, there’s no sense in building a clever tool for making harpoons first, but if you have to make harpoons for five fishermen, then maybe there is sense and time-saving in first making the harpoon-making tool.

According to the anthropologist Joe Henrich, human beings learn skills from each other by copying prestigious individuals, and they innovate by making mistakes that are very occasionally improvements – that is how culture evolves. The bigger the connected population, the more skilled the teacher, and the bigger the probability of a productive mistake.

‘population growth leading to diminishing returns is fiction; the induced increase in productivity is scientific fact’.

Money is not metal. It is trust inscribed. NIALL FERGUSON The Ascent of Money

Cooperation, exchange and specialisation within a family group are routine throughout the animal kingdom: among chimpanzees and dolphins, among wolves and lions, among individuals of almost any social species.

In the game, specialising is risky because the pay-off for ending up with units of only one colour is zero, but specialisation with exchange allows three times the pay-off of self-sufficiency.

As the philosopher Robert Solomon put it, ‘What I want for myself is your approval, and to get it I will most likely do what you think I should do.’

All it took was for eBay to solicit feedback from customers after each transaction and post the comments of buyers about the sellers. Suddenly every deal lay under the shadow of the future; suddenly, every eBay user felt the hot breath of reputation on his neck as surely as a Stone Age reindeer hide salesman returning to a trading place after selling a rotten hide the year before.

trust has gradually and progressively grown, spread and deepened during human history, because of exchange. Exchange breeds trust as much as vice versa.

The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves

I believe in the discipline of mastering the best of what other people have figured out. Charlie Munger1

A mental model is simply a representation of how something works.

Multidisciplinary thinking, learning these mental models and applying them across our lives, creates less stress and more freedom.

When understanding is separated from reality, we lose our powers. Understanding must constantly be tested against reality and updated accordingly. This isn’t a box we can tick, a task with a definite beginning and end, but a continuous process.

The only way you’ll know the extent to which you understand reality is to put your ideas and understanding into action.

If you don’t test your ideas against the real world—keep contact with the earth—how can you be sure you understand?

Our failures to update from interacting with reality spring primarily from three things: not having the right perspective or vantage point, ego-induced denial, and distance from the consequences of our decisions.

The first flaw is perspective. We have a hard time seeing any system that we are in.

We must be open to other perspectives if we truly want to understand the results of our actions.

The second flaw is ego. Many of us tend to have too much invested in our opinions of ourselves to see the world’s feedback—the feedback we need to update our beliefs about reality.

First, we’re so afraid about what others will say about us that we fail to put our ideas out there and subject them to criticism. This way we can always be right. Second, if we do put our ideas out there and they are criticized, our ego steps in to protect us. We become invested in defending instead of upgrading our ideas.

The third flaw is distance. The further we are from the results of our decisions, the easier it is to keep our current views rather than update them.

As Confucius said, “A man who has committed a mistake and doesn’t correct it, is committing another mistake.”

We also tend to undervalue the elementary ideas and overvalue the complicated ones.

Understanding only becomes useful when we adjust our behavior and actions accordingly.

Without reflection we cannot learn. Without learning we are doomed to repeat mistakes, become frustrated when the world doesn’t work the way we want it to, and wonder why we are so busy. The cycle goes on.

Sometimes making good decisions boils down to avoiding bad ones.

The chief enemy of good decisions is a lack of sufficient perspectives on a problem.

If you get into the mental habit of relating what you’re reading to the basic structure of the underlying ideas being demonstrated, you gradually accumulate some wisdom.» Charlie Munger

What successful people do is file away a massive, but finite, amount of fundamental, established, essentially unchanging knowledge that can be used in evaluating the infinite number of unique scenarios which show up in the real world.

It’s not just knowing the mental models that is important. First you must learn them, but then you must use them.

When you start to understand the world better, when the whys seem less mysterious, you gain confidence in how you navigate it.

The truth is, the only way we can navigate the complexity of reality is through some sort of abstraction.

When we mistake the map for reality, we start to think we have all the answers. We create static rules or policies that deal with the map but forget that we exist in a constantly changing world.

When we close off or ignore feedback loops, we don’t see the terrain has changed and we dramatically reduce our ability to adapt to a changing environment.

Reality is messy and complicated, so our tendency to simplify it is understandable. However, if the aim becomes simplification rather than understanding we start to make bad decisions.

We can’t use maps as dogma. Maps and models are not meant to live forever as static references.

If reality has changed the map must change.

«Remember that all models are wrong; the practical question is how wrong do they have to be to not be useful.»

In order to use a map or model as accurately as possible, we should take three important considerations into account: Reality is the ultimate update. Consider the cartographer. Maps can influence territories.

Understanding your circle of competence improves decision-making and outcomes.

if you don’t have at least a few years and a few failures under your belt, you cannot consider yourself competent in a circle.

“A little learning is a dangerous thing; Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring: There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain, And drinking largely sobers us again.”6

There is no shortcut to understanding. Building a circle of competence takes years of experience, of making mistakes, and of actively seeking out better methods of practice and thought.

One of the essential requirements of a circle of competence is that you can never take it for granted. You can’t operate as if a circle of competence is a static thing, that once attained is attained for life. The world is dynamic. Knowledge gets updated, and so too must your circle.

There are three key practices needed in order to build and maintain a circle of competence: curiosity and a desire to learn, monitoring, and feedback.

«Learn from the mistakes of others. You can’t live long enough to make them all yourself.»

Keeping a journal of your own performance is the easiest and most private way to give self-feedback.

It is extremely difficult to maintain a circle of competence without an outside perspective.

We can learn it on an as-needed basis. The way to do it, in this case, would be to defer all decisions on major spending until you’ve had time to poke around the resources you can find online and at least confirm that the mechanic isn’t making a major bluff.

being able to identify your circle, and knowing how to move around outside of it, is so important.

«Ignorance more often begets confidence than knowledge.»

Falsification is the opposite of verification; you must try to show the theory is incorrect, and if you fail to do so, you actually strengthen it.

I don’t know what’s the matter with people: they don’t learn by understanding; they learn by some other way—by rote or something. Their knowledge is so fragile!

First principles thinking is one of the best ways to reverse-engineer complicated situations and unleash creative possibility.

If you know the first principles of something, you can build the rest of your knowledge around them to produce something new.

If we never learn to take something apart, test our assumptions about it, and reconstruct it, we end up bound by what other people tell us—trapped in the way things have always been done.

When it comes down to it, everything that is not a law of nature is just a shared belief. Money is a shared belief. So is a border. So are bitcoin. So is love. The list goes on.

Socratic questioning generally follows this process: Clarifying your thinking and explaining the origins of your ideas. (Why do I think this? What exactly do I think?) Challenging assumptions. (How do I know this is true? What if I thought the opposite?) Looking for evidence. (How can I back this up? What are the sources?) Considering alternative perspectives. (What might others think? How do I know I am correct?) Examining consequences and implications. (What if I am wrong? What are the consequences if I am?) Questioning the original questions. (Why did I think that? Was I correct? What conclusions can I draw from the reasoning process?)

Socratic questioning stops you from relying on your gut and limits strong emotional responses. This process helps you build something that lasts.

The goal of the Five Whys is to land on a “what” or “how”.

If your “whys” result in a statement of falsifiable fact, you have hit a first principle. If they end up with a “because I said so” or ”it just is”, you know you have landed on an assumption that may be based on popular opinion, cultural myth, or dogma.

First principles thinking helps us avoid the problem of relying on someone else’s tactics without understanding the rationale behind them.

when we start with the idea that the way things are might not be the way they have to be, we put ourselves in the right frame of mind to identify first principles.

The real power of first principles thinking is moving away from random change and into choices that have a real possibility of success.

«As to methods, there may be a million and then some, but principles are few. The man who grasps principles can successfully select his own methods. The man who tries methods, ignoring principles, is sure to have trouble.»

Much like the scientific method, a thought experiment generally has the following steps: Ask a question Conduct background research Construct hypothesis Test with (thought) experiments Analyze outcomes and draw conclusions Compare to hypothesis and adjust accordingly (new question, etc.)

Thought experiments tell you about the limits of what you know and the limits of what you should attempt. In order to improve our decision-making and increase our chances of success, we must be willing to probe all of the possibilities we can think of.

Thought experiments are not daydreams. They require both rigor and work. But the more you use them, the more you understand actual cause and effect, and the more knowledge you have of what can really be accomplished.

If we’re interested in understanding how the world really works, we must include second and subsequent effects. We must be as observant and honest as we can about the web of connections we are operating in. How often is short-term gain worth protracted long-term pain?

second-order thinking is so useful and valuable. Going for the immediate payoff in our interactions with people, unless they are a win-win, almost always guarantees that interaction will be a one-off. Maximizing benefits is something that happens over time.

Constructing an effective argument: Second-order thinking can help you avert problems and anticipate challenges that you can then address in advance.

For example, most of us have to construct arguments every day. Convincing your boss to take a chance on a new form of outreach, convincing your spouse to try a new parenting technique. Life is filled with the need to be persuasive. Arguments are more effective when we demonstrate that we have considered the second-order effects and put effort into verifying that these are desirable as well.

Second-order thinking needs to evaluate the most likely effects and their most likely consequences, checking our understanding of what the typical results of our actions will be.

We don’t make decisions in a vacuum and we can’t get something for nothing. When making choices, considering consequences can help us avoid future problems. We must ask ourselves the critical question: And then what?

A little time spent thinking ahead can save us massive amounts of time later.

Bayesian updating, as it can be called) is this: given that we have limited but useful information about the world, and are constantly encountering new information, we should probably take into account what we already know when we learn

When making uncertain decisions, it’s nearly always a mistake not to ask: What are the relevant priors? What might I already know that I can use to better understand the reality of the situation?

using conditional probability means being very careful to observe the conditions preceding an event you’d like to understand.

the world is fundamentally unpredictable and volatile, and large events—panics, crashes, wars, bubbles, and so on—tend to have a disproportionate impact on outcomes. There are two ways to handle such a world: try to predict, or try to prepare.

The second thing we can do is to learn how to fail properly.

Failing properly has two major components. First, never take a risk that will do you in completely. (Never get taken out of the game completely.) Second, develop the personal resilience to learn from your failures and start again.

No one likes to fail. It hurts. But failure carries with it one huge antifragile gift: learning.

Those who are not afraid to fail (properly) have a huge advantage over the rest. What they learn makes them less vulnerable to the volatility of the world. They benefit from it, in true antifragile fashion.

Whenever possible, try to create scenarios where randomness and uncertainty are your friends, not your enemies.

Avoiding stupidity is easier than seeking brilliance. Combining the ability to think forward and backward allows you to see reality from multiple angles.

There are two approaches to applying inversion in your life. Start by assuming that what you’re trying to prove is either true or false, then show what else would have to be true. Instead of aiming directly for your goal, think deeply about what you want to avoid and then see what options are left over.

Identify the problem Define your objective Identify the forces that support change towards your objective Identify the forces that impede change towards the objective Strategize a solution! This may involve both augmenting or adding to the forces in step 3, and reducing or eliminating the forces in step 4.

Using inversion to identify your end goal and work backward from there can lead to innovation.

Simpler explanations are more likely to be true than complicated ones. This is the essence of Occam’s Razor,

focusing on simplicity when all others are focused on complexity is a hallmark of genius, and it’s easier said than done. But always remembering that a simpler explanation is more likely to be correct than a complicated one goes a long way towards helping us conserve our most precious resources of time and energy.

I need to listen well so that I hear what is not said.

By not generally assuming that bad results are the fault of a bad actor, we look for options instead of missing opportunities.

we’re deeply affected by vivid, available evidence, to such a degree that we’re willing to make judgments that violate simple logic.

When we see something we don’t like happen and which seems wrong, we assume it’s intentional. But it’s more likely that it’s completely unintentional.

Most people doing wrong are not bad people trying to be malicious.

The Great Mental Models Volume 1: General Thinking Concepts

Remember, in whatever you do be a student, not merely a follower.

SUCCESS IS NO MORE THAN THE NATURAL CONSEQUENCE OF CONSISTENTLY APPLYING THE FUNDAMENTALS OF SUCCESS TO LIFE.

Happiness comes to those who deliberately expand their horizons and experiences.

If there is one critical ingredient for your successful quest for both wealth and happiness, it is discipline.

Discipline is the foundation on which all success is built. Lack of discipline inevitably leads to failure.

Discipline is the master key. It unlocks the door to wealth and happiness, culture and sophistication, high self-esteem and high accomplishment, and the accompanying feelings of pride, satisfaction, and success.

It’s dangerous to linger too long at the table of success. The only way to enjoy another meal is to get good and hungry.

Don’t join an easy crowd. Go where the expectations are high, where the pressure to perform is high. That, too, is part of your overall strategy for wealth and happiness.

The Bible says, “Without dreams and vision, we perish.”

Remember this rule: INCOME RARELY EXCEEDS PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT. That’s why all of us must subject ourselves to self-examination.

YOUR ABILITY WILL GROW TO MATCH YOUR DREAMS.

UNLESS YOU HAVE GOALS, IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO MANAGE YOUR TIME EFFECTIVELY.

“If you wish to be successful, study success. If you wish to be happy, study happiness. If you want to make money, study the acquisition of wealth. Those who achieve these things don’t do it by accident. It’s a matter of studying first and practicing second.”

if you want more than the average, you must become self-educated.”

Choose a really successful person and take him or her out to dinner.

Learn to work harder on yourself than you do on your job.”

UNLESS YOU CHANGE HOW YOU ARE, YOU’LL ALWAYS HAVE WHAT YOU’VE GOT.

IT’S HARD TO KEEP THAT WHICH HAS NOT BEEN OBTAINED THROUGH PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT.

“Don’t wish it were easier, wish you were better. Don’t wish for fewer problems, wish for more skills. Don’t wish for less of a challenge, wish for more wisdom.”

Remember: YOU CAN CHANGE ALL THINGS FOR THE BETTER WHEN YOU CHANGE YOURSELF FOR THE BETTER.

And lack of self-esteem is the greatest deterrent to success.

Here is the first rule of successful management: DON’T SEND YOUR DUCKS TO EAGLE SCHOOL.

Keeping a separate section on each child can always remind us of the essentials.

Here’s an important thought: BE HAPPY WITH WHAT YOU HAVE WHILE PURSUING WHAT YOU WANT. I try to live this one every day of my life.

Better a few treasures than a house full of junk.

Lifestyle is style over amount. And style is an art — the art of living.

“If we don’t go for the higher tastes, we will settle for the lower ones.”

“No, Jim, you don’t understand. Sophisticated people don’t take a chance on good service. They insure good service by giving the money up front.”

In conclusion, remember this: The good life is not an amount; it’s an attitude, an act, an idea, a discovery, a search. The good life comes from a lifestyle that is fully developed, regardless of the size of your bank account; a lifestyle that provides you with a constant sense of joy in living; a lifestyle that fuels your desire to become a person of deep value and achievement. After all, what is wealth without character, industry without art, quantity without quality, enterprise without satisfaction, and possessions without joy?

Whatever you do, don’t camp at the fork in the road. Decide. It’s far better to make a wrong decision than to not make one at all.

The best answer to the “Why should you try?” question is another question: Why not? What else are you going to do with your life? Why not see how far you can go? Why not see how much you can earn, or read, or share? Why not see what you can become or how much you can grow? Why not? After all, you’ll be here until you go. Why not stay here in style?

7 Strategies for Wealth & Happiness: Power Ideas from America's Foremost Business Philosopher

“There is no elevator to success, you have to take the stairs.” ― Zig Ziglar

Things take time, and intensity is not always the answer.

They seem to make little difference on any given day and yet the impact they deliver over the months and years can be enormous. It is only when looking back two, five, or perhaps ten years later that the value of good habits and the cost of bad ones becomes strikingly apparent.”

there’s no such thing as the best tool.

we should practice JOMO (the joy of missing out), which is mostly about being happy and content with what you already know.

you need to be able to identify what is the signal and what is just noise.

Accept the fact that you simply can’t learn everything. Remember, desires are endless; needs are limited.

money. Practice daily the subtle art of saying ‘no’. No to that newest library. No to that fancier platform. Say more ‘noes’ so you can say ‘yes’ to what really matters to

Hear the noise, but only pay attention to the signals.

"Accept that you can’t learn everything, but you

“You can practice shooting eight hours a day, but if your technique is wrong, then all you become is very good at shooting the wrong way. Get the fundamentals down and the level of everything you do will rise.” ― Michael Jordan

it’s important to understand core concepts such as algorithms, logic, network, accessibility, security, and user experience.

Bonus: The open source community built a roadmap of fundamentals for DevOps, Front-end, and Back-end developers. Go to 14habits.com/bonus/2 to grab it. */

“I would learn a new programming language by picking one of my existing pet projects and rewriting it using this new programming language. In my opinion, this is the most efficient way to learn a new language,

“If you really want to learn something, you have to teach it”.

Just write readable code. Think about maintainability, and use meaningful names for your classes, functions, and variables.

Next time you start developing, ask yourself this question: “Will the future me understand the intention of this code?”

Remember, a person who knows how to code is powerful, a person who knows how to code and knows how business works is unstoppable.

You can read many books on any particular subject, but there is nothing like getting your hands dirty and side projects can be that sandbox for you.

It takes time for a side project to gain traction, so the next thing you should ask yourself is: “Am I willing to spend at least 5 years working on this idea?”

“Wise men speak because they have something to say; Fools because they have to say something.” ― Plato

Conversations are typically bi-directional, but that doesn’t mean you should speak all the time just for the sake of speaking.

“Everyone you meet is fighting a battle you know nothing about. Be kind. Always.”

Next time someone asks for an estimate, grab a Post-it and take a note of your answer. When you are ready to begin the task, start a clock and see how long it takes to complete. Once the task is done, take a note of how many hours it actually took to finish. Repeat the same thing for the next task.

Overestimate it and deliver before the deadline. That’s a better way to manage expectations and prevent yourself from unknowns that might happen along the way."

Stop wasting time on variables that are out of your control. Focus on the variables that you can change.

Habit 2: Focus on the Fundamentals The open source community built a roadmap of fundamentals for DevOps, Front-end, and Back-end developers. Go to 14habits.com/bonus/2 to grab it.

I created a list of my personal top 5 books about software architecture and best practices. Go to 14habits.com/bonus/5 to receive it.

listed 7 ideas for getting started on a side project, including real life examples from my own personal projects. Go to 14habits.com/bonus/8 to get it.

14 Habits of Highly Productive Developers

Focused-mode thinking is essential for studying math and science. It involves a direct approach to solving problems using rational, sequential, analytical approaches. The focused mode is associated with the concentrating abilities of the brain’s prefrontal cortex, located right behind your forehead.

Diffuse-mode thinking is also essential for learning math and science. It allows us to suddenly gain a new insight on a problem we’ve been struggling with and is associated with “big-picture” perspectives. Diffuse-mode thinking is what happens when you relax your attention and just let your mind wander.

If you are trying to understand or figure out something new, your best bet is to turn off your precision-focused thinking and turn on your “big picture” diffuse mode, long enough to be able to latch on to a new, more fruitful approach.

The harder you push your brain to come up with something creative, the less creative your ideas will be.

as long as we are consciously focusing on a problem, we are blocking the diffuse mode.

Articulating your question is 80 percent of the battle. By the time you’ve figured out what’s confusing, you’re likely to have answered the question yourself!”