• Many profit-driven corporate strategies are based on fashion, planned obsolescence, unneeded upgrades, and masterful emotional manipulation --marketing--causing people to continuously replace goods which are still in good working order.

• Currently, I spend my "retirement" volunteering on the board of a small nonprofit, tending our garden, improving my hockey game, crewing in yacht races, learning how to repair mechanical watches and bicycles, blogging, and writing books such as this.

• The Renaissance man is capable of many different things and doesn't restrict himself to vocational skills. He does his own taxes and researches his own investments. He can fix a computer or a broken appliance. He knows how to drive and fix a car, but he has enough time and athletic ability to ride his bicycle 20 miles instead, or run five miles to get groceries. Physically, he keeps up with people decades younger than himself. He can play an instrument, dance, paint, or write creatively. He can create interesting meals from scratch rather than recipe. Socially, he knows who to ask for help, who needs help, and how to put people together to efficiently solve problems. He is a leader or an inspiration to other people, whether it is personal, local, national, or global.

• Rather, it means that attitudes combined with actions lead to habits which, over time, tend to deliver certain deserved outcomes.

• Rather, it means that attitudes combined with actions lead to habits which, over time, tend to deliver certain deserved outcomes. The mathematical term for this property or statistical connection is ergodicity. In popular psychology, it's known by various other names such as positive thinking, synchronicity, and praying. These concepts are often described as magical thinking because the new habitual actions which result from mentally focusing on a goal and the statistical connection with the actual outcome go unseen.

• unseen. This doesn't mean these methods don't work;

• Yet while there is no physical connection between wishing for something and actually achieving it, there's no denying that by making something a priority and constantly thinking about it, you will influence your actions. There are two additional ingredients to this: First, you must pick the right actions; second, your vision must lead to a mission--that is, actions must be initiated.

• The right way is to realize that in order to become a millionaire, you must earn at least $1 million more than you spend. Your every thought should therefore be about how you can a) earn more money and b) spend less money.

• Agency resists and reduces stress. Anyone who has been out in the world for a while and experienced a lot of different situations has a good idea of what is normal, and thus can describe a bad situation as what it is: simply a bad situation.

• With a process-oriented attitude you'll eventually master several subjects. Once a threshold is reached, the synergy between different subjects will help you create new solutions. Since all human knowledge is based on a limited number of mental models, the stronger and wider this foundation of models is, the easier it is to gain new knowledge. A similar principle holds for physical abilities, emotional maturity, social networks, economic power, technical understanding, and one's ability to integrate with the world. Perhaps now more than ever there's a need for people who understand and are able to connect different interdisciplinary topics, lest we end up in a Tower of Babel situation where specialists and experts no longer understand each other.

• It was the universal ideal that led to the discovery of the scientific method, the rediscovery of democracy, and the settling of a new continent, all of which created the world we see today

• In general, the wider the scope of one's knowledge, the greater one's ability to think laterally and the more creative the solutions become.

• Also, he should acknowledge that breadth of knowledge is inherently valuable and that learning should not stop when leaving school.

• compiling -> computing -> coordinating -> creating, and parallels the development of expertise. The first two levels, copying and comparing, correspond to defining an objective--that is, a goal, such as getting out of debt, becoming a millionaire, retiring early, or running a marathon

• Now, there are many plans available on the market following a permutation of a formula of the type, "X days/tips to success in Y using the Z method," where X is a number (typically 7, 21, 30, or 365 days or 10, 12, 50, or 100 tips), Y is something desirable (typically $1,000,000, losing weight, getting a date, etc.), and Z is some kind of secret or, often, the author's autobiography.

• Compared to a plan, which may be thought of as a string of actions, subject to complete failure if it breaks, a strategy is better thought of as a web of actions.

• Creative synthesis occurs when you're able to see principles as an abstract model representation and apply the abstracted model elsewhere

• Creative synthesis occurs when you're able to see principles as an abstract model representation and apply the abstracted model elsewhere.

• It's important to understand that doing the right thing (good strategy) is much more important than doing things right (good tactics).

• available. A strategy that relies on means that are impossible to replicate for most people, like inheriting $1 million, winning the lottery, being the rare inventor or author that actually gets his great ideas commercialized,

• A strategy that relies on means that are impossible to replicate for most people, like inheriting $1 million, winning the lottery, being the rare inventor or author that actually gets his great ideas commercialized, being the first one in on a new technology, or simply riding a leveraged asset in a financial bubble and getting out at the right time, or relying on yet-to-exist communities or ways of life, are not very effective.

• However, since the strategy is preset by society (see The lock-in), improvements are limited to tactics such as introducing more slack through reserve funds, using the proper amount of savings and insurance, and simply running the operation faster--hence the fascination with lifehacking, productivity, time-saving strategies, and the almost fanatical discussions of exactly how large the emergency fund should be and how much one should spend on each budget category.

• This is both simple as well as tremendously challenging,

• A very common and very good piece of career advice is not to work to earn money but to work to learn new skills, gain new connections, and create new opportunities

• A very common and very good piece of career advice is not to work to earn money but to work to learn new skills, gain new connections, and create new opportunities.

• fact, companies often attempt to strengthen their employees' dependence on the company by providing "benefits" like health care, retirement plans, and other perks which can be thought of as golden handcuffs. This must be kept in mind when resolving dependencies, especially connections to things outside your immediate control.

• An important part of the systems thinking approach is to continuously increase the number of different problems that the strategy aims to solve or the number of different goals that the strategy intends to meet.

• A good strategy solves multiple problems at the same time!

• Tactics are often presented as lists. These lists are both helpful and useless at the same time. They are helpful because they allow people to pick up a thing or two that they have not seen before, but they are useless because few people are capable of memorizing hundreds of little rules that might not even apply directly to their situation and remember to obey all of them. In that sense, tips are like a collection of pretty postcards or pictures of specific instances of a particular way of living. They are interesting to look at, but they do not substitute for a map of the lifestyle, nor do they substitute for navigating the map, and most importantly, knowing them does not make anyone an expert.

• Each level on each list has a price and a value which is individually unique. The ultimate goal is maximizing total value while minimizing the total price. While the locked-in lifestyle described in The lock-in provides a default choice of levels, it's possible to choose one's levels very differently. For instance, instead of choosing a career in a cubicle, a five-bedroom/three-bathroom home on a 30-year mortgage, and a new TV on credit, one may choose financial independence and early retirement.

• This is also called lateral thinking, a kind of thinking that improves with generalization and worsens with specialization, or out-of-the-box thinking, which really originates from having thought in many different kinds of boxes. In particular, it requires a shift in focus from products to components.

• Since humans need very little, eliminating various wants can go far in terms of solving problems. Can't afford it? Don't want it! Too complicated? Don't want it! Reduce and simplify. Reduce and simplify! An entire aesthetic can and has been formed around this principle, and so the pleasure from following this path can be as strong as the (previous) pleasure of accumulation. However, as there's a point of diminishing returns to the pleasure of accumulation, there's also a point of diminishing returns to the pleasure of giving things up. The optimal point is somewhere in the middle. It should therefore be kept in mind that while eliminating problems can be a very good tool, some will be very tempted to make it their only tool, in which case it becomes a hammer for which the whole world becomes a nail.

• The most important thing to remember is that the price of anything is not determined by how much effort went into the production. If it was, I should be paid as much for writing this book as an actor gets for a movie. Nor does it depend on the level of specialized knowledge required for the job. If it was, I should have earned more than $40,000 per year after spending 10 years to acquire what corresponds to a master's degree in nuclear physics and a PhD in astrophysics, given that you can also earn this salary as a toll booth operator. Nor is it determined by any kind of inherent value. If it was, school teachers would be paid more than professional athletes and bankers. It's strictly determined by how much the seller can get.

• An unskilled money handler spends money everywhere, too much on some things, too little on other things, with much going to waste.

• pages I have written as the book project has progressed.

• You must be willing to change your frame of mind and conquer old habits. In particular, you must be willing to do things that 95% of the population won't be able to understand and 99% won't be willing to do.

• This means that you must be exceedingly confident that you're doing the right thing, which is why 90% of this book is dedicated to the development of a coherent philosophy.

• Freedom is attained by creating a large gap between production (revenue) and consumption (expenses). This can be done in two ways--earning more or spending less. Nothing new there.

• Decrease the volume and size but increase the sophistication of your activities and possessions.

• Keep running costs down but pay for value.

• Libertarians (believing in low economic control, low social control) have a similar problem when dealing with left-wing (believing in high economic control, low social control) people or right-wing (believing in low economic control, high social control) people. With either group there is something to agree with, but there is also something to disagree with. A preference for agreement or truth comes down to personality type.