From 600+ conversations with the world’s leading thinkers.
Poverty is like treading in a pool of quicksand- if you're standing on the outside looking in, it's easy for you to pontificate about what the person in the quicksand should do, how they should behave, what risks they should be able to take- but anyone who's been in the proverbial quicksand knows that the biggest risk is that they make one move in the wrong direction, and submerge deeper.
It's not enough to lead yourself, you need to tune into the people you work with- the people that you know- your family. You need to pick up non-verbal cues, facial expressions, tone of voice.
I knew I could still fight, and some of the people close to me said, 'not with one eye you can't' so I continued anyway... I lied, I cheated and scammed the system... I did whatever I could. It was highly stressful, but I believed in myself.
Entrepreneurship is about taking risks and having the audacity to commit and persevere through all the obstacles and hurdles we have to overcome.
Endurance stays with you across everything, if you do it one place, you can do it anywhere. You're able to sustain because you've already trained your brain to do that.
Selling is about creating agency in the people that you are talking to so that they feel like they are part of the decision-making process. Selling is wanting to ask questions that you really want to know the answers to. Not ones that you have to ask.
Consciousness is any kind of subjective experience whatsoever. The philosopher, Thomas Nagel, put it like this, 'for a conscious organism, there is something it is like to be that organism…' – there is something it is like to be me, to be you, to be a dolphin – but there's probably nothing like what it is to be a chair, table, or iPhone.
ISIS and Al Qaeda don't radicalise anybody, what they do is tip people over the edge. The online phenomenon just speeds it up.
If you want other people to open their minds, you have to open yours too.
Neuroscience shows us that habit formation is based on how rewarding something is, not willpower. Willpower isn't even in the equation. We like to think of willpower is something, but it's more myth than muscle.
Humans can be parasitized by actual brain worms, but also by idea pathogens that cause them to behave in profoundly maladaptive ways.
Firms like McKinsey are self-reporting that their people are 5x more productive in-flow than out of flow… 500% more productive. That means you can work Monday in-flow and take the rest of the week off – and you'd still get as much done as your peers.