It’s popular to read advice from highly successful people.

Their advice may be good for THEIR situation, but does it generalize to other circumstances?

Here’s my attempt to distill repeated advice from MANY highly successful people across many distinct circumstances:

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1. You won’t automatically be happy when you hit your goals.

Achieving goals breeds new ones.

A terrible situation creates misery, but a good situation doesn’t imply happiness.

Happiness takes inner work, gratitude for what’s had.

The good life’s a journey, not a destination.
2. High levels of accomplishment almost always require hard work over a long period.

“Overnight successes” are rare, and are often misidentified. If you look closely, usually the person was practicing for 5-20 years before they were an “overnight success.”

Always be improving.
3. Life is unpredictable.

When young, people usually don’t know what they’re going to “do with their life.” That’s fine!

Life takes crazy, unexpected twists & turns.

Plans are great but expect to modify them.

Be adaptable and on the lookout for great, unexpected opportunities
4. Don’t let fear stop you.

Attempting hard things will bring stress, fear, and anxiety. If you avoid what you fear (more than is warranted by the level of danger) your potential will be curtailed.

Learn to push through your fears to do stressful things that are valuable.
5. Who you spend time with matters.

Be thoughtful about who you are friends with, whether you spend enough quality time with your loved ones, etc.

Spending time with the wrong people will waste time or even sap potential.

Make enough time for the people that matter most to you
6. Learn to say no.

People will ask many things from you. If you always say yes it will drain energy & focus.

Say “yes” to your loved ones.

For others, consider if you realistically have the bandwidth without taking away from valued priorities. If not, give an authentic “no.”
7. Take care of your body and mind.

Exercise regularly, reduce sugar, eat healthy foods that make you feel good, avoid excessive alcohol, meditate regularly, and seek treatment for mental health challenges.

Good health has ripple effects, and will help you achieve your goals.
8. You will fail many times.

That’s normal and expected. The key is to learn from every failure, and to pick yourself back up and keep going.

If you’re not willing to fail many times, you aren’t prepared to do hard things.

More from Life

1/“What would need to be true for you to….X”

Why is this the most powerful question you can ask when attempting to reach an agreement with another human being or organization?

A thread, co-written by @deanmbrody:


2/ First, “X” could be lots of things. Examples: What would need to be true for you to

- “Feel it's in our best interest for me to be CMO"
- “Feel that we’re in a good place as a company”
- “Feel that we’re on the same page”
- “Feel that we both got what we wanted from this deal

3/ Normally, we aren’t that direct. Example from startup/VC land:

Founders leave VC meetings thinking that every VC will invest, but they rarely do.

Worse over, the founders don’t know what they need to do in order to be fundable.

4/ So why should you ask the magic Q?

To get clarity.

You want to know where you stand, and what it takes to get what you want in a way that also gets them what they want.

It also holds them (mentally) accountable once the thing they need becomes true.

5/ Staying in the context of soliciting investors, the question is “what would need to be true for you to want to invest (or partner with us on this journey, etc)?”

Multiple responses to this question are likely to deliver a positive result.

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“We don’t negotiate salaries” is a negotiation tactic.

Always. No, your company is not an exception.

A tactic I don’t appreciate at all because of how unfairly it penalizes low-leverage, junior employees, and those loyal enough not to question it, but that’s negotiation for you after all. Weaponized information asymmetry.

Listen to Aditya


And by the way, you should never be worried that an offer would be withdrawn if you politely negotiate.

I have seen this happen *extremely* rarely, mostly to women, and anyway is a giant red flag. It suggests you probably didn’t want to work there.

You wish there was no negotiating so it would all be more fair? I feel you, but it’s not happening.

Instead, negotiate hard, use your privilege, and then go and share numbers with your underrepresented and underpaid colleagues. […]