Work and play with people who respect and cherish how they spend their time. It’s normally a good clue that they won’t waste your time.

My favorite line:

But don’t hurry the journey at all.
Better if it lasts for years,
so you’re old by the time you reach the island,
wealthy with all you’ve gained on the way,
not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.

Enjoy this timeless advice.

Ithaka
BY C. P. CAVAFY
TRANSLATED BY EDMUND KEELEY

As you set out for Ithaka
hope your road is a long one,
full of adventure, full of discovery.
Laistrygonians, Cyclops,
angry Poseidon—don’t be afraid of them:
you’ll never find things like that on your way
as long as you keep your thoughts raised high,
as long as a rare excitement
stirs your spirit and your body.
Laistrygonians, Cyclops,
wild Poseidon—you won’t encounter them
unless you bring them along inside your soul,
unless your soul sets them up in front of you.

Hope your road is a long one.
May there be many summer mornings when,
with what pleasure, what joy,
you enter harbors you’re seeing for the first time;
may you stop at Phoenician trading stations
to buy fine things,
mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,
sensual perfume of every kind—
as many sensual perfumes as you can;
and may you visit many Egyptian cities
to learn and go on learning from their scholars.

Keep Ithaka always in your mind.
Arriving there is what you’re destined for.
But don’t hurry the journey at all.
Better if it lasts for years,
so you’re old by the time you reach the island,
wealthy with all you’ve gained on the way,
not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.

Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey.
Without her you wouldn’t have set out.
She has nothing left to give you now.

And if you find her poor, Ithaka won’t have fooled you.
Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,
you’ll have understood by then what these Ithakas mean.

“Someone once asked me why McDonald’s is so successful.

I said ‘our bathrooms are always clean.’ ‘Sure,’ he said, ‘But that’s easy.’

‘Well,’ I replied, ‘Are your bathrooms clean?’”

Ray Kroc

Have you ever thought about buying something and then seen the price and thought – “Wow, that’s way too expensive, I could just make that myself!”. You then get a life lesson about how difficult and expensive it is to build it yourself. After some struggles and false starts you end up paying full price with a deeper appreciation for what you are buying.

Everything looks simple easy until we try to replicate it.

Simplicity is the product of discipline, complexity and persistence.

“Think for yourself, or others will think for you without thinking of you.”

Henry David Thoreau

“Be the change you wish to see in the world”

Mahatma Gandhi

Say no to stuff that doesn’t bring you joy.

Say yes to people who align with your values.

Flee from self absorbed, and selfish people when your orbits intersect.

Work at places that are part of your bigger plan.

If you drift, then others will drag you along.

Set your own course and back yourself.

Every job looks easy when you’re not the one doing it.”

Jeff Immelt after leaving General Electric

Mistaking simple for easy is expensive.

— Danny Trinh (@dtrinh) November 17, 2020

“Stress comes from ignoring the things that you shouldn’t be ignoring.”

Jeff Bezos

One of the best ways to get a good night’s sleep is to make a list of all the things you need to do the next day. Getting them out of your head and onto a paper is a good first step, and it’s also a stress reliever.

Your brain uses up energy when you keep your to do list in your head. Free up some memory on you hard drive and click transfer.

Genuinely clever people know better than to pretend to understand when they don’t know the answer.

There is nothing less confidence-inspiring than a person faking a knowledge they don’t possess. True authority and true leadership come from knowing who you are and not pretending to be anything else.

Bob Iger

“When a man does not know what harbour he is making for, no wind is the right wind.”

Seneca

If you are going nowhere, you’ll go nowhere fast.

Hemingway is a master storyteller. The first few lines in his short story, Snows of Kilimanjaro could be a story all by itself.

Kilimanjaro is a snow-covered mountain 19,710 feet high, and is said to be the highest mountain in Africa. Its western summit is called the Masai “Ngaje Ngai,” the House of God. Close to the western summit there is the dried and frozen carcass of a leopard. No one has explained what the leopard was seeking at that altitude.

Snows of Kilimanjaro by Ernest Hemingway

A great public speaking class won’t stop you being nervous when you speak in front of large groups. But it will teach you to speak better in front of large groups while you are nervous.