I think it's a healthy practice to occasionally blow off a previous commitment and do whatever you want instead. It's a great reminder that you're the boss of your life.

Once you realize that one value is more important to you than another, ask yourself if you're living accordingly. What's ultimately more important to you: Learning or creating? Money or time? Expanding or focusing? Once you know which takes top place, consider taking it to an extreme—to its logical conclusion—and optimizing your entire life around that top priority, letting go of almost everything else.

It takes many hours to make what you want to make. The hours don't suddenly appear; you have to steal them from comfort.

Learning and creating, to me, are kind of two halves of the same thing. I think of those two, learning and creating, as kind of a cycle. I like to learn things for the sake of creating; I don't like to just learn for the sake of learning. And I like to create things that are a learning process in creating them.

People who don't have kids or are thinking of having a kid say 'I know that you have a kid... do you have any advice for a potential father?' And I always say 'Yeah, here's my best advice: Make as much money as you can, save your money, and then when your kid's born, shortly afterward, just take a sabbatical and be a full-time dad. It's great.'

When everyone else is trying to automate everything, using a little human intervention can be a competitive advantage.

Happiness is 50% genetic and 50% everything else. Some people are just born with a higher setpoint of happiness, and that accounts for 50% of your happiness in life.

Any focus is good ... Any interest a kid has is good. The mastery path to anything is great, whether it's video games or juggling or beatboxing or skateboarding or surfing or poker or whatever. When someone gets so into something, they should be encouraged to master it to help them see that they can become one of the best in the world if they focus and deliberately practice.

The world goes at the pace of the lowest common denominator, especially in schools—they have to teach the curricula in such a way that nobody gets left behind. If you're smarter and more focused than average, you can go much faster than most people.

50% percent of our happiness is just genetic, and only 50% is through our actions and life circumstances ... 50% of your happiness is just in your DNA. The best you can do with all of your attitude adjustments and positive thinking and even your life circumstances and where you live... All that stuff only accounts for 50% of your happiness.

There's a huge difference between in-theory versus in-practice. If you've been deliberating on something for a while, get it out of your head and into the world.

If you really want to call attention to yourself and do something cool that people pay attention to, then look at what the rest of the world is doing and do the opposite.

A charismatic leader with a bad team will fail, but an uncharismatic leader with a great team is more likely to succeed. So, to me, that's just the proof that leadership is over-glorified because it makes for a more interesting story, but the truth is it's the team that makes things happen.

I think to be driven is the best thing that we could help someone be ... It doesn't matter what someone's focused on—it can even be as shallow as video games. It doesn't matter. If they're on the path to mastery, anything is better than that just adrift lost thing that makes people just sit around and do nothing and get drunk and hang out feeling lost.

Most of us don't change until we have to. Usually, something has to push us.

Business is not business plans; it's not financial plans; it's not spreadsheets; it's not profit and loss statements. Business is just serving people.

It's fun for techies to try to find the tech solution to everything, but don't forget that even a tiny touch from a real person can be the best algorithm and a massive business maximizer.

I've never liked TV. I'm not going to watch TV just so I can chat at the water cooler about 'Game of Thrones.' Fuck that. I'd rather reclaim those 300 hours of my life.

The news is changing between the morning and the evening ... What was true yesterday is false today and vice versa. Isn't that a perfect reason why we shouldn't follow it?

It's a wonderful thing to constantly ask yourself, 'Wait a minute, why am I doing this?'