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.

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

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.'

Off the top of my head, I think of how important it is to be done with something so that you can move on. I don't want unresolved decisions sitting unresolved, sitting undecided, for a long time. I feel the weight of those. Unfinished projects, because I'm trying to make it perfect, I feel the weight of those. I've learned the importance of just getting things done and finishing. And to do that, you usually have to say good enough.

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 way I think about it is asking yourself, what kind of people do I like being around? Because these are people you're going to be serving; you have to like them. You want to love your customers and love serving them because, ultimately, even if it's the money, what you really want is the emotional fulfillment ... What if your customers are jerks? Would you be happy getting rich running an all-night vaping store?

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.

Number one, almost nothing is objectively true. Number two, beliefs are placebos ... Number three, rules and norms are arbitrary games that can be changed ... And number four, refuse ideology.

We spend so much of our life, the first half of our life, deferring to authority and thinking that authority has power over us. And at a certain point, you realize that you’re free. You’re liberated from that as long as you don’t break the law.

I think we should be skeptical of every -ism. I think we should avoid -isms, avoid ideology, and take ideas piecemeal—which means, ideally, you should be open to somebody you don't like taking their good ideas from people you don't like; and the people you do like, admitting that some of the things they say, you're not going to adopt that. And when somebody does that, to me, that shows a stronger thinker, a clear thinker.

Say no to almost everything and leave space in your life—leave free time ... Then, when something great comes along—something that makes you say, 'Oh, hell yeah! That would be awesome!' then not only can you say 'yes' to that, but now you have the time and energy to throw yourself into it completely.

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.

If you set up your business to serve the people that you love being around, even if it makes less money, you’re going to be much happier.

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.

I don't think life has meaning. I don't think anything has inherent meaning. I think it's all just a blank slate that we can project whatever meaning we want on to.

When I think back about the times in my life where I got the most done, created the most, or had a major breakthrough, it was often while I was supposed to be doing something else.

The thing that separates the really appealing businesses from those that aren't is generosity.

I think that saying enough, good enough, is a superpower.

True friendship is almost purely emotional. I don't care what somebody's achieved in their life or how book smart they are; it's all about your emotional trust with somebody. That's what makes a real friendship. The most smart, intellectual, interesting famous person, if you don't feel an emotional safety with that person, isn't really a friend; they're an acquaintance.

We should not sugarcoat everything because we really learn best from pain. Pain teaches us like nothing else.

The daily stock market is something that you should ignore. In fact, you should probably ignore the weekly and the monthly, too. The wisest investors are the ones that don't look at the daily ups and downs.

Tony Robbins' 'Awaken the Giant Within' ... It's like asking someone what they learned from their religion. The stuff that Tony Robbins preached in that book is so deeply ingrained in me that it just feels like reality.

There's no such thing as failure until you give up because until that point, you're still just getting feedback.

If you wonder why I'm so happy, why I'm thriving, why I seem to be doing well; to me, a lot of my happiness comes from this worldview that is radical doubt. It's skepticism.

Someone made up these rules, and most people follow those rules, but they're not true ... Realizing they're not true gives you an incredible advantage.

What the people must learn if they learn anything at all is that the world will do most of the work for you provided you cooperate with it by identifying how it really works and aligning with those realities. If we do not let the world teach us, it teaches us a lesson.

It's better to do 5 big things with your life instead of 500 half-assed things.

Choose the plan with the most options ... The best plan is the one that lets you change your plans.

Nobody cares what you're not good at.

Even those categories can be involuntary—that you can suddenly be a rescuer even if you never intended to be one just through the power of imitation. And you can deliberately step into these roles by imitating others.

Choose opportunity, not loyalty. Have no loyalty to location, corporation, or your past public statements. Be an absolute opportunist, doing whatever's best for the future in the current situation unbound by the past. Have loyalty for only your most important human relationships.

You have to kind of decide what's worth optimizing. We don't need to optimize everything. It's okay to have some things be good enough.

I just don't find myself to be that kind of person who can do one thing for an hour and something else for two hours, and then this for an hour, and this for 30 minutes. I throw myself completely into whatever I'm doing—almost to a fault. I love just doing one thing all the way, and I'll do that for hours or days or weeks or months or sometimes, like in the case of CD Baby, I did one thing for 10 years.

All the things that I love the most in life— learning, thinking, and creating—don't take any money. And in fact, money is probably a distraction that would take me away from those things.

The world feels unnecessarily ceremonial. People imitate others without questioning it enough.

It's fine to be as confident as you can possibly be as long as you're not looking down on others because of it.

You can change the way you feel about anything in an instant. So, if your emotions aren't working in your favor, you can just change them.

Events are neutral. You can interpret events as good or bad. You can interpret a neutral event as crisis or as opportunity.

Own as little as possible; depend on even less. The less you own, the less you're affected by disaster.