year over year

Think of one way in which the way you do something is better than the way you did it last year. Find another way in which the way you do things could be better than the way you did them one year ago.

do better

It is not efficient to make yourself a slave to efficiency. It is not logical to make the biggest decisions based only on logic.

battle-prone

Have opinions, but don’t be drawn into battles.

fed up with being fed up

If you’re “fed up” with something for years on end, your reaction has become an automatic habit that others are using against you.

same old song

People might listen to you better if your spiel wasn’t so repetitive.

habit vs. now

Behind any habit you have you will find a set of assumptions based on your personal history. All that can be changed.

change

You can change any habit by changing your sense of identity.

You don’t have to go someplace warm to be warm. You are warm by nature. You become warm just by being well enough protected from the universe.

Without insight and clarity, the ideal of integrity becomes a collar by which a person can be dragged from one place to another.

“In the black swan world [any context in which large unpredictable events occur], optimization isn't possible. The best you can achieve is a reduction in fragility and greater robustness.” —Nassim Taleb

The idea of “safety in numbers” doesn’t apply to fish. The larger a school of fish is, the more easily it is found and caught.

When you make an appointment with yourself, you are continuing and extending the same pattern of victimization that created most of your other appointments. The problem of too many appointments is not solved by making more appointments, but by making fewer of them.

Bad planning is a problem that can rarely be solved with more detailed planning.

It is important for your personal standards to be flexible. Anyone who stubbornly holds to a long list of strict standards soon finds that others are using the standards to manipulate them.