30 Days of Genius- Gary Vaynerchuk

Gary Vaynerchuk's words are in bold. My comments are in italics. 

• "You’re not going to become more talented. The only thing you can control is time."
• No matter how hard you work, you likely won't become the greatest anything in the world. 10,000 hours of photography will make you a better photographer, but not the best. However, you won't get any better without putting the time into it, so don't let anything stop you.

• "If you complain, you need to look at what you’re spending your time on."
• We all have the same amount of time in a day. We each just use it differently. If things aren't going well in business, start calculating how much time you spend watching TV. If things aren't great in your marriage, ask yourself how much time you spend with your partner.

• "You’re so lucky. You could have been an ant."
• The most meta of facts. We're all humans. We're all in the year 2016. Many of us are in the United States or another first world democracy. The freedom we have to explore, experiment, try, work, thrive, live, exist, create, fail, succeed- anything- is unprecedented in the history of any species in the entire world. 

• "Never let follower count become a self estimate barometer. Become a craftsman."  
• Create content regardless of who follows you. If you're a photographer who missed the bandwagon on Instagram, that doesn't mean you shouldn't start now. Even if you never hit thousands of followers, you'll be more prepared and more talented when the next tool comes around.

• Do you love your craft, scaling your craft, or just the money?
• There is a difference between the man who loves to code, the one who loves building software businesses, and the one who loves the enormous money he can make through his business. Not to say that one is better or worse than the other- you just need to recognize which one you are and use that to play to your strengths and happiness.  

• You’ve got to play the small clubs to play the stadiums.
• You won't start off being paid $10K a speech. Your first artwork won't sell for $5K. Your first blog post won't get 1000 views. But your second will get closer to it. And then your third. Play the small clubs, and you'll get invited to the stadiums.

• "Never do the next job for the same price you did the last one for."
• Always expect more from yourself, and others will do the same for you. Confidence and determined self-expectation of growth will lead to the world having higher expectations for you. 

30 Days of Genius- Richard Branson

Richard Branson's words are in bold. My comments are in italics.

• "My greatest fear in life is saying no to something and then regretting it."
• Preach, Richard. Preach. Say yes to everything. If you don't, you'll regret it. 

• "Screw it, just do it."
• Act first, analyze later. Do you wonder about what something would be like? Do it. Have an idea? Make it happen. Then figure out the rest later. 

• "The first rule of business is to protect the downside." 
• Contrary to popular opinion, entrepreneurs are not risk takers. You shouldn't be betting the company with every decision. Be sure to protect your assets and keep the business afloat.

• "I’m interested in life, generally"
• Virgin brands represent over 400 companies. How Richard justifies that is saying that he is interested in every aspect of the human experience. By finding ways to improve music, airlines, health, food, and journalism all at the same time, each is an engaging task full of discover for him. 

• "I’m a good listener. A good leader needs to be a good listener. I know what I think, so I don’t need to listen to my own voice." 
• You won't learn by speaking. You should always be listening to the opinions of others. Take notes during all meetings- that's how things get done and how you learn. 

• "There is not much of a difference between a business person and an artist. You start off with a blank canvas, and have to get all of the little details right."
• A concept I heard put in different words before. "Every entrepreneur is an artist and every artist is an entrepreneur." Create things, then sell them. It's a simple maxim but a intricate task.

• "If something is run in a stuffy way, one shouldn’t be frightened of un-stuffy-fying it."
• Richard is known as one of the most fun CEOs in the world. And fun can be a blue ocean strategy. If something is boring, make it fun. The world will appreciate it. 

• Learn the art of delegation
• Great leadership is about finding people better than you are and inspiring them to work with and for you. You can't do everything- and you don't want to. Learn to identify the things that should be delegated and the people who you can delegate them to. Then do it. 

30 Days of Genius- Brené Brown

Brené Brown's words are in bold. My comments are in italics.

• The only thing I know for sure about being courageous is that if you’re brave enough often enough- you’re gonna fail (this is not just a guarantee. It’s a determined fact)
• Echoing Seth Godin, Brené reminds herself that failure is an inevitable part of success. High risk, high reward. Reminding yourself that failure is an inevitable part of courage will make it less hurtful and less of a blockade when you do fail. And don't worry- you certainly will.

• "It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat." 
• Umm, okay best quote ever. Be in the arena. Go strive and achieve and fall and be defeated. Because the sidelines are safe and boring. The arena- where gladiators produce music or create art or start businesses- is where the successes come. And ~side note~ it's also whre all the fun hangs out.

• "What is actually going on here? What am I feeling, what do I know for sure?"
• It is important to ask yourself these questions before acting and before judging. Too often we extrapolate the very few facts we do know into an baseless emotional cascade. When noticing any emotion within ourselves- fear, discomfort, joy- think about what you know, and decide if your emotions are justified. 

• There is a physiological response to emotion. All you need to do is get curious about it.
• Are your emotions making you sweat in nervousness? Shake in anger? Curl up in fear? Think about what your body is doing, and ask yourself why. Don't let emotions control your body without you understanding what is happening first. Be curious, as with everything else.

• What story are you telling yourself?
• Referencing the last two comments- what are you making up based off of what little you know? What is the story you are making up about yourself? Is it about your inability to do good work? About your lack of worth as a friend or partner? Recognize it, then think about where it's coming from and if it has any merit.

• If you own the story, you can write the ending
• Once you can recognize the story, you can control it. Mad at yourself? Change your mindset. Think that your manager hates you? Find the facts that make you think that, or come up to her and discuss the facts that you know and make you feel such. 

• You’ve got something that only you can bring to the world
• Don't be someone else. Take advantage of the fact that you're the only person in the history of the world who has your set of experiences. Embrace that. Use that.

• He or she who has the greatest capacity for discomfort rises the fastest
• Similar to Tim Ferriss' Comfort Challenges where he asks his readers to do things that will make them uncomfortable (ask for 10% off at the coffee shop, ask two people for their phone numbers). Recognize that if you can handle the most difficult situations, you can rise through them the easiest. 

• The only thing that experience gives you is a little grace that whispers in your ear “you’ve been in the dark before, you know your way through. Stay in the dark."
• Experience doesn't make you infallible. It simply means that you understand yourself well enough to know there are dark times, and there is no success without struggle.

• "You will fail."
• Remind yourself again and again- you will fail. And that is an essential ingredient to success and great work. This is not putting yourself down- it's motivating yourself through the positivity of knowing the future.

• "The best ideas can only be born with very trusting midwives."
• Create a safe environment in which to experiment and share ideas. You need partners who are risk takers and supportive. Every team member should be relied upon to be supportive of all others and brave enough to speak their mind.

That's a lot of notes. I guess I liked what Brené had to say.

30 Days of Genius- Stefan Sagmeister

Stefan Sagmeister's words are in bold. My comments are in italics.

• "Design something that helps somebody or delights somebody"
• Projects should be one or the other- beneficial or joyous. If it is not doing one of those, what is it's true purpose? What is the designer's?

• "Projects should live on their quality" 
• The best work doesn't require the most marketing to promote it. Producing excellent products is the best way to selling them. If you create a good film, people will watch it for a long time. If you create a bad film, people will watch it only as long as you market it- but even then, they will not be helped or delighted.

• "I am the world’s #1 expert on my own happiness"
• No one knows better than you do what can and should make you happy. Everyone has a guess, but no one has the answer. Think about what it is that brings about your joy, and pursue it. 

• "You develop a personal style by not worrying about it. A fast feedback loop is essential to developing your style."
• Do not stress about what your personal style is until you have the ability to receive feedback on it. And once you are receiving consistent feedback from people you trust, adjust your work between your preferences and the audiences' until you find the style that brings about the most success.
• Stefan's emphasis on feedback's relation to personal style is interestingly different from others (Tim Ferriss, Brené Brown) who say that you should create the work that you value without altering to the opinions of others, because that creates the most honest work. I suppose a mix- trust in your work and appreciation of the feedback your audience (ie. benefactors and customers) provide- leads to happiness within large scale success.

• Take 1 year off from work every 7 years- it helps increase creativity and abilities
• Stefan takes one full year off of work for every seven he works. The first time he did this, he was afraid of what people would think, how they would look at his work, if he would ever get hired again. There was a great fear.
• Once he committed to his year off, he found that his ability to design and create was elevated to a point where his return to work produced the greatest results. And, because customers couldn't have him for one year, they all flocked to him eagerly upon his return. 
• This is similar thinking to Arianna Huffington's assertion that the best ideas come out of stillness.

• "5 projects is the ideal number of projects for a creative to be working on"- Chase Jarvis
• Too many projects cause distraction, too few can silo the creative into one mindset, which is restricting. Balancing 5 projects allows the mind to shift from one to the other and have projects in very different arenas benefit each other.
• My own work spans 3-4 creative projects at any point. I see tangible benefits across the borders often enough to believe in the power of creating diversity in the mind.

• Think about the project from the point of view that has nothing to do with the project
• Having trouble designing a book cover? Think about a glass of water, and draw parallels (can you book be transparent? Fluid? Does it even need to be a rectangular shape?) 
• Forcing your mind to attack ideas from directions they have never before been viewed will create great, unique work. Or it won't. Regardless, the thinking process will be more creative, original, and enjoyable. And those three factors can definitely lead to great work. 

30 Days of Genius- Levar Burton

Levar Burton's words are in bold. My comments are in italics.

• "My experience was that life was really linear in nature. But this year, I have experienced that life is actually circular. It is possible to come back to the same place you were on the wheel, but as a different person."
• A theme in Levar's career has been openness to opportunity and diversity of experience. When you think one chapter of your life has been closed for good, you're being short-sighted. Be open to all experiences, and you may return to a familiar place as a different person.
• Levar uses his return to the concept of Roots, 40 years after the show originally aired, as an example. He started the show as a 19 year old doing his first real job. He returns as an Executive Producer with four decades of experience in the professional world as a black man in America that he can apply to the new Roots to align it with the ideas of today's audience. 

• "All of the decisions in my life and my career have been guided by one thing. Passion. Find out that which you are passionate about, and you have a key to what’s going to make you happy."
• Levar emphasizes the point that passion brings more than just happiness- it brings the ability to fight through hard times and work towards a brighter future. Passion for what you do makes longevity in your work possible. 
• "Put in your time, do the work. Become your own advocate. You have to not only be the artist and creator, you have to be the promoter. You have to hustle. One’s hustle is a sign of the degree to which one is really passionate about getting it done. "
• Hustle is passion's offspring, and is the second necessary ingredient to success. Just because you love your writing, your company, your brand, that doesn't mean people will start coming to it. Passion just means you enjoy doing it. To spread the word, you need to hustle.

• "It takes energy as well as presence to change the world. You can’t change the world with an absentee point of view." 
• Levar discusses getting in touch with himself as an individual in the years after Roots went off the air. He needed to understand what he believed to be true. He mentions two strategies to find presence:
• 1. Ask yourself the tough questions. Dig deeper. Are you working as hard as you say you are? Are your actions mirror reflections of your words, or are they the muddled reflection of a puddle?
• 2. Find a group of friends to be critics on your personal life. If you are veering away from the person you want to be, you need friends to will be able to recognize that and tell it to you in a way that you believe. 

• "The world is full of experiences. You just have to expose yourself to enough before you figure out where you land."
• Experiment. Try new things. Get to know yourself. 

• "You can never predict the end of the story in the first chapter."
• Don't make assumptions about the future, they're likely very wrong. You can only connect the dots looking backwards. If you have an end goal, keep working towards it. Though things may seem blight in the beginning, all you can control is your passion and your hustle. With enough of each, you can get to a finished story you're proud of. 

• "Imagination is the superpower of the human being." 
• Look around. Everything you see, in the physical world and the societal, was just an idea in someone's mind. Chairs, bridges, democracy, school, school buildings. It was all just an idea. What ideas do you have?

30 Days of Genius- Arianna Huffington

Arianna Huffington's words are in bold. My comments are in italics.

• "It’s not about exclusivity anymore. It’s about ubiquity. You produce content, you want it to be everywhere."
• Opportunity comes when everyone is helped. Huffington Post's world of journalism is a reflection of, or perhaps a leader in, the value of sharing. Content is made more powerful when it is globally sourced and globally distributed. We can extrapolate this to ourselves and our work. Help yourself, and few will care. Help others, and the world will notice. 

• "Remember- you are not your job."
• When asked “what do you do?” or “who are you?,” we often answer immediately with how we make money. And because of this deep association between ourselves and our jobs, we pour the entirety of our effort into something that should be just one role, not the entire cast, of the play that is our life. We are our interests, our friends, our knowledge, and our health are just as much- or perhaps more than- we are our job. Find the balance you need to remember this. 

• "We’ve convinced people that exercise and nutrition are important. The third and most important leg of that stool is sleep." 
• Today’s world is hyper-competitve, and it creates the illusion that every minute spent sleeping is a minute lost working. “I’ll sleep when I’m dead” and “you snooze you lose” prevail through our society, giving sleep a misleading and unfortunate reputation as a crutch for the weak. This is more than just wrong- it is dangerous.
• Sleep’s benefits are everywhere. Dreams can be the source of imaginative inspiration. Sleep revitalizes our systems to make us more productive when awake. It is scientifically more vital to our overall health than even exercise or nutrition. A lack of sleep causes urges for ruining nutrition and dangerous over-extension during exercise
• We take better care of our phones than we do of ourselves. We know how much battery our phone has at all times, and if it ever falls low, we freak out. Why do we treat the metal in our pocket with more tender respect than we do ourselves?
• Don’t punish yourself. You are not “losing” if you sleep more. Working longer is not the same (and can be the opposite) or working better. Prioritizing sleep will make you better when shifting focus on other parts of life.
• Routine is as important with sleep as with everything. Arianna’s most important advice- get away from your technology before going to sleep. It ruins dreams and sleep cycles and causes unnecessary stresses. 

• "The best ideas come out of stillness"
  • Decrease inputs to increase outputs has been a theme of the 30 DOG series. Arianna uses Steve Jobs’ reference to zen meditation and Bill Gates’ walks through the woods as the inspiration for their best ideas. Quiet- in the form of sleep, meditation, or solitude- is an essential component for creativity.

30 Days of Genius- Tim Ferriss

Ah, Tim Tim Talk Talk. We meet again!

Tim Ferriss's words are in bold. My personal comments are in italics. 

• "Work on projects that, even if they are viewed as a failure to the outside world, give you skills that carry over to your next project."
• Tim borrows from Scott Adams, creator of the Dilbert comic, when he discusses "systems thinking," or the pursuit of skills. If, in your current activities, you are not gaining any new skills that you can tangibly refer to in future endeavors, you are missing an opportunity to do so. Every assignment is an opportunity for education, and every endeavor, regardless of success in the market, should be a success in personal development.

• "What would this look like if it were easy?"
• An extension of Tim's constant critique of the self-prescribed 'busy-ness', it is important to bring things to their simplest level. Whatever you are trying to pursue- what would would make it easier? Want to write a book? Write 2 crappy pages a day. Want to start a podcast? Remove all editing. Want to have good customers? Set your rules and if anyone doesn't like them, you shouldn't care if they leave.
• "In negotiation, the one who cares the least, wins." 

• "The feeling that you are winning is a precursor to actually winning. Celebrate the small wins."
• Make things easy for yourself. Build confidence. If learning to code, you'll quit if you can't turn the page blue, and if you don't appreciate how awesome that small thing is. If starting a podcast, you need to celebrate the first 10 listeners. Go have a drink. You've earned it.
• Meditation and gratitude are two tools used to be appreciative of what you have today. Notice the beautiful clouds outside, and be grateful you can live beneath them. Notice how far you've come in your learning of "insert thing here." And be proud of yourself, no matter how little it seems to be.
• Comparison is the root of unhappiness. Don't compare to anyone except your past self. 

• "Creativity is an infinite resource. The more you spend, the more you have."
• A Chase Jarvis quote that I love. Work on your photography, you'll be more observant and a better podcaster. Work on your podcasting and you'll develop a taste for production to make better music. Creativity crosses disciplines.

• "Do things just for the hell of it- and make them as absurd as possible."
• Opportunities come from experimentation, and success comes from enjoyment. If you don't try something just for shits and gigs, you won't open doors for yourself. And if you don't have fun, you won't succeed. 

• "Wake up earlier."
• When asked for his advice to people who have two kids, a full time job, and 6 other things on their plate and just don't have the time to do whatever they dream of doing, Tim has simple advice: wake up earlier. We all have the same 24 hours to work with. How will you spend yours?
• Khaled Hosseini was working full time as a doctor and father of two children. He would wake up early every day, no matter how tired he was or what he needed to get done, and ensure that he had 45 minutes to write. And what came of it? Not much. Just the New York Times bestseller, "The Kite Runner," which sold over 7 million copies in the US alone.

• The importance of routine.
• A routine helps build habits, and habits lead to success. Knowing the 4 things you're going to do every morning immediately upon waking up ensures that you do them efficiently and effectively and, perhaps most important, consistently.

• "You can choose the record."
• Everyone, including the most successful, has someone (or a voice inside their head) constantly nagging at them. Everyone is influenced by sudden flashes of emotion. What is important to remember is that these are completely within our control. We can choose what we feel, how we act, and what we think. We can choose how our mind works, and what records play in it.

• "Once you have the constraint to do more with less, only then can you do more with more."
• Tim places constraints on himself like removing the word "pretty" from his vocabulary, or limiting his blog posts to 500 words, or dancing tango with one arm behind his back. Once you can do that well, you can fully appreciate the advantage of re-introducing additions.

• "You’re the average of the 5 people you associate with most."
• We are a different version of ourselves with everyone we meet. And who we truly build ourselves to be is a mosaic of the 5 versions of ourselves we spend the most time being. 

FUCK! Sorry, it felt wrong to do a Tim Ferriss writeup without cursing at least once. Long Island baby!