Category: Achievement

  • Knowledge is Attainable

    Knowledge is Attainable

    Knowledge is attainable. If you are willing to put in the time to learn, you can become an expert in just about anything. Books is your best way to start. Elon Musk has a famous quote on this… whenever anyone asks him how, with no engineering background, he learned to build space rockets, this is his three-word answer: “I read books.”

    I learned this lesson early. My dad, a MIT physicist, used to have no mercy on me as a kid when we played chess. He would destroy me every game. I got so mad once that I decided I was going to spend the entire summer between my freshman and sophomore year studying the game. I read every book I could get my hands on. I remember my dad would come home from work with countless pages made by his copier at work scanned from chess books. Well, by the end of the summer the tables had turned and it was me who was mercilessly beating him at chess. After that summer, he didn’t want to play chess much any more. And I learned a lesson that has been serving me ever since: You can get really good at stuff just by reading books.

    (change this image to playing chess with Dad)

  • On Becoming a Millionaire

    On Becoming a Millionaire

    Become a millionaire, but not for the money. For what it will make of you to achieve it. – Jim Rohn
    Greatest value of your activities is not what you get. It’s what you become.
    The flip side of this is beware of what you become in pursuit of what you want.
  • Pay the Price

    Pay the Price

    “Understand there is a price to be paid for achieving anything of significance. You must be willing to pay the price.” – John Wooden

    If you want something big, you have to be willing to pay the price. That means you have to be willing to work for it and make the sacrifices. If you want to run a marathon in three hours, you have to pay the price and put in the grueling months of training and suffering.

    Ambition and achievement requires sacrifice and trade offs. I always wanted to accomplish so I didn’t spend much time with friends. My social life suffered. Many people work so hard they lose sight of their close friends and family and they become more and more distant over time. Eventually, they completely lose touch. It doesn’t have to be this extreme but it gives you a sense of the sacrifice required – the price you have to pay.

    In order to be willing to pay the price, you have to understand deeply what you were trying to accomplish. He won’t be willing to stay up late and work harder than anybody else if you don’t have a clear picture of what the final outcome of all the hard work will be. Make sure you have a clear vision for what you want and why you were sacrificing so you will be willing to pay the price.