Writing and running marathons are very much alike: a writer has a quiet, inner motivation, and doesn’t seek validation in the outwardly visible. Exerting yourself to the fullest, within your individual limits, is the essence of running and a metaphor for life. Murakami shares the lessons he has learned in life, and how he releases them as a part of the storyline in a novel.

Creative nonfiction is not making something up but making the most of what you have. When moving from your first draft to your fourth, expect a 4:1 ratio of writing time (i.e. if the first draft takes 2 years, then the combined second, third, and fourth drafts will take 6 months). Nobody writes like you, therefore a good editor’s goal is to help writers make the most of the patterns that are unique about them.

Epstein argues creative achievers tend to have broad interests in adjacent domains and take expertise accrued in one area and apply it to a completely new one (innovation). Instead of working backward from a goal, work forward from promising situations, reflect, and adjust your personal narrative. By struggling to generate an answer on your own — even a wrong one — you significantly enhance long-term learning.

Thinking in terms of probability rather than “yes” or “no” triggers a more open-minded exploration of alternative hypothesis, making us more likely to explore the opposite side of an argument more often and more seriously. The people with the most legitimate claim to a bulletproof self-narrative have developed habits around accurate self critique. Sharing your uncertainty with others invites collaboration in the same way scientists share their experiment methodology.

Clutter is costly: commit to being more intentional, think about how you’ll use technology, and understand if the benefits outweigh the negatives. If you prioritize demanding activity over passive consumption, use your skills to produce valuable things in the physical world, and seek activities that require structured interaction, you’ll find yourself with fresh ideas and a stronger connection to those you care about. The key to sustained success with a Digital Minimalist philosophy is accepting that it’s more about the quality of your life, not the technology.

You don’t need a rarified job, you need a rarified approach to your work. The ability to concentrate intensely is a skill that must be trained; creative insight in professional life is about making a commitment to training this ability every single day. To make the most out of your deep work sessions focus on only a few important goals, build strict rituals, and implement a fixed-schedule to determine what rules and habits are needed to satisfy your constraint.

Don’t make the mistake of thinking big, looking for a world-changing mission without the career capital to back it up or you’ll get stuck making little progress. If you just show up and work hard, you’ll soon hit a performance plateau and fail to get any better. Developing work you love means patiently building ‘Career Capital’ (rare and valuable skills) towards a tentative mission through deliberate practice.

We spend our lives lost in thought, not knowing what is actually happening in the present moment. Meditating is not merely thinking with their eyes closed, it is a skill that takes training to distinguish between being lost in thought and seeing thoughts for what they are. During the normal course of life your mind will determine the quality of your life; changing your perception of the world is often as good as changing the world itself.

People don’t buy what you do, people buy why you do it. Defining why you do something is difficult, as we usually rely on metaphors, imagery and analogies in an attempt to communicate how we feel. Therefore, guiding principles have to be actionable verbs: “always do the right thing” (integrity), or “look at the problem from a different angle” (innovation).

Experiencing impatience is one of the first symptoms of not being in the present moment, not doing what you are doing, and not staying process-oriented. Become a good observer of your own actions: instead of focusing on an abstract end goal—which adds a lot of undue pressure—focus on the process, observe how you do, and make a corrective action. Understand that perfection is relative, and everything that you spiritually acquire expands your true self and becomes part of you forever.

A [personal] manifesto on how to live a happy life. Anna Quindlen draws on her own life experience and outpours how she has come to find happiness in her life. A source of inspiration when you're looking, or motivation to write your own life manifesto.

Eric Maisel provides twenty-two categories of anxiety management techniques to combat our tendency to incorrectly appraise situations as more important, more dangerous, or more negative than they in fact are. People waste enormous amounts of time avoiding things that make them anxious, sometimes a lifetime; the first step is to remember that you get to do the appraising. We need to worry less about looking good to ourselves and spend more time honouring our commitments to ourselves, fulfilling our goals, and realizing our dreams.