A quotation is a handy thing to have about, saving one the trouble of thinking for oneself, always a laborious business.

— A.A. Milne

Perfection is the enemy of good.

— Voltaire

All Truly Great Thoughts Are Conceived While Walking

— Friedrich Nietzsche

The opposite of love is indifference, and the opposite of happiness is boredom.

— Tim Ferriss

What you choose to read is a vote towards who you want to become

— Mark Manson

Whenever I get bad luck I like to remind myself that I was born in America and I wouldn't trade my good luck in for another dice roll. So I'll take the bad luck as a low price for what good luck has brought me.

— Alex Hormozi

Many people assume they are bad at writing because it is hard. This is like assuming you are bad at weightlifting because the weight is heavy. Writing is useful because it is hard. It's the effort that goes into writing a clear sentence that leads to better thinking.

— James Clear

Somewhere in the future, your older self is watching you through memories. Whether it's with regret or nostaliga depends on what you do now.

— Gurwinder Bhogal

If you only wished to be happy, this could be easily accomplished; but we wish to be happier than other people, and this is always difficult, for we believe others to be happier than they are.

— Montesquieu

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.

— Robert A. Heinlein

No matter how great the talent or efforts, some things just take time. You can’t produce a baby in one month by getting nine women pregnant.

— Warren Buffett

Writing is good, thinking is better. Being smart is good, being patient is better

— Siddhartha

Men Wanted: For hazardous journey. Small wages, bitter cold, long months of complete darkness, constant danger, safe return doubtful. Honour and recognition in case of success.

— Ernest Shackleton

"Everyone gives what he has. The warrior gives strength, the merchant gives merchandise, the teacher teachings, the farmer rice, the fisher fish." "Yes indeed. And what is it now what you've got to give? What is it that you've learned, what you're able to do?" "I can think. I can wait. I can fast." "That's everything?" "I believe that's everything!" "And what's the use of that? For example, the fasting—what is it good for?" "It is very good, sir. When a person has nothing to eat, fasting is the smartest thing he could do. When, for example, Siddhartha hadn't learned to fast, he would have to accept any kind of service before that day is up, whether it may be with you or wherever, because hunger would force him to do so. But like this, Siddhartha can wait calmly, he knows no impatience, he knows no emergency, for a long time he can allow hunger to besiege him and can laugh about it. This, sir, is what fasting is good for."

— Siddhartha

If more information was the answer, we’d all be billionaires with perfect abs.

— Derek Sivers

If you're at a much higher level than someone you can always seem mystical because you're doing things which are outside of their conceptual scheme. The way that operates in the martial arts is if you think about it through the lens of frames, if you and I are looking at a position and in your mind, there's this position, this position, and this position so there are three positions. In my mind if I'm constantly training at the transitions between these positions, these actually expand into these transitional frames and become positions to me. So if I'm seeing 100 positions when you're seeing two, then I can play in your blind spots and I can seem mystical to you because you haven't trained there.

The impediment to action advances action, what stands in the way becomes the way.

If you know the way broadly, you will see it in everything.

— Miyamoto Musashi

An hour passes. I’m warmer now, the pace has got my blood going. The years have taught me one skill: how to be miserable. I know how to shut up and keep humping. This is a great asset because it’s human, the proper role for a mortal. It does not offend the gods, but elicits their intercession. My bitching self is receding now. The instincts are taking over.

Prestige is just fossilized inspiration. If you do anything well enough, you'll make it prestigious. Plenty of things we now consider prestigious were anything but at first. Jazz comes to mind-though almost any established art form would do. So just do what you like, and let prestige take care of itself.

The big lesson of survivor bias is that you should optimize for being a survivor. You can't win if you lose – so learn to not lose. Most major failure conditions are avoidable with a little bit of foresight, planning, study and so on. Analyze failures and take conscientious steps to avoid them.

Struggle is the architect of the soul.

— James Cook

Let me fall if I must fall. The one I am becoming will catch me.

— Baal Shem Tov

WE’RE ALL PROS ALREADY All of us are pros in one area: our jobs. We get a paycheck. We work for money. We are professionals. Now: Are there principles we can take from what we’re already successfully doing in our workaday lives and apply to our artistic aspirations? What exactly are the qualities that define us as professionals? 1) We show up every day. We might do it only because we have to, to keep from getting fired. But we do it. We show up every day. 2) We show up no matter what. In sickness and in health, come hell or high water, we stagger in to the factory. We might do it only so as not to let down our co-workers, or for other, less noble reasons. But we do it. We show up no matter what. 3) We stay on the job all day. Our minds may wander, but our bodies remain at the wheel. We pick up the phone when it rings, we assist the customer when he seeks our help. We don’t go home till the whistle blows. 4) We are committed over the long haul. Next year we may go to another job, another company, another country. But we’ll still be working. Until we hit the lottery, we are part of the labor force. 5) The stakes for us are high and real. This is about survival, feeding our families, educating our children. It’s about eating. 6) We accept remuneration for our labor. We’re not here for fun. We work for money. 7) We do not overidentify with our jobs. We may take pride in our work, we may stay late and come in on weekends, but we recognize that we are not our job descriptions. The amateur, on the other hand, overidentifies with his avocation, his artistic aspiration. He defines himself by it. He is a musician, a painter, a playwright. Resistance loves this. Resistance knows that the amateur composer will never write his symphony because he is overly invested in its success and overterrified of its failure. The amateur takes it so seriously it paralyzes him. 8) We master the technique of our jobs. 9) We have a sense of humor about our jobs. 10) We receive praise or blame in the real world

A man with one watch always knows what time it is. A man with two watches is never sure.

If you trust the source then you don’t need to hear the arguments

You should “just be yourself” not because it will make you more likeable (it won’t) but because it's only by being yourself that you'll find people who like you for who you really are rather than for someone you're pretending to be.

— Gurwinder Bhoga

Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes.)

— Walt Whitman

I spent so much of my life terrified of what I was going to become and whether I was going to be right here right now. God, how much time did I waste afraid I wasn’t going to be right here right now? If I could change, the only thing I’d change about my whole life would be fearing less that I wouldn’t get right here - the place I was going anyway. I wouldn’t change all the mistakes and mishaps, I needed those. But all the constantly worry that I wasn’t going to make it, that took me out of enjoying the moment. It took me out of enjoying these experiences, smiling or eating my lunch or doing whatever I was doing. Know your mission, have faith you’re going to get there. Wherever you go, it’s going to be alright. Just find ways to get out of your head.

he who has a why can bear any how

— Friedrich Nietzsche

I've lost my mind doing this. Like Vincent van Gogh. He dedicated his life to his art and lost his mind in the process. That's happened to me.

— Conor McGregor

The formula of my happiness: a Yes, a No, a straight line, a goal.

Above all, do not lose your desire to walk: every day I walk myself into a state of well-being and walk away from every illness; I have walked myself into my best thoughts, and I know of no thought so burdensome that one cannot walk away from it. Even if one were to walk for one's health and it were constantly one station ahead—I would still say: Walk! Besides, it is also apparent that in walking one constantly gets as close to well-being as possible, even if one does not quite reach it—but by sitting still, and the more one sits still, the closer one comes to feeling ill. Health and salvation can be found only in motion. If anyone denies that motion exists, I do as Diogenes did, I walk. If anyone denies that health resides in motion, then I walk away from all morbid objections. Thus, if one just keeps on walking, everything will be all right.

Out of life's school of war: What does not destroy me, makes me stronger

To those human beings who are of any concern to me I wish suffering, desolation, sickness, ill-treatment, indignities—I wish that they should not remain unfamiliar with profound self-contempt, the torture of self-mistrust, the wretchedness of the vanquished: I have no pity for them, because I wish them the only thing that can prove today whether one is worth anything or not—that one endures.

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

The difference between real material poison and intellectual poison is that most material poison is disgusting to the taste, but intellectual poison, which takes the form of cheap newspapers or bad books, can unfortunately sometimes be attractive

— Tolstoy

Eventually, the time that was not spent on learning skills will catch up with you, and the fall will be painful

— Robert Greene

In judo, so many people care about rank and what degree black belt they are. I have never gotten caught up in that. Rank is based solely on a board of people getting together and saying, "Oh, you deserve to be such-and-such a rank." Once you give them the power to tell you you're great, you've also given them the power to tell you you're unworthy. Once you start caring about people's opinions of you, you give up control.It's the same reason I don't get caught up in being the crowd tavorite when I fight. It's why I don't read things that are written about me. One of the greatest days of my life was when I came to understand that other people's approval and my happiness were not related.

Perhaps a better way to internalize boredom is to accept it, and to see it as something you have a relationship with. Trying to run away from it results in a desire for excitement, which paradoxically leads to more boredom because your threshold for excitement keeps increasing. Instead, if we acknowledge that even the best lives are punctuated with boredom, then we will understand how this slowdown in attention can be interpreted as a welcomed state of mind.

The greatest weight. What, if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: "This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live it once more and innumerable times more: and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything unutterably small or great in your life will have to return to you, all in the same succession and sequence — even this spider and this moonlight between the trees, and even this moment and I myself. The eternal hourglass of existence is turned upside down again and again, and you with it, speck of dust!" Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus? Or have you once experienced a tremendous moment when you would have answered him: "You are a god and never have I heard anything more divine." If this thought gained possession of you, it would change you as your are or perhaps crush you. The question in each and every thing, "Do you desire this once more and innumerable times more?" would lie upon your actions as the greatest weight. Or how well disposed would you have to become to yourself and to life to crave nothing more reverently than this ultimate eternal confirmation and seal?

“When people come to me saying they want to kill themselves, I tell them, “What’s your rush? You can kill yourself any time you like. So calm down. Suicide is a positive act.” And they do calm down.”

“Until death, all failure is psychological.”

— Jocko Willink

5. Immigrant mentality - If they've moved from their hometown, that's a good sign. If they've moved from their home country, that's an even greater sign. It takes agency to spot you're in the wrong place, resourcefulness to operationalise a move and a growth mindset to start from zero in a new location.

Ultimately, it comes down to taste, it comes down to trying to expose yourself to the best things that humans have done and then trying to bring those things into what you're doing. Picasso had a saying: "good artists copy, great artists steal."

— Steve Jobs

The most intelligent men, like the strongest, find their happiness where others would find only disaster: in the labyrinth, in being hard with themselves and with others, in effort; their delight is self-mastery; in them asceticism becomes second nature, a necessity, as instinct.

— nietzsche

A great man shows his greatness by the way he treats little men.

— Thomas Carlyle

There is always a philosophy for lack of courage.

— Camus

No one can build you the bridge on which you and only you must cross the river of life. There may be countless trails and bridges and demigods who would gladly carry you across; but only at the price of pawning and forgoing yourself. There is one path in the world that none can walk but you. Where does it lead? Don't ask, walk!

It's a healthy practice to approach our work with as few accepted rules, starting points, and limitations as possible. Often the standards in our chosen medium are so ubiquitous, we take them for granted. They are invisible and unquestioned. This makes it nearly impossible to think outside the standard paradigm.

To get status, you have to give up status. You have to sacrifice some existing status to make it back and more. This is especially true in creative fields and high-upside opportunities. Writers, musicians, actors, directors, entrepreneurs must all do their time in status limbo. And you don’t know how long that time will be. How well you tolerate this state can be the “winning” difference between you and someone just as talented and hard-working as you.

In a world of scarcity, we treasure tools. In a world of abundance, we treasure taste

Have stuff to look forward to. You can’t engineer happiness, but you sure can engineer excitement.

At critical moments in time, you can raise the aspirations of other people significantly, especially when they are relatively young, simply by suggesting they do something better or more ambitious than what they might have in mind. It costs you relatively little to do this, but the benefit to them, and to the broader world, may be enormous. This is in fact one of the most valuable things you can do with your time and with your life.

What I tell my nephews: flirting is basically this - give moderately strong signals of interest with plausible deniability (for you) and outs (for her), and then be attentive for returned signs of interest and riff off of that. If she plays with you, you can ask her out.

Plans are worthless, planning is priceless. Spend a day making elaborate plans and then disregard them completely to make whatever you think is most compelling. Repeat monthly or quarterly

most people's lives are determined by how they cure their boredom

"I have never seen ordinary effort lead to extraordinary results.

— Alexandr Wang

Marry, and you will regret it; don’t marry, you will also regret it; marry or don’t marry, you will regret it either way. Laugh at the world’s foolishness, you will regret it; weep over it, you will regret that too; laugh at the world’s foolishness or weep over it, you will regret both. Believe a woman, you will regret it; believe her not, you will also regret it… Hang yourself, you will regret it; do not hang yourself, and you will regret that too; hang yourself or don’t hang yourself, you’ll regret it either way; whether you hang yourself or do not hang yourself, you will regret both. This, gentlemen, is the essence of all philosophy.

— Søren Kierkegaard

It’s hard to do a really good job on anything you don’t think about in the shower.

— Paul Graham

In an artificial world, only extremists live naturally.

The big lesson of survivor bias is that you should optimize for being a survivor. You can’t win if you lose – so learn to not lose. Most major failure conditions are avoidable with a little bit of foresight, planning, study and so on. Analyze failures and take conscientious steps to avoid them.

Knowledge expands fractally, and from a distance its edges look smooth, but once you learn enough to get close to one, they turn out to be full of gaps.

Though it might seem like you'd be taking on a heavy burden by trying to be the best, in practice you often end up net ahead. It's exciting, and also strangely liberating. It simplifies things. In some ways it's easier to try to be the best than to try merely to be good.

So when they continued asking Him, He lifted Himself up and said unto them, “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.”

Suppose you are a little, nimble guy being chased by a big, fat, bully. You open a door and find yourself in a staircase. Do you go up or down? I say up. The bully can probably run downstairs as fast as you can. Going upstairs his bulk will be more of a disadvantage. Running upstairs is hard for you but even harder for him.

<html> <head> <title>Private Training</title> </head> <body> <p>book a private with me. 120 aud an hour 1&lt;&gt;1. 100 aud an hour 1&lt;&gt;2 (50 each) *footnote</p> <p>free saturday after 2pm, sunday after 2pm</p> <p>privates can be paid cash on the day, or transfered to a bank account listed <a href="payments">here</a></p> <p>example sessions:</p> <p>footsweep crash course</p> <ul> <li>→ learn the basics of footsweeps and weight distribution</li> <li>→ learn setups and combination to pull of footsweeps</li> <li>→ learn drills to practice at your own training to keep improving</li> </ul> <p>hiptoss crash course</p> <ul> <li>→ understand the basics of hiptoss and the biomechanics of what makes them so effective</li> <li>→ learn setups and combinations</li> </ul> <p>tailored session based on a match breakdown</p> <ul> <li>→ send me match footage before the session I will breakdown the match and</li> <li>→ breakdown a grappling match</li> </ul> <p>general grappling skills</p> <ul> <li>→ general grappling skills private</li> </ul> <p>* its far easier to teach a private to two people that it is to one, there are multiple reasons for this</p> <ol> <li>you can see the technique being demonstrated on someone else</li> <li>it naturally slows down the rate of information being thrown at you and gives you time to digest what youve been told</li> <li>you have an accountabiity buddy and someone who learnt the exact same information at the exact same time who you can lean on and continue to work on the technqiues with after the session has concluded.</li> </ol> <p>for these reasons i STRONGLY reccommend 1&lt;&gt;2 privates, but am happy to accomodate 1&lt;&gt;1 if need be.</p> <p>any further questions you can contact me <a href="">here</a></p> </body> </html>

At Viaweb one of our rules of thumb was run upstairs. Suppose you are a little, nimble guy being chased by a big, fat, bully. You open a door and find yourself in a staircase. Do you go up or down? I say up. The bully can probably run downstairs as fast as you can. Going upstairs his bulk will be more of a disadvantage. Running upstairs is hard for you but even harder for him. What this meant in practice was that we deliberately sought hard problems. If there were two features we could add to our software, both equally valuable in proportion to their difficulty, we'd always take the harder one. Not just because it was more valuable, but because it was harder. We delighted in forcing bigger, slower competitors to follow us over difficult ground. Like guerillas, startups prefer the difficult terrain of the mountains, where the troops of the central government can't follow. I can remember times when we were just exhausted after wrestling all day with some horrible technical problem. And I'd be delighted, because something that was hard for us would be impossible for our competitors.

Amazon SWE Graduate Interview Prep 🚀 🎯 High Priority - Core Amazon Problems Arrays & Strings (Very Common) * Two Sum (1) - Easy ⭐ * 3Sum (15) - Medium ⭐⭐ * Container With Most Water (11) - Medium ⭐⭐ * Trapping Rain Water (42) - Hard ⭐⭐⭐ * Longest Substring Without Repeating Characters (3) - Medium ⭐⭐ * Group Anagrams (49) - Medium ⭐⭐ * Valid Parentheses (20) - Easy ⭐ * Longest Palindromic Substring (5) - Medium ⭐⭐ Linked Lists (Amazon Favorite) * Reverse Linked List (206) - Easy ⭐ * Merge Two Sorted Lists (21) - Easy ⭐ * Remove Nth Node From End (19) - Medium ⭐⭐ * Linked List Cycle (141) - Easy ⭐ * Copy List with Random Pointer (138) - Medium ⭐⭐ * Merge k Sorted Lists (23) - Hard ⭐⭐⭐ Trees & Graphs (Very Important) * Binary Tree Level Order Traversal (102) - Medium ⭐⭐ * Validate Binary Search Tree (98) - Medium ⭐⭐ * Lowest Common Ancestor of BST (235) - Medium ⭐⭐ * Number of Islands (200) - Medium ⭐⭐ * Course Schedule (207) - Medium ⭐⭐ * Binary Tree Maximum Path Sum (124) - Hard ⭐⭐⭐ * Serialize and Deserialize Binary Tree (297) - Hard ⭐⭐⭐ Dynamic Programming (Amazon Loves DP) * Climbing Stairs (70) - Easy ⭐ * House Robber (198) - Medium ⭐⭐ * Coin Change (322) - Medium ⭐⭐ * Longest Increasing Subsequence (300) - Medium ⭐⭐ * Word Break (139) - Medium ⭐⭐ * Edit Distance (72) - Hard ⭐⭐⭐ 🔥 Amazon-Specific Problems (Frequently Asked) System Design Related * LRU Cache (146) - Medium ⭐⭐⭐ * Design HashMap (706) - Easy ⭐⭐ * Design Hit Counter (362) - Medium ⭐⭐⭐ * Design Add and Search Words Data Structure (211) - Medium ⭐⭐ Sorting & Searching * Search in Rotated Sorted Array (33) - Medium ⭐⭐ * Find Peak Element (162) - Medium ⭐⭐ * Merge Intervals (56) - Medium ⭐⭐ * K Closest Points to Origin (973) - Medium ⭐⭐ * Top K Frequent Elements (347) - Medium ⭐⭐ Heap/Priority Queue * Kth Largest Element (215) - Medium ⭐⭐ * Meeting Rooms II (253) - Medium ⭐⭐⭐ * Merge k Sorted Lists (23) - Hard ⭐⭐⭐ 📅 4-Week Study Plan Week 1: Foundations * Days 1-2: Arrays & Strings (Easy problems) * Days 3-4: Linked Lists (Easy to Medium) * Days 5-7: Trees (Easy to Medium) Week 2: Core Algorithms * Days 1-2: More Trees + DFS/BFS * Days 3-4: Dynamic Programming (Easy to Medium) * Days 5-7: Sorting & Searching Week 3: Advanced Topics * Days 1-2: Graphs (DFS, BFS, Topological Sort) * Days 3-4: Heaps & Priority Queues * Days 5-7: System Design Problems Week 4: Mock Interviews * Days 1-3: Hard problems from above list * Days 4-5: Timed practice (45 min per problem) * Days 6-7: Mock interviews with friends/online 🎯 Amazon Leadership Principles to Prepare Common Behavioral Questions 1. Customer Obsession: "Tell me about a time you went above and beyond for a customer" 2. Ownership: "Give me an example of when you took on something outside your area of responsibility" 3. Invent and Simplify: "Tell me about a time you had to work with incomplete information" 4. Learn and Be Curious: "Tell me about a time you had to learn something new quickly" 5. Dive Deep: "Tell me about a time you had to deep dive into a problem" Prepare STAR Format Stories * Situation: Set the context * Task: What needed to be done * Action: What you did specifically * Result: What was the outcome 💡 Interview Day Tips Technical Round Strategy 1. Clarify the problem - Ask questions about edge cases 2. Think out loud - Explain your approach 3. Start with brute force - Then optimize 4. Write clean code - Use meaningful variable names 5. Test your solution - Walk through examples Coding Best Practices * Handle edge cases (null inputs, empty arrays) * Use consistent naming conventions * Add comments for complex logic * Consider time/space complexity * Test with multiple examples 🚨 Red Flags to Avoid * ❌ Jumping into coding without planning * ❌ Not asking clarifying questions * ❌ Giving up too easily * ❌ Not testing your solution * ❌ Poor communication during problem solving 🎯 Final Week Checklist * [ ] Review all medium problems you've solved * [ ] Practice 2-3 problems daily under time pressure * [ ] Prepare 6-8 STAR format stories * [ ] Review Amazon's Leadership Principles * [ ] Get good sleep and stay hydrated 📚 Additional Resources * Blind 75 - Classic interview problems * AlgoExpert - Structured learning path * Pramp - Free mock interviews * LeetCode Premium - Company-specific problems Good luck with your Amazon interview! 🍀 Remember: Amazon values problem-solving approach over perfect solutions. Show your thinking process, ask good questions, and demonstrate leadership principles through your examples.

— claude