The slope of the trajectory for your career is (unfairly) set in the first five years post-graduation. If you want the trajectory to be steep, you’ll need to burn a lot of fuel. The world is not yours for the taking, but for the trying. Try hard, really hard

The world does not belong to the big, but to the fast. You want to cover more ground in less time than your peers. This is partially built on talent, but mostly on strategy and endurance

There is a correlation between how much money you have and how happy you are. Money can buy happiness, to a point. But once you reach a certain level of economic security, the correlation flattens. More money won’t make you less happy, either (also a myth). I made the mistake of spending all my time, for most of my life, trying to figure out how to make more money, instead of taking a pause and asking myself what makes me happy.

Male monkeys have higher ranks and more mating success if they have more social bonds, rather than being bigger or stronger. Increasingly, being a good citizen—being a good neighbor, respecting institutions, remembering where I come from, helping people I’ll never meet, taking an interest in a child who isn’t mine, and voting, all stuff I never thought about when I was younger—makes me feel like beating my chest.

The Harvard Medical School Grant Study was the largest study on happiness, tracking three hundred nineteen-year-old men for seventy-five years and looking at what factors made them less or more happy. The presence of one thing in a man’s life predicted unhappiness better than any other factor: alcohol. It led to failed marriages, careers coming off the tracks, and bad health.

Studies show that people overestimate the amount of happiness things will bring them and underestimate the long-term positive effect of experiences. Invest in experiences over things. Drive a Hyundai, and take your wife to St. Barts.

On a balanced scorecard, the happiest people are those in monogamous relationships who have children. I didn’t want to get married or have children, and I still don’t believe you need children be happy. I can say, however, that being a decent dad and raising kids with someone I love and who’s competent has, for the first time, begun to address the question we all struggle with: Why am I here?

People who speak at universities, especially at commencement, who tell you to follow your passion—or my favorite, to “never give up”—are already rich. And most got there by starting waste treatment plants after failing at five other ventures—that is, they knew when to give up. Your job is to find something you’re good at, and after ten thousand hours of practice, get great at it. The emotional and economic rewards that accompany being great at something will make you passionate about whatever that something is

In return, you’ll earn money, status, and power and will over time become passionate about your work