Fire and Knowledge

1. Specialize in a very small niche; develop a core skill.
2. Choose a niche that you enjoy, where you can excel and stand a chance of becoming an acknowledged leader.
3. Realize that knowledge is power.
4. Identify your market and your core customers and serve them best.
5. Identify where 20 percent of effort gives 80 percent of returns.
6. Learn from the best.
7. Become self-employed early in your career.
8. Employ as many net value creators as possible.
9. Use outside contractors for everything but your core skill.
10. Exploit capital leverage.

—Richard Koch, The 80/20 Principle: The Secret of Achieving More With Less (1998), p. 188

It is essential to employ, trust, and reward those whose perspective, ability, and judgment are radically different from yours. It is also rare, for it requires uncommon humility, tolerance, and wisdom.

—Dee W. Hock, as quoted in Guy Kawasaki, The Art of the Start (2004), p. 100.

The key to earning more and working less is to pick the right thing to do and to do only those things that add the highest value.

—Richard Koch, The 80/20 Principle: The Secret of Achieving More With Less (1998), p. 188

It is often easier to make an enthusiasm into a career than to become enthusiastic about a career dictated by others.

—Richard Koch, The 80/20 Principle: The Secret of Achieving More With Less (1998), p. 167

Things that matter most
Must never be at the mercy of things that matter least.

—Goethe, as quoted in Richard Koch, The 80/20 Principle: The Secret of Achieving More With Less (1998), p. 164

Seth Stevenson writes a humorous letter to a young procrastinator from a veteran slacker. Excerpt:

The root cause of my procrastination, in technical terms, is this: I’m lazy. Extremely lazy.

Don’t judge, pal—you’re lazy, too. It’s why you procrastinate. When there’s a difficult, disagreeable, or tedious chore that needs to get done, guess what? You don’t want to do it. So you don’t. Until you have to.

It’s just that simple, my slothful friend. And guess what else? The trick to overcoming procrastination is even simpler. Ready? Here it is:

Get off your fat badonk and stop procrastinating. Right now. No, not after the Gilmore Girls rerun ends. Now now.

Will you do this? No. You will not. You will dabble at the crossword for a while. Later, you might get a yogurt. Eventually, you’ll start reading pointless crap on the Internet. You see, you’re doing it as we speak! Because: You are lazy.

Understand that this will never, ever change. You will always be lazy, and you will always procrastinate.

As Carlson implies here, a 401(k) or other employer IRA is one of the best methods of investment because of the tax breaks and ease of investment. Most employers also match up to a certain percentage, which is an immediate 100% gain. If you’re not funding a retirement account, get started today!

If you are not taking full advantage of your employer’s 401(k), you are making a very big mistake. You have no business investing in any other investment until you contribute the maximum allowed by law to your plan.

–Charles Carlson, Eight Steps to Seven Figures (Currency; 2000), p. 60.

Update: I actually don’t agree with his last sentence. If you need the money before you retire, then no-load index funds or quality stocks are great investments even if you’re not maxing out your IRA. This is especially true for those of us with 401(k) plans, where one can contribute up to $15,500 a year. It’s not realistic for most of us to max that out!

But even then a Roth IRA is often the best investment account, as your contribution can be withdrawn at any time, while the earnings grow tax-free. If you need the earnings before retirement, then I recommend a standard investment account from a discount broker like Scottrade (the one I use) or Etrade.

Everywhere, every day, local life is being discomforted, disrupted, endangered, or destroyed by powerful people who live, or who are privileged to think they live, beyond the bad effects of their bad work.

A powerful class of itinerant professional vandals is now pillaging the country and laying it waste. Their vandalism is not called by that name because of its enormous profitability (to some) and the grandeur of its scale. If one wrecks a private home, that is vandalism, but if, to build a nuclear power plant, one destroys good farmland, disrupts a local community, and jeopardizes lives, home, and properties within an area of several thousand square mile, that is industrial progress.

—Wendell Berry, “Higher Education and Home Defense” in Home Economics (1986), p. 50.