Timeless Truths

Personal maxims, rules and reminders

About creating a life truly worth living.

  1. Love is an action.
  2. Restriction is liberation.
  3. Precision isn’t accuracy.
  4. Setbacks are launchpads.
  5. Constraints fuel creativity.
  6. Better system, better result.
  7. Missing out is the standard.
  8. Depth follows commitment.
  9. Never taking any risks is risky.
  10. Blame doesn't solve problems.
  11. Not being offended isn't a right.
  12. We too often live life by analogy.
  13. Good goals inspire good actions.
  14. Impermanence magnifies beauty.
  15. The meaning of life is that it ends.
  16. We avoid pain through distraction.
  17. What you consume consumes you.
  18. Plausibility doesn’t equal probability.
  19. The great is made from the ordinary.
  20. Emotions aren't a choice, behavior is.
  21. Discipline eats motivation for breakfast.
  22. Observation + Interpretation = Perception.
  23. What got you here might not get you there.
  24. All models are wrong, but some are useful.
  25. You don't have to be anybody to be somebody.
  26. Our actions are the tools that create our future.
  27. Just because you can doesn’t mean you should.
  28. Don’t confuse what is with what you want to be.
  29. Emotions are suggestions, not commandments.
  30. Achieving goals without fulfillment equals failure.
  31. Talking more doesn't mean you have more to say.
  32. Peace of mind is more important than being right.
  33. Good can seem bad when in contrast to excellent.
  34. If you’re easily outraged, you’re easily manipulated.
  35. More effort doesn't help if the basis is of bad quality.
  36. Today’s habits construct tomorrow’s You in real time.
  37. Without constraints we become slaves to our desires.
  38. We'd often rather have a wrong map than no map at all.
  39. Most information we encounter is a form of marketing.
  40. Prestige and status distort our beliefs about what we enjoy.
  41. The weight of regret is a lot heavier than the weight of failure.
  42. Your current trajectory matters more than your current results.
  43. If you completely avoid making mistakes, you kill all new ideas.
  44. Understanding isn’t like a light switch, it’s more like a stove top.
  45. Taking action in the face of doubt is the primary way to let go of it.
  46. Happiness waits on the other side of providing value to other people.
  47. Happiness is a function of your liberation from the demands of society.
  48. Ideas that unite us don’t spread as fast and far as ideas that separate us.
  49. It’s easy to say what we want but not what we are willing to sacrifice for it.
  50. Avoid games where those making the rules don't have any skin in the game.
  51. Conclusions from the past are more hazardous the faster the rate of change.
  52. There are many things we believe to be true because we want them to be true.
  53. If you don’t feel at home with yourself, you will never feel at home in the world.
  54. Understanding the price to success is the first step towards being able to pay it.
  55. Conclusions are often not as interesting as the process behind getting to a conclusion.
  56. There are some things in this life that are important and a whole lot of things that aren’t.
  57. Understanding the problem is often overlooked as a prerequisite for finding good solutions.
  58. Goals are good for planning progress, but systems are crucial for actually making progress.
  59. Every once in a while we should stop trying to win in order to ask if we’re playing the right game.
  60. The one mission you have is to make a positive difference, not to prove how smart or how right you are.
  61. Full understanding is almost always impossible, sufficient understanding is almost always underestimated.
  62. We hit 'like' for things that trigger us in some way — not for things we have an honest and deep admiration for.
  63. We make decisions based not on our experiences but on our stories of these experiences — memories matter.
  64. What determines the functioning of a physical system is usually not its average component but its weakest one.
  65. Our predictions of the future are inherently flawed as tiny changes will exponentially impact the reality over time.
  66. The world is a continuum — where to draw a boundary around a system depends on the purpose of the discussion.
  67. Your personal experiences make up 0.000001% of what’s happening in the world but 90% of how you think the world works.
  68. If you let yourself be defined by what others perceive of as you, you’ll forever be limited by what they give you permission to do.
  69. In a world of virtually endless options, the difference between what we can conceive of doing and what we can actually do is painful.
  70. You don’t need ground breaking original thoughts to be successful — just master what the brightest minds have figured out before you.
  71. Because we learn to want what other people want, we are on a collision course with one another unless we understand what’s driving us.
  72. If you’re always mentally living in a future moment, your finite life will come to an end without you ever experiencing meaning in the present moment.
© Philipp Hagspiel 2022