Give a man a fish, and you'll feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and he'll buy a funny hat. Talk to a hungry man about fish, and he's a consultant.
Pessimism is often a failure of imagination.
I don't trust the science behind the vegetarian movement because the believers have agendas beyond nutrition. Some vegetarians are in the lifestyle to protect animals, some want to address climate change, and all are partially blinded by the cognitive dissonance that comes automatically with any lifestyle choice. Complicating.
You can change only what people know, not what they do.
I've always defined myself not as a cartoonist, but as an entrepreneur. That was true before I tried cartooning. I always imagined cartooning would be how I got my seed capital. I always thought my other businesses would be the less dominant part of my life.
Women are treated differently by society for exactly the same reason that children and the mentally handicapped are treated differently.
I hated my work. It never seemed to me to be what I should be doing.
Humans think they are rational, and they think they understand their reality. But they are wrong on both counts.
I have an endless stream of suggestions coming in from readers who are in cubicles. That keeps me going.
I think if you talk to anybody who ever went from not having much to having enough to buy what they wanted, they're always happier. Now I get that whole '$75,000 a year is some kind of magic number,' but my experience is 'more is better, up to a point.' Then there's a point where it doesn't make any difference.
Engineers like to solve problems. If there are no problems handily available, they will create their own problems.
Informed decision-making comes from a long tradition of guessing and then blaming others for inadequate results.
For most of my career I did one comic a day, every day, including weekends and holidays.
We must develop knowledge optimization initiatives to leverage our key learnings.
Avoid career traps such as pursuing jobs that require you to sell your limited supply of time while preparing you for nothing better.
To change yourself, part of the solution might involve spending more time with the people who represent the change you seek.
Losers have goals. Winners have systems.
It doesn't take many people to have a bad sense of humor to get in trouble at a corporation.
Beware of advice about successful people and their methods. For starters, no two situations are alike. Your dreams of creating a dry-cleaning empire won't be helped by knowing that Thomas Edison liked to take naps.
My optimism is like an old cat that likes to disappear for days, but I always expect it to return.
The only way to succeed in the long run is by using a system that bypasses your need for willpower.
I think 'Dilbert' will remain popular as long as employees are frustrated and they fear the consequences of complaining too loudly. 'Dilbert' is the designated voice of discontent for the workplace. I never planned it that way. It just happened.
If you believe people use reason for the important decisions in life, you will go through life feeling confused and frustrated that others seem to have bad reasoning skills. The reality is that reason is just one of the drivers of our decisions, and often the smallest one. Recently.
Recapping my skill set: I have poor art skills, mediocre business skills, good but not great writing talent, and an early knowledge of the Internet. And I have a good but not great sense of humor. I'm like one big mediocre soup. None of my skills are world-class, but when my mediocre skills are combined, they become a powerful market force.
The Knowledge Formula: The More You Know, the More You Can Know.
I burned out my drawing hand by using it too much. The common word for it is writer's cramp. The fancy words for it are focal dystonia. The symptom in my case was a pinky finger that went spastic when I tried to draw.
There's no denying the importance of practice. The hard part is figuring out what to practice.
If you see voters as rational, you'll be a terrible politician. People are not wired to be rational. Our brains simply evolved to keep us alive. Brains did not evolve to give us truth. Brains merely give us movies in our minds that keeps us sane and motivated. But none of it is rational or true, except maybe sometimes by coincidence.
Keep in mind that disapproving of Trump's style and personality is a social requirement for people who long for a more civil world. Effectiveness is a separate issue from persuasive skill.
Persuasion is effective even when the subject recognizes the technique. Everyone knows that stores list prices at $9.99 because $10.00 sounds like too much. It still works.
Free will is an illusion. People always choose the perceived path of greatest pleasure.
Pre-suading, or setting the table, is about creating mental and emotional associations that carry over. If you get the mood right, and your credibility is high, you're halfway done with your persuasion before anyone knows you started.
How can one part be more important if each part is completely necessary?
You might wince at the fact that I put economics ahead of your family, your friends, and the rest of the world, but there's a reason. If you don't get your personal financial engine working right, you place a burden on everyone from your family to the country. Once.
Practice involves putting your consciousness in suspended animation. Practicing is not living. But when you build your skills through an ever-changing sequence of experiences, you're alive.
Success caused passion more than passion caused success.
You can't keep all bad luck from finding you, but you can fortify yourself to the point where the smaller stuff bounces off.
Quality is not an independent force in the universe; it depends on what you choose as your frame of reference.
The marketing department uses many advanced techniques to match products and buyers in a way that mximizes profits. For example, they give away keychains.
For most people, it's easy to be passionate about things that are working out, and that distorts our impression of the importance of passion. I've been involved in several dozen business ventures over the course of my life, and each one made me excited at the start. You might even call it passion.
When did ignorance become a point of view?
Humans are hardwired to reciprocate favors. If you want someone's cooperation in the future, do something for that person today.
Public speaking Psychology Business writing Accounting Design (the basics) Conversation Overcoming shyness Second language Golf Proper grammar Persuasion Technology (hobby level) Proper voice technique.
I wouldn't be satisfied simply escaping from my prison of silence; I was planning to escape, free the other inmates, shoot the warden, and burn down the prison. Sometimes I get that way. It's a surprisingly useful frame of mind.
No one wants to believe that the formula for happiness is as simple as daydreaming, controlling your schedule, napping, eating right, and being active every day.
I'm predicting that we'll finally have a computer will search my e-mail automatically and delete every message that begins with 'thought you'd be interested,' and then give an electrical shock to the sender to remind him or her to stop send that kind of message.
We expect others to act rationally even though we are irrational.
You're wasting your time if you try to make someone see reason when reason is not influencing the decision.
