1. Build a personal board of directors: based on character, not accomplishment. Mentors you don‘t want to disappoint. People on your board don’t need to know that they are there.
2. Study yourself like a bug: what is this bug? What is this bug genetically encoded for? It’s all about non-judgemental empirical observation. Define your own hedgehog concept.
3. Regularly block off chunks of time, to think, with no distractions.
4. What is your questions to statements ratio? And, can you double it? Don’t try to be interesting. Be interested. Ask questions. Learn from others.
5. If you woke up tomorrow with $20m and also had a terminal disease and only had 10 years to live. What would you stop doing?
6. Create a stop doing list. Always ask “What could I stop doing?”
7. Unplug the opportunities that distract you. If something doesn’t fit your three circles (hedgehog concept), don’t do it. Even if it’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. There will be many opportunities in life.
8. How do we build a legion of level 5 leaders on an industrial scale? Find something for which you have so much passion, that you are willing to endure the pain.
9. Articulate the values that you will never compromise. What are you guiding principles? Write them down. Communicate them often.
10. Prepare to live a live where at age 65 you have only accomplished 1/3 of your life’s work. Peter Drucker, at age 65, had only written 1/3 of his books. Even after the age of 86, he wrote 10 more books. Let’s all be more like Drucker.
