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Tim Ferris interviewed more than 200 world-class performers to deconstruct their success habits.

Here's my favorite tips and insights:

• Kids don't do what you say. They do what they see. How you live your life is their example.

• Good stories always beat good spreadsheets. Never forget that underneath all the math and the MBA bullshit talk, we are still emotionally driven human beings.
  

• How do you thrive in an unknowable future? Choose the plan with the most options. The best plan is the one that lets you change your plan.
  
  
• "First, ten." Tell ten people, show ten people, share it with ten people. Ten people who already trust and like you. If they don't tell anybody else, it's not that good and you should start over. If they do tell other people, you are on your way.
  
  
• If you want to do something extraordinary, you have two paths: 1) Become the best at one specific thing. 2) Become very good (top 25%) at two or more things. The first strategy is nearly impossible. But everyone has at least a few areas in which they could be in the top 25% with some effort. Make yourself rare by combining two or more "pretty goods" until no one else has your mix. At least one of the skills in your mixture should involve communication, either written or verbal.
  
  
• If I have a problem, I will own it. For example, do you blame your boss for not giving you the support you need? Plenty of people will say, "It's my boss's fault." No, it's actually your fault because you haven't educated her, you haven't influenced her, and you haven't explained to her in a manner she understands why you need the support that you need. That's taking extreme ownership of a problem.
  
  
• You should have a running list of three people that you are always watching. Someone senior to you that you want to emulate, a peer who you think is better at the job than you are and who you respect, and someone subordinate who's doing the job you did - one, two, or three years ago - better than you did. Learn from them, and you are going to be exponentially better than you are.
  
  
• Every time you meet someone, just in your head say, "I love you" before you have a conversation with them, and that conversation is going to go a lot better. Just assume everybody is doing the best they can with what they have, which is really hard for a lot of people to accept.
  
  
• "I'm busy" has become the default response when you ask anyone how they are doing. "Better to be busy than the opposite." This is something we have chosen. Work and obligations we have taken on voluntarily. We are busy because of our own ambition or drive or anxiety. It makes us feel important, sought-after, and put-upon. But what exactly is getting done?
  
  Busyness is not an inevitable condition of life. We need more idleness. Idleness is not just a vacation, it is as indispensable to the brain as vitamin D is to the body. It is, paradoxically, necessary to getting any work done.
  
  
• Never serve anything you would not want to eat.
  
  
• What makes a good commander? Humility. You've got to be humble, and you have to be coachable. Have the ability to listen, open your mind, and see that, maybe, there's a better way to do things. The arrogant guys can't take criticism from others, and can't even do an honest self-assessment because they think they already know everything. Stay humble or get humbled.
  
  
• Write in order to think. You actually don't know what you think until you try to write it. You think you have an idea, but when you begin to write it, you will realize that you have no idea.
  
  
• To blame someone for not fully understanding you is deeply unfair because, first of all, we don't understand ourselves, and even if we do understand ourselves, we have such a hard time communicating ourselves to other people.
  
  
• When you go into a conflict or a difficult situation, say less. That's it. Just say less.
  
  
• Honor those who seek the truth, beware of those who have found it.
  
  
• If you don't do something well, don't do it unless you want to spend the time to improve it.
  
  
• "Strong views, loosely held". Most people go through life and never develop strong views on things. They go along and buy into the consensus. You should have strong views, but you need to be able to adapt in light of new information.
  

A personal value I strive to live by, both as a dad and as a professional, is leading by example.

If I'm not willing to change, why should anyone else? I must behave in ways that are consistent with the values, norms and changes we have agreed on as a team. Practice what I preach.

It's my actions that send the strongest signals about what matters and what others should be doing. Consistency between words and actions also signals reliability. It builds trust.

This means my actions and behavior need to be visible and present. I need to show up and let people see what I stand for.

I am not always great at expressing expectations or coming up with a fancy uplifting speech on the fly, but I can step forward and carry some of the weight. Go first. Be willing to do the hard work alongside my team. It’s my way to demonstrate my investment in what we are trying to achieve.

If I want others to be committed, then I have to be 100 percent, without doubt, fully committed myself.

But there are pitfalls. I risk becoming a bottleneck if I feel the need to be involved in everything or be the “best” at every task.

I also believe our actions and behavior tend to come back on us. You get what you give. If I act in a disagreeable or negative way, that's often what I will get in return.

For example, want more proactivity in your team? Or a stronger tolerance for uncertainty?

I can take the first small step before everything is defined. I can share imperfect ideas to signal that it's okay not to have all the answers. I can meet new ideas with curiosity instead of reacting with doubt or negativity too quickly. I can stay open and calm in ambiguity.

Little by little, we adopt the thoughts, the attitudes and standards of the people around us. It's contagious - for better or worse.

I can never expect people around me to be more open and willing to learn and improve than I am.

It always starts with me.

Food for thought.

If someone mirrored your behaviour, what would that look like? What are people likely to pick up from you?

What is one behaviour you expect from others that you don’t consistently model yourself?

Here's my favorite aphorisms by Nassim Taleb.

• Your brain is most intelligent when you don't instruct it on what to do - something people who take showers discover on occasion.
  
  
• It is harder to say no when you really mean it than when you don't.
  
  
• The ultimate freedom lies in not having to explain why you did something.
  
  
• There are two types of people: those who try to win and those who try to win arguments. They are never the same.
  
  
• Bureaucracy is a construction designed to maximize the distance between a decision-maker and the risks of the decision.
  
  
• Under opacity, incomplete information, and partial understanding, much of what we don't understand is labeled "irrational".
  
  
• Technology is at its best when it is invisible.
  
  
• What I learned on my own I still remember.
  
  
• The problem of knowledge is that there are many more books on birds written by ornithologists than books on birds written by birds and books on ornithologists written by birds.
  
  
• You can only convince people who think they can benefit from being convinced.
  
  
• To understand how something works, figure out how to break it.
  
  
• Knowledge is subtractive, not additive - what we subtract (reduction by what does not work, what not to do), not what we add (what to do).
  
  
• When someone starts a sentence with "simply", you should expect to hear something very complicated.
  
  
• The first, and hardest, step to wisdom: avert the standard assumption that people know what they want.
  
  
• It is much better to do things you cannot explain than explain things you cannot do.
  
  
• You need to keep reminding yourself of the obvious: charm lies in the unsaid, the unwritten, and the undisplayed. It takes mastery to control silence.
  
  
• When people call you intelligent it is almost always because they agree with you. Otherwise they just call you arrogant.
  
  
• Asking science to explain life and vital matters is equivalent to asking a grammarian to explain poetry.
  
  
• Change your anchor to what did not happen rather than what did happen.

What's your favorite?

Incentives send signals. Unfortunately, too often there is a conflict between what you say and what your incentives signal.

• You encourage teamwork, but incentivize individual success.
• You say you value autonomy, but punish deviation.
• You want innovation, but reward predictability.
• You talk about empoweremnet, but override decisions.

An incentive is a tool used to motivate people to do something they would not do otherwise. It can be used as a solution to a problem. We can use it to better understand why people do what they do.

When you push people to increase one dimension of their output, you can create unintended effects on the other dimensions.

You need to make sure what you incentivize is indeed what you want to encourage because sometimes incentives achieve the opposite of what they were designed for.

Such as the fine introduced to discourage parents from being late picking up kids in the kindergarten, that actually promoted late pickups. Before the policy, parents felt bad when they arrived late. Now parents could just pay to avoid the feeling of guilt.

You need to understand the psychology behind the incentives to make them work.

For instance, we have a tendency to settle for a smaller present reward rather than to wait for a larger one in the future. The idea is simple: "now" is very strong and hard to resist.

With behavior change, the costs are now; the benefits are in the future. Therefore, make the incentive not too far in the future. If someone changes their behavior in the desired direction, give them an immediate reward.

Clear thinking

There is nothing stronger than biological instincts hardwired within us. They control us often without us even knowing.

For instance, like all animals, we are naturally prone to defend our territory.

Territory can also be psychological. When someone criticizes our work, status, or how we see ourselves, we stop listening and go on the attack. We instinctively defend ourselves.

We react without thinking.

We have a set of defaults that our brains will automatically execute when triggered unless we stop and take the time to think.

The emotion default.

We tend to respond to feelings rather than reasons and facts. Emotions can drive us away from clear thinking. Emotions can multiply all of your progress by zero.

Sleep deprivation, hunger, fatigue, emotion, distraction, stress from feeling rushed, and being in an unfamiliar environment. If you find yourself in any of these conditions, be on your guard.

The ego default.

Our ego can turn confidence into overconfidence or even arrogance. We get a bit of knowledge on the internet and suddenly everything seems easy.

When someone steps on how we see ourselves, or how we want to be seen, the ego leaps into action, and we often react without reasoning. The ego default urges us to feel right at the expense of being right.

The social default.

We fall in line with an idea or behavior simply because other people do. The social default encourages us to outsource our thoughts, beliefs, and outcomes to others.

We want to belong to the crowd. We fear being an outsider. It comes from our history. Survival inside the tribe was hard but survival outside the tribe was impossible. Our individual interests became secondary to the group interests.

The inertia default.

We resist change even when it is for the best. Keeping things the way they are requires almost no effort.

The inertia default leverages our desire to stay in our comfort zone, or the "zone of average", relying on old processes and standards even when they are no longer optimal. It's the point where things are working well enough that we don't feel the need to make any changes.

Groups create inertia of their own. Group dynamics end up favoring people who don't deviate from the defaults. People are rewarded for maintaining status quo.

Protect yourself from yourself

We can't eliminate our defaults. But we can reprogram them into forces for good. We need to learn to manage them. Which defaults do you struggle with the most? How do you think clearly? Which tools do you use to protect yourself from yourself?

"Clear thinking" by Shane Parrish