“Man himself is in control,” was Bezdomny’s quick and angry reply to what was, admittedly, a not very clear question.

“I’m sorry,” replied the stranger in a soft voice, “but in order to be in control, you have to have a definite plan for at least a reasonable period of time. So how, may I ask, can man be in control if he can’t even draw up a plan for a ridiculously short period of time, say, a thousand years, and is, moreover, unable to ensure his own safety for the next day? And, indeed,” here the stranger turned to Berlioz, “suppose you were to start controlling others and yourself, and just as you developed a taste for it, so to speak, you suddenly went and…well…got lung cancer…”- at which point the foreigner chuckled merrily, as if the thought of lung cancer brought him pleasure. “Yes, cancer,” he repeated, narrowing his eyes like a cat as he savored the sonorous word, “and there goes your control! No one’s fate is of any interest to you except your own. Your relatives start lying to you. You, sensing that something is wrong, run to learned physicians, then to quack, and maybe even to fortune-tellers in the end. And going to any of them is pointless, as you well know. And it all ends tragically: that same fellow who not so long ago supposed that he was in control of something ends up lying stiff in a wooden box, and those present, realizing that he is no longer good for anything, cremate him in an oven. Why even worse things can happen: a fellow will have just decided to make a trip to Kislovodsk,” – here the foreigner narrowed his eyes at Berlioz, “a trivial matter, it would seem, but he can’t even accomplish that because for some unknown reason he goes and slips and falls under a streetcar! Would you really say that that’s an example of his total control over himself? Wouldn’t it be more correct to say that someone other himself is in control?” – and at this point the stranger laughed a strange sort of laugh.

—

“You haven’t by any chance spent some time in a mental hospital, have you?”

“Ivan!” softly exclaimed Mikhail Alexandrovich.

But the foreigner was not the least bit insulted and he burst out with a hearty laugh.

“I have indeed, I have indeed, and more than once!”

—

(more…)

The ultimate form of intrinsic motivation is when a habit becomes part of your identity. It’s one thing to say I’m the type of person who wants this. It’s something very different to say I’m the type of person who is this.

—

When situation X arises, I will perform response Y.

The punch line is clear: people who make a specific plan for when and where they will perform a new habit are more likely to follow through.

—

When your dreams are vague, it’s easy to rationalize little exceptions all day long and never get around to the specific things you need to do to succeed.

—

After [current habit], I will [new habit].

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Books

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Movies

• Anna
• Spiderman: Far From Home
• To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before
• The Accountant
• Irrational Man

Books

• The Count of Monte Cristo 
• The Smartest Guys in the Room
• Talking to Strangers
• Can’t Hurt Me
• Sum
• The Right Stuff
• Wittgenstein’s Mistress

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If, as a result of reading this book you see that even a decision to consult a doctor is a serious and potentially risky one, that it requires some estimate of potential risks as well as potential benefits, you will have spent your time well.

…

Dr. Albert Szent-Gyorgyi:

As to ascorbic acid, right from the beginning I felt that the medical profession misled the public. If you don’t take ascorbic acid with your food you get scurvy, so the medical profession said that if you don’t get scurvy you are all right. I think that this is a very grave error. Scurvy is not the first sign of the deficiency but a premortal syndrome, and for full health, you need much more, very much more. I am taking, myself, about 1g a day. This does not mean that this is really the optimum dose because we not know what full health really means and how much ascorbic acid you need for it. What I can tell you is that one can take any amount of ascorbic acid without the least danger.

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Nevertheless, Congress loves these nonproductive redistributions of tax burden among taxpayers. Tax preferences – properly called “tax expenditures” by economists – are the vehicles for these dubious favors. It is easy to see why Congress loves tax preferences:

Suppose the Pentagon wanted to buy a new fighter plane. But instead of writing a $10 billion check to the manufacturer, the government just issued a $10 billion “weapons supply tax credit.” The plane would still get made. The company would get its money through the tax credit. And politicians would get to brag that they had cut taxes and reduced the size of government!

…

The virtue of the Milliman Index is that it includes out-of-pocket spending by families. The current debate on health reform typically focuses only on whether insurance premiums rise or fall, as if that were the proper metric for judging the affordability of health care. It is not. Total spending matters more.

…

Given the often clinically and morally compelling nature of health care as a commodity, one can think of a nation’s health system as just another tax system, operating side by side with the government’s tax system.

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The first pilot said, “I was given a thousand rules for flying my plane.” The pilot said, “I was only given three rules.” The first pilot gloated, thinking he was given many more options, until his friend says, “My instructor told me the three things I should never do. All else is up to me.” This story captures the idea that it is better to know the few things that are really against the rules than to focus on the many things you think you should do.

…..

There is strong evidence that the ratio between our individual successes and failures stays the same. Therefore, if you want more successes you’re going to have to be willing to live with more failures. Failure is the flip side of success, and you can’t have one without the other.