Personal Growth

All The Advice From “Into The Wild” By Jon Krakauer

This book describes the true story of Chris McCandless, a bright, upper-middle-class, college-educated 24-year-old, who set off alone into the Alaskan wild and died there several months later.

My notes reflect Chris’ worldview, the advice he gave others, his reasons to leave his normal life behind and quotes he was pondering during his last months.

If the day and the night are such that you greet them with joy, and life emits a fragrance like flowers and sweet-scented herbs, is more elastic, more starry, more immortal – that is your success.

Henry David Thoreau

1. Be open to the raw throb of existence.
2. Always tell the truth.
3. Own nothing except what you can carry on your back at a dead run.
4. There are two states of life: War and Peace.
5. Real meaning and joy are found in experiences, memories and the joy of living life to the fullest extent.
6. Consider a radical change in your lifestyle.
7. Begin to boldly do things which you may previously never have thought of doing, or been too hesitant to attempt.
8. You are conditioned to a life of security, conformity, and conservatism, all of which may only appear to give you peace of mind.
9. In reality, nothing is more damaging to your adventurous spirit than a secure future.
10. The very basic core of the human spirit is our passion for adventure.
11. There is no greater joy than having an endlessly changing horizon.
12. Have a new and different setting each day.
13. If you want to get more out of life you must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a “helter-skelter” style of life that will at first appear to you to be crazy.
14. Hit the Road.
15. Don’t settle down and sit in one place; Move around, be nomadic, be each day someplace else.
16. You are wrong if you think that joy emanates only or mainly from human relationships; joy is all around us, it is in everything and anything we can experience.
17. Have the courage to turn against your habitual lifestyle and engage in unconventional living.
18. Spend as little money as possible and you will enjoy it much more immensely.
19. Don’t hesitate or allow yourself to make excuses.
20. Always fight to kill your false being within and stay on your spiritual pilgrimage.
21. We are all poisoned by civilization.
22. All the following are holy: Food, Warmth, Positivism, Joy of the Life, Aesthetics, Absolute Truth and Honesty, Reality, Independence, Finality, Stability, and Consistency.
23. Don’t go into the wilderness to ponder nature or the world but, rather, to explore your own soul.
24. Demand more of yourself.
25. Happiness is only real when shared.
26. Don’t rush anything: Care about every step while always having your end-result in mind.
27. There are no events other than thoughts and the heart’s calling.

My highlighted notes on “Get Your Sh*t Together: The New York Times Bestseller (A No F*cks Given Guide)” by Sarah Knight:

Stop worrying about what you should be doing.

Winning happens when you translate dreams into action and your actions change your reality.

If you’re serious about getting your shit together in the long term, you have to strategize, focus, and commit in the short term.

Spend the time now to save it later.

Getting it together takes three steps:

1. Strategize: Set a goal and make a plan to achieve that goal in a series of small, manageable chunks.
2. Focus: Set aside time to complete each chunk. One at a time.
3. Commit: Do what you need to do to check off your chunks.

A strategy is a plan of action designed to achieve a goal and therefore all the small, manageable steps of a plan – your plan – neatly bundled.

You’re only as good as the last step you took.

You have to commit all the way.

Ask yourself: What’s wrong with my life? Why?

Where does your time go? Know how long it takes to do anything.

The secret to time management isn’t speeding up or slowing down. It’s about strategy and focus.

Strategy: If X is a necessary task, schedule the necessary time to get it done (= focus) and/or do X only when you have the necessary time available.

The most important thing is single-tasking: Completing one small, manageable goal at a time.

Letting go of things you can’t control is a huge part of the mental decluttering process.

Prioritize and delegate. When in doubt, hire a pro. And try to do it all without losing my mind.

Mental clutter examples: Anxiety and perfectionism.

Eventually, the fear of failure becomes just as powerful and punishing as the failure itself, and it can be crippling.

Frankin D. Roosevelt once said, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”

When you accept that failure is an option, you move it from the realm of anxiety-inducing anticipation into a reality that you’ll deal with when (and more importantly, IF) it ever happens.

Your energy is better spent on accomplishing goals in the here and now than on worrying about failure in the future (or in your imagination).

Prioritize “doing stuff” before “doing it perfectly,”

Perfection is an illusion and a self-defeating strategy.

The more you spend trying to get one thing perfectly perfect, the less time you have for anything else.

Perfect is the enemy of the good.

Identify your pitfalls in the Game of Life: Poor time management, distraction, and fear of failure.

You cannot finish something you never start.

Pinpoint your own behavior as the cause of your problems.