“To paraphrase Einstein, you can’t solve your problems with the same mindset that created them. To live as a free person, following lists of easy, repetitive things, possibly in return for some reward, is exactly what should be avoided. Instead, it’s necessary to understand how the world works and how people have been specialized to the point of general incompetence, like ants, which only know how to do one job, but do it very well; this is not human nature. To live well, one must go beyond lists and start thinking creatively about solving problems.”

用同样创造出问题的思维去解决问题是不可行的。比如一个人工作了很久还是觉得自己很穷，那他保持同样的工作方式，消费水平继续工作30年，也很难让他变得很富有。现在社会讲究分工来提高总体的生产效率，而忽略了人们最基本的生存技能，企图用一份工作赚的钱去支付另外的所有开销。这本身并不是一种自然的选择。

What Gandhi said “Be the change you want to see”, may sound trite, but that doesn’t make it untrue.

一个人怎么去影响身边的人乃至整个社会，成为一个你想要整个社会都成为的人。改变自己是我们唯一可以把握的，身教的力量远远超过言传。

The question you need to answer is what you want to do with your life given that you don’t have the time to do everything? Do you want to spend most of your life paying off the interest of a 30-year mortgage and working so you can fill increasingly bigger houses with increasingly more stuff while being stuck in your daily communte in increasingly nicer cars? Or are you prepared to give up the stuff so that you can do whatever you want, whenever, and wherever, with reason? What will your legacy be-what you owned or who you were?

FIRE: 财富自由，提早退休。其实强调的重点在于财富自由。财富自由，并不是说你赚了大钱，而是你所拥有的财富足够长时间地支持日常的开销，而你不需要为了钱而做一些自己并不喜欢的事来换取支持生活的钱。提早退休也不代表着一般意义上60岁从一份工作中退休而不工作了，而是有自由去选择自己想做的事，从不得不做的事中退休。

In other words, you need to believe your lifestyle as an end rather than as a means to an end. To wit, runners and other athletes sometimes get the reverse cum hoc ergo propter hoc comment that they’re already git, so they don’t need to exercise. Yet their diligent exercising is exactly what causes their fitness. How is doing good, creating wealth, establishing connections-in short, accomplishing anything-any different?

把过程(因)作为终极目的，而不是结果最为终极目的。运动带来好的身材，并不意味着运动员就不需要运动了(因为他们已经有好身材了)，而是因为他们运动才有的好身材。

“Barriers represent a cost which must be paid. The willingness to pay depends on a combination of dissatisfaction with the present situation, vision of the future situation, and the practicality of changing from the present situation to the future situation. This will to change can be represented by the volume of the pyramid in the figure. The volume of the pyramid represents the will to change from an unsatisfying situation to something else and depends on vision, how practical the change is, and the level of dissatisfaction with the situation.”

  1. Increase your dissatisfaction with present situation.
  2. Strengthen your vision of future situation.
  3. Build a plan to get from the present to the future.
  4. Lower the perceived cost of the plan.

对现状越不满，对未来的状况越有清晰的目标，对计划越有具体的规划，对计划的成本越有清晰的认识，实际做出改变的概率就越大。