Great books change who you are even though you don’t remember most of their content.

You forget things as fast as you understand them. Yet, the really great stuff sticks with you.

What you find in this article is a list of really powerful ideas that stuck with me from the +200 books I read in the last three years. May these ideas be as valuable to you as they were for me.

1) Quit more books.

A book’s sales numbers don’t say much about its quality. Best-selling authors are primarily great marketers.

But your life is too short for bad books. Start books quickly but also quit them fast if you don’t like them. Knowing what you want to read is essential, but so is its inversion — knowing what you don’t want to read.

“Nine-tenths of the whole of our present literature aims solely at taking a few shillings out of the public’s pocket, and to accomplish this, author, publisher, and reviewer have joined forces.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

2) Most things have already been done, but they have not yet been done by you.

You’ll never be the best of the world in any field except for one — you’re the best at living your life.

Borrow from Elizabeth Gilbert’s wisdom and create whatever is on your mind. Don’t worry whether the same thing has been written or built by anyone else. Your angle will be different.

3) Say no to everything that doesn’t feel like a clear yes.

Don’t give a fuck about things that don’t matter. Improving your happiness and well-being is often about what you do less of, not more of.

There are plenty of respectful ways to say no, such as “Thanks for reaching out. I appreciate the thought, but my priorities are elsewhere.” or “No, but I know someone that might be a fit for that. I’ll email you their information.”

People will understand when you set your boundaries. This powerful idea from Mark Manson’s bestseller has brought me more freedom and can do the same for you.

4) Stop being a people-pleaser.

Don’t be a prisoner of what Brené Brown labels “pleasing, performing, and perfecting.” Instead, live by your values and show who you want to be.

“Nothing has transformed my life more than realizing that it’s a waste of time to evaluate my worthiness by weighing the reaction of the people in the stands.”

— Brené Brown

5) When you can’t change a situation, you need to change yourself.

Victor Frankl shows you can choose your response to external things even in unbearable circumstances.

It’s also the basis of Frankl’s psychological theory, logotherapy. He says humans are motivated by the search for meaning, not pleasure (Freud) or power (Adler).

6) Be critical about anything society calls ‘normal’.

Elizabeth Gilbert’s ‘City of Girls’ is an ode to female self-determination and sexual liberation. Vivian, the main character, doesn’t follow social expectations but bluntly follows her free will.

This novel made me start a podcast about my open relationship —despite my fear of going against many societal norms.

7) Start any new habit with the 2-minute rule.

“Make it easy to start, and the rest will follow,” James Clear writes, “you have to standardize before you can optimize.”

The more you internalize the beginning of a process, the easier it’ll be for you to slip into a flow state. Here’s how I applied it for different habits:

• Become a writer → write down one idea
• Do a yoga session → get into yoga clothes
• Eat healthy → google one new recipe

8) Always use your beautiful things; you never know when they’ll be gone.

Don’t ban your best clothes or dishes for special occasions. Life is about enjoyment and sensuality.

You never know when things will change. The best way to live by these words is to use your best possessions today.

There are many other great lessons in The Choice by Dr. Edith Eger, and I bet it will soon accompany Victor Frankl’s classic on every bestseller list.

9) The most important skill for getting rich is becoming a perpetual learner.

Investing my time in learning this meta-skill had a multiplying effect on every other skill I learned.

Naval Ravikant says, “you have to know how to learn anything you want to learn. No life skill can pay you greater dividends than learning how to learn.”

“Even today, what to study and how to study it are more important than where to study it and for how long. The best teachers are on the Internet. The best books are on the Internet. The best peers are on the Internet. The means of learning are abundant — it’s the desire to learn that is scarce.”

— Naval Ravikant

10) Get three hours of undistracted deep work every day.

Deep work is the most valuable skill of our century. Where your attention goes, your energy flows.

Thanks to Newport’s book, I published 176 articles and made more than 30,000$ from writing online in a single year.

If you can focus on a single task for three uninterrupted hours each day, you can achieve anything you want. The equation is:

High-Quality Work Produced = (Time Spent) x (Intensity of Focus)

Choose the same time and same location each day. Put on noise-canceling headphones, disable all notifications, block distracting websites, and get your most important things done.

11) Breathe through your nose whenever you can.

If you’re among the 50% who breathe through their mouth, you’re ruining your health. Through mouth-breathing, you deteriorate your jaw, decrease your sleep quality, lose 42% more water than nose breathers, and inhibit memory and learning.

James Nestor writes: “No matter how healthy you eat or how much you exercise — none of it matters if you’re breathing in the wrong way.”

Since I read the book, I always try to breathe through the nose and take 5.5-second inhales followed by 5.5-second exhales.

12) The purpose of learning is to evolve your beliefs.

Changing your opinion when presented with evidence or arguments is one of the most valuable skills of the 21st century. Psychologist Adam Grant dedicated an entire book about it.

What changed since I read the book is to be happy when you’re proven wrong. You learned something new.

13) Memento mori — remember your own mortality.

Yuval Noah Harari writes, “Even in the best scenario, I don’t think Homo sapiens will be around in two or 300 years.”

He says one of these three things will put an end to our species:

1. As global tensions rise, so does the chance of a nuclear war.
2. Climate change, destruction of habitats, and ecological collapse.
3. Technological disruption, mainly from artificial intelligence and bioengineering.

Remember that time and attention are your most valuable resources. Choose how you spend them wisely, and keep in mind that nothing will last forever.

“Change is the only certainty in life.”

— Yuval Noah Harari