It does not matter how frequently something succeeds if failure is too costly to bear.

Go to parties. You can't even start to know what you may find on the envelope of serendipity. If you suffer from agoraphobia, send colleagues.

Answer e-mails from junior people before more senior ones. Junior people have further to go and tend to remember who slighted them.

Anything organic requires some dose of variability so it can adapt all the time, and fixing things is not a good idea.

Read books are far less valuable than unread ones. The library should contain as much of what you do not know as your financial means, mortgage rates, and the currently tight real-estate market alow you to put there.

Poverty is clearly one source of emotional suffering, but there are others, like loneliness.

Deficits are like putting dynamite in the hands of children. They can get out of control very quickly.