The quality of American patents has been deteriorating for years; they are increasingly issued for products and processes that are not truly innovative - things like the queuing system for Netflix, which was patented in 2003. Yes, it makes renting movies a snap, but was it really a breakthrough deserving patent protection?

Wall Street is at best ambivalent. The size of the accounts is nothing big. How many Wall Street firms do you know that are running after people with $5,000 accounts?

The most important thing is to talk to people that have jobs that you might like and to see what they say the job involves.

America is the only major country that tries to ascertain who was the first applicant to invent the product or procedure. This may seem fair, but long proceedings to determine precisely when each party conceived an idea result mostly in keeping innovations from hitting the market.

If you want an active schedule, you have to husband your time so you can act on the things that are important.

You have various institutions like law firms and accounting firms which bill by the hour. I'm really against that. You have an incentive to go slowly, be there as long as possible, to over-research things and over-staff.

Most people get overwhelmed by the insignificant decisions of their lives. I'm urging people to minimize the time spent on these when they're not critical to their most important goals.