To kick start the years reading list, i decided to pick up Richard Koch's book that highlighted Pareto's 80/20 Principle. What i found intriguing about his writing was the following:

-"Things that matter most must never be at the mercy of things that matter least"

-10 golden rules for career success:

1) Specialise in a very small niche; develop a core skill

2) Choose a niche that you enjoy, where you can excel and stand a chance of becoming an acknowledged leader

3) Realise that knowledge is power

4) Identify your market and your core customers and serve them best

5) Identify where 20of effort gives 80%% of returns

6) Learn from the best; observe, learn, practice

7) Become self-employed early in your career

8) Employ as many net value creators as possible

9) Use outside contractors for everything but your core skill

10) Exploit capital leverage

In summary, rewards increasingly demonstrate the 80/20 Principle: the winners take all. Those who are truly ambitious must aim for the top in their field. Choose your field narrowly. Specialise. Choose the niche that is made for you. You will not excel unless you also enjoy what you are doing. Success requires knowledge. But success also requires into what delivers the greatest customer satisfaction with the least use of resources. Identify where 20% of resources can be made to deliver 80% of returns. Early in your career, learn all there is to be learned. You can only do this by working for the best firms and the best individuals within them, “best” being defined with reference to your own narrow niche. Obtain the four forms of labour leverage. First, leverage your own time. Second, capture 100% of its value by becoming self-employed. Third, employ as many net value creators as possible. Fourth, contract out everything that you and your colleagues are not several times better at doing. If you do all this, you will have built your career into a firm, your own firm. At this stage, use capital leverage to multiply its wealth.

-Two ways to be happier:

i) Identify the times when you are happiest and expand them as much as possible

ii) Identify the times when you are least happy and reduce them as much as possible

MAKING OURSELVES HAPPY BY STRENGTHENING EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE

Daniel Goleman and other writers have contrasted academic intelligence or IQ with emotional intelligence: “abilities such as being able to motivate oneself and delay gratification; toregulate one’s moods and to keep distress from swamping the ability to think; to emphasise and to hope.” EQ is more crucial for happiness than intellectual intelligence, yet our society places little emphasis on the development of EQ. As Goleman aptly remarks:

Even though a high IQ is no guarantee of prosperity, prestige, or happiness in life, our schools and our culture fixate on academic abilities, ignoring EQ, as set of traits—some might call it character—that also matters immensely for our personal destiny.

The good news is that EQ can be cultivated and learned: certainly as a child, but also at any stage in life. In Goleman’s wonderful phrase, “Temperament is not destiny”: we can change our destiny by changing our temperament. Psychologist Martin Seligman points out that “moods like anxiety, sadness and anger don’t just descend on you without your having any control over them…you can change the way you feel by what you think.” There are proven techniques for exiting feelings of incipient sadness and depression before they become damaging to your health and happiness. Moreover, by cultivating habits of optimism you can help to prevent disease as well as have a happier life. Again, Goleman shows that happiness is related to neurological processes in the brain:

Among the main biological changes in happiness is an increased activity in a brain center that inhibits negative feelings and fosters an increase in available energy, and a quieting of those that generate worrisome thought…there is…a quiescence, which makes the body recover more quickly from the biological arousal of upsetting emotions.

Identify personal levers that can magnify positive thoughts and cut off negative ones. In what circumstances are you at your most positive and most negative? Where are you? Who are you with? What are you doing? What is the weather like? Everyone has a wide range of EQ, depending on the circumstances. You can start to build up your EQ by giving yourself a break, by skewing the odds in your favour, by doing the things where you feel most in control and most benevolent. You can also avoid or minimise the circumstances where you are at your most emotionally stupid!

MEDIUM-TERM STRATEGEMS FOR HAPPINESS

Seven shortcuts to a happy life:

i) Maximise your control

ii) Set attainable goals

iii) Be flexible

iv) Have a close relationship with your partner

v) Have a few happy friends

vi) Have a few close professional alliances

vii) Evolve your ideal lifestyle

Conclusion

Happiness is a duty. We should choose to be happy. We should work at happiness. And in doing so, we should help those closest to us, and even those who just stumble across us, to share our happiness.