Rather than engage in the sort of selective retention that so many investors tend to do and pretend mistakes never happened, I prefer to 'own' them. This allows me to learn from them and, with any luck, avoid making the same errors again.

A man must not always tell all, for that be folly; but what a man says should be what he thinks.

Thinking about how disturbingly herdlike people become in so many different contexts - mimetic theory forces you to think about that, which is knowledge that's generally suppressed and hidden. As an investor-entrepreneur, I've always tried to be contrarian, to go against the crowd, to identify opportunities in places where people are not looking.

When you strive for perfection, you compare different versions of what could be instead of being present with what is. Perfectionism is an attempt to inhabit an imaginary world in order to avoid experiencing the world in which you live.

If I get stuck, I look at a book that tells me how someone else did it. I turn the pages, and then I say, 'Oh, I forgot that bit,' then close the book and carry on. Finally, after you've figured out how to do it, you read how they did it and find out how dumb your solution is and how much more clever and efficient theirs is!

Only dumb people try to impress smart people. Smart people just do what they do.