The 22 Big Ideas:

• Emotional control is essential

• Use history to learn; need to learn from everyone, not just those you agree with

• Be careful about upstaging your superiors. Even if you are right, people are emotional and may strike back

• Friends and trusted colleagues will not give you accurate feedback

• Be succinct in what you say

• Cultivate a reputation and never lose it

• People need to see the value you add for you to be rewarded

• Learn from history – you get to use old ideas and get the credit

• If you bring irreplaceable skills and value, you can’t be replaced

• Always appeal to self-interest when making an ask – offer something of value

• Being unpredictable gives you an aura of uncontrollability

• Be careful if you are going to insult someone

• Always prefer to remain independent so you can see the issue without commitment

• By appearing dumb, you can get people to open up and reveal their true motives and feelings

• Concentrating your resources, focus, abilities

• You should be constantly evolving and open to change.

• Don’t look like you are working too hard

• When ready to act, go all in

• Don’t show the hard work it took to get to where you are

• You need to act and behave like the person you want to be, not what you are.

• Ignore the frivolous things that distract you

• Make adaptation a key focus in your life – always ready to change and learn to meet a changing environment

My Highlights From the Book:

Emotional control is essential:

The most important of these skills, and powers’ crucial foundation, is the ability to master your emotions. An emotional response to a situation is the single greatest barrier to power, a mistake that will cost you a lot more than any temporary satisfaction you might gain by expressing your feelings. Emotions cloud reason, and if you cannot see the situation clearly, you cannot prepare for and respond to it with any degree of control.

Anger is the most destructive of emotional responses, for a cloud your vision the most. If you are trying to destroy an enemy who has hurt you, far better to keep him off guard by feigning deadliness then showing your anger.

Use history to learn; need to learn from everyone, not just those you agree with:

The real purpose of the backward glancing eye is to educate yourself constantly -- you look at the past to learn from those who came before you. Never discriminate as to whom you study and whom you trust never trust anyone completely and to study everyone, including friends and loved ones.

Be careful about upstaging your superiors. Even if you are right, people are emotional and may strike back:

Never outshine the master. All masters want to appear more brilliant than other people. They do not care about science or empirical truth or the latest invention; they care about their name and their glory. When it comes to power, outshining the master is perhaps the worst mistake of all. You can inadvertently outshine a master simply by being yourself.

Friends and trusted colleagues will not give you accurate feedback:

Never put too much trust in friends, learn how to use enemies. Friends often agree on things in order to avoid an argument. They cover up their unpleasant qualities so as to not offend each other. Since honesty rarely strengthens friendship, you may never know how a friend truly feels. The friend is really the one who is most able to help you; and in the end, skill and competence are far more important than friendly feelings.

Be succinct in what you say:

Always say less than necessary. Powerful people impress and intimidate by saying less. The more you say, the more likely you are to say something foolish. Your short answers and silences will put them on the defensive, and they will jump in, nervously filling the silence with all kinds of comments that will reveal valuable information about them and their weaknesses.

Cultivate a reputation and never lose it:

So much depends on reputation: guard it with your life. Make your reputation simple and based it on one sterling quality. This single quality becomes a kind of calling card that announces your presence and places others under a spell.

People need to see the value you add for you to be rewarded:

Court attention. Everything is judged by its appearance; what is unseen counts for nothing. Never let yourself get lost in the crowd, then, or buried in oblivion. Standout. The conspicuous, at all costs. Make yourself a maintenance of attention by appearing larger, more colorful, more mysterious than the bland and timid masses.

Learn from history – you get to use old ideas and get the credit:

Get others to do the work for you but always take the credit. Use the past, a vast storehouse of knowledge and wisdom. Isaac Newton called this standing on the shoulders of giants. Learn to use the knowledge of the past and you will look like a genius. Even when you are really just a borrower. It is an excellent device to acquire knowledge from everybody. Life is not life without knowledge.

If you bring irreplaceable skills and value, you can’t be replaced:

Keep people dependent on you. Be the only one who can do what you do, and make the fate of those who hire you so inclined with yours that they cannot possibly get rid of you. No one will come to depend on you if they are already strong. If you are ambitious, it is much wiser to seek out weaker rulers or masters with whom you can create a relationship of dependency. You become their strength, their intelligence, their spine. What power you hold!... There are many ways to obtain such a position. Foremost among them is to possess a talent and creative skill that simply cannot be replaced.

Always appeal to self-interest when making an ask – offer something of value:

When asking for help, appeal to people's self-interest, never to their mercy or gratitude. If you need to turn to an ally for help, do not bother to remind him of your past assistance and good deeds. He will find a way to ignore you. Instead, uncover something in your request, or in your alliance with him, that will benefit him, and emphasize it out of all proportion. He will respond enthusiastically when he sees something to be gained for himself.

Being unpredictable gives you an aura of uncontrollability:

Keep others in suspended terror: cultivate an air of unpredictability. Humans are creatures of habit with an insatiable need to see familiarity in other people's actions. Your predictability gives them a sense of control. Turn the tables: be deliberately unpredictable. Behavior that seems to have no consistency or purpose will keep them off balance, and able with wear themselves out trying to explain your moves.

Be really careful if you are going to insult someone – it may come back to you in a bad way:

Know who you are dealing with…do not offend the wrong person. If you want to turn people down, it is best to do so politely and respectfully, even if you feel their request is imprudent or their offer ridiculous. Never reject them with insults until you know them better; you may be dealing with a Genghis Khan. Some people's insecurities and ego fragility cannot tolerate the slightest offense. The person who is decidedly more insecure than the average mortal presents the greatest dangers.

Always prefer to remain independent so you can see the issue without commitment:

Do not commit to anyone. It is the fool who always rushes to take sides. Do not commit to any side or caused by yourself. By maintaining your independence, you become the master of others -- playing people against one another, making them pursue you. The moment you commit, the magic is gone. You become like everyone else. People will try all kinds of underhanded methods to get you to commit. They will give you gifts, shower you with favors, all to put you under obligation. Encourage the attention, stimulate their interest, but do not commit at any cost.

By appearing dumb, you can get people to open up and reveal their true motives and feelings:

Play a sucker to catch a sucker -- seem dumber than your mark. No one likes feeling stupider than the next person. The trick, then, is to make victims feel smart -- and not just smart, but smarter than you are. Once convinced of this, they will never suspect that you may have altered your motives.

Concentrate your resources, focus, abilities:

Concentrate your forces. Conserve your forces and energies by keeping them concentrated at their strongest point. You gain more by finding a rich mine and mining a deeper, then by flitting from one shall mind to another -- intensity defeats extensity every time.

Intellect is a magnitude of intensity, not a magnitude of extensity. When a man gets into his head to do something, and when he exclusively occupies himself in that design, he must succeed, whatever the difficulties.

You should be constantly evolving and open to change:

Re-create yourself. Remake yourself into a character of power. Working on yourself like clay should be one of your greatest and most pleasurable life tasks. It makes you in essence an artist, an artist creating yourself.

Don’t look like you are working too hard:

Keep your hands clean. As a leader you may imagine that constant diligence, and the appearance of working harder than anyone else, signify power. Actually though you have the opposite effect: they imply weakness. Why are you working so hard?

When ready to act, go all in:

If you are unsure of a course of action, do not attempt it. Your doubts and hesitations will affect your execution. Timidity is dangerous: better to enter with boldness. Any mistakes and commit to audacity are easily corrected with more audacity. Everyone admires the bold; no one honors the timid.

Don’t show the hard work it took to get to where you are:

Make your accomplishments seem effortless. As a person of power, you must research and practice endlessly before appearing in public or anywhere else. Never exposed the sweat labor behind your poise. Some think such exposure will demonstrate their diligence, but it actually just makes them look weaker as if anyone who practice it works at a could do what they had done or as if they were really up to the job.

You need to act and behave like the person you want to be, not what you are:

Act like a king to be treated like one. Always make a bold demand. Set your price high and do not waver. Go after the highest person in the building. This immediately puts you on the same plane as the chief executive you are attacking. By choosing a great opponent, you create the appearance of greatness. Give a gift of some sort to those above you. You are essentially saying that the two of you are equal.

Ignore the frivolous things that distract you:

Disdain things you cannot have: ignoring them is the best revenge. By acknowledging a petty problem you’ve given it existence and credibility. You choose to let things bother you…Many things which seemed important at the time to out to be of no account when they are ignored…When you are attacked by an inferior, deflect people’s attention by making a clear that the attack has not even register.

Make adaptation a key focus in your life – always ready to change and learn to meet a changing environment:

Assume formlessness. The best way to protect yourself is to be as fluid and formless as water; never bet on stability or lasting order. Everything changes.

The powerful are often people who in their youth have shown immense creativity in expressing something new. The problem comes later, they often go conservative and possessive. They no longer dream of creating new forms; their identities are set, their habits congealed, and the rigidity makes them easy targets. Everyone knows their next move. Instead of demanding respect they elicit boredom: let someone else, someone younger, entertain us.

The need for formlessness becomes greater the older we get, as you grow more likely to become set in our ways and assume too rigid of form.