[vector_rotcev]

When I first read his first two books was when I had just left university and moved to a big city and gotten a 'proper' job, and I didn't get how you were supposed to organise your time in an office and what you were supposed to pay attention to and what you should ignore, what you should worry about and what you should not care about at all, and I recall that my second job where I applied his advice about not reading or responding to emails, and searching to automate and avoid meetings as much as possible resulted in better performance and reviews and relationships with my manager, such that I ended up able to save enough money to quit and backpack around the world for ~two years.

Looking back now, I have a similar feeling that I can't recall anything specific (apart from only checking email at 10:00 and 16:00), but I do seem to have absorbed by osmosis some of his approach of almost obsessive application of 80/20 analysis on everything, and I think that's had a significant positive effect on my life of habituating the regular identification and shedding of negative things (I still use Twitter and Instagram, but on on the PC - the apps are removed from my phone). I've actually just realised while writing this that I also still do a weekly 80/20 review, which is where I identify that kind of thing.

I think I also found his super positive vibe about taking matters into your own hands to be great, and it was the first time I'd encountered the idea that you could have that much control over your own life. The thought-space of being able to change whatever aspect of life you want didn't exist before then.