On any given day, more than 2 million children in the United States go to sleep without one very important necessity: a bed.

But the implications of not having a warm bed to sleep in are far greater than the mere question of comfort; safety, health, and general living conditions.

The families of these children are trying to get back on their feet. Some come from homeless shelters after having had financial difficulties and don’t have the resources to buy furniture. Others are simply struggling. They live in low-income areas and can’t afford the cost of a mattress.

The truth of the matter is that the ground or a poorly made mattress is bad for your health. It can lead to significant health problems such as lower back pain and sleep deprivation. In fact, an estimated 70 million Americans suffer from sleep deprivation each year.

But Ashley Sleep believes in a good night’s rest.

We believe that a quality night’s sleep should be available to everyone, which is precisely why we launched our “A Hope to Dream” program.

Founded in 2010 by Ashley Furniture HomeStore, “A Hope To Dream” seeks to provide thousands of children with a mattress set—an essential part of a good night’s sleep. For every mattress sold in enterprise stores, $5 will be donated to the “A Hope To Dream” campaign.

Most of us dream in the wrong direction
— @jonacuff

As we survey the black hole of endless possibility, we often get overwhelmed in that moment. We don’t know where to start when we ask discovery questions, so we stop. We freeze. We get paralyzed and give up dreaming before we’ve even really begun.

End Malaria will strike some as an odd title for a business book. But the number-one lesson in storytelling? Never bury the lead. The purpose of this compilation is to raise funds for the fight against malaria—a preventable and treatable disease that is spread by mosquitoes and kills more than 750,000 people every year. End Malaria puts the charitable mission of this project at center stage.

This book is a great example of how doing good makes good business sense. By purchasing End Malaria, you’ve donated $20 to Malaria No More to support our efforts to stop children from dying from the absurdity of a mosquito bite. But you’ve also given yourself the chance to learn from some of the biggest business greats in their respective industries, including Seth Godin, Alan Webber, Dan Pink, and Gina Trapani. Not a bad payout for helping families in Africa protect their children from a deadly disease.

Our approach to ending malaria is based on the same principles of any business. It starts with an idea and grows from there, taking one single spark of inspiration and adding just enough focus, ambition, and resilience to make that idea a reality. Every good business sets out to accomplish a specific, deliverable goal, and fighting malaria is no different—our goal is to end malaria deaths in Africa by 2015.

The authors of this compilation came together to share their lessons learned in the business world and to give advice on how to get the most out of an idea, team, or business. Their shared goal is not just to do good work—but also to do good. By participating in this book—either by contributing to it or by purchasing it—you’re helping African families defeat malaria once and for all.

Thank you for helping to put malaria out of business.

Focus is overrated
— @stevenbjohnson

So imagine a primordial soup with a few swirling atoms of various elements. The adjacent possible of that system is defined by all the various molecules that can be formed by those atoms. It’s a very useful concept, because it works just as easily for cultural systems as it does for biological systems. When humans started walking upright, it opened up the adjacent possible for more complex tool use because our hands were freed up. When we invented vacuum tubes and integrated circuits, it opened up the adjacent possible for computers.

The focus of this trip was on hardcore life-and-death issues
— @richardlapchick

The purpose of the Basketball Without Borders program in Africa is to bring together the sixty best young African male players to be trained in basketball skills as well as in life skills, such as leadership, character development, and teamwork, and to involve the players in the community to demonstrate the power of sport to make life better. This year, forty girls were in another camp doing some of the same things as the men.

Recently it began to dawn on me that there is another stage beyond doing things well and with love.
— Kevin Kelly

As you educate yourself about your own talent and ambitions, you graduate from doing a task right to doing the right task. It takes some experience to realize that a lot of work is better left undone. It might be busywork that is performed out of habit, or it might be work that is heading in the wrong direction. Working smart means making sure you are spending your time on jobs that are effective and that actually need to be done.

But the smart journey doesn’t end there. If you really pay attention to the feedback of those around you, and constantly strive to improve, you may eventually be able to discover your own best talents. At this stage, you can begin to do only the jobs that you are good at doing and that need to be done. And what a joy that is! For many years I thought this was the pinnacle of working wisdom. What could be more heavenly than to spend your energies only on those tasks you were both good at AND loved?

Choose. Start. Stop. This single 90-minute practice has been life changing for me
— @tonyschwartz

Many of us unwittingly train ourselves to ignore our bodies’ signals that we need a rest—difficulty concentrating, physical restlessness, irritability. Instead, we find ways to override this need with caffeine, sugar, and our own stress hormones—adrenalin, noradrenalin, and cortisol—all of which provide short bursts of energy but leave us over-aroused.

By intentionally aligning with my body’s natural rhythms, I’ve learned to listen to its signals. When I notice them, it usually means I’ve hit the 90-minute mark. At that point, I take a break, even if I feel I’m on a roll, because I’ve learned that if I don’t, I’ll pay the price later in the day.

Take time out for daydreaming—it’s where you can find the seeds of excellence
— @tom_peters

The epigraph of my most recent book is a quote by American statesman Henry Clay: “Courtesies of a small and trivial character are the ones which strike deepest in the grateful and appreciating heart.” You can be a tough son of a gun in business but be decent and kind and thoughtful.

Kindness is free. Thoughtfulness is free. And people will remember that kindness thirty years later.

A half-hearted stab at humor won’t resonate. Don’t whimper through the corner of your mouth—sing out!
— @SCorkerIrwin

Being unapologetically funny won’t alienate your customers—or team members. Quite the opposite. Humor is about vulnerability. Vulnerability is about humanity. And at lululemon, we design our business to support and sustain our humans—not the other way around.

In my experience, many people settle for too little
— @SirKenRobinson

Think about how many of those 80 billion or so people had to meet each other and hang out, and in what different circumstances, during the course of those fifty thousand years, before your own parents ran into each other and eventually conceived you. The fact is, as the Dalai Lama puts it, being born at all is a miracle.

So congratulations: you made it.

And now that you are here, to quote the Dalai Lama again, what are you going to do with this brief life?