A regimented life is like a heartbeat that's non-chaotic; it's a system that’s too ordered. It doesn't have any life to it. And real life has lots of ups and downs, some of them very extreme.
A distillation of what @naval said on Clubhouse last night:
A regimented life is like a heartbeat that's non-chaotic; it's a system that’s too ordered. It doesn't have any life to it. And real life has lots of ups and downs, some of them very extreme.
Expose yourself to asymmetric upside and lots of good options: things that can become massively important for you.
That requires a certain amount of chaos and spontaneity.
We think about planning as linear and controlled, but that's not how the world around us works anymore.
The world is dominated by nonlinearities, so understanding options value is far more important.
After that, you want to fulfill that curiosity.
Bidding for status is tricky because directly seeking status is a low status signal.
A lot of it is knowing what the group knows, what you know about the group, and what you know about yourself.
If you look at the highest status human beings in human history, they're beyond mortal needs and mortal cares.
Genuine apathy is a very strong credible signal that you have so won the game that you’ve stepped out of it altogether.
If you're in that position, then you truly do stand alone. You don't care what other people do or think, and you have to signal that in your every move.
It will annoy people. Who is this monkey to stand up over the other monkeys and say his name is worth something?
You’re overtly and publicly taking the risk of humiliation.
If you bid for status and you fail, then you're thrown in the back of the pack. So you have to show that you're worthy.
A leader, by definition, sticks his or her neck out.
You do something that’s worthwhile and then you’re willing to stick your neck out by putting your name on it.
If you’re great, people will remember you. If you're terrible, people will blame you.
If taking risks to become famous, or successful, or wealthy – if any of these things were socially applauded, then we'd all be there.
You're never going to have the crowd’s approval while you're doing anything truly worthwhile.
If you have higher status, then there's always going to be people bidding for status by trying to go to war with you.
Get very good at ignoring people who are trying to always create fights.
If you’re an incredible thinker or speaker, or you have some great insight, you will build up a following more quickly and more efficiently on @joinClubhouse than on almost any medium that came before.
Likewise, if you’re building media or messaging or a brand online, it's better to approach it multimodally.
The absurd endpoint of leverage: omniscience is omnipotence.
If you know everything, then you are also all-powerful as a consequence.
You could just wave your hand.
But at some absurd level, knowledge is power. And pure knowledge is the ultimate form of leverage, so all leverage tends towards knowledge.
Ultimately, if you are curious about something, you will be successful at it, and the more curious you are about it, the more successful you will be at it.
What's rare is saying things that are true that either other people haven't thought through fully before, or things that other people don't dare to say.
If you’re speaking for the audience, the audience is worthless. If you're writing for followers, the followers are worthless.
Someone who is playing to the audience will eventually be boring to the audience.
Very few people can speak extemporaneously for long periods of time and stay interesting.
They will have an individual cult of personality.
Either a truth that people didn't already know or a truth they knew but couldn't articulate the right way, or it's a truth that they didn't know could articulate, but we're too afraid to say.
You can teach them something new, but you eventually run out of new things, so then a lot of it becomes articulating old things in new ways.
I can rearticulate something I've learned in a new way so it strikes at the core of yourself and reminds you, “Aha, yes, I should keep that in mind. Thank you for rearticulating that for me.”
But these are truths that have to be learned individually.
And there’s a fourth unfakeable signal that's more subtle: knowledge about how to deal with situations.
Let's call it judgment.
Judgment
A healthy body
A calm mind
A loving household
You just have to work at them.
You can make it big without specific knowledge.
But if you don't have leverage, you're never going to make real wealth.
Leverage is the most important component of the principles I've discussed.
If you’re overwhelming desire is to figure out why people are happy and how to be happy, you'll be happy.
But it's got to be your overwhelming thing.
It's not like you can turn it on at max and then you can turn it off at some preset number.
And that desire to make money will keep you relatively unhappy and keep you from enjoying your money.
It just means that you learn to be content with your life.
Your day-to-day experience of life is highly positive and you're happy to continue it. I
It's not too dependent upon external circumstances.
That’s a scorecard that just doesn’t stop.
I'm not speaking this as some holier-than-thou sage who has conquered this. I'm speaking this as a victim.
All I can do is acknowledge, “This is the mental disease I have." And maybe eventually I'll realize the cost of the disease is too high and I'll drop it.
Until then, I'm resigned to living with it.
It's all an internal game, it’s all single player, and making more money beyond an early point doesn't change anything in your mindset.
I see a lot of successful, wealthy people who have busy calendars.
There's nothing that brings me as much joy and happiness as an empty calendar where you can just be spontaneous with your day.
(I didn’t make this up; unfortunately, I don’t remember the original author)
We're all born “time billionaires,” and we just get poorer as we spend our time.
Ask any rich person you know how much money they would give up to be ten years younger. I think most of them would tell you all of it.
-Say no to everything
-Delete emails without responding and without flinching
-Walking meetings only
-Keep meetings short
-Ask people to do it by email and text instead
If you are completely convinced meetings are generally a plague, and you want to do as few of them as possible, and you hate them with a passion, then you will find ways to not do meetings.
It can be a waste of time, according to somebody else's definition. But whatever I feel like in that moment is the right thing for me to do. And that's what I aspire to.
Don't spend any time thinking about the past. It doesn't exist. It's not real. There's nothing there.
You can't go back.
That's what you’ve got to spend time on and time within.
At any moment where you're not present, you're squandering time.
Do it in a way that you're completely engaged. You're fully aware. You're completely present.
That means your mind isn't running out of control.
Your inputs into that and your ability to control that are incredibly limited if they exist at all.
The best thing to do is function to the best of your capability.
If you didn't define one event as joyous, then you would define another event as suffering. It's like every time you create a friend, you create the basis for an enemy.
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Like company moats, your personal moat should be a competitive advantage that is not only durable—it should also compound over time.
Characteristics of a personal moat below:
I'm increasingly interested in the idea of "personal moats" in the context of careers.
— Erik Torenberg (@eriktorenberg) November 22, 2018
Moats should be:
- Hard to learn and hard to do (but perhaps easier for you)
- Skills that are rare and valuable
- Legible
- Compounding over time
- Unique to your own talents & interests https://t.co/bB3k1YcH5b
2/ Like a company moat, you want to build career capital while you sleep.
As Andrew Chen noted:
People talk about \u201cpassive income\u201d a lot but not about \u201cpassive social capital\u201d or \u201cpassive networking\u201d or \u201cpassive knowledge gaining\u201d but that\u2019s what you can architect if you have a thing and it grows over time without intensive constant effort to sustain it
— Andrew Chen (@andrewchen) November 22, 2018
3/ You don’t want to build a competitive advantage that is fleeting or that will get commoditized
Things that might get commoditized over time (some longer than
Things that look like moats but likely aren\u2019t or may fade:
— Erik Torenberg (@eriktorenberg) November 22, 2018
- Proprietary networks
- Being something other than one of the best at any tournament style-game
- Many "awards"
- Twitter followers or general reach without "respect"
- Anything that depends on information asymmetry https://t.co/abjxesVIh9
4/ Before the arrival of recorded music, what used to be scarce was the actual music itself — required an in-person artist.
After recorded music, the music itself became abundant and what became scarce was curation, distribution, and self space.
5/ Similarly, in careers, what used to be (more) scarce were things like ideas, money, and exclusive relationships.
In the internet economy, what has become scarce are things like specific knowledge, rare & valuable skills, and great reputations.