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1. No “Zero Days”

No day should pass without some contribution to your objectives, however small it may be. Can’t do a whole workout? Do 1 push-up. Can’t meditate for 30 minutes? Sit for 1 minute. Do not get carried by this practice and always remind yourself not to do things for the sake of doing but to continue doing it proper.

2. The “Reverse Bucket List”

Create a list of things you’ve already achieved and experienced – things that you feel proud of. Look at your list on tough days to remind yourself of all the wonderful moments you’ve lived through.

3. Planning Memories

Yes, you can plan memories.

Think about the best times you’ve had with your friends or family. What did those moments have in common? Plan more events that put you in situations like that.

4. Make a “Not-To-Do” List

Make a list of the 5 to 10 things that distract you most and AVOID THEM AT ALL COSTS.

This could include:

• No hitting snooze

• No scrolling in the morning

• No pointless coffee meetings

Overrated: choosing what to do

Underrated: choosing what NOT to do

5. Embrace “Creative Rabbit Holes”

Double down on creative activities that make you lose track of time. When people talk about finding your “Ikigai”, this is one of the ways to do it.

6. The “Go One More” Mindset

When you’re feeling close to your limit. Challenge yourself to “go one more”.

• At the gym – go one more rep (carefully).

• Reading a book – go one more page.

• Meditating – go one more minute.

One is perfect because it’s enough to push you slightly out of your comfort zone without overwhelming you.

7. Cheap is expensive

Yes you read that correctly. Cheap products often come with hidden costs:

• Repair fees

• Safety risks

• Poor performance

• Replacement costs

If you plan on using something for a good amount of time, invest a good amount of money in it.

8. How to stop feeling behind in life

If you’re 37. Instead of regretting that you can’t wake up age 18 again, pretend to yourself that you’re 90 and you’ve woken up age 37 again, and that you get to magically, wonderfully have the next 50 years again.

9. Write a letter to your future self

Sit down and write a letter to your future self. 10 years from now, 5 years from now, whatever. Reflect on where you are and where you hope to be. Take action to make that envisioned future a reality.

10. Schedule time with loved ones

A few months ago I put a non-negotiable recurring block on my calendar to hang out with my kids. Now, every Sunday we will hang out without fail. It’s been great for our relatioinship. Put your loved ones on your calendar more often, you have less time with them than you think.

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• be as specific as possible. “agi takeoff fast”: define “agi” “takeoff” “fast”

• there’s no such thing as a coincidence

• for decisions: autoresolve (1) on specific date (2) to the scary one

• let people tell you no. don’t make the decision for them.

• if you’re ever confused about what to do, just do the right thing

• expectation of progress towards a goal is key to motivation. we are not motivated if we don’t know next step. we are not motivated if we don’t know what the goal is

• when sending/receiving important email, snooze it for the date when you want to follow up

• set 1 hour timers to surface thoughts in a google doc and 3m timers to write down next steps.

• the more you know, the more easily you can see the next steps.

• if you don’t have consistent scheduled time for your top goals, you don’t have top goals

• what are you being a coward about? be specific

• what are you ashamed of? be specific

• what makes you angry? be specific

• everything has an MVP & final version. MVP can usually be done in 10% of the time with a timer for 5-10-15 minutes & ensures you don’t get stuck. what’s the mvp of your current top goal?

• don’t be ashamed to ask “what do you do?” as the first question at parties.

• seek out weirdest people at parties.

• working on the hardest problems requires incredible amount of courage. acknowledge & embrace fear.

• strong intuition doesn’t mean intuition is right.

• even if high level intuition is right, without grounding actionable implications likely completely wrong.

• seek ground truth and poke reality. don’t settle for proxies or for winning arguments.

• never defer key beliefs. do everything possible to find ppl thinking from first principles rather than from what’s reasonable or what someone else believes

• be suspicious if you haven’t felt awkward today

• ppl good at thinking think that thinking is everything; people good at doing think that doing is everything. doers dismiss thinkers & thinkers are scared of doers.

• if there’s something on your mind, write it down & get it out. maintain full attention on what you’re doing.

• if you did a sequence of actions 3 times, make a checklist

• if you have a thought and you don’t like it, you can tell your brain that you don’t like it and drop it.

• add questions & ideas you want to get back to later to anki, snooze tabs, schedule them in asana.

• if you don’t find yourself naturally wanting to work in a location, go somewhere else. don’t even bring your computer to the one with bad vibes.

• send cold emails. assume that everyone is a friend.

• always have a timer on top & use it to avoid getting stuck

• what were you thinking about in the shower?

• lots of alpha in low status

• a reason why being in the bay area important – standards are high! otherwise easy to forget that there are people who need 10 minutes to blow you away with their energy & insight. lots of important ppl intuitions get fucked.

• be sus if you haven’t spent a few years feeling like a loser when everyone else was getting ahead

• if you never feel a particular emotion, it’s probably the brain suppressing awareness of it or suppressing the emotion directly

• read, don’t listen to books.

• people think that others have same motivations as them

• people protect themselves by projecting their fears on others

• you can decide to pay or not to pay attention to things

• what’s the default decision?

• be sus whenever you want to read & research instead of figuring something out yourself. it’s usually avoidance caused by fear.

• grab a piece of paper and write a feelings diagram asking “why” endlessly

• if you told someone in the year 1400 that the earth rotates around the sun, they’d either ridicule or burn you.

• run, don’t walk. literally. “Slow is fake”

• poke at whatever your 15-year old self felt & believed in.

• you’ll learn 10x more by talking to the paper’s author for 30 minutes versus reading it for 30 minutes

• you can’t improve what you can’t measure. if you want to improve on ground-truth, measure ground-truth

• never give up

• we become the people whose opinion we care about

• we become the people we spend the most time (physically and mentally) with

• get to the point

• who do you want to be more like? write a list

• set 5 minute timers and write next steps

• set a 5 minute timer and start doing the next step

• how do you feel – not think! – about your current top goal?

• every document must have a specific goal written at the top of it

• get to inbox 0 every day, unless you have a specific reason not to

• set 1 minute timers to surface thoughts

• close eyes when thinking

• take sundays off

• if you don’t want to write google docs, best to avoid me at dinner parties

• credible commitment not to engage in a certain stimulus is tantamount to removing it entirely.

• intelligence != genius

• fewer better arguments

• what’s the silver bullet?

• cherish friends who tell you things that make you angry

• sitting around on the floor with eyes closed thinking & having friends call you a coward both remain extremely underrated

• easy to replace systems get replaced by difficult to replace systems

• do something courageous

• be sus if you’re not asking dumb questions

• feeling stupid now is better than feeling stupid in 10 years

• if someone is successful but there are no specific problems they solved, it’s probably because they’re good at persuading people rather than solving problems.

• some people are not your friends

• what’s your purpose?

• saying things out loud shows inner conflict

• put on your favorite song and dance

• keep asking why

• who are your mentors?

• make sure you trust your own word

• reasonable priors are an oxymoron bc the world is just fucking weird

• if you want people you don’t like to like you you won’t like yourself

• at least 30% of the world’s smartest 22 year olds right now are in the bay area hustling to get an o1/j1/h1b

• writing makes thought visible.

• will you hire your future boss? think

• utility monsters are real

• luck favors the prepared

• most decisions are fake. we are not aware of options, feel like the right thing is impossible, can’t overcome fear.

• most decisions have a silver bullet & are autoresolved if set up right.

• wear a funny hat

• everything is power-law distributed

• everything is power-law distributed

• if you’re not failing you’re not operating at the edge. if you’re not operating at the edge, you’re not learning as much as you can

• ask for help. especially when you’re scared of asking for help

• keep asking why

• you haven’t failed until you’ve given up

• write google docs

• meditate

• if someone you respect gives you dumb advice, think about it instead of discarding it immediately.

• let the world tell you no

• go to a rave get drunk & dance

• have a concrete positive vision of the future

• seek people who see the future

• seek people who don’t get angry at you for saying what you think, being yourself, and doing what you believe is right

• love

• if you think you’re introverted, find better friends

• you decide whether to live in the past or in the future with your every action

• what will you regret tomorrow?

• in 1 year?

• in 10 years?

• when a prisoner at auschwitz was trying to escape the gas chamber, other prisoners alerted the guards

• never make decisions on the basis of tax rates or rent prices

• if you have more than a few months of runway, start spending more

• spend 10-20% of your time reorienting

• ask the girl you like out

• brain is a wet sausage

• be kind

• if you’re 20, you’re probably underestimating yourself

• update all the way

• if you weren’t at Los Alamos in 1943, you probably thought nuclear weapons were 20 years away

• know what you want

• if you feel bad, low energy, depressed, demotivated, there’s probably a reason & there’s probably a solution

• the smarter someone is the more they can afford to have terrible epistemics and still be successful

• you are permitted to do what you believe is right

• autistic visionaries are not natural-born leaders

• risks are less risky than you think. take as many as you can.

• be loyal to your friends

• the richest people lose the most money, the most connected people get rejected the most, the most successful people fail the most

• go do something that can fail

• reflect on your day at the end of it and write down what you learned

• don’t die