// This was originally a Google Doc where I gathered hard-won life lessons; eventually I open sourced it. It got a great response, including a shoutout from Tim Ferriss, so here it is on Substack.
A cursed fact of the world is that the most important life lessons you learn are the hardest to communicate to others. They always sound like clichés. In any case, these are a few things I’ve learned from experience and that I try and keep in mind.
Think about what makes you ‘imbalanced’ as a personality, & do things where this gives you an edge.
Once you are ok with people telling you ‘no’, you can ask for whatever you want. (Make reality say no to you.)
Fun is underrated. The best and most creative work comes from a root of joy and excitement. You can feel this in your body.
Environment matters a lot; move to where you flourish maximally. Put yourself in environments where you have to perform to your utmost; if you can get by being average, you probably will. (Greek saying: “A captain only shows during a storm.”)
Later, you’ll be nostalgic for right now.
Do things fast. Things don’t actually take much time (as measured by a stopwatch); resistance/procrastination does. “Slow is fake”. If no urgency exists, impose some.
Moving fast forces you to strip things down to the bare bones.
Wealth can be created, there is not a fixed amount of it in the world. Somebody doing well doesn’t always come at someone else’s expense.
Doing as much as you can every day is a form of life extension.
Always be high integrity, even when it costs you. The shortcuts aren’t worth it.
Figure out what your primary focus is and make progress on that every day, first thing in the morning, no exceptions. Days with 0 output are the killers. (Tyler Cowen)
Pay attention to your production/consumption balance. If you’re only consuming and not producing, fix that.
You don’t do anyone any favors by lurking, put yourself out there!
If you don’t “get” a classic book or movie, 90% of the time it’s your fault. (It might just not be the right time for you to appreciate that thing.)
If you find yourself dreading Mondays, quit.
Lean into the good kind of fear.
Pick some kind of fitness/athletic activity to get addicted to, and get addicted to it for its own sake. (For me, this is running. Zone 2 cardio is underrated.)
Learn how to meditate, even if you don’t end up doing it regularly. The techniques are useful. (99% of books/resources on this are quite bad - I’d recommend looking at Rob Burbea’s talks and jhana practice as a way in.)
No matter how bad things seem, everything passes.
You are probably too risk-averse. Write out the worst things that can happen, realize they’re not that bad, then take the leap.
Do a review of your year, every year, write it out, figure out what was good and what was bad, use this to make your goals for the next year.
Doing things is energizing, wasting time is depressing. You don’t need that much ‘rest’.
Being able to travel is one of the key ways the modern world is better than the old world. Learn to travel well.
Form opinions on things and then find the strongest critique of those opinions. Repeat.
If you really can’t disprove something, it has a chance of being right. (Fallibilism.)
Memorize a few old poems, or texts that mean a lot to you.
At some point in your life, work on a startup, or at least a thing driven by a small group. Small group energy is amazing.
Be careful about rationalizing something that does not feel right. (Utilitarians, this means you!)
Know your ‘triggers’ / what makes you the worst version of yourself.
Figure out what creates enduring value. (A non exclusive list: great cultural artifacts such as books; great companies/institutions).
Don’t let anyone make you feel small.
Working with people you really respect, and are secretly worried are much better than you and will figure out how dumb you are, is the best.
“Aim for Chartres” (Christopher Alexander) — when doing something, aim to be the best there ever was at it. This compensates for your natural bias, which is to do something mediocre. You have to really aim to be as good as the greats.
Send more cold emails. People respond! Assume everyone’s your friend.
Have a lot of crazy experiences in your 20s.
There are some people who, after you talk to them, you feel more energized and you want to conquer the world or climb a mountain or something. They’re rare but they exist. Go find them and make friends with them.
Move to where the action is. Agglomeration effects are powerful.
Status is fake and transient. Just focus on substance and doing valuable work. Talk about it in public. Beware the inner ring fallacy.
Ask dumb questions. The people who matter won’t judge you for it, and you’ll learn things as a result. (See: How To Understand Things)
Don’t over-index on trends. Just figure out your first-principles view of what’s actually important for the world, and go from there.
There is some wisdom in “fake it till you make it”.
Don’t “slow down” as you get older, speed up. Lean into changes, be curious about new things. Most people seem to go the other way.
Understand power laws. Outlier math rules all.
Stop asking for approval and permission from others. School and work trains people to have this mindset. Instead, figure out what you want to do, and plant the “this is happening” flag. People will come along for the ride.
Werner Herzog to Errol Morris: “when it comes to filmmaking, money isn’t important, the intensity of your wishes and faith alone are the deciding factors.”
Don’t network, make friends. Writing online is great for bringing interesting people your way. Having a wide network of friends really makes a difference to the opportunities you get and how easy it is to launch your projects.
Figure out what gives you new ideas, and make sure you incorporate that into your routine. For me this is talking to people, tweeting, writing in my notebook, long conversations with friends (especially late night or while walking). For other people this is showering, baths, long walks, runs, etc. Make sure you “harvest” these ideas too, i.e. write them down somewhere so they don’t get lost.
When writing, separate the “creator” and the “editor”. The “creator” just writes, and doesn’t worry about quality; the goal is words on the page. Later, you can be the “editor” and shape it into something good.
Be honest about whether something is learning or entertainment. Real learning is extremely hard and effortful. (Podcasts, Atlantic articles, pop science books, anything that’s a bit too digestible is more “entertainment” than real learning).
Any given “bet” you take is likely to fail. Success is making lots of “bets” and trying as hard as possible at each of them. P(success) is higher the more bets you take & the better your execution per bet. (This is also why fast cycle time is so important). Ravin first articulated this to me.
Think in writing. Write Google Docs, scrawl in notebooks. This extends working memory arbitrarily and allows your thoughts to compound on each other. (”The difference between a Turing machine and a finite state machine is the tape.”)
Once in awhile, put away all concepts you read about online and reason “up” from the base of your experience and what you’ve seen and done. (e.g. What were some of the best decisions you made? The worst? Why? Can you apply those lessons now? etc.)
80% utilitarian, 15% deontologist, 5% virtue ethics.
Most intelligent people want status, prestige, wealth and the like -- even the ones who claim not to. “Genius” is a distinct category to intelligence and geniuses are motivated by entirely different things and are socially strange (and often selfish) people. Ayn Rand is a bad writer but is one of the very few people who grokked this and made it explicit.
Scrolling and reading too much drowns out your inner voice.
Be very suspicious of a priori arguments on empirical matters (e.g. “AI will certainly kill everyone”), they’re usually wrong no matter how convincing. Reality is endlessly surprising. (Cf. Knightian uncertainty.)
There’s a lot of alpha in being willing to do “menial” work (take notes, send out agendas, order pizza, manually inspect raw data, whatever). Beware over-delegation and being too far from the details.
One key to effective negotiation is to have multiple options and be OK with it not working out. Even if you really need the thing, it’s never your only choice: reframe and create alternative options until you have multiple outcomes you’re ok with. (See BATNA.)
Luck isn’t a constant, it increases with surface area: be in the right places, have lots of conversations, put yourself out there, ask for what you want and be optimistic and positive. See #52.
The most valuable feedback usually hurts a lot.
If you want to think originally and differently, seek uncorrelated inputs. Read minor works, older things, obscure journals.
These are amazing and appreciate you sharing and Tim Ferris’ push, but I have an increasingly hot take - these are only actually useful for the person creating them because of the lived experience informing them and the time taken to harness/refine the insight, and for the reader it’s just empty calories - each one requires the story to bring it alive and then reflection to grapple with examples from our own experiences that validate it on a deeper level.
This is absolutely fantastic Nabeel. What a gold mine. Thank you for sharing!