50 Writing is thinking and what you can't communicate, has control over you. When you can write well, you can think well.
45 Know when to be Achilles Know when to be Odysseus
38 When failure is reversible, act quickly. When failure is irreversible, think carefully.
38 Behind all interrelated set outcomes of outcomes hides a complex cost/benefit matrix that you'll need to make decisions on what outcomes to optimize for.
37 Think in systems. Shitty inputs = shitty outputs. If your inputs are good, but output is shitty, then your processing is shitty. If your process is shitty, improve it by improving the monitoring of inputs (control), providing better feedback, limiting the system by creating boundaries and interfaces, and/or analyzing the environment for problems
37 There is a powerful hidden reason to be best friends forever (BFF) with your testing tool: you fail faster.
34 It's more useful to think about how other people assign probabilities to actions, than your probabilities to your actions when dealing with other people
33 Match the potential payoffs (costs/benefits) of outcomes to the amount of resources (time, money, energy, willpower, etc.) spent making that decision.
32 We are often given to space and opportunity to be great, but frequently flinch, avoid, or excuse ourselves from it, clutching to our comforts, instead of embracing that space available. You have to put in the hours to be great. You have to put in the long hard difficult hours to be great. There is no other way
31 In all your social relationship, be the owner, think of yourself of the handler and you're trying to maximize the relationship for yourself as much as possible in the long run
30 Keep notes on all your excuses, at the very least, mental notes. Every time you encounter that excuse, be prepared to give more than one reason why that excuse really is bullshit
30 start with what we know, measure it live and fix the slow
30 If you do things just because you "feel like doing it" you'll be a loser your whole life If you don't do things because "you don't feel like doing them" you'll be a loser your whole life. If you do/don't do things because of fear, especially the fear of what other people may think or say, you'll be a loser your whole life
28 When you’ve got to do something very difficult. Don’t focus on that. Instead break it down into pieces. Simply do what you need to do right now. And do it well. And then move on to the next thing. Follow the process and not the prize. Don’t think about the end—think about surviving. Making it from meal to meal, break to break, checkpoint to checkpoint, paycheck to paycheck, one day at a time. Replace fear with the process. Depend on it. Lean on it. Trust in it.
28 When you find success, there will come a time where you believe you're above the process and the seemingly little things that got you that success. Avoid that trap with urgency
28 Humans are 'cause-and-effect' thinkers. Cause and effect is how we think about and understand most things. A subset of cause-and-effect thinking is 'probabilistic' thinking. Probabilisitic thinking is thinking about causes having an assigned probability to effects. For example if I step outside there is somewhere between .000001% - 100% chance I might step in step dog poop.
27 ABC: Always Be (lowering) Cognitive load
27 Make the right things, the repeatable things, the repeatable things the easy things and if you can’t do either, just don’t make the right things any harder than they need to be.
27 There are mental cost associated with frequent task switching. Don't work haphazardly, always work with a plan.
26 The payoff (benefits - cost), is more important than the pattern.
26 When you optimize for freedom, you naturally introduce entropy
26 shipping begets shipping
25 You have less time than you think in the short term, and more time than you think in the long term
25 The 80/20 of male-female relationships, specifically male mating strategies, both in the short term and long term is Demonstrating Higher Value (DHV)
25 To better understand something, figure out it’s boundaries. What is possible and what is not.
24 Start from the desired result and plan backwards
24 The more ambiguous the "complete" state is, the larger the startup cost and restart cost is in working
24 That thing you're dreading doing, once you do it? You'll laugh at how easy, simple, not worth the stress and even enjoyable it was and how it was worth it
24 To achieve an emotional state/automatic (bravery, industriousness, relaxed), create the conditions to the emotional state
24 The quest for classical understanding helps you see the ghosts The quest for romantically understanding helps you develop your own ghosts
24 Never take things personally. Whether that be the actions, opinions, or comments of other people. Never take it personally. The only person who knows the absolute truth about you is you. The only opinion that matters is your own. People can’t “make” you feel anything. You have a choice. Even when they insult you. Be a cloud and let their words pass right through you
24 Trying to achieve the "perfect" or the "ideal" anything is a poor use of resources as everybody is different. Everybody's consumption of a thing is different and relies on too many factors to control. You're more often better off accepting "good enough"
24 Options distributed in time cause cognitive complexity. That's why scheduling/calendaring is so important
23 Caught in a funk? Use meditation, music, and exercise to reset your mood. Then choose a new path to commit emotional energy for rest of day
23 If you don't perform and review post-mortems, you don't care that you've failed and you don't care to understand how succeeded. Failure can only be your antifragility if you actively learn from it. To develop foresight, you need to practice hindsight
23 Sometimes it's easier to learn and understand via antipatterns than patterns
22 Don't underestimate the utility in sparking your own, and/or other people's energy
21 Cognitive complexity is a precursor to inaction
21 The problem happens when we have multiple desires. When we have fuzzy desires. When we want to do ten different things and we’re not clear about which is the one we care about.
21 The least you can do is brush your teeth every morning. That's really the bare minimum
21 Wash your pits once to remove deodorant, then two more times.
21 It's a useless endeavor to constantly try and control people's perception of you. Not only is it impossible, as you can never know how someone truly feels about you, but life is much more miserable that way as you're constantly inhibited and can't live life to it's fullest
20 Better to stumble than to not move at all because if you can just get a little momentum you can turn that into something special. Stay moving, always
20 Accept the good with the bad. There are days you'll have bad results, and days you'll have good ones. If you internalize that both will occur, you won't get too down on yourself when the bad ones occur, and don't get too cocky when the goods ones occur as well. Either way, remember to ENJOY the gamut of life. The good, the bad, and the ugly.
20 Signaling, self-signaling, satisficing, and psycho-physics are of the most important games in human behavior
20 Create clear and actionable error messages. Their invaluable in the long run for yourself and your users
20 If you haven't tested against all types of gnarly data. Null, non well formated, incomplete data... You haven't really tested
20 Physiology trumps Psychology
19 Master small fractions of a skill at a time
19 Step away from problems you're stuck on to get fresh perspectives
19 It doesn't matter how fast you move, if it's in a worthless or wayward direction
19 Avoid debt at all costs
19 You don't learn anything until you ship/launch/field test
19 The guilt, regret, shame will last longer than the pleasure
19 Tunnel vision: You only see the negative aspects of a situation.
19 The mind of the alchemist understands that the smallest change in context or meaning can have immense effects on behavior.
19 If you do X today, what does that result in tomorrow, a year from now, ten years from now?’ Don't be the dog chasing the car. What does the dog do if he catches the car? He doesn’t have a plan for it.
19 When developing software schema, try to make large amounts of datasets and see how your application manipulates it to catch any potential future problems
19 Complex systems need subsystems to perceive stress because that stress leads to discovery of often important information. If humans had lacked pain, we wouldn't have gotten this far
19 To cheapen the cost of development, make the cost of introducing new code, and the cost of testing cheaper.
18 Be so good they can't ignore you
18 Leisure expands to fill time available until it collides with urgency
18 You have nobody to blame for your problems except yourself
18 Rules create freedom and agility
18 It's not about what you know, or who you know, it's about what you can deliver
18 Be obsessively interested in topics where you know more than others
18 To figure out what you want, take two things you desire as separate options and compare your future having one or the other. Add stipulations and manipulate the constraints "Would I rather have 1 million dollars but have a shitty job or have a great job but 50k" Imagine how you would feel if you attained one or the other
18 Catastrophizing - (also called fortune-telling): You predict the future negatively without considering other, more likely outcomes. Example: “I’ll be so upset, I won’t be able to function at all.”
18 To identify satisficing or the potential of satisficing, look for the "easier question asked"
18 Test to save your business/job. What if broken would lose you your business/job. Test that.
18 Build useful dynamic seeders to populate development databases with day
17 To win in a market, you must have superior insight, skills, or knowledge. But if you can't win in the market change the market you're playing in.
17 Identify when you're being fearful/avoidant and switch to being intensely curious
17 The slower you are, the longer it takes to discover roadblocks
17 Ideate -> Implement -> Iterate
17 The primary reason why we have evolved to satisfice in our particularly human way is because we are making decisions in a world of uncertainty, and the rules for making decisions in such times are completely different from those when you have complete and perfect information.
17 Comedy is about screwing with the audiences frame of reference
17 To do original work: It’s not necessary to know something nobody else knows. It is necessary to believe something few other people believe.
17 Cost of introduction is the c/b analysis of doing something new Cost of changeability is the c/b analysis of changing what's there Cost of ownership is the c/b analysis of managing what's there
17 Better navigation is probably one of the easiest ways to improve UX
16 Set variables to 0 then think on them
16 Make good, even ok plans, but execute them violently
16 Don't get blocked
16 True customer obsession is a slow but immensely effective path towards a business's success
16 Learn how to monitor, log, and alert all services you are responsible for. And your responsible for all of them
16 You can change it, you can accept it, or you can leave it. What is not a good option is to sit around wishing you would change it but not changing it, wishing you would leave it but not leaving it, and not accepting it. It’s that struggle, that aversion, that is responsible for most of our misery. The phrase that I use the most to myself in my head is one word: accept.
16 Emotional reasoning: You think something must be true because you “feel” (actually believe) it so strongly, ignoring or discounting evidence to the contrary. Example: “I know I do a lot of things okay at work, but I still feel like I’m a failure.”
16 If you can’t solve a problem, then there is an easier problem you can’t solve: find it.
16 Document plan A, identify riskiest parts, systematically test your plan
15 All behavior is changeable as long you're deeply aware of the elements of the behavior
15 The small things fit around the big, the big things don't fit around the small
15 Don't always rush to problem solve, you must sometimes consider if a problem is worth solving
15 A major part of life is about other people, and the moments and memories you make with them
15 The natural state of things is disorder. The more possibilities or options, the more chaotic things can potentially become. To fight chaos you either need to eliminate possibilities by removing elements of the thing or inject energy to keep things in a state you would like them to be
15 Seek out people who will believe your message
15 Work on the things that lead to the biggest impact long term
15 To be honest, speak without identity. Speak as if you were someone else, someone neutral. What would a machine say?
15 Do things the dumb and ugly way then iterate
15 Cross bridges when you get to them
14 Stress triggers growth and a lack of stress triggers decay
14 Cash is King
14 Capture value in the short term and long term and long term
14 The people you think "made it" ain't no better than you
14 Unless you change course, the path you're on now is most likely very similar on the path you'll be on for the near and far future
14 Start cults, not startups
14 The desire for more positive experiences is itself a negative experience. The acceptance of negative experiences is a positive experience. Embrace the suck
14 Always read the docs
14 Consider game script when making start/stop decisions. If a team is going to have to keep up with opponents, their WRs get a boost If a team is going against a scrub team and the game might get out of hand, then their WRs might not get as much burn as a neutral or negative gamescript
14 When there is the slightest inconvenience, the slightest excuse, to not do something, your brain will rationalize a million different reasons why you shouldn't do it. Every time you let your brain win that battle, it gets harder and harder
14 Stats are ok, advanced stats are better, film is king
14 Implement ideas cheaply, and you'll be able to iterate faster
14 Start with the “ideal success” calibrate your proximity to that success, and do the work towards that incrementally and systematically leads you to success
14 Good ideas are based on past experience and formerly acquired knowledge.
14 Anger is a hot coal that you hold in your hand while waiting to throw it at somebody else
14 Getting upset won't help things
14 You don’t feel a need to control other’s perceptions to feel secure. You support others when possible, while knowing each person is fully responsible for their own feelings. You honestly and lovingly express your true self, even though it sometimes leads to painful feelings. You easily say no when you want to. And you say no when you need to, even though it’s hard. You highly value what you think, feel, and believe. It matters because you matter.
13 Emotion sells, not logic
13 A business idea requires storytelling and execution
13 Don't try to design for more than 10x the current scale
13 A rational person can find peace by by not worrying about things outside of their control.
12 99% of success is about mastering your own psychology
12 Personalization: You believe others are behaving negatively because of you, without considering more plausible explanations for their behavior. Example: “The repairman was curt to me because I did something wrong.”
12 When you want to hurry something, that means you no longer care about it and want to get on to other things.
12 If you think and act like the owner, it’s only a matter of time until you become the owner
11 Don't introduce low value into your environment
11 Sales is the most valuable skill you'll ever learn
11 Discipline is born out of awareness
11 People resonate with people and content that convey utility, empathy and ultimately inspires them
11 Goal failure often stems from goals being too hard, too long, or the cognitive complexity in reaching the goal
11 Run post-mortem of past events
11 If incentives are aligned, discretionary effort isn't a problem
11 Prestige comes from service. Displaying how much you give /help.
11 Who will buy, how much, and how you will find them is business at it's core
11 Build proof of concepts then refine
11 When humans can’t decide, they do nothing at all
11 The mammalian brain has a deep-set preference for control and certainty. Even if that control and certainty is imaginary
11 BMI of 30+ has a strong correlation of success at RB
11 Inspiration is perishable - act on it immediately.
11 At any big moment, you're either ready or you're not. You either did the work needed or you didn't. Whatever is going to happen is going to happen and all you can do in the moment is show up
11 Never go to sleep without a request to your subconscious
11 Rely on code to document itself. Save the comments for the weird hairy stuff
10 More money has been lost anticipating corrections than in corrections themselves
10 New data is only important if that data will be used for future decisions
10 Jobs are scarce during recessions
10 keep in touch with people when you don't need them, so it's easier to call them when you do
10 Manage security from the start
10 You don't get paid to argue with niggas
10 the behaviors we adopt shape our attitudes. Behaviour comes first; attitude changes to keep up.
10 There is duality in understand another perspective. To truly understand, you can't view them from the outside in. You must view them from the inside, out. As if the perspective was your own, through your own lens of reality. But you can only begin to empathize with that reality after you do the work in learning about the perspective, inevitably from the outside in.
10 a good way to start creating requirements is to think what it MUST do, what it SHOULD do and what it CAN do. Using just one of these words in your requirement can make a lot of difference in the final outcome.
10 The best revenge is not to be like revengeful at all
10 You are only entitled to the action, never to its fruits.
9 Most people, if not everybody, couldn't care less about your problems. You're generally on your own
9 Happiness comes from solving problems
9 People are not drawn to perfection, they're drawn to shared interests, shared problems, and energy
9 Friendships stem and expand from shared interests and experiences
9 Controlling your hormones is key in creating biological changes
9 one way you can improve your life is by understanding that the things you focus on seem more important to you and then control what you pay attention to.
9 As you go through your work day write down all the concepts and ideas that tripped you up, or you really didn't understand and at the end of the day, teach them to yourself
8 Fragility is a net-negative after a bad result. Robustness is breaking even after a bad result Anti-fragility is a net-positive after a bad result
8 Ideation --> Implementation The two rhythms of work
8 Only pay technical debt on code you are receiving value from (equity, dividends)
8 If everything seems under control, you're not going fast enough
8 It is foolish to answer a question that you do not understand. It is sad to work for an end that you do not desire.
8 Bike Shedding - Spending disproportionate time and energy spent over an insignificant or unimportant detail of a larger concern.
7 Don't overvalue knowledge and undervalue experience
7 Life is a consistency game
7 Efficiently manage resources before attempting to acquire more
7 Cash allows for options
7 Good planning creates speed
7 In most cases growth comes from avoiding pleasure
7 Solve things the quick and easy way first then iterate
7 Our perceptions are heavily influenced by the interconnectedness of our senses and cognitions A cookie tastes great until you read the packaging and it says "For Dogs Only" some people avoid "sugar free" drinks, gum even though they taste almost identical to sugar goods
7 Don't underestimate the effectiveness and usefulness of smoke and mirrors
7 A tech spec forces you to think through complicated issues and to get everyone on the same page. This helps to avoid wasting time on dead-end solutions or building the wrong thing.
7 Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic
6 Massive returns come from chasing what you're most interested in
6 A 1% improvement compounds and creates a massive change over time
6 To learn faster, leverage what you already know
6 Imaginary Theatre - Worrying about imaginary scenarios that probably won't happen
6 To achieve flow state, if you feel out of control or slightly terrified, then decrease the difficulty. If you feel bored, underwhelmed or underworked then increase the difficulty.
5 Beware of linear thinking
5 Every actor does what they believe is best for them (In most cases in the short term, but also in the long term)
5 Either you're great or you don't exist
5 Unpleasant != Hard
5 Self improvement is incremental. Self-reconstruction is exponential
5 Take on more stress/risk to increase your stress/risk tolerance
5 Take evolutionary psychology and evaluate your situations with it as a framework
5 Creativity is just novelty being created from past experiences
5 The trouble with market research is that people don't think what they feel, say what they think, or do what they say they will
5 Move fast and break things
5 Learn to enjoy the pain, the suck, the uncomfortableness
5 Every Day, do the work to connect with someone on a one-on-one basis who is ahead of you in any way possible (not necessarily your field). If they don't want to connect with you, bring gifts. Show you are serious. Don't ask without giving. Offer to help.
5 Software requirements are the basis of all proper development work. You need them if you want to succeed.
5 every project should have good requirements that tell exactly what needs to implemented not forgetting error situations.
5 Yak Shaving - The process of performing a series of nested tasks to accomplish a goal, each of which seems necessary in context but becomes less and less linked to the original goal.
4 Seek for low risk, high reward opportunities
4 The benefits of reducing cognitive complexity far outweighs the effort
4 Great, original content come from bold premises
4 There is nothing more important than fundamentally understanding things, how they work, and dealing with it.
4 Emotions are simply biological signals designed to nudge us in the direction of what our genes believe are beneficial changes
4 Use draft capital as one clue to how a team will prioritize using players or keeping them involved
4 If you have a single word for something, negative or positive it will be easier to avoid it or seek it than if you don’t.
4 Be intellectually humble enough to review and consider all ideas, theories, viewpoints, but to never be willing to die for any of them
4 Enjoying the gamut of life. The good, the bad, and the ugly.
4 Classical understanding is the understanding of the system, the hierarchy, the parts, the intricacies and how they all work together. The parts, systems, and subsystems of the motorcycle Romantic understanding is the end result. The end goal and the subjective meaning that results from it. The ability to ride the motorcycle, where it can get me. Both are important. No more than the other
4 We have a plan when we know, or know at least in outline, which calculations, computations, or constructions we have to perform in order to obtain the unknown. The main achievement in the solution of a problem is to conceive the idea of a plan.
4 Flag arguments are ugly. Passing a boolean into a function is a truly terrible practice. It immediately complicates the signature of the method, loudly proclaiming that this function does more than one thing. It does one thing if the flag is true and another if the flag is false!
4 Teaching something you don’t personify is just talk. And talk is cheap
3 Metaphors and models reveal and obscure simultaneously
3 Invest globally
3 Be watchful of lifestyle inflation
3 Major growth occurs outside your comfort zone
3 Luxuries become necessities and later obligations
3 Humans are tribal at their core
3 Fundamental understanding fosters speed
3 Humans are basically habit machines… I think learning how to break habits is actually a very important meta skill and can serve you in life almost better than anything else.
2 Eliminate the inessential
2 Every conscious decision has a long term consequence
2 An understanding of how the economy is shifting and exploiting it can produce massive wealth
2 Multiple projects open leads to the opportunity for multiple success
2 Picking the right thing to do is the most important productivity decision
2 You're your own boss. You're your own employee
2 Run your own race
2 Learn how to exploit other's insecurities
2 Compulsion is forcing someone on your ideas Persuasion is convincing someone of your ideas Collusion is convincing someone your ideas are actually theirs
2 We are deaf, dumb, and blind to the powerful negative emotions we get after incessantly seeking pleasure
2 Fail, learn, and improve quickly
2 Build the pipeline, then optimize for the pipeline to be filled
1 The standard pace is for suckers
1 Become really good at a few things
1 Find 1000 die hard fans to maintain a lifestyle business
1 You can't improve it if you don't measure it
1 Look for ways to 80/20 things
1 Without a target you'll miss every time
1 Assume everyone knows something you need to know
1 Markets are just people and their decisions
1 Words organize thought
1 Practice against the absence of the good to prepare for the bad
1 Options are created in the past and executed in the present
1 Those who don't hustle, don't eat
1 2nd order thinking is understanding what others believe and exploiting that information
1 Operate as if you're below average and are only looking to improve
1 An individual is only as strong as their weakest character trait
1 Discipline is how you leverage your potential
1 Bond prices control the economy
1 The 5 phases of a bubble are displacement, euphoria, mania, distress and finally revulsion/panic
1 Diversity in liability is powerful
1 Desperate people will do desperate things
1 Any scarce resource can be priced
1 Culture heavily affects our behavior and thinking
1 Investing, by definition, requires time. Be Patient
1 True risk is the possibility of an unacceptable outcome
1 Pleasure evaporates quickly and leaves you wanting more
1 Seek truth over comfort and validation
1 Notice imaginary narratives all around you and figure out how to hack them
1 hen you accept the substandard, it becomes the standard
0 Be completely and unflinchingly honest with yourself, especially the worst parts
0 Accept and be comfortable with people disagreeing with you
0 Learn how to figure out when to stop and rest and when you need to push through
0 The future is here, just not evenly distributed
0 You can't just read about it, you must also experience it
0 Don't mistake temporary setbacks for abject failure
0 Ask the right questions, get the right answers
0 Build software that increases psychological strengths and endurances
0 Never make promises your not 100% sure you can keep
0 Bet on people not on their ideas
0 The gap between the top and the rest is massive
0 Pandering to curry favor devalues yourself as an individual
0 Don't sacrifice execution for pre-optimization
0 Anything that forces you to reconcile and recalibrate your beliefs and assumptions with reality is a great thing
0 Risk happens slowly at first, then all at once
0 Iteration speed is everything
0 The ratio of time you spend sweating/working to the time you spend watch others work/sweat is a forward indicator of your success. And you got no business watching others
0 Time in the market is more valuable than timing the market
0 Time pressure helps us with execution. It's essential
0 Increase flexibility of action while reducing the flexibility of outcome
0 Pinpoint behaviors that lead to success and reinforce those behaviors
0 Make positive reinforcement the primary consequence of getting things done
0 Delayed consequences are ineffective
0 Start work with clear objectives and goals
0 End work setting a target for the next work session
0 You don't want to win arguments. You want to win
0 Copying the ideas of others is highly underrated
0 When we feel as if we're choosing our problems we feel empowered. When we feel our problems are forced upon us we feel victimized
0 Practice seeing outside the mini-game to see the meta game
0 Have a strong sense of self. Accept yourself for who you are no matter what
0 Take responsibility for getting your needs met
0 The only approval you should be seeking is self approval
0 Have an abundance mindset
0 Be willing to let go of what you have to get what you want
0 Victim mindsets and excuses inevitably lead to failure
0 Knowing how it works is more powerful than knowing how it's supposed to work, or how you think it's supposed to work
0 Build around your strengths
0 Optimize for your best work
0 Count your time and make it count
0 Deliver in chunks
0 Overloading: Increasing the load of a skill to get better Specificity: To get better at the thing, do the thing
0 To overload a skill make things more difficult or more complex
0 The purpose of training is to refine an existing action, whereas learning is to increase the number of potential actions
0 Training focuses on the reduction of errors, learning focuses on increasing creativity
0 When training for error reduction, errors should be easy to define, easy to measure, and easy to manage
0 Identify when you're being defensive and switch to being open
0 Identify when you're being jealous and switch to being inspired and motivated
0 Don't argue with strangers
0 Keep burn rates low
0 Identify when you're being passive/soft and switch to being engaged/intense/active
0 Recognizing the perspective of others, vocalize it, and you'll have influence over them
0 Labeling others thoughts is a quick way to create empathy
0 Words, tone, body language are the words music and dance
0 Acknowledge the negative and diffuse it "Look, I'm an asshole"
0 Observe negative emotions, label then and replace them with positive. solution based emotions
0 Copy what all masters of a field do
0 "No" leads for real issues to arise, protects people from bad decisions, and gives a sense of autonomy
0 To get real negotiation leverage you must convince the other side they something to lose
0 Learn to disagree without being disagreeable
0 Ask open-ended solution based questions "How am I supposed to do that" "What do you want to complete the trade"
0 7-38-55 rule. 7% of a message is based on words, 38% on tonality and 55% on body language
0 Humanize yourself by using your name
0 Become genuinely interested in other people. Encourage them to talk about themselves. Make them feel smart and important
0 People aspire to be recognized by people of value (real or perceived)
0 Give the effect of compounding time and space to grow
0 Personal experiences make .000001 of what actually happened in the world but 80% of how you think the word works
0 Few things matter more with money than understanding your own time horizon and not being persuaded by the actions and behaviors of people playing different games
0 Opportunity lives where others aren't and others tend to stay away from
0 You have to survive to succeed
0 Know when to have freedom of outcome
0 Good decision making requires time and space to think
0 Failure comes from failure to imagine failure
0 Destruction leads to fertile ground
0 There is a motivating effect of turning work in
0 There should never be a time where you don't know what to do or can't act. Simply breakdown a complex task to an embarrassing set of little tasks, or brain dump tasks
0 Thesis --> proposed system/process --> exploitation --> reconciliation
0 Leadership is displayed competence
0 Too much work in progress results in less done at worse quality
0 The most important thing to think about is your time
0 Don't be afraid to decomission or defer low value work
0 The 80/20 principle is the most important heuristic to know period
0 Through pooling of different cognitive resources (emotions, feelings, cognition, working memory, attention) we create thought and can reason
0 The self does not exist. It's a continuous ephemeral reconstruction. An ever frequent firing pattern in the brain used as an avatar for survival purposes of the organism
0 Feelings come first. They set the stage. They create the frame of reference of the next thoughts, so they have immense influence over your behavior
0 Courage is just what we call acting despite having fear
0 Build big arms. Women find them attractive and men find them intimidating
0 Treat your kids with love and compassion. Instill the trust that they can talk to you about anything
0 Make your kids pay for 1/2 of everything to teach them the value of a dollar
0 When you say something to your children, mean it and always follow through
0 Punish children by taking the things they love most
0 Be careful with your words, you can't control how other people interpret them
0 Best way to kick a vice is to stay busy
0 The best questions are the ones you least want to be asked
0 The human mind has evolved to excel at deceiving others as well as ourselves
0 Bullshit times bullshit equals an exponential amount of bullshit
0 Every attempt to compress info mathematically inevitably results in a loss of information (The average salary me and Bill Gates is well over a billion)
0 Life isn't like math. 10 x 1 = 1 x 10 but... Tricking one person 10 times is much harder than tricking 10 people one time
0 Perspective: What if who you think are the good guys, are actually the bad guys?
0 Perspective: Question the importance of an underlying promise or assumption
0 Advertising does not have to look like advertising
0 All powerful messages must contain an element of absurdity, illogicality, costliness, disproportion, inefficiency , scarcity, difficulty, or extravagance, because rational straight talk convey no meaning
0 YAGNI - You ain't gon need it
0 Always test a newly created DB schema with seed data to ensure it works as intended
0 Learn how to debug and master it
0 Architectural agility dominates all other agility in software development
0 Do the riskiest part of a project first
0 Scope creep causes complexity
0 Simple means well parted. Isolated
0 Treat production data like it's holy - Only use read only - Create and test backups - Only touch prod if absolutely necessary
0 The most valuable engineers are the ones who view their work through the lens of what the business needs to succeed
0 Create visuals for your technical architecture
0 Application architecture determines application performance
0 It's never too early to think about performance
0 Know your next commit
0 People will swear up and down that they're telling the truth and aren't lying. But that doesn't mean they are and you must remember that.
0 The first step in designing an interface is to figure out what its users are really trying to accomplish.
0 Think about your users. How much effort are your users willing to spend to learn your interface? Assume it's much less than you expect
0 Safe Exploration - Allow users to explore the interface, try something unfamiliar, back out, try something else, all without stress
0 Instant Gratification - Allowing users to get immediate results from their actions. Getting quickly to a successful experience
0 if you can predict the first thing a new user is likely to do, you should design the UI to make that first thing stunningly easy.
0 Users often "satisfice" with user interfaces. The learn up until "good enough" instead of "best" when learning comes with a cost of time or effort
0 Use calls to actions in the interface. Give directions on what to do
0 A complicated interface imposes a large cognitive cost on new users.
0 When using an interface people sometimes change their mind of what they're doing while in the middle of doing it. Allow for reentrance, giving people the chance to revisit where they last left off
0 Give users the ability to make deferred choices. If something isn't necessary, then give them a chance to do it later. You will be rewarded with more conversions
0 Many users understand tech conventions. For example in most applications, Undo is ctrl-z and save is ctrl-s. It's in your best interest to stick to those conventions and to rarely if not never go against them
0 Some people visit sites as micro-breaks so it may be wise to offer micro-break features. Make an activity easy and fast to reach
0 If a user has to do something over and over again, make it easy for them to do it.
0 Some users love the keyboard over the mouse. So if your users fit that, make sure to design for the keyboard only mode
0 Decide whether the purpose of an interface is to either. Show one single thing Show a list of things Provide tools to create a thing Facilitate a single task
0 Good interactive information graphics offer users answers to these questions: How is this data organized? What’s related to what? How can I explore this data? Can I rearrange this data to see it differently? How can I see only the data that I need? What are the specific data values?
0 You get stronger/better doing what you couldn't do yesterday, today
0 Give the next man praise when he earns his success correctly
0 You have just one life
0 The fundamental delusion — there is something out there that will make me happy and fulfilled forever
0 The first rule of handling conflict is don’t hang around people who are constantly engaging in conflict
0 Think clearly from the ground up. Understand and explain from first principles. Ignore society and politics. Acknowledge what you have. Control your emotions
0 People who live far below their means enjoy a freedom that people busy upgrading their lifestyles can’t fathom
0 Knowledge is a skyscraper. You can take a shortcut with a fragile foundation of memorization, or build slowly upon a steel frame of understanding
0 Doctors won’t make you healthy. Nutritionists won’t make you slim. Teachers won’t make you smart. Gurus won’t make you calm. Mentors won’t make you rich. Trainers won’t make you fit. Ultimately, you have to take responsibility. Save yourself.
0 Don't make decisions based on wanting to be entertained (Don't play Thursday players because the play Thursday)
0 Brands are guarantees. That person, company, team, whatever… stands behind whatever it makes and without them everything sucks.. So create your brand and stand by it
0 When you decide to take on a new endeavor, pledge a specific amount of focused non-interrupted time to doing it. Decide to continue or quit only after that time is finished
0 All-or-nothing thinking (also called black-and-white, polarized, or dichotomous thinking): You view a situation in only two categories instead of on a continuum. Example: “If I’m not a total success, I’m a failure.”
0 Disqualifying or discounting the positive: You unreasonably tell yourself that positive experiences, deeds, or qualities do not count. Example: “I did that project well, but that doesn’t mean I’m competent; I just got lucky.”
0 Labeling: You put a fixed, global label on yourself or others without considering that the evidence might more reasonably lead to a less disastrous conclusion. Example: “I’m a loser. He’s no good.”
0 Magnification/minimization: When you evaluate yourself, another person, or a situation, you unreasonably magnify the negative and/or minimize the positive. Example: “Getting a mediocre evaluation proves how inadequate I am. Getting high marks doesn’t mean I’m smart.”
0 Mental filter (also called selective abstraction): You pay undue attention to one negative detail instead of seeing the whole picture. Example: “Because I got one low rating on my evaluation [which also contained several high ratings] it means I’m doing a lousy job.”
0 Mind reading: You believe you know what others are thinking, failing to consider other, more likely possibilities. Example: “He thinks that I don’t know the first thing about this project.”
0 Overgeneralization: You make a sweeping negative conclusion that goes far beyond the current situation. Example: “[Because I felt uncomfortable at the meeting] I don’t have what it takes to make friends.”
0 “Should” and “must” statements (also called imperatives): You have a precise, fixed idea of how you or others should behave, and you overestimate how bad it is that these expectations are not met. Example: “It’s terrible that I made a mistake. I should always do my best.”
0 Just because you don't ~feel~ like doing something, isn't reason to not do it and sometimes is more the reason to do it.
0 create and use dummy data, seed data, mocks, fill ins so you don't get blocked by lack of data
0 To feel more confident, do the things that signal confidence. Dress nice. Get a haircut. Women don't mainly wear makeup for men, they wear it for themselves
0 If you optimize something in one direction, you may be creating a weakness somewhere else.
0 When facing an enormous task, focus on working on the parts and not the sum
0 The job of a designer is hence that of a translator. To play with the source material of objective reality in order to create the right perceptual and emotional outcome.
0 what people perceive is sometimes more important than what is objectively true.
0 conventional logic is hopeless in marketing – as you end up in the same place as your competitors.
0 Good design is as little as possible
0 Two Core Abilities for Thriving in the New Economy 1. The ability to quickly master hard things. 2. The ability to produce at an elite level, in terms of both quality and speed.
0 Help other have a good time and hopefully they can help you have a good time
0 You want wealth because it buys you freedom—so you don’t have to wear a tie like a collar around your neck; so you don’t have to wake up at 7:00 a.m. to rush to work and sit in commute traffic; so you don’t have to waste your life grinding productive hours away into a soulless job that doesn’t fulfill you.
0 People creating wealth will always be attacked by people playing status games
0 Wealth isn’t about taking something from somebody else—it’s about creating abundance for the world. This thought experiment I want you to think through is imagine if everybody had the knowledge of a good software engineer and a good hardware engineer. If you could go out there, and you could build robots, and computers, and bridges, and program them. Let’s say every human knew how to do that. What do you think society would look like in 20 years? My guess is what would happen is we would build robots, machines, software and hardware to do everything. We would all be living in massive abundance.
0 Everybody can be wealthy. Everybody can be retired. Everybody can be successful. It is merely a question of education and desire. You have to want it. If you don’t want it, that’s fine. Then you opt out of the game.
0 In 1,000 parallel universes, you want to be wealthy in 999 of them. You don’t want to be wealthy in the 50 of them where you got lucky. We want to factor luck out of it.
0 Wealth stacks up one chip at a time, not all at once. It’s not like any one video is going to suddenly shower him with riches overnight. It’s going to be a long lifetime of learning, of reading, of creating that’s going to compound. There’s just so many ways to create wealth, to create products, to create businesses, to create opportunities, and to, as a byproduct, get paid by society that I can’t even handle it all.
0 Build your character so opportunity finds you. One of the things I think that is important to making money, when you want the kind of reputation that makes people do deals through you. I use the example of like, if you’re a great diver then treasure hunters will come and give you a piece of the treasure for your diving skills. If you’re a trusted, reliable, high-integrity, long-term thinking deal maker, then when other people want to do deals but they don’t know how to do them in a trustworthy manner with strangers, they will literally approach you and give you a cut of the deal or offer you a unique deal just because of the integrity and reputation that you have built up.
0 Because the world is a very efficient place, so, everyone has dug through all the obvious places to dig and so to find something that’s new and novel and uncovered, it helps to be operating on a frontier. You have to be a little eccentric to be out on the frontier by yourself, and then you have to be willing to dig deeper than other people do, deeper than seems rational just because you’re interested. extreme people get extreme results. you can’t be normal and expect abnormal returns.
0 You are not going to get rich renting out your time. You must own equity, a piece of the business to gain your financial freedom. Renting out your time means you’re essentially replaceable And you’re essentially replaceable because you’re now doing a set role. Most set roles can be taught. If they can be taught like in a school, then eventually you’re gonna be competing with someone who’s got more recent knowledge, who’s been taught, and is coming in to replace you. You must own equity to gain your financial freedom You want a career where your inputs don’t match your outputs. The most dangerous things are heroin and a monthly salary
0 Society will pay you for creating what it wants, but doesn’t know how to get, and delivering it at scale And if you want to be wealthy, you want to figure out which one of those things you can provide for society, that it does not yet know how to get, but it will want, that’s natural to you, and within your skillset, within your capabilities.
0 Escape competition through authenticity Basically, when you’re competing with people it’s because you’re copying them. It’s because you’re trying to do the same thing. But every human is different. Don’t copy. And so the more authentic you are to who you are, and what you love to do, the less competition you’re gonna have. So, you can escape competition through authenticity when you realize that no one can compete with you on being you.
0 Arm yourself with specific knowledge. It can’t be trained but it can be found by pursuing your genuine curiosity For example, someone who goes and gets a degree in psychology and then becomes a salesperson. Well if they were already a formidable salesperson, a high grade salesmanship to begin with, then the psychology degree is leverage, it arms them and they do much better at sales. But if they were always an introvert never very good at sales and they’re trying to use psychology to learn sales, they’re just not going to get that great at it. So, specific knowledge is found much more by pursuing your innate talents, your genuine curiosity, and your passion. It’s not by going to school for whatever it is the hottest job, it’s not for going into whatever field investors say is the hottest.
0 Learn to sell, learn to build—if you can do both, you will be unstoppable The ultimate is when one individual can do both. That’s when you get true superpowers. That’s when you get people who can create entire industries
0 Doing is faster than watching Similarly, a lot of people think they can become really skilled at something by watching others do it, or even by reading about others doing it The number of ‘doing’ iterations drives the learning curve If you’re willing to bleed a little every day, you may win big later
0 Work as hard as you can, even though what you work on and who you work with are more important
0 Impatience with actions, patience with results Anything you have to do, just get it done. Why wait? You’re not getting any younger. Your life is slipping away. You don’t want to spend it waiting in line. You don’t want to spend it traveling back and forth. You don’t want to spend it doing thing that you know ultimately aren’t part of your mission. When you do them, you want to do them as quickly as you can while you do them well, with your full attention. But then you just have to give up on the results; you have to be patient with the results because you’re dealing with complex systems, you’re dealing with lots of people. It takes a long time for markets to adopt products. It takes time for people to get comfortable working with each other. It takes time for great products to emerge as you polish away, polish away, polish away. Impatience with actions, patience with results. As Nivi said, inspiration is perishable. When you have inspiration, act on it right then and there.
0 Use bin scripts to automate the most commonly used series of commands in a project
0 Only own the software logic you need to change Only write the logic you need to own Own everything you write try not to write anything reuse everything else isolate the things you do want to own from the things others own
0 There is no ‘feeling’ that justifies procrastination, it’s all a cognitive summation. If someone was willing to pay you $100-$100,000 dollars to do that thing, you'd run skip and jump in a heartbeat
0 As a way of life, minimalism means having as little as you require, so you don’t have to think about things that you own.
0 In web design minimalism is about keeping only the most essential elements that let users quickly and easily solve their problems. Minimalist designing forces you to make conscious design decisions, it makes you question each element about its necessity even if it is a spare space or a dividing line.
0 To find unnecessary design elements, choose an element, take it away, if the design remains to work the way it should, throw that element out because it is not absolutely required, if not keep it. In other term, don’t add elements just for their own sake.
0 How can I reach Minimalism in my design? Limit your purposes: Choice isn’t always good, pare down decisions and clear your design. If you want to create a website, try to give it one single purpose, with one call to action. Limit your resources: Reducing the number of colors, fonts, sizes… will make the design feel consistent, and force you to focus more on the real problem. Find your important element, and put it above all other elements. Don’t just throw out elements, think about your users’ needs and try to make tasks as simple as possible. Focus on details because they are important to the overall look and feel of the website when the elements are few.
0 Changing takes effort, takes time, and involves risk. If what you have works well and does what you need, why invest that time and effort and take a risk? Well…you don’t. There are thousands of better things you can do with your time.
0 If you’re a pessimist you’ll be right, if you’re an optimist you’ll be rich
0 A decision that raises revenue even though it churns vocal users is a good decision.
0 Replace percentages with frequencies to better understand them.
0 Assumptions are inherently built into advice, so if you’re looking for advice, be specific
0 Do things that don’t scale.
0 All models are wrong, but some are useful.
0 If you torture the data long enough, they will tell you whatever you want.
0 As to methods there may be a million and then some, but principles are few. The man who grasps principles can successfully select his own methods. The man who tries methods, ignoring principles, is sure to have trouble.
0 Upgrade your user, not your product. Don’t build better cameras—build better photographers.
0 The behavior of a system cannot be known just by knowing the elements of which the system is made. So just because you know separate elements of a complex thing, does not mean you understand that complex thing
0 A system must consist of three kinds of things: elements, interconnections, and a function or purpose deduced from behavior not from a stated goal
0 Many of the interconnections in systems operate through the flow of information. Information holds systems together and plays a great role in determining how they operate.
0 Systems thinkers see the world as a collection of stocks along with the mechanisms for regulating the levels in the stocks by manipulating flows.
0 The least obvious part of the system, its function or purpose, is often the most crucial determinant of the system’s behavior.
0 It takes more energy to be negative
0 Count your blessings.
0 Don't just accept the good with the bad, see that the bad can also bring good by teaching you something and it's apart of the cycle of life. even though it is raining now, i can see that rain has made the plants grow. it has washed the earth. maybe rain is just what i needed to better myself.
0 Hungry dogs hunt best. Complacency is a killer that prevents you from seeing blind spots and giving your best each day. When external motivation is lacking, you must create internal competition to keep your team well prepared and hungry.
0 Losses and setbacks shouldn’t cause panic, as they’re to be expected in all walks of life. But never let them become bigger than they are. If something happens, address it, assign people to fix it, but don’t be misdirected from the overall goal.
0 The ability to commit to something when it’s needed most is an important skill. This means clarity of direction and instruction with clear milestones identified and, when appropriate, attached to deadlines.
0 Focus on always delivering. Rehearse it. The goal of practice is not to be good at practice, it’s to perform. Everything must be aimed at perfecting the delivery. This is why great teams always create game-like scenarios in training. Competition is the iron that sharpens iron.
0 Emphasize quality. Never confuse a person’s busyness for progress.
0 Start from the scoreboard and work backwards. How will it affect the bottom line or the end goal? Collecting data shouldn’t start with what you can gather, but begin with what you want to achieve. Then you look for the data that will impact that.
0 The inner narratives we create and perpetuate are just as powerful as the external noise from media or colleagues. So create and reinforce the message you want to hear. Counter negative comments and criticism with your own positive self-talk. Remember that you have no control over what others say, but you can decide what you believe and say, whether it’s about yourself, your team, or your competition.
0 Never use an excuse as a reason not to achieve something. Turn perceived weaknesses and disadvantages into an opportunity to learn and grow.
0 Recognize the reality of the situation you’re in. Know your enemy, but, most of all, continuously calibrate your awareness of yourself and your capabilities. Maintain confidence, but never let it border on arrogance and temper it with humility. Don’t allow humility become a sense of inferiority, but also don’t cultivate submission. Balance the mood and awareness of the team as a whole.
0 We avoid training like Tarzan and playing like Jane by ensuring practice is individualized to improve each team member’s limiting factors, not merely reinforcing their strengths.
0 Work to preserve clarity. Over time, I have learned to identify this as a crucial practice. Know your primary goal and hone in on it. Never lose track or sight of the Commander’s Intent. Prioritize.
0 When thinking in percents, use the number 10,000 to better understand the frequency
0 Every setback is a lesson and an opportunity
0 Deliberate practice always follows the same pattern: break the overall process down into parts, identify your weaknesses, test new strategies for each section, and then integrate your learning into the overall process.
0 When faced with a greenfield project, and motivation/momentum is low, try to get started with the most enjoyable part and add focus after that
0 Culture is important because it is the collective mindsets, beliefs, and attitudes that bind a group of people. And if you want to successfully interact with those people, or move those people forward, you cannot do so without first understanding their culture!
0 life is about taking action, and if your work is not driving action, you need to stop and reboot.
0 Perfection is the enemy of good enough
0 In any domain you probably have at most three critical few metrics that define your existence.
0 If you want to change the culture of any company, you start by focusing on outcomes, not metrics
0 Momentum Trick: What's the smallest step I can take to get closer to my goal
0 Complexity seduces builders. Simplicity seduces buyers.
0 Huge jumps in challenges is how you get aha moments
0 The more you say, the more you’re responsible for.
0 Make a simple, concise statement. And then STOP TALKING
0 focus on a market segment until you dominate
0 Jot down Ideas built upon for everything you learn
0 Understanding is about building better conceptual models.
0 “Man is what he believes” - Anton Chekhov
0 A good analyst is able to investigate and discover human experiences through the use of data.
0 Never stop marketing
0 For a business to be truly customer-focused, it needs to ignore what people say. Instead it needs to concentrate on what people feel.
0 Removing features makes it more obvious how something should be used
0 Opinion is really the lowest form of human knowledge; it requires no accountability, no understanding. The highest form of knowledge, according to George Eliot, is empathy, for it requires us to suspend our egos and live in another’s world. It requires profound, purpose‐larger‐than‐the‐self kind of understanding.
0 It is essential for a man to strive with all his heart, and to understand that it is difficult even to reach the average if he does not have the intention of surpassing others in whatever he does.
0 Clean slate thinking is really hard - But forgetting everything you know and being open to doing crazy shit that you can't even understand is the only way to ensure you are a part of every new leap.
0 Not everything happens for a reason, but everything that survives, survives for a reason
0 If you are the sort of person who likes to deal with problems outside the comfortable area where you can rely on instinct – then it’s really nice to have an epistemology that doesn’t suck.
0 Get numb, then get good
0 Solve the problems you have, not the ones you imagine.
0 Be like family to your friends, a friend to strangers, and a stranger to your enemies
0 Easy is the mother of mediocrity, and in your life, mediocrity is like a broke uncle. Once he moves into your house, it is nearly impossible to get him to leave.
0 Always be a first-rate version of yourself and not a second rate version of someone else.
0 using your full talent stack .. that is tranceding
0 Software Engineering is primarily a learning endeavour, the working code is rather a side effect.
0 From the invisible comes the visible.
0 Options are worthless or can make you a millionaire. They're probably worthless unless the headcount of engineering is more than 100. Then maybe they are worth something within this decade.
0 The Gordian Knot is an allegory reminding us that solving problems sometimes requires rejecting the basic premise.
0 By endurance you conquer
0 Anything worth doing is worth doing to excess
0 people will always be too certain that the most recent thing that worked is going to work again
-2 No pain, no gain
-2 Rely on your strength instead of someone else's compassion
-3 Induce controlled mania when you work. You'll work better, be more creative and think better
-5 Work relentlessly to consistently and predictably deliver results
-6 You have to put in the hours to be great