— Books, Highlights — 4 min read
If you don’t know yet what you should work on, the most important thing is to figure it out. You should not grind at a lot of hard work until you figure out what you should be working on.
Pick an industry where you can play long-term games with long-term people.
Play iterated games. All the returns in life, whether in wealth, relationships, or knowledge, come from compound interest.
Specific knowledge is knowledge you cannot be trained for. If society can train you, it can train someone else and replace you.
who you work with and what you work on are more important than how hard you work.
There are no get-rich-quick schemes. Those are just someone else getting rich off you.
Technology democratizes consumption but consolidates production.
Specific knowledge is found much more by pursuing your innate talents, your genuine curiosity, and your passion
There’s not really that much to fear in terms of failure, and so people should take on a lot more accountability than they do.
usually, the real wealth is created by starting your own companies or even by investing
Following your genuine intellectual curiosity is a better foundation for a career than following whatever is making money right now.
Product or service society wants but does not yet know how to get. You want to become the person who delivers it and delivers it at scale. That is really the challenge of how to make money.
Most important form of leverage is the idea of products that have no marginal cost of replication
Whenever you can in life, optimize for independence rather than pay
accountable on your output, as opposed to your input
What you want in life is to be in control of your time. You want to get into a leveraged job where you control your own time and you’re tracked on the outputs.
Forty hour work weeks are a relic of the Industrial Age. Knowledge workers function like athletes—train and sprint, then rest and reassess.
input and output disconnected
Take rationally optimistic bets with big upsides
I think every human should aspire to being knowledgeable about certain things and being paid for our unique knowledge. We have as much leverage as is possible in our business
Small differences in judgment and capability really get amplified
We waste our time with short-term thinking and busywork. Warren Buffett spends a year deciding and a day acting. That act lasts decades.
Being at the extreme in your art is very important in the age of leverage
I work through bursts of energy where I’m really motivated with something.
Being anti-wealth will prevent you from becoming wealthy, because you will not have the right mindset for it
Optimists actually do better in the long run.
Spend more time making the big decisions.
Three really big decisions you make in your early life: where you live, who you’re with, and what you do.
You’ll never be rich since you’re obviously smart, and someone will always offer you a job that’s just good enough.
One way is to have so much money saved that your passive income (without you lifting a finger) covers your burn rate.
A third is you’re doing something you love. You enjoy it so much, it’s not about the money.
But if you can hold your lifestyle fixed and hopefully make your money in giant lump sums as opposed to a trickle at a time, you won’t have time to upgrade your lifestyle.
Freedom to do what I want, freedom from things I don’t want to do, freedom from my own emotions or things that may disturb my peace. For me, freedom is my number one value.
Alumni network you’re going to build. Think about who you will work with and what those people are going on to do.
Hope luck finds you. • Hustle until you stumble into it. • Prepare the mind and be sensitive to chances others miss. • Become the best at what you do. Refine what you do until this is true. Opportunity will seek you out. Luck becomes your destiny.
In a long-term game, it seems that everybody is making each other rich. And in a short-term game, it seems like everybody is making themselves rich
You don’t get rich by spending your time to save money. You get rich by saving your time to make money.
In an age of leverage, one correct decision can win everything.
The direction you’re heading in matters more than how fast you move, especially with leverage.
It’s only after you’re bored you have the great ideas. It’s never going to be when you’re stressed, or busy, running around or rushed. Make the time.
There are no permanent solutions in a dynamic system.
Praise specifically, criticize generally.
I think being successful is just about not making mistakes.
I believe we are fundamentally ignorant and very, very bad at predicting the future.
If you cannot decide, the answer is no.
Generally want to lean into things with short-term pain, but long-term gain.
The means of learning are abundant—it’s the desire to learn that is scarce.
Just like the best workout for you is one you’re excited enough to do every day, I would say for books, blogs, tweets, or whatever—anything with ideas and information and learning—the best ones to read are the ones you’re excited about reading all the time
As long as I have a book in my hand, I don’t feel like I’m wasting time.
When you’re reading a book and you’re confused, that confusion is similar to the pain you get in the gym when you’re working out. But you’re building mental muscles instead of physical muscles. Learn how to learn and read the books.
If you’re a perpetual learning machine, you will never be out of options for how to make money
When solving problems: the older the problem, the older the solution.
You know that song you can’t get out of your head? All thoughts work that way. Careful what you read.
Is it so important to me I’ll be unhappy unless this goes my way?
I don’t measure my effectiveness at all. I don’t believe in self-measurement. I feel like this is a form of self-discipline, self-punishment, and self-conflict.
As long as you’re doing what you want, it’s not a waste of your time. But if you’re not spending your time doing what you want, and you’re not earning, and you’re not learning—what the heck are you doing?
If your values line up, the little things don’t matter. Generally, I find if people are fighting or quarreling about something, it’s because their values don’t line up. If their values lined up, the little things wouldn’t matter.