Tools of Titans¶

Systems over goals¶

A goal is a clearly defined objective that a person wants to achieve. A system is a process which facilitates progress towards a goal.

Goal focused people often experience an emotional roller-coaster depending on whether the goal is achieved or not. Systems oriented people succeed every time they apply the process towards a goal.

Systems win in the long run.

One of the best examples of a system based approach is reflected in Amazon's management leadership practices. Their system facilitates a relentless forward progress towards objectives. It continues to scale exceptionally well, Amazon's present size of the organization, market share, product differentiation and customer loyalty are at unprecedented levels and continue to grow.

James Clear (author of "Atomic Habits") has an excellent post about goals vs systems here. Scott Adams (author of "Dilbert") has also written an excellent post about goals vs systems here.

For an excellent introduction to the Amazon management system please read "The Amazon Management System: The Ultimate Digital Business Engine That Creates Extraordinary Value for Both Customers and Shareholders" book.

Fasting¶

Do you feel sluggish after your meals?
Is your brain a bit foggy at times?
Does your blood sugar spike up and down?
Are you having trouble focusing?

Intermittent fasting is a system of restricting food intake in order to help the body expend stored calories. I have experienced multiple benefits of this approach and have been practicing various forms of intermittent fasting over many years.

A common form of intermittent fasting is the 16/8 method which involves limiting consumption of foods and calorie-containing beverages to a set window of eight hours per day and abstaining from food for the remaining 16 hours.

This cycle can be repeated as frequently as you like and is popular especially among those looking to lose weight and burn fat. While other diets often set strict rules and regulations, 16/8 intermittent fasting is easy to follow and can provide real results with minimal effort. It’s generally considered less restrictive and more flexible than many other diet plans and can easily fit into just about any lifestyle.

For additional information please look at this Harvard funded study and for a practical how to guide read this article.

This is not medical advice, please check with your doctor first before attempting to fast.

Daily mindfulness and/or meditation¶

Mindfulness is a type of meditation where you have to intentionally focus on whatever is happening without injecting your bias to interpret and/or pass judgement.

I find this skill to be an enabler for developing unbiased mindset necessary to lead with empathy.

I find reading about this subject overwhelming and often impossible to verify. You need to discover your own approach to develop this skill. I have been practicing for years and can confirm that mindful meditation allowed my brain to forge new neural pathways. It has also materially altered my perspective on how to interpret our reality. In my personal experience, the benefits of this practice result in heighten sense of self awareness, unbiased judgment, profound increase of empathy and compassion, emotional stability, accurate perception of other people emotional state and mental calmness under all circumstances.

This is a complex area of study and I encourage you to search and discover your own research materials. One the few books I could "connect with" is "Practicing Mindfulness: An Introduction to Meditation", although it was impossible for me to maintain focus while reading it. I opted for the audio version instead and spent many hours walking the dog while absorbing and practicing the content as advised.

Continuous reading¶

Are you seeking knowledge?
Do you want to become a better writer?
Are you looking to grow your ability to comprehend?
Seeking alternative perspectives?
Do you want to improve your odds of success?

Continuous reading is yet another system to learn from others, perhaps even more important as a system of discovery for what mistakes to avoid. Reading helps us better understand people on an intimate level, may even help increase our empathy. Books challenge us to grow, as your mind is forced to wrestle in order to comprehend. At times you can feel the neural pathways forming.

A great perspective on reading can be found in a blog titled "Why Read? Advice From Harold Bloom", and another great source of reading tips come from no other than Naval Ravikant on this blog post

Attain focus by listening to a single song/binaural beats¶

Are you having trouble focusing?
Is it difficult for you to calm your mind?
Is your brain having a million thoughts a minute and you need a break?
Are you finding practicing mindfulness difficult?

Binaural beat is a multi tone signal you hear with a slightly different frequency per ear. Your brain processes a beat at the difference of the frequencies resulting in a series of surprising effects.

Binaural beats are often associated with practice of meditation, a number of additional benefits have also been identified:

reduced anxiety
increases focus and concentration
lowers stress
foster positive moods
promotes creativity
helps to manage pain

I have experienced all of the above outcomes as a result of listening to binaural beats daily and recommend that you find an iOS/Android app for your phone. Most of these apps come with pre-configured beat frequencies commonly found to induce a particular mood, meditative state, increased focus or simply assist with falling asleep. I have also experienced similar results by listening to the same song continuously over an extended period of time.

For additional information please look at this "Auditory Beat Stimulation and its Effects on Cognition and Mood States" research study and for practical how to guide read this article.

"Spec" work, create a project and try to sell it¶

Spec work is when you create a product content such as video, song, script, code, website, design, graphic, other artifacts first and then attempt to find a buyer to sell it to.

This is one of the most common experiences shared by successful people featured in the "Tools of Titans" book by Tim Ferris. They have all created some form of "spec" work and then attempted to find a prospective buyer in order to sell the artifact, license the content or create a new business opportunity based on the idea itself.

Why then have all these people attempted this endeavor?
What is their motivation?
What can we learn from this?

It is impossible to read other people minds and its easy to speculate what each person's personal motives might have been. Perhaps, it is a character trait that made these people successful to begin with, a willingness to take a leap of faith. "You will never know unless you try", this quote is often attributed to public figures, try googling it.

Think of this as a learning opportunity and to increase probability of success we must apply a system, so consider the following creative process:

Identify "spec" work
Identify potential buyers
Develop a 30/60/90 plan
Apply the 80/20 rule
Be creative, go Big

People often advise against this approach due to the perception that work presented to a non-committed buyer can be easily acquired without having to pay for the work performed, see an entire website dedicated to this topic here, then again none of these people were featured in the "Tools of Titans" book.

Take supplements (vitamins)¶

If you have a healthy diet, a multivitamin supplement may have little or no benefit.

But how do you really know if you need to supplement vitamins?

It is best to ask your doctor about a blood test, it is a routine procedure often performed around the same time as your yearly physical examination. The results will be telling and will arm you with knowledge to decide next steps.

You may find yourself low on vitamin D if you live in darker places or your lifestyle limits exposure to sunlight, vitamin D is arguably the most important vitamin you could take. Whenever, you feel fatigued or have low energy, it's very possible that you are vitamin D deficient. For an in depth Harvard study on vitamin D please read the following article Vitamin D and your health: Breaking old rules, raising new hopes, another great source of information about vitamin D can be found in this blog post.

This is not medical advice, please check with your doctor first before taking vitamins.

Exercise Daily¶

Want to improve memory and mental sharpness?
Need to reduces stress?
How to promote creativity?

You already know that exercise is good for you. Exercise is one of those activities you need to make into a daily habit, and just in case you haev doubts please read all about the benefits of regular physical activity article from Mayo Clinic. Most successful people have long adopted exercise as part of their daily regiment, click here to google it.

So why is it so hard?

This is yet another opportunity to implement a system, remember system over goals. Do not feel obligated to begin with an objective to loose weight, gain strength or run a marathon. Develop a process that will reduce friction preventing you from exercising daily. For example, I have brought the 35lbs dumbbell and set it down in a visible place next to my desk. Next, I have placed a yellow sticky note next to my keyboard, a bit of an eyesore but an effective reminder tool, with the following list:

Curls
Squats
Pushups

This is a good start but still not as effective as I would like, it has worked maybe 60% of the time. Another enhancement to this process is to pair the exercise with an activity that you find pleasurable. This will help to train your brain to connect both activities together and the hard exercise will be mentally associated with a reward of some kind. So far I have found success with two different approaches, in the morning I drink coffee while exercising since I love coffee and in the afternoon I play one of my favorite 80's era inspirational songs (Kickstart My Heart by Motley Crue)

Atomic habits¶

Tiny changes lead to remarkable results.

No matter your goals, a book "Atomic Habits" by James Clear, offers a proven framework for improving a little every day. The book reveals a system for habit formation with practical strategies to teach you exactly how to form good habits, break bad ones, and master the tiny behaviors that lead to remarkable results.

If you're having trouble changing your habits, the problem isn't you. The problem is your system. Remember, systems over goals always win. Bad habits repeat themselves because you have the wrong system for change.

The Book in Three Sentences:

An atomic habit is a regular practice or routine that is not only small and easy to do but is also the source of incredible power; a component of the system of compound growth.
Bad habits repeat themselves again and again not because you don’t want to change, but because you have the wrong system for change.
Changes that seem small and unimportant at first will compound into remarkable results if you’re willing to stick with them for years.

The Five Big Ideas:

Habits are the compound interest of self-improvement.
If you want better results, then forget about setting goals. Focus on your system instead.
The most effective way to change your habits is to focus not on what you want to achieve, but on who you wish to become.
The Four Laws of Behavior Change are a simple set of rules we can use to build better habits. They are (1) make it obvious, (2) make it attractive, (3) make it easy, and (4) make it satisfying.
Environment is the invisible hand that shapes human behavior.

For a more detailed book summary please visit this blog post.

Develop a mild case of "OCD"¶

People with either OCPD or OCD are high achievers and feel a sense of urgency about their actions. They may become very upset if other people interfere with their rigid routines.

Some of the signs commonly associated with an OCD are:

Over-devotion to work
Not being able to throw things away, even when the objects have no value
Lack of flexibility
Lack of generosity
Not wanting to allow other people to do things
Not willing to show affection
Preoccupation with details, rules, and lists

Think about all these symptoms, most of them seem as a requirement to become a high achiever. Consider then developing a mild case of an "OCD" focused on implementing systems over goals in every aspect of your life. Heighten creativity, detail oriented and driven personality is often associated with the successful people, therefore, it makes sense for you to adopt some of these behaviors.

For additional information about OCD please refer to this article.

Crazy ideas are good¶

How can you tell if your crazy idea wouldn't work?
Why is it that others are quick to judge and dismiss your idea?
Wasn't everyone successful seen as crazy at some point in their life?

Many bad ideas nurtured by a relentless entrepreneur can be made to work at a smaller scale. Then, adjacent to those bad ideas, there may be some very powerful ideas that will grow with no bounds. If you really care about it, there’s a decent chance that other people care about it too and it can be developed to reach critical mass.

Once again, implement a system over goals to optimize for success.

Listen, and keep listening. New venture creation is about designing new solutions to problems, and all good solution design begins with listening. But that listening shouldn’t stop once you’ve decided on a course of action. Continue listening, and listen to all stakeholders regularly. Pay special attention to new information and edge cases as you go — they often hold the clues to move you forward toward better versions of your idea.
Work in “hunch mode.” Think of strategies and initiatives not as fixed, final theses but as current best guesses. Recognize that you will likely need to update your hunch regularly, and sometimes radically, to eventually find your way to success.
Build to learn. Strategies and ideas are ultimately abstractions, and as such are inherently limited for understanding what’s good and what’s bad. Real, built things on the other hand have a way of revealing the truth about these things quickly. Get past abstract discussion to the building phase – even if you’re only building non-functional prototypes – to better evaluate an idea.
Resist instincts to kill. Instead of killing ideas and initiatives outright when they seem problematic, challenge yourself or your team to push further, reframe the problem and solution, or explore adjacencies. It is these very challenges to seemingly bad ideas that can end up leading to breakthroughs.
Be impatient.

For more of this great advice please read a Harvard Business Review publication on entrepreneurship "Embracing Bad Ideas To Get To Good Ideas". From a historical perspective, consider reading "1001 Inventions That Changed the World by Jack Challoner", every idea mentioned was seen as crazy at one point.

Its ok to say "NO"¶

Are you a “Go-To Person”?
Do you know how to protect your time?
Do you know how to say NO (without being a jerk)?

People have trouble saying no for numerous reasons:

To “avoid offending people”: Often people give in to avoid upsetting someone. Don’t fear to say no, but always say it with respect toward the other person. When you treat a person who is asking you for favor with respect, you’ve done everything you can or should do. This knowledge can liberate you from feeling guilty.
To “avoid disappointing people”: When you feel you’ve let someone down by saying no, remorse can soon follow. Remember that feeling remorseful for standing up for yourself isn’t appropriate. It’s not your job to protect others from disappointment when you decline their requests.
To get “others to like us”: You think that when you say no to others, they’ll like you less. In fact, they’ll like you more and will respect you more, too.
To avoid “missing out on opportunities”: Do you fear saying no to important people, like your boss? Do you worry that if you don’t do what the boss wants, he or she won’t think of you when other opportunities appear? Are you in danger of wasting your time doing something inconsequential for your manager to get a future chance to do something consequential for yourself? Instead, do consequential things to get on the path to being offered even more consequential things.
To prevent “conflict”: Sometimes conflict is impossible to avoid and harmony seems impossible to achieve. Be brave enough to embrace conflict to protect yourself. When you say yes to duck a confrontation, you only confirm the notion that your feelings matter least.

When you always consent to put others’ needs ahead of your own -- you throw away your most valued non renewable resource -- your precious time.

Once you give away your time, you’ll never get it back.

You must learn to say No.

To learn how to say no I recommend that you read "The Art Of Saying NO: How To Stand Your Ground, Reclaim Your Time And Energy, And Refuse To Be Taken For Granted", you can also find an excellent summary of this book here. Naval Ravikant calls his ability to say "No" without feeling bad a mediocre superpower, enjoy the video clip.

Take the time to think¶

Real knowledge is intrinsic, and it’s built from the ground up.

Consider first-principles reasoning approach to break down a complex problem to the most simple elements to gain base line understanding of what components are involved click here to read more.

This is a system to acquire knowledge. It requires time.

Basically, if someone is using a lot of fancy words and a lot of big concepts, they probably don’t know what they’re talking about. The smartest people can explain things to a child. If you can’t explain it to a child, then you don’t know it.

Naval Ravikant has a few thoughts on clear thinking:

Very smart people tend to be weird since they insist on thinking everything through for themselves.

A contrarian isn’t one who always objects—that’s a conformist of a different sort. A contrarian reasons independently from the ground up and resists pressure to conform.

Cynicism is easy. Mimicry is easy. Optimistic contrarians are the rarest breed.

Become an optimistic contrarian.

To learn more about Naval's thinking perspectives please read "How to think clearly".

Define your own happiness¶

Its entirely possible to achieve happiness without financial wealth. I think that most of us are aware that there is no way to buy happiness. However, as Naval Ravikant puts it, in modern times you can buy your way out of common causes of unhappiness.

Happiness is a skill you can develop.

Think about a system that will repeatedly move you forward towards your unique definition of happiness. But first let us agree on the following truths:

There are many types of happiness
When you’re sick, your desires run away
No single thing will make you happy forever
Happiness is a process of understanding and self-discovery
Figuring out the truth will lead to happiness
Happiness Is Peace in Motion
Your happiness has to be defined by you
You can't outsource your happiness to others

One of the best sources of thoughts on happiness I have found so far comes from Naval Ravikant and can be found at https://nav.al/happiness.

Do what scares you¶

Certainly, some fear is necessary as it is a natural reaction to protect us from harm. However, in professional settings fear often makes us do the opposite of what’s best for us.

Think about it!

How often have you wanted to ask for a promotion and the fear stopped you? How about when you had ask for a pay rise, a job, speak in public or ask someone out? There are countless examples of everyday situations where the fear gets the better of us. The key is to realize that the worst that can happen is typically insignificant. So what that someone will say no? People will forget what you said soon after the event, you can find another job, meet new people.

Are you thinking -- easy to say?

I have a solution, consider a system based approach to effectively build up immunity to fear. You have to systematically expose yourself to the thing that scares you, starting small and building tolerance as you progress (see Atomic Habits). Another approach, albeit a lot more drastic and instantly effective, is to identify the one thing that scares you the most. For example jumping out of an airplane, what happens if you simply go ahead and do just that? Take your worst fear and eradicate it instantly. The effect is surprising, all other fears quickly become irrelevant as you have managed to overcome your #1 on the list.

There is an excellent article titled "The Value of Doing Things That Scare You", available at this blog post. Tim Ferriss has an great Ted talk "Smash fear, learn anything" on this subject as well.

Go in sprints¶

Naval Ravikant had an interesting tweet, "Forty hour workweeks are a relic of the Industrial Age. Knowledge workers function like athletes — train and sprint, then rest and reassess." If you are part of the knowledge based economy, consider how you work. When was the last time you worked just 40 real and productive hours? How many hours are spent browsing, reading, talking to people to get context, searching for answers, being interrupted with context switching being one of the worst offenders.

What if you had a better system for work?

First consider a daily sprint based approach, a series of mini-sprints where each one is a period of concentration for 60-90 minutes followed by a rest period. The same approach can be scaled to days, where a single day is fully dedicated to meetings and nothing else. The next day could be all about coding, followed by a rest day spent reading, browsing, learning. This approach continues to scale, you are probably already familiar with the agile project sprints (typically a two week time period).

Here are some great articles and studies about this subject, "The Modern Knowledge Worker is a Sprinter", "Sprints Are the Secret to Getting More Done" and "Working in sprints with regular breaks will totally transform your productivity".

30/60/90 plan¶

Are you about to start a new project and don't know how?
How do you define and prioritize the work?
What system could you apply to organize yourself and the team?

This is a system to organize activity in order to provide clarity on how to proceed. For simplicity of understanding consider 30 to be immediate, 60 as near term and 90 as the long term.

Begin the work by gathering requirements necessary to define the following:

Vision
Objectives
Key Results
Stakeholder

The next step is to create a planning matrix as follows:

Right Now (30)	Medium Term (60)	Long Term (90)
Build Solution	Build Solution	Build Solution
Data Provisions	Data Provisions	Data Provisions
Increase Adoption	Increase Adoption	Increase Adoption

This is an example of a product development matrix but it can be adapted to any situation.

The next step is to identify and classify activity for each of the placeholders within the above matrix. In other words, given the appropriate “time” bucket (for example "Right Now (30)") begin by breaking down the objectives into tasks that must happen immediately. For example, prototyping and end to end test (“Hello World”) system should be in the first 30.

To see a practical example of a 30/60/90 plan focused on what to do in a new job click here.

80/20 rule¶

Another effective system to decide priority of execution is known as the "Pareto Principle", often referred to as the 80/20 rule. The basic premise is that 20% of the identified work is responsible for the 80% of the outcome value. This approach can be combined with another system, for example the 30/60/90 plan. In such a scenario, the work activity identified in each of the "time" buckets would be prioritized as to first begin the work on a small subset of the activities (the 20%) that delivers 80% of the results.

Financial literacy¶

Many Americans have little understanding of finances, responsible credit usage, and the long term impact of poor financial decisions. In fact, a lack of financial understanding has been signaled as one of the main reasons many Americans struggle with saving and investing. For additional details about financial literacy read the following article, and learn about how inadequate are median retirement savings here, note not to use average savings since those numbers include the billionaires that skew the numbers tremendously.

One of the best sources of basic financial information is provided by Fidelity on their website, click here for an excellent primer on financials basics.

Scott Adams (the Dilbert's creator) has created an effective Dilbert’s One-Page Guide to Everything Financial:

Make a will.
Pay off your credit cards.
Get term life insurance if you have a family to support.
Fund your 401k to the maximum.
Fund your IRA to the maximum.
Buy a house if you want to live in a house and can afford it.
Put six months worth of expenses in a money-market account.
Take whatever money is left over and invest 70% in a stock index fund and 30% in a bond fund through any discount broker and never touch it until retirement.

If any of this confuses you, or you have something special going on (retirement, college planning, tax issues), hire a fee-based financial planner, NOT one who charges a percentage of your portfolio.

I would also add the following to this plan:

Use 529 plan for college savings
Get a universal insurance policy with a cash savings guaranteed rate but only if you are in your early 20s (insurance costs less when you are young)

This is it, a simple system to improve odds of financial well being and secure retirement.

If you want to build wealth, I recommend you read Naval Ravikant's twitter thread titled "How to Get Rich (without getting lucky)".

Business writing¶

Great business writing is about clarity and persuasion.

One of the best practical lessons on great business writing can be found on Scott Adams blog post. He describes the main technique as keeping things simple. Simple writing is persuasive. A good argument in five sentences will sway more people than a brilliant argument in a hundred sentences. Don’t fight it.

Simple means getting rid of extra words. Don’t write, “He was very happy” when you can write “He was happy.” You think the word “very” adds something. It doesn’t. Prune your sentences.

Your first sentence needs to grab the reader. It makes you curious and that’s the key.

Write short sentences. Avoid putting multiple thoughts in one sentence. Readers aren’t as smart as you’d think.

Learn how brains organize ideas. Readers comprehend “the boy hit the ball” quicker than “the ball was hit by the boy.” Both sentences mean the same, but it’s easier to imagine the object (the boy) before the action (the hitting). All brains work that way.

Keep in mind that brain is additive machine, it will naturally want to add meaning and context as it imagines what's not there. If your purpose is to persuade then less is more, the brain on the other side will imagine the rest.

In the context of business emails, the above advice applies as well. Direct messages are best, if you have a question then just ask, fewer words work best.

That’s it. You just learned 80% of the rules of good writing.

Value your time¶

Time is a non-renewable resource you are in control of.

Think about it!

You have a finite amount of time available to you, you can spend it earning money and then you spend that money to buy back time (for example you pay a kid to mow the lawn to have that hour to yourself). Time for us is finite.

So the questions you should ask yourself are:

What is one hour worth to you?
How to calculate what your time is really worth?
How to get more free time?

Not all uses of time are equal, and this simple truth can make a big difference in life. People who spend their time doing more profitable work make more money. People who spend their time investing in others build better relationships. People who spend their time creating a flexible career enjoy more freedom. People who spend their time working on high-impact projects contribute more to society. Whether you want more wealth, more friendship, more freedom, or more impact, it all comes down to how you spend and value your time.

James Clear has written an excellent article to explain how to figure out what your time is worth and use that information to spend your time more effectively.

Career Progression¶

Do you wonder what's next?
How can you judge the next opportunity?
What should you do?
Stay or go?

This is a system based approach to apply judgement to the decision making process that impacts your career. Please, rate the following four items in the order of importance to you, and only you (do not consider external input).

Money
Power
Experience
Idea

The order of the above four items indicates how you should evaluate the opportunity you are considering. Write down your understanding of the situation in the context of the topic (Money, Power, Experience, Idea). Simplify your writing, remove unnecessary adjectives and review. Your writing should be simple, crisp, keep sentences less than 13 words long.

Now imagine placing these topics on a balance scale, your first topic should feel as if its 80% of the total weight. If it does, then this is what is truly important to you and should be used to decide your next move.

Work on what matters¶

When you run out of things that are both high-impact and easy go for hard and high-impact, avoid easy.
Maintain a hold on your ego to avoid investing into meaningless work at a grand scale.
Take the time to understand the status quo before shifting it.
If something dire is happening at your company, then that’s the place to be engaged.
The most effective places to work are those that matter to your company but still have enough room to actually do work.
Take the time to develop the team around you, it’s quite likely that will become your legacy long after you are gone.
A surprising number of projects are one small change away from succeeding.
Time spent getting work finished is always time well spent.
Things that simply won’t happen if you don’t do them are your biggest opportunity to work on something that matter.

You can learn all about working on what matters and how to make betters decisions in this blog post, certainly one of the best things I have read in 2020.

Frugality¶

There is a hidden secret in the ability to remain frugal in the face of constant barrage of consumption promotion. This is about being savvy with the resources provided. Frugality, in a way, is the ultimate test of one's abilities to execute. Given a finite set of resources (for example money, time, people and materials) the ultimate measure of one's ability to create something out of nothing lies on the other side of the accomplishment.

Jeff Bezos said he believes frugality is a positive thing because it drives innovation. He clarified: "I think frugality drives innovation, just like other constraints do. One of the only ways to get out of a tight box is to invent your way out."

A system based approach can be equally effective for personal as well as professional environments. Apply the 80/20 rule to focus your frugality effort on the 20% of what matters to deliver 80% of the results.

Let's begin with your personal frugality, make peace with buying used depreciating assets (i.e. used car, used books on amazon, used bicycle) to limit the expense, use the saved monies to invest in index mutual funds instead. For example, buy a used car instead of new, you will save on insurance and the overall cost of the vehicle which depreciates rapidly when brand new. You can still enjoy fine dining, nice clothes, a vacation as those are expenses that have smaller financial impact.

The same frugality based approach applies in a professional setting. Instead of developing a new software product from scratch, consider leveraging an open source project that delivers just enough functionality to test the idea with. Given a need to hire another person full time, consider a combination of a part time consultant and SaaS software instead.

Tim Ferriss has an interesting article about this very subject titled "Where Are You Still Using Single-Ply?", another simple system based approach is outlined in the following article.

Think long term¶

Thinking long term is the typically the domain of the CEOs and strategic thinkers. These visionaries think decades into the future and they often make bold long term bets that shape our future. ‘It’s all about the long term.’ That was the title of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos’ first letter to shareholders in 1997. In another quote Jeff Bezos said “We can’t realize our potential as people or companies, unless we plan for the long term.” Warren Buffet, Elon Musk, Naval Ravikant and many others also share in this belief.

So how can you benefit from such foresight?

Naval Ravikant has a great quote on twitter, "Play iterated games. All the returns in life, whether in wealth, relationships, or knowledge, come from compound interest." This is his idea of how to apply long term thinking, there is a great write up on his blog with the title "Play Long-term Games With Long-term People". The title says it all. Align yourself with like minded individuals to work and play with. The trust and respect developed over time allows each other to better focus on building a better vision of the mutually beneficial future. And with every passing iteration that trust compounds.

Another great article talks about how "Bezos, Musk, & Buffett See The World Differently, Because They See Time Differently", effectively outlining their 4 dimensional thinking pattern that accounts for time variable as the key to effective long term thinking.

Become a rational optimist¶

Naval Ravikant has made an interesting comment, "To create things, you have to be a rational optimist. Rational in the sense that you have to see the world for what it really is. And yet you have to be optimistic about your own capabilities, and your capability to get things done."

Rational optimists make asymmetric bets where the upside is unlimited, while the downside is capped. Pessimists often overanalyze the downside. They convince themselves the risk is too high on all opportunities and usually end up doing nothing. Rational optimists analyze the downside and assess whether they will avoid ruin if it fails. The downside in a first world country is relatively small. Even bankruptcy can be endured and recovered from.

Smart, pessimistic people, talk themselves out of all sorts of opportunities because they fear a downside that doesn’t exist. Becoming a rational optimist solves this.

You can find an excellent writeup about Here’s Why You Should Become A Rational Optimist. A good Harvard article about your health and benefits of optimism can be found here and another interesting take on Scott Adam's irrational optimism in this blog post.

Develop multiple incomes¶

Diversification is fundamental to long term success, therefore, your income should come from multiple sources just as you diversify your investment portfolio (stocks, mutual funds, bonds, precious metals). There are many possibilities, but all will require an investment of your time and in some cases money. You can google for ideas here but its difficult to apply such generic advice and expect tangible results.

Again we reach for a system based approach, one that allows you to identify and validate the idea first.

For all forms of business a personal network is fundamental, this is the group of people you are connected to that you can provide value to. You network can and is willing to help, always ask for help and you will be surprised to find that most people are willing to help. Your network is often the first source of your clients, ideas, new connections and can also provide validation of your ideas. If you have a small network, invest in building one, always ask how you can help others, add value wherever possible. Take the time and find ways to grow it, use LinkedIn as much as possible but also do not forget to meet and talk to people. The post Covid world has accelerated the migration towards remote work environment and made the quick online meetings easier than before, social networks such as Clubhouse also provide an easy and fun way to connect with new people.

The next component is to look for opportunities. Look for something that is a passion of yours as that significantly increases the odds of resilience in face of adversity. Also, find something others hate doing and offer to do it for them instead. Let others outsource their problems (your opportunities) to you. You can easily register an LLC, get business insurance and work as a consultant in addition to your primary source of income. Perhaps over time, you can apply a system to the problem, use automation and build a solution that scales in order to progress to a self sustaining business without requiring major investment of your time. To increase probability of success, apply the 80/20 rule to deliver most impact as fast as possible. Become customer obsessed, see what Jeff Bezos has to say about his customer obsession here.

Here is an excellent writeup on building startups with real advice, you can also join Angel List in search of others to partner up with, there are many opportunities for project based work and small engagements that generate income but do not conflict with your primary job.

Public speaking¶

Much has been written and said about public speaking. The only advice I have is practice, practice, practice and then practice some more. Tim Ferriss has an excellent write up about how he prepares for public speaking here, its his perspective but I find it very effective. You can see that he has developed a system for how to organize and deliver the speech, as always systems win over goals and his method works well.

I would add just a few additional points to Tim's approach:

Rehearse and record yourself, pay attention to filler words, "like", "um", "you know" and your body posture, this can be an ultimate miracle cure as people often are unaware or simply forget to pay attention
Must have clarity of message, repeat the key message multiple times during the speech
Make the audience do something, ask a question so that they raise a hand or have them stand up as you ask questions
During Q/A Repeat the question to buy time for yourself to think
Make a clear point and illustrate with an example
Utilize intentional pause, slow down, take a sip of water, regroup in your mind
Don't worry about it, 5 minutes after the event/call ends nobody remembers anything except for maybe the last thing you said
Make sure the last thing you say is sticky, the persuasive take away

Radical candor¶

Radical candor is a deeply human (empathetic) way of managing the people who work for/with you and supporting them through personal and professional problems.

Caring personally means caring about people on a human level, beyond their work output. This requires getting to know each team member’s motivations and ambitions, as well as learning about their “whole selves”—their lives and interests outside of work that may affect their needs at work. Showing that you personally care about people naturally builds trusting relationships. When team members feel that you have their best interests in mind, they are more likely to engage with your feedback, trust your decisions, and be honest with you—and in turn, you’ll feel that you can trust and be honest with them.

Challenging directly pushes you to have tough conversations with other people, such as in giving criticism or discussing subpar performance. These important conversations give your team members the opportunity to improve, help you avoid more problems and tough conversations down the line, and contribute to trust-building—being. Pushing your team members to their full potential demonstrates that you care about them.

Never forget to solicit candid feedback (its a gift), it must flow both ways, radical candor at its best.

To learn more about how to apply radical candor and what not to do, read the excellent book called "Radical Candor" by Kim Scott. For a great book summary please visit this blog post.

Tracking metrics¶

Amazon is a giant size organization, how can such a business operate in visible and transparent manner given its size and complexity?

The answer is, metrics. Amazon has a robust metrics system in which everything that matters can be tracked, measured and analyzed with insights generated and routine decisions automated. This system empowers Bezos, executives and frontline employees to focus more on what matters and away from managing routine daily chores. Amazon is not alone, all businesses utilize metrics in some capacity.

Given what metrics do for a business, should we track and measure personal metrics?

If you have a Fitbit, or Apple watch then you are already familiar with collecting metrics for your own personal benefit (health tracking). Try applying a system based approach and collect and compare metrics in the context of major aspects of you own life. Apply the 80/20 rule to focus on the things that deliver the most impact with the least amount effort. For example, anytime you have a big purchase to make (i.e. car), begin by identifying the key metrics you are concerned with, then expand those with another set that is a lot more granular, ask others for feedback on the metrics, compare and contrast the data, and make the decision based on the metrics.

For more ideas about personal metrics please read "Metrics that Matter", Tim Ferriss also has a great article about "Vanity Metrics vs. Actionable Metrics".

Bias towards action¶

Jeff Bezos has one of the principal leadership values defined as bias for action and it reads as follows "Speed matters in business. Many decisions and actions are reversible and do not need extensive study. We value calculated risk taking."

You can't possibly predict the future, and all of its outcomes. You can only approximate and estimate based on new input and past experience in order to calculate the risk. The bias towards action is the catalyst needed to move you forward, with every completed task you reduce the risk as you move towards a working solution.

For a more detailed definition of all of Amazon's leadership principle please read this blog. Naval Ravikant says "All of the really successful people I know have a really strong action bias. They just do things.”, listen to the podcast here, and on a funny side read about Jerry Seinfeld's bias towards action story here.

Lead with Empathy¶

Just care.

This is a simple message, just care. Care about your coworkers, care about their lives, care about their problems, be compassionate. This is how you build long lasting relationships, this is how you become an empathetic and better leader.

Conscious actions (physical, emotional, energy, mental)¶

https://goop.com/wellness/spirituality/the-four-bodies/

Grooming & Fashion¶

https://www.stitchfix.com/ https://40overfashion.com/

Fitness¶

https://www.planetfitness.com/