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December 8 - December 14, 2020
Books make for great friends, because the best thinkers of the last few thousand years tell you their nuggets of wisdom. [8]
Making money is not a thing you do—it’s a skill you learn.
Getting rich is about knowing what to do, who to do it with, and when to do it.
Seek wealth, not money or status. Wealth is having assets that earn while you sleep. Money is how we transfer time and wealth. Status is your place in the social hierarchy.
You’re not going to get rich renting out your time. You must own equity—a piece of a business—to gain your financial freedom.
You will get rich by giving society what it wants but does not yet know how to get. At scale.
Play iterated games. All the returns in life, whether in wealth, relationships, or knowledge, come from compound interest.
Learn to sell. Learn to build. If you can do both, you will be unstoppable.
Specific knowledge is found by pursuing your genuine curiosity and passion rather than whatever is hot right now.
Business leverage comes from capital, people, and products with no marginal cost of replication (code and media).
Labor leverage will impress your parents, but don’t waste your life chasing it.
Capital and labor are permissioned leverage.
Code and media are permissionless leverage.
Leverage is a force multiplier for your judgment.
Study microeconomics, game theory, psychology, persuasion, ethics, mathematics, and computers.
Reading is faster than listening. Doing is faster than watching.
who you work with and what you work on are more important than how hard you work.
Become the best in the world at what you do. Keep redefining what you do until this is true.
Money is how we transfer wealth. Money is social credits. It is the ability to have credits and debits of other people’s time.
Technology democratizes consumption but consolidates production. The best person in the world at anything gets to do it for everyone.
Society will pay you for creating things it wants. But society doesn’t yet know how to create those things,
Society always wants new things. 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 and providing it is natural to you, within your skill set, and within your capabilities.
The specific knowledge is sort of this weird combination of unique traits from your DNA, your unique upbringing, and your response to it. It’s almost baked into your personality and your identity.
I view scientists as being at the top of the production chain for humanity. The group of scientists who have made real breakthroughs and contributions probably added more to human society, I think, than any single other class of human beings. Not to take away anything from art or politics or engineering or business, but without science, we’d still be scrambling in the dirt fighting with sticks and trying to start fires.
Science applied is the engine of humanity.
Specific knowledge is found much more by pursuing your innate talents, your genuine curiosity, and your passion.
“Escape competition through authenticity.”
The most important skill for getting rich is becoming a perpetual learner.
arithmetic and numeracy are way more important in life than doing calculus. Similarly,
Intentions don’t matter. Actions do. That’s why being ethical is hard.
Humans evolved in societies where there was no leverage. If I was chopping wood or carrying water for you, you knew eight hours put in would be equal to about eight hours of output. Now we’ve invented leverage—through capital, cooperation, technology, productivity, all these means. We live in an age of leverage. As a worker, you want to be as leveraged as possible so you have a huge impact without as much time or physical effort.
Forty hour work weeks are a relic of the Industrial Age. Knowledge workers function like athletes—train and sprint, then rest and reassess.
The higher the creativity component of a profession, the more likely it is to have disconnected inputs and outputs.
If there is a direct correlation between input and output, you always have to put in effort to make the same proportion of money.
Earn with your mind, not with your time.
You start as a salaried employee. But you want to work your way up to try and get higher leverage, more accountability, and specific knowledge. The combination of those over a long period of time with the magic of compound interest will make you wealthy. [74]
I would love to be paid purely for my judgment, not for any work. I want a robot, capital, or computer to do the work, but I want to be paid for my judgment. [1]
CEOs are highly paid because of their leverage. Small differences in judgment and capability really get amplified. [2]
Solve by Iteration. Get paid by repetition.
I haven’t made money in my life in one giant payout. It has always been a whole bunch of small things piling up. It’s more about consistently creating wealth by creating businesses, creating opportunities, and creating investments. It hasn’t been a giant one-off thing.
No one is going to value you more than you value yourself.
If you get into a relative mindset, you’re always going to hate people who do better than you, you’re always going to be jealous or envious of them.
There are basically three really big decisions you make in your early life: where you live, who you’re with, and what you do.
where did we come up with this idea the correct logical thing to do is for everybody to work for somebody else? It is a very hierarchical model. [14]
Humans evolved as hunters and gatherers where we all worked for ourselves. It’s only at the beginning of agriculture we became more hierarchical. The Industrial Revolution and factories made us extremely hierarchical because one individual couldn’t necessarily own or build a factory, but now, thanks to the internet, we’re going back to an age where more and more people can work for themselves.
Any end goal will just lead to another goal, lead to another goal. We just play games in life. When you grow up, you’re playing the school game, or you’re playing the social game. Then you’re playing the money game, and then you’re playing the status game. These games just have longer and longer and longer-lived horizons.
Retirement is when you stop sacrificing today for an imaginary tomorrow. When today is complete, in and of itself, you’re retired.
Lusting for money is bad for us because it is a bottomless pit. It will always occupy your mind. If you love money, and you make it, there’s never enough. There is never enough because the desire is turned on and doesn’t turn off at some number. It’s a fallacy to think it turns off at some number.
I think the best way to stay away from this constant love of money is to not upgrade your lifestyle as you make money.
“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.”
“Be a maker who makes something interesting people want. Show your craft, practice your craft, and the right people will eventually find you.” [14]
Building business relationships in advance is a waste of time. It’s popularized by people who benefit from that business model.
You have to enjoy it and keep doing it, keep doing it, and keep doing it. Don’t keep track, and don’t keep count because if you do, you will run out of time. [78]
