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June 27 - June 28, 2024
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.
If you don’t know yet what you should work on, the most important thing is to figure it out.
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.
Understand ethical wealth creation is possible. If you secretly despise wealth, it will elude you.
Ignore people playing status games. They gain status by attacking people playing wealth creation games.
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.
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.
Pick business partners with high intelligence, energy, and, above all, integrity.
Learn to sell. Learn to build. If you can do both, you will be unstoppable.
Specific knowledge is knowledge you cannot be trained for. If society can train you, it can train someone else and replace you.
Specific knowledge is found by pursuing your genuine curiosity and passion rather than whatever is hot right now.
When specific knowledge is taught, it’s through apprenticeships, not schools.
Specific knowledge is often highly technical or creative. It cannot be outsourced or automated.
Code and media are permissionless leverage. They’re the leverage behind the newly rich. You can create software and media that works for you while you sleep.
If you can’t code, write books and blogs, record videos and podcasts.
Study microeconomics, game theory, psychology, persuasion, ethics, mathematics, and computers.
Become the best in the world at what you do. Keep redefining what you do until this is true.
Productize Yourself
Society, business, & money are downstream of technology, which is itself downstream of science. Science applied is the engine of humanity.
if you’re not already good at it or if you’re not really into it, maybe it’s not your thing—focus on the thing that you are really into.
Specific knowledge is found much more by pursuing your innate talents, your genuine curiosity, and your passion.
You can go on the internet, and you can find your audience. And you can build a business, and create a product, and build wealth, and make people happy just uniquely expressing yourself through the internet. [78]
“Escape competition through authenticity.” Basically, when you’re competing with people, it’s because you’re copying them.
The most important skill for getting rich is becoming a perpetual learner.
Foundations are key. It’s much better to be at 9/10 or 10/10 on foundations than to try and get super deep into things.
You can only achieve mastery in one or two things. It’s usually things you’re obsessed about. [74]
“All the returns in life, whether in wealth, relationships, or knowledge, come from compound interest.”
Intentions don’t matter. Actions do. That’s why being ethical is hard.
When you find the right thing to do, when you find the right people to work with, invest deeply. Sticking with it for decades is really how you make the big returns in your relationships and in your money. So, compound interest is very important. [10]
To get rich, you need leverage. Leverage comes in labor, comes in capital, or it can come through code or media.
Follow your intellectual curiosity more than whatever is “hot” right now.
Learn to sell, learn to build. If you can do both, you will be unstoppable.
Earn with your mind, not your time.
We waste our time with short-term thinking and busywork. Warren Buffett spends a year deciding and a day acting. That act lasts decades.
No one is going to value you more than you value yourself.
Wealth creation is an evolutionarily recent positive-sum game. Status is an old zero-sum game. Those attacking wealth creation are often just seeking status.
Spend more time making the big decisions. There are basically three really big decisions you make in your early life: where you live, who you’re with, and what you do.
You have to say no to everything and free up your time so you can solve the important problems.
Figure out what you’re good at, and start helping other people with it. Give it away. Pay it forward. Karma works because people are consistent. On a long enough timescale, you will attract what you project.
Ways to get lucky: • 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.
People are oddly consistent. Karma is just you, repeating your patterns, virtues, and flaws until you finally get what you deserve. Always pay it forward. And don’t keep count.
Your real résumé is just a catalog of all your suffering.
To see the truth, you have to get your ego out of the way because your ego doesn’t want to face the truth.
What you feel tells you nothing about the facts—it merely tells you something about your estimate of the facts.
It’s actually really important to have empty space. If you don’t have a day or two every week in your calendar where you’re not always in meetings, and you’re not always busy, then you’re not going to be able to think.
It’s only after you’re bored you have the great ideas.
Very smart people tend to be weird since they insist on thinking everything through for themselves.
