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August 17 - September 1, 2023
If you have nothing in your life, but you have at least one person that loves you unconditionally, it’ll do wonders for your self-esteem. [8]
Getting rich is about knowing what to do, who to do it with, and when to do it. It is much more about understanding than purely hard work.
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.
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 will get rich by giving society what it wants but does not yet know how to get. At scale.
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.
Fortunes require leverage. Business leverage comes from capital, people, and products with no marginal cost of replication (code and media).
Study microeconomics, game theory, psychology, persuasion, ethics, mathematics, and computers.
Doing is faster than watching.
Set and enforce an aspirational personal hourly rate. If fixing a problem will save less than your hourly rate, ignore it. If outsourcing a task will cost less than your hourly rate, outsource it.
Productize Yourself
Technology democratizes consumption but consolidates production. The best person in the world at anything gets to do it for everyone.
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.
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 is the hottest job; it’s not by going into whatever field investors say is the hottest.
“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. [78]
The most important skill for getting rich is becoming a perpetual learner. You have to know how to learn anything you want to learn.
Knowing how to be persuasive when speaking is far more important than being an expert digital marketer or click optimizer. 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.
Intentions don’t matter. Actions do. That’s why being ethical is hard.
realize in most things (relationships, work, even in learning) what you’re trying to do is find the thing you can go all-in on to earn compound interest.
when you find the 1 percent of your discipline which will not be wasted, which you’ll be able to invest in for the rest of your life and has meaning to you—go all-in and forget about the rest. [10]
Clear accountability is important. Without accountability, you don’t have incentives. Without accountability, you can’t build credibility. But you take risks. You risk failure. You risk humiliation. You risk failure under your own name.
in modern society, the downside risk is not that large.
generally, people will forgive failures as long as you were honest and made a high-integrity effort.
You’re not going to have passive income where a business is earning for you while you are on vacation. [10]
Following your genuine intellectual curiosity is a better foundation for a career than following whatever is making money right now. [11]
If it entertains you now but will bore you someday, it’s a distraction. Keep looking.
when you do things for their own sake, you create your best work.
The less you want something, the less you’re thinking about it, the less you’re obsessing over it, the more you’re going to do it in a natural way. The more you’re going to do it for yourself. You’re going to do it in a way you’re good at, and you’re going to stick with it.
When you do just the actual work itself, you’ll be far more productive, far more effcient.
Knowledge workers function like athletes—train and sprint, then rest and reassess.
If you’re looking at professions where your inputs and your outputs are highly connected, it’s going to be very hard to create wealth and make wealth for yourself in that process. [78]
Learn to sell, learn to build. If you can do both, you will be unstoppable.
Earn with your mind, not your time.
I want a robot, capital, or computer to do the work, but I want to be paid for my judgment. [1]
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. You just have to set a very high personal hourly rate and you have to stick to it.
if you can outsource something or not do something for less than your hourly rate, outsource it or don’t do it.
being anti-wealth will prevent you from becoming wealthy, because you will not have the right mindset for it, you won’t have the right spirit, and you won’t be dealing with people on the right level. Be optimistic, be positive. It’s important. Optimists actually do better in the long run. [10]
when you’re trying to create wealth and you’re getting attacked by someone else, they’re trying to increase their own status at your expense. They’re playing a different game. And it’s a worse game. It’s a zero-sum game instead of a positive-sum game. [78]
You have to say no to everything and free up your time so you can solve the important problems.
work was a means to an end. Making money was a means to an end. I’m much more interested in solving problems than I am in making money.
Don't let money be the driving force for you to do anything. Do what you love, become good at it and the money will follow.
What you really want is freedom.
Retirement is when you stop sacrificing today for an imaginary tomorrow. When today is complete, in and of itself, you’re retired.
doing something you love. You enjoy it so much, it’s not about the money.
Money is not the root of all evil; there’s nothing evil about it. But the lust for money is bad. The lust for money is not bad in a social sense. It’s not bad in the sense of “you’re a bad person for lusting for money.” It’s bad for you. 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.
The winners of any game are the people who are so addicted they continue playing even as the marginal utility from winning declines.
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.
