Lies You've Been Told About the World

The timelines we create for ourselves are mostly just arbitrary nonsense.

We create these fake timelines:

• I need to hit [X] title by [X] age.
• I need to have [Y] salary by [Y] age.
• I need to win Forbes [X] under [X] otherwise I'm a failure.

Focusing on these timelines is playing the wrong game. It leads you into dangerous comparison traps—envying others who achieved these things.

There’s no fixed path—you create your own.

It's very in vogue to say hard work is overrated—but it’s not quite true.

What you work on is more important than how hard you work, but if you're striving for great things, you have to work hard.

• You can get to the top-10% by either working hard OR smart.
• You can only reach the top-1% by working hard AND smart.

It's definitely not for everyone, but it's the reality if you are trying to achieve exceptional results.

The concept of “mentorship” has become way too formal. Asking someone to be your mentor can come across as a big commitment.

Instead of focusing on finding a formal mentor, build a Personal Board of Advisors.

The key features of a Personal Board of Advisors:

• Group of 5-10 individuals. The members don't need to know each other or that they are on your board. Informality is a feature, not a bug.
• Unbiased (not family).
• Diverse experiences.
• Willing to provide raw, candid feedback.

There’s no shortage of great ideas, just a shortage of people willing to put in the effort to capitalize on them.

Execution requires a combination of:

• Intensity: To execute sprints of focused energy.
• Consistency: To execute a marathon of these sprints.

Ideas are cheap, execution is very, very expensive.

The best way to stand out will always be quite simple: Act.

It's in vogue to say that you should learn to say no in order to protect your time.

In reality, it depends.

As a general rule of thumb:

Early on, say yes—it puts you into growth-conducive situations. Saying yes allows you to expand your luck surface area.

Once you're established, say no—to focus and build leverage. Saying no allows you to focus on the 10x+ opportunities.

Hustle culture told you that free time is lost productivity.

The reality: free time is a "call option" on future interesting opportunities.

When you have free time, you have the headspace and bandwidth to pursue new ideas. Free time creates alpha.

Learning when to say no creates the free time necessary to capitalize on the alpha-rich opportunities that arise.

Life gets so much better when you realize you can learn from anyone. No one is too old, young, rich, or poor to teach you something valuable.

Everyone has formed their own map of reality. By gathering data points from the maps of those around us, we sharpen the resolution of our own.

Nothing just happens—that’s for the movies, not real life. You have to kick down the door and blast through to the other side.

Big decisions are better made fast than slow. Slow typically leads to overthinking and paralysis that keeps people from making the leap. Fast allows you to operate from instinct—to trust your gut.

With the bigger decisions, don't outsmart your common sense.

Most of your friends aren’t really your friends.

They’re just along for the ride when it’s fun, convenient, or valuable—they'll disappear when it's not.

Your real friends are there when it is none of those things. They are there when you have nothing to offer in return.

Cherish them.

If you want to get lucky, start increasing your luck surface area.

It’s hard to get lucky watching TV at home. It’s easy to get lucky when you’re engaging and learning—physically or digitally.

Put yourself in a position to get lucky.

If it bothers you to see other people succeed, you’re definitely not gonna make it.

Distance yourself from anyone who spends time bringing others down.

Celebrate everyone’s wins and you’ll start winning more. A rising tide lifts all boats.

Once you're past your first job, no one will ask about that stuff—if they do, you shouldn't take that job.

To be successful, you either need to learn how to build or you need to learn how to sell. People who know how to build AND sell are unbeatable. 

If you aren't technically gifted, that's okay. Just learn to sell—yourself, your ideas, and your vision. If you can do that, you'll always make it.

In the real world, EQ still stands out.

An empowering realization: Most of the people you admire are unremarkable.

Their success is not due to some intrinsic difference.

They simply built leverage to scale efficiently and had a powerful combination of effort, focus, long-term consistency, and luck.

Most advice sucks.

It's well-intentioned, but it's dangerous to use someone else's map of reality to navigate yours—even if they're experienced.

Winners learn to filter and selectively implement advice—take the signal, skip the noise.

Interesting people sound impressive, but the reality is that being INTERESTED is more important than being INTERESTING.

Interested people ask questions, listen, and observe. They are prone to diving deep to understand the world around them.

They win by compounding knowledge efficiently.

It’s really hard to be “too late” with a mega-trend.

This fallacy is driven by the fact that humans are terrible at comprehending exponential growth. We see a rapid run-up and assume we're near the peak when the reality is we have just begun the ascent.

As a rule of thumb, when facing a mega-trend, you’re probably still early.

You can read every business and self-help book in the world, but ultimately the only way to learn is by screwing it up.

Reading and studying are nothing without battle-testing.

Don’t fear failure—just learn to fail smart & fast.

Everyone wants hacks or shortcuts, but there’s literally no such thing.

If anyone tries to sell you one, you should run away.

The only “hack” is relentless consistency. It’s not glamorous—and it's not fun—but it works.

The most intelligent people don't have the best answers—they ask the best questions.

Asking great questions is how you uncover the truth.

The sharpest minds will listen intently and then ask the one question that drills down to the core of the issue at hand.

It's a legitimate superpower—but one that can conceivably be developed with practice.

Society celebrates experts in any given field.

But as author David Epstein finds in Range, many experts succeed because of the range of pursuits that preceded their main endeavour.

Become a polymath. Generalize first, specialize later.

Fear generates clicks—the media knows it and they capitalize on it. So if you watch the news, you're hit by a barrage of pain, suffering, and fear.

The message is to avoid your neighbour—to fear thy neighbour.

Always remember: There are a few bad people out there, but most people are fundamentally good. They just want to be able to provide for their family and live well.

Don't fall into the vicious media trap. Love spreads—love thy neighbour.