Philosophy 101

No one is going to beat you at being you. Find what that feels like — play to you but looks like work to others. So that you're going to outcompete them because you're doing it effortlessly; you're doing it for fun.

The more you do things that are natural to you, the less competition you have. Escape competition through authenticity, by being your own self.

To be successful in two words — productize yourself.

Much better to treat this like a search function: find the work you want to do, or the place you want to be at, and the best time to figure this out is right now.

Try to focus on the overarching problem and try to solve that problem. If you want to be successful, define success very concretely and focus on that.

You have one life, don't settle for mediocrity.

The only true test of intelligence is if you get what you want out of your life, and there are two parts to that —

• One is getting what you want, so you know how to get it.
• Second, wanting the right thing — knowing what to want in the first place.

Use the secretary theorem to pick stuff in life. Optimal time is about ⅓ or 37%.

• The interesting thing about the secretary problem is that it's not time-based. It's not based on ⅓ of the time; it's iteration-based.

Malcolm Gladwell popularized this idea of 10,000 hours to mastery — but I think it's 10,000 iterations to mastery. It's about the number of iterations that drives a learning curve.

Iterations are not repetitions. Repetition is about repeating a thing over and over. Iteration is modifying it with a learning and doing another version of it. That's error correction.

Knowing as Inseparable from Doing — We treat pieces of knowledge as something to be acquired once and kept forever. But the reality is that knowing requires diligent practice and constant maintenance.

• In other words, knowing is a skill, like playing an instrument or playing chess, that can be honed with practice.
• How do we create tools for thought that support knowing as an active process?