The studio executive decided if your story would see the light of day.
The editor decided if your words reached readers.
The record executive decided if your music existed at all.

For most of history, you needed permission to participate.

Then came the internet.

You could upload your music without a label. Publish your book without a publisher. Broadcast your thoughts without a network. The side door swung open. For twenty years, you could walk through.

That door now has a (new) lock.

When you apply for a job, a resume-scanning AI decides if a human ever sees your name. When you seek a visa, an algorithm scores your application before a consular officer glances at it. When you submit a paper, a detection system judges your originality. When you request funding, a model estimates your likelihood of success.

You used to need a human’s blessing. Now you need a machine’s.

Gatekeepers have always existed. But AI gates faster, cheaper, and at scale. It never sleeps. It holds no sympathy. It cannot be charmed, persuaded, or convinced with a story.

The human gatekeeper could be circumvented. The side door worked because a person might look up from their stack, see something in you, and open the latch. AI has no peripheral vision (yet). It sees only what it was trained to see.

There is freedom in this. The old gatekeepers were biased, slow, and inconsistent. AI offers speed and, ideally, fairness. If you match the criteria, you pass. No politics. No favoritism.

But there is also loss.

The side door that the internet opened is now being rebuilt with an algorithmic lock. Those who learn to pick it will pass. Those who don’t will knock on a door that doesn’t answer.

The question is not whether you can get in.

The question is whether you can write for the machine that decides if you deserve the chance to be seen by a human*.

*Unless you have a direct relationship, that isn’t filtered by the algorithm, like Substack

An anxious mind cannot think boldly.

A scattered mind cannot think deeply.

Your mental state is a multiplier between zero and one.

Output = Mental State × Work × Leverage

You can have the best strategy. The sharpest tools. Ten hours of focused effort. But run it through a mind operating at 0.5, and you get half of what was possible.

I often put off meditating because it seems like time wasted. But every time I sit for even 15 mins, it always helps in clearing the mind.

Athletes understand this. Musicians understand this. They rest fiercely. They know: the instrument must be tuned before it can be played.

Your environment shapes your mental state more than your willpower can resist.

Where you live. Who you work with. What you read. Who appears in your feed. These are not neutral inputs. They either pull you toward clarity or drag you into noise. Choose them like you’re choosing the air you’ll breathe for the next decade.

There are basics that work for nearly everyone: waking up rested (not just early), exercise, stillness, morning light. But these are not the insight.

The insight is simpler.

When the mind is clear, hard things become possible.
When it is not, even easy things become hard.

Your mental state is a multiplier of everything you do.

A project done in-house: $1 million. The same project done by consultants: $200,000.

Now, with AI, done in-house for $10,000. The executive sharing this seemed to imply that specialized consultants would become obsolete.

He left out one thing: the consultants have AI too.

What once cost $200,000 now costs $2,000. AI makes things faster and cheaper for you.

But for everyone else too.

The sword you just picked up? Everyone else is holding the same one.

”Let your ambitions be delusionally optimistic and your preparations realistically pessimistic.”

The above is just a convoluted way of saying -

Hope for the best, prepare for the worst.

One of my tweets on delusional optimism got some numbers on X, and over half the comments were pessimistic. The fact that we live in a world where we can believe that the future will be MUCH better than the past is a rare historical anomaly.

For most of human history, nothing really happened in terms of progress and social mobility was non-existent. We come from a long line of pessimists that helped us survive all the dangers.

But all the progress we’ve made in the past 2 centuries came from the delusional optimism of a few pioneers and all the others supporting them. To thrive in the 21st century, delusional optimism is the way to go.

If you are a knowledge worker, how should you be preparing for the AI age?

The blistering pace of AI progress over the past 2 years has made it clear that we are entering a period of hyper-growth in knowledge work and this is likely going to overturn industries, disrupt the traditional knowledge work job market while still growing the economy faster than ever before. 

Despite the underwhelming launch of GPT 5, it seems likely that the world of knowledge work will be very different in a few years. Whether it takes 10, 20 years or more is debatable, but change and subsequent rapid progress is certain and undeniable.

Before we can chart a path to navigate the changes ahead, we first need to understand how AI fundamentally changes the nature of work.

How we got here

In 1440, Johannes Gutenberg sparked a knowledge bonfire that lit up the world. Before his printing press, scribes scratched out maybe a couple of dozen pages a day by hand with books costing as much as a year's salary.

After the printing press?

3,600 pages per workday, with tens of millions of volumes flooding Europe by 1500 reducing costs by an estimated 340 times. Ideas leaped borders like wildfire and led to scholarly networks being built that powered the Scientific Revolution.

Since that time we've had at least a few step-changing progress events in human history. Let's talk about the two big ones.

Step change 1 - The Industrial Revolution

The first one was the Industrial revolution which re-organized society from a primarily agrarian society to an industrial one.

A large part of modern work habits can be traced back to the processes and systems invented and perfected during the past couple of hundred years. The rise of cities, the modern work week, the company man - all trace their origins to the effects of the industrial revolution.

This started to change slowly with the invention of semiconductors.

Step change 2 - The Computing Revolution

The Computing revolution was the 2nd big step-change that changed the world - moving economies from the Industrial age to the Information age. A large chunk of today's modern office jobs have been made possible by the computing revolution and more specifically the internet revolution.

The biggest companies in the world today are those who have dominated the information age - companies like Google, Meta, Amazon, Apple, Oracle owe a large part of their success to the growth of computers and the internet.

What the internet enabled was the instant exchange of information - of any kind - across time and geography. It was like the Gutenberg press on rocket boosters and it reduced the friction in sharing knowledge with anyone in the world down to near zero.

The natural outcome of this was another explosion of information exchange.

The average person has access to more knowledge today than all of humanity combined for all of human history prior to the invention of the Gutenberg press. More new information is created for consumption every single day than in entire lifetimes just a couple of hundred years ago.

Since the 1500s, the amount of new information created for human consumption has increased infinitely, the number of opportunities available to the average human has gone up thousands of times, and yet the amount of time every single human has to peruse this new knowledge or explore and capitalize on the new opportunities is still the exact same since antiquity - 24 hours a day.

The amount of information has gone up billions of times, yet our brain is still the same as it was hundreds of thousands of years ago. 500 years is simply not enough time for evolution to catch up to process the unending barrage of new information and opportunities.

Too many opportunities, too little time

The way busy people traditionally dealt with information overload was by outsourcing it to other people.

Booking flight tickets? Hire an assistant.
Setting up meetings? Hire an assistant.
Dealing with too many mails? Hire an assistant.

In companies, layers of management peruse the endless barrage of news, emails and incoming opportunities and evaluate, filter and simplify them to present the most worthy ideas to senior management in the most concise form to decide which ones to pursue.

If you had the money, you employed other people to ingest all the new information and decide which opportunities to pursue. Personal assistants would take things off your plate, other executives would be in charge of execution, employees would do the work and you could be free to spend time only on the thorniest of problems.

You scaled your time by spending money and hiring people.

The key constraint in doing this was money.

You "bought" more time for yourself by spending money. But unless you were rich and had the ability to hire others, you would largely have to settle with the little chunk of time left over after all your chores of the day.

This is the specific step-change that AI now enables. It makes it possible for anyone and everyone to manage the ever increasing information overload, identify the best opportunities and capitalize on them.

AI scales your attention.

AI scales your attention

At its core, AI enables you to do things faster, cheaper and better than before in almost all domains of knowledge work. Once this is deployed to robots, we will likely see the same result in the physical world.

It scales the most precious limited resource we have - the limited 24 hours.

It can now handle the inane, repetitive, trivial and irritating tasks that you had to spend time on because there was no other way. What is more exciting (and a bit worrying) is it can also do non-repetitive and creative tasks in ways that were not possible before - opening up an entirely new frontier that was previously locked.

AI also helps navigate the information slop being thrown your way by the world. Indeed, all social media feeds are already filtered by AI algorithms to give you what you want.

All the implications of how AI will change our world stem from this simple insight -

AI scales your attention.

Entering the 10x world

Humanity's rate of progress is limited by how much time and effort we can spend in solving the problems we have without growing bankrupt.

The time and mental effort spent in completing work is limited by the tools and resources at our disposal.

Pushing a rock is hard-work and the ancient Sumerians could not move rocks faster or farther than their strength or animals allowed. Inventing wheels multiplied the distance they could push rocks while using the same amount of strength. Imagine if wheels were invented and the Sumerians rejected it by arguing the wheel could never move the rocks with as much care as they did.

That. is. ridiculous. of course.

What the wheel did was it allowed us to move objects and people far farther than before, allowing us to explore new lands and grow beyond the capacity of our limbs. Each mode of transport allowed us to travel farther, faster thus boosting progress at ever increasing rates along the way, while expending the same amount of time and energy.

In a similar vein, the internet put information exchange in overdrive, dropping the costs and time of communication to effectively zero. This allowed people anywhere to capitalize on new breakthroughs in one part of the world and apply it in another, unlocking progress for all.

Now, AI allows you to get more done, in less time, with less money than ever before. AI allows you to move beyond the limitations of your own mind and access the near best of humanity's knowledge pool at the click of a few keys.

In all likelihood this means we are about to enter a period of hyper-growth in the coming years. This will speed up even more once AI starts self-learning. At that point, we will likely enter an age of rapid progress unlike anything we've ever seen.

10x cheaper, 10x faster, 10x better - that is the (likely) future we are going towards.

AI is a rocket-ship for knowledge work. Either you get on and learn to fly it and explore the universe or stay back on land and get left behind.

AI will push the world to the tails.

We are moving from a world that accommodated and rewarded the vast majority of the population with a safe, steady pathway over the past couple of decades to one that now rewards the outliers.

The safe and predictable path to success for the past couple of generations was this: Study hard, go to college, get a job at a stable company and slowly rise through the ranks. Use your earnings to buy a house and raise a family. Retire decently well-off with an added cushion of social security.

Today however, that expectation is all but gone. We are already moving into a world of tails. Be it social media, music or investing.

If you net out the Mag 7 from the S&P 500, the remaining 493 stocks have barely gone anywhere in over a decade (comparatively speaking). Chart: Goldman Sachs

(via X Markets & Mayhem)*

Technology and the internet have already been pushing the world to winner-take-all markets for a while.

When distribution costs are zero, there is no reason to use the 5th best search engine, or the 10th best software or watch the 1000th best comedian on Youtube. There are no returns to being average.

• In the world of investing, the top 7 US tech companies drove most of the returns in the past couple of years.

• In the world of music streaming, the top 1% of artists account for the top 80% of earnings.

• In the world of social media, out of billions of users, 10 accounts have over 300 million followers.

The internet laid the foundation for instant information flow and AI can ride these rails to instantly provide the most powerful knowledge work tools to everyone in the world.

As with everything else, some people will be vastly more effective in wielding these tools to their advantage.

In the physical world, you are limited to the products and services in your location.
In the digital world, the person in Palo Alto and Pune have the exact same software and AI model.

Outside of the current cost differential, there is no reason to use an inferior AI model if a more powerful one is available. Because the digital world is 'winner-take-all', we've been seeing extreme outliers take most of the winnings.

Before AI, there were still physical limitations of knowledge work. You could not replicate the knowledge work of one human across everyone.

If you had a top engineer, you still had ONE 100x engineer. But it may soon be possible that one 100x engineer can co-ordinate a team of 100 agents with 2x capability and multiply their impact far faster and far more than hiring 100 more engineers.

Mediocre engineers will in all probability get replaced by AI, whereas the star engineers will see their income multiplied since they will be vastly more effective.

My hypothesis is we will see the same trend play out in ALL fields of knowledge work.

Indeed, if news of $250 million offers from Meta for the world's top AI talent are true, then we are already seeing this.

AI is getting increasingly good to the point where a mix of AI and other software tools can do certain tasks 10x better, faster and cheaper than humans in those specific tasks. E.g., Specific coding tasks, specific text generation, image and video generation, music generation - all of these are near human level with the right prompting, some even surpass the capabilities of most humans.

The rate at which AI has been evolving forces one to seriously consider the possibility that AI could one day possibly replace the work you're doing. I estimate that AI can certainly do, in an instant, a decent chunk of the drudge-work I would've spent weeks on during some of my Analyst days in Banking. The CEO of Goldman Sachs agrees.

Mediocrity will be replaced by AI.
Excellence will be rewarded by all.

The penalty for being average has never been so severe, but the payout for being extraordinary has never been higher. - @signull

In light of what we’ve discussed so far, what we can do about it?

The questions you need to answer

The simple question you have to answer in your current job is:

What can AI 10x? 100x? 1000x? in what I’m working on.

Sooner or later, the baseline performance expectation is going to shift from whatever you were doing before to now doing it 10x better or cheaper or faster by leveraging the tools at your disposal.

If the customer support team handles 100 queries a day, the baseline expectation will be that either they should handle 1000 queries a day, or the team size needs to shrink - with AI handling the additional load.

For every knowledge work job, the answer will be different -

• If you spent 1 week compiling a research report, the baseline expectation will now be to do 10 of these in a week.

• If you used to create 1 design a week, the baseline expectation will now be to do 5 of these, maybe even 10x better and more creative.

• If you used to write 1 news article a week, you might need to write 5-10 a week.

• If you used to ship 1 feature a quarter, the expectation will be to ship 10 every quarter.

The more important question you need to answer is:

What new thing is now possible with AI in my job that was not possible before?

The answer to this question might be even more important than the first one.

There are likely millions of niche problems which affect small groups of people but no solution was ever built for them because it was too expensive to build and not cost-effective to run it, but it may now be possible to do so.

Instead of the same broad solution for your entire group of customers, you can segment them even further and deliver a customized solution to each sub-group of customers in hyper-specific niches.

It helps to know your target customer.

The better you know them, the better you will be able to identify the unique problems they face which the market was not able to address before but can do so now. Those are the problems you should be focussed on and use AI to solve them.

Let's take the example of an SEO expert.

The first thing they might do in an AI first world is use AI to create SEO optimized content. But in a world where traditional search could possibly be replaced fully by direct answers instead of links, this approach might not be the best one. The more impactful approach will be to figure out and work on AI SEO i.e how to be included in the AI results. (E.g. Like this YC backed startup)

Direction before speed

A Ferrari can get you to your destination faster than a bicycle, but only if you know where you want to go, and only if you know how to control it, else it will simply lead you to crash and burn faster.

AI makes you faster at everything - including mistakes. A marketer can use AI to spam low-quality ads and 10x the number of new impressions but alienate core target customers leading to an overall drop in revenue. A student can use AI to research and skim 10x more articles but be none the wiser with it.

You can hit all the metrics yet lose the plot entirely if the metrics are the wrong ones.

If you don't know where you're going any road will take you there

-Lewis Carrol

What is going to matter is deciding WHAT metrics to hit, WHAT to use AI for, WHAT to build for your customers. AI helps with HOW to do things, but WHY to do them and WHAT to focus on is still, and will likely remain a human bastion for a while.

The value will likely shift from pure execution to those who can best allocate the abundant AI resources at our disposal. It seems increasingly likely that we are moving from The Knowledge Economy to The Allocation Economy as Dan Shipper calls it.

Deciding what to spend time on

The leverage you get from AI means WHAT you decide to focus on becomes far more valuable than before. The opportunity cost of working on the wrong thing has never been higher. Work on the right thing and you become a millionaire almost overnight, work on the wrong thing and you're stuck slogging in the median.

This post on the importance of prioritizing is more important than ever. But let us take it to a higher level of Abstraction to decide where AI can produce the best results.

Imagine a 2x2 matrix, with the Y axis consisting of work tasks - ranging from standardized tasks - like generating a weekly report for senior management on the finances of the company, to more bespoke needs like hiring new employees.

On the X-axis you have the value these tasks generate for the company - ranging from low value to high value.

Traditional software is great at handling structured data and well defined processes. In a deterministic environment, it is best to use traditional software - like in cases where you want to store candidate information in a database and generate a report on it.

Where AI now starts playing a role, is in the vague, varied contexts that humans can navigate with ease, but traditional software cannot. This is the new layer where AI builds on top of traditional software and also unlocks new use cases where there was previously no alternative to human labour.

If you're using AI, the first place to start exploring it is in areas where traditional software has not yet made a dent because of the unstructured nature of that work.

Take the role of SDRs (sales development representatives).

They reach out to leads, qualify them and set up further calls, handling all pre-sales activities needed to eventually make a sale. This is a highly unstructured environment where inputs and outputs might be thematically similar but can be quite varied depending on the person.

Traditional software could at best auto-populate snippets to be copy-pasted in the emails with canned replies, but AI can now customize emails to each lead and continue following up autonomously to book meetings with the salesperson.

In this case, a good bunch of tasks of the SDR are mostly automated away leaving human SDRs to manage the exceptions when the AI goes off the rails. This is an example of automating the specific tasks of researching leads, sending emails and setting up meetings for follow-ups. But you need a human-in-the-loop for now to handle the exceptions, and humans still need to step in and take over the sales cycle after the call is set up.

At this stage, AI-augmentation tools like AI notetakers and AI first CRMs are starting to play a key role. They automate away tedious parts of data-entry and provide a summary of all the past interactions with a potential client automatically, thus augmenting the sales capabilities of the salesperson.

For something like investment research, AI firmly augments the capabilities of the Equity analyst. It can screen through thousands of pages of transcripts and extract the key points that might influence the decision to buy or sell a stock. This was impossible before without a literal army of human analysts poring through each line for endless hours every day.

The work must have both contextual and economic value

In his article on the Fugu guide to jobs in a world of AI, argues that you don't want to just look at what AI can do, but also look for where it breaks, what are the new constraints AI generates and position yourself to solve those constraints.

These have to be jobs with a high contextual value, but also a high economic value.

The fugu chef is a perfect example because it has both high contextual value and high economic value. You can't eat the fugu fish (which is abundantly available), without it being prepared by a highly trained and licensed chef, else you will likely die, and precisely because of the rarity of the skill in preparing this dish safely, it has a high economic and status value.

In the example of sales roles, in a world of AI, while the role of an SDR has high contextual value, the economic value may be diminished since AI can take over many of the tasks almost completely. The Account Executives however still have both high contextual and economic value since they own the revenue generation accountability. In that sense the role of an SDR may evolve to get and serve 10x more leads, or just be bundled into the work of an Account Executive.

AI makes everyone else faster as well

AI can 10x your content creation process, but it can do so for everyone else too.

The result is we are all going to be drowning in an avalanche of AI generated slop - on social media, in emails, in calls, in any form of digital communication.

The ones that break through the noise will be those that master and own a hyper-specific niche that the customer cares about.

Everything else will be lost in the cacophony of noise.

This is also why it is possible that some of the pure productivity gains from AI will be erased by AI itself. This is one key reason why we may not see a 10x increase in productivity.

Because AI scales attention, it does so for everyone. While you can now use it to scan through the endless opportunities available, the amount of distracting and false information is also going to increase 10x.

Companies will use AI to maximize their goals, this means using it to 10x email outreach via automated emails, or LinkedIn messages, or creating 10 times more content than before or personalizing every single marketing message that gets sent out. Influencers will create media that serves the algorithm to get the most engagement.

The end result is going to be one where the amount of information created everyday is going to 10x, and you will HAVE to rely on AI to sift through the inevitable slop to reject the noise and find the information that truly aligns with our vision and goals.

This is why a chunk of the productivity gains from AI will be pruned to combat the problems arising from the rise of AI.

AI will likely re-invent the way we work in ways we can't yet predict.

The entire economy including knowledge work is geared and built for a world of humans. But we are now entering a world where AI assists or takes over many parts of the knowledge economy, possibly even a large chunk. Are you accounting for that future possibility?

Targeting the AI agent not the user

Take the simple example of documentation.

All documentation is written for humans to read and understand the instructions and how to use the software or device.

In a world where AI (or robots) can understand instructions and write code, humans may not be the first entity to look at the documentation - An AI will likely take the first pass, and then humans might step in.

Humans read text or watch videos. We like beautifully formatted and structured text.

AI does not care about the styling. It prefers JSON, or XML or Markdown (or any other new paradigm that the industry might settle on).

This means that all documentation platforms will have to adapt and have a machine-readable format of their software so that AI can interact with it. We are seeing a variety of approaches on this front specifically in the world of software with LLMs.txt files, but we are likely to see this trend in every single knowledge work tool.

Or take Marketing - The current industry is geared towards getting humans to salivate at the product and eventually buy it. But if the world of the future is navigated by AI agents on behalf of their users, then your marketing ALSO needs to target the AI agents rather than just the humans, and it might look very different from current approaches to marketing.

Indeed, marketers already target algorithms rather than humans.

The reason people write SEO optimized articles is so that the Google algorithm ranks it higher. It does not matter whether it is truly useful or not. Whether the user's query could be better answered in 100 words rather than 750 words. If you can convince the algorithms, then it is assumed that humans will surely click on it too.

Given AI scales your attention, I would wager that we will likely see a future where an AI version of ourselves that knows all of our preferences navigates boundless opportunities - inbound emails, messages, posts, videos, and filters only the ones that best suit us.

Which jobs go and which jobs stay?

Microsoft recently published a new report on the jobs that are most at risk. The World Economic forum released its Future of Jobs Report 2025 which estimates a loss of 92 million jobs and the creation of over 170 million new ones

While no one can predict whether this view of the future will come to pass and which jobs will be wiped out, and which won't - there are some things we can be certain of.

The overwhelming trend in any industry touched by technology is one of an increase in speed and a decrease in cost.

As Marc Andressen points out in his article - Why AI won't lead to unemployment

“This chart shows price changes, adjusted for inflation, across a dozen major sectors of the economy.

As you can see, we actually live in two different economies.

The lines in blue are the sectors where technological innovation is allowed to push down prices while increasing quality. The lines in red are the sectors where technological innovation is not permitted to push down prices; in fact, the prices of education, health care, and housing as well as anything provided or controlled by the government are going to the moon, even as those sectors are technologically stagnant.

We are heading into a world where a flat screen TV that covers your entire wall costs $100, and a four year college degree costs $1 million, and nobody has anything even resembling a proposal on how to systemically fix this.

Why? The sectors in red are heavily regulated and controlled and bottlenecked by the government and by those industries themselves.[...] The regulated sectors continuously grow as a percentage of GDP; the less regulated sectors shrink. At the limit, 99% of the economy will be the regulated, non-technological sectors, which is precisely where we are headed.”

On the impact of AI, I think we will likely see all of the predications made by people play out to varying degrees at the same time•

• ⁠massive job losses

• massive number of new jobs created

• ⁠massive wealth for AI Natives

• ⁠stagnant growth for many

• record number of people on some form of universal basic income

• millions of new companies

• humanity starts taking on many more moonshots - like reaching Kardashev 1

Your phone today has more computing power than the rocket we sent to the moon. It is safe to assume that technology will continue to make things cheaper, faster and better, while simultaneously opening up new frontiers.

Some jobs will stay, some will go away. Most knowledge work jobs will evolve. The baseline expectation for any knowledge worker is going to be to 10x their output in any way shape or form or take a pay cut or be replaced.

Go Big or Go Home seems to be the motto for success in the coming wave.

Either you become prolific and reach the pinnacle or you're forced to languish in the depths of average.

Malcolm Gladwell popularized 10,000 hours as the time you need to put into anything to gain mastery over it. While the number is debatable, directionally it is true. You need to put in the hours and get to 10,000 iterations1 to master something.

The greatest athletes were also some of the most prolific. Kobe Bryant once made 100,000 free throws one summer to correct a flow due to an older injury

To correct the flaw, Kobe said, he went to the gym over the summer and made 100,000 shots. That's 100,000 made, not taken. He doesn't practice taking shots, he explained. He practices making them.

The summer Kobe Bryant made 100,000 shots

In business, it is fitting that the richest man on the planet is also one of the most prolific businessmen ever. Few people can run 3 industry-leading companies, in 3 different industries while also tinkering around to make the government more efficient.

Some of the most famous writers were also the most prolific.

Isaac Asimov wrote more than 500 books, averaging ~70,000 words per book during his lifetime. Stephen King has written over 60 books and everyday at 8:00 am, he sits down with his cup of tea and writes 2,000 words in 4 hours, usually completing the first drafts of his books in one month.2

Speed and time are two key components of becoming prolific.

The faster you are, the more you can get done in the same amount of time and the more consistent you are over the years, the more your advantage compounds to a level others can’t match.

Here’s Kobe Bryant explaining how getting in 1 extra practice a day, put him years ahead of his competition.

Being prolific means pushing beyond reasonable

The greats often stand out by demanding more than what is reasonable from themselves and those around them. It can be surprising to learn just the sheer amount of effort people at the top of their field have put in and continue to do so.

Seth Godin has published a blog daily for more than a decade. He’s approaching almost 10,000 posts. That is incredible and far beyond what any reasonable blogger would write. He’s also written 20 books.

The consistency is the secret sauce.

If you’re aiming for greatness, push beyond what others think is normal. Push beyond what you think is normal right now. This clip from The Last Dance hits it out of the park.

It is not enough to start; you must finish and move on to the next project.

The next exercise, the next test, the next paper, the next essay, the next program, the next shot, the next software.

The first 90% of the project takes 90% of the time. The final 10% takes 90% of the time

-Tom Cargill, Bell Labs3

You learn things at the end that you will not learn at the start or the middle.

You will learn things when you revisit what you've already shipped that you cannot learn without shipping.

You don't need to ship publicly

But after you've reached a certain level of proficiency, you will benefit more from shipping publicly than keeping it private.

The internet is a noisy place. Most people will not care about your single post, song, video, program. They are too busy drowning in a sea of information. If they do care, you get at best 1-2 days in the media cycle before the algorithm moves to the next new thing.

The reason to post publicly is people will eventually pay attention when you put out great work consistently.

No one cares about what did not work

You might worry that you're not putting out your best work. The Beatles wrote 100s of songs and it is their top 10-20 songs that cemented them as the one of the greatest bands in the history of music.

Some of the world’s most successful entrepreneurs have failed multiple times before succeeding. Richard Branson, founder of the Virgin Group, launched over 100 companies, Virgin Cola, Virgin Cars, Virgin Brides, Virgin Clothing, and Virgin Vodka - all of which failed. Does anyone remember them?

The important thing is to release the bangers. Since you can't know before-hand what will work or not in most forms of creative work, it is better to put it out there than not. You might have to release the same work multiple times4. You might have to launch the same thing multiple times to catch the market’s attention. But that is ok. No one is keeping track except you.

The edge in today's economy is being prolific.

Either you steadily gain trust by putting your work out in the public over time or you improve your skills enough to stand out with each new thing you put out.

Either way, the path to getting there is becoming prolific.

It has never been easier to be more prolific and share your work with the world.
It has never been harder to stand out.

Before I begin, some context: Occasionally, I'll think of ideas in the shower or during a walk. For some ideas, I’ll do a quick Google search to find any existing literature. In this case I’ve found two things:

1. Elon Musk said the same thing a few years ago.

2. Google AI now provides a quick summary that gives a decent explanation.

The first one is a line, the second one provides an explanation, but it does not help you visualize the problem of context-switching. For that, I present a visuals-rich format for today’s post.

Enjoy!

When you pay focused attention to something, it might look like a contiguous block like the first one below. You might also call this Flow.

But I’ve found my attention increasingly looks more like the subsequent fractured ones, and I suspect it does for a lot of us as well.

Instead of focusing on one thing for a long amount of time, I’m switching from one context to another, from one piece of information to another, from longer formats to shorter ones.

The problem with doom-scrolling is you are rapidly switching contexts i.e rapidly switching between multiple threads of thought, most of which are new and not attached to a pre-existing ‘knowledge tree’.

The content we consume on social media is largely dictated by algorithms. Spending an hour on them means going through hundreds of ephemeral strands of new information, few of which might be useful to us later on.

Mindless perusal of unrelated knowledge adds no lasting roots, because there is no trunk to attach to.

An abundance of scattered knowledge does not translate to more effectiveness because

Every time you switch contexts, you pay a switching fee.

Your mind needs to not only drop the previous context, but also needs to get up to speed on the current task and the entire context surrounding that task.

This takes time and mental energy.

This is precisely why email can be such a pain.

You're dealing with tens or hundreds of different contexts one after another, each with a different background and each requiring a different solution.

Some people handle context switching much better than others E.g., Managers. The best example of the difference in operating styles between people was laid out by Paul Graham in his famous essay Maker's schedule, Managers schedule.

Makers like software engineers, writers or others involved in building and creating things, necessarily require long blocks of focused time to think and create.

Managers, however, are constantly shuffling between multiple contexts, ranging from dealing with employee problems to strategy to customer problems and more in the course of a single day. Their day is also peppered with multiple meetings.

How do you deal with context-switching?

Whether you like it or not, you're likely dealing with switching contexts multiple times a day, sometimes hundreds of times over the course of a few hours, like while watching Youtube Shorts.

One way to counteract the downsides of context-switching is to simply do fewer things.

Dieter Rams, the famous German industrial designer behind Braun’s design brilliance, who also inspired Johnny Ive and Apple products like the iPod, has a great line.

Less but better.

Maintain a high standard of excellence in all the things that you do, and only do those things where you can strive to hit that standard of excellence.

The fewer things you indulge in at the same time, the lesser your need for context switching.

The immediate benefit of doing fewer things but going deeper in each of them is you increase your expertise. Every new thing you learn about a particular task is akin to laying down new roots and adding branches to your existing knowledge tree, strengthening it.

Doing fewer things is fine, but work is always demanding and will require you to switch between a lot of different contexts. To avoid paying the switching attention fee, batching tasks together can be a very effective tweak to your workflow.

An example of how your schedule might look like is as follows

If you have three different concurrent projects, it might be useful to split your time across all of them by assigning one day of the week to each of them. Indeed that is how Elon Musk runs his multiple companies.

And within each day as well, you can batch certain tasks together.

• All meetings can be held at the start of the day or the end of the day.

• All email can be handled in one hour blocks maybe twice a day instead of breaking up the flow while you're working on something that requires uninterrupted.

Here are some more examples to spark ideas.

• Use social media only when you have 5-10 minute blocks where you're waiting for the bus or at a doctors office or somewhere else (Long blocks of free time are too precious to squander on anything other than focused work or leisure)

• Consider replacing social media with long form reading. I save all long-form reads on Omnivore and then read it when I have bits of time.

• Consider books instead of social media or articles. I carry my Supernote everywhere and either read books or take notes during small blocks of time.

• Manage your schedule in a way you have contiguous blocks of time for focussed work - e.g, Morning 6-8am for writing. Evening 8-10pm for coding etc.

The fundamental idea is still the same - find a way to reduce the amount of context switching that you need to do on a daily basis, and use the extra time and mental energy to work on the things that matter most to you.

There is no escaping context-switching but we can guard ourselves against its downsides by simply planning and structuring our work a little bit better.

Note: All drawings are hand-drawn by yours truly on the Supernote Nomad

The clearest sign of a newbie in any creative field is when their first question is, "Which tools are you using?"

It’s only natural. I get it because that was usually my first question when I started any creative endeavor.

• Designing posters? Photoshop or CorelDraw?

• Editing Videos? Adobe Premiere Pro, Windows Movie Maker, or Vegas Pro?

• Filming videos? Nikon or Canon; Kit lens, Zoom lens, or Prime lens, which focal length?

• Guitar? Yamaha, Gibson, Les Paul, Epiphone, or a no-name brand?

• Piano? Yamaha or Casio, digital keyboard or an upright piano

• Music Production? Logic, Abelton, or Fruity Loops (now FL Studio)?

• Programming? Which framework?1

Underlying the question was an implicit expectation that the tool will compensate for my lack of skill and would magically create an output better than my beginner skills.

If you talk to the pros they’ll tell you, it matters not which tools you use, especially at the start. When you’re starting out, use the tools that are available.

Tools will not determine your greatness, you will.

Consider the Sistine Chapel:

Despite modern advancements over the past 500 years, Michelangelo's masterpiece remains unparalleled. What makes it incredible is the technique, skill and vision, not the brushes and the paint.

True artistry transcends tools.

Tools give you leverage to do the work better, faster, and cheaper, but they can't tell you if the work will be meaningful, valuable, or worth doing at all.

Tools can't tell you what to create or what people will like. Only you can decide what to work on. Only you can decide what signals to act on.

Tools can make you efficient; you make yourself effective2.

Take Disney for example.

Today's animation technology is infinitely better than 100 years ago. The artists and animators are arguably 100s of times more efficient in creating and animating the scenes. The films are certainly more detailed, much larger in scale, and have visuals that were impossible decades ago.

Does this mean Disney is any more effective in creating lovable films that will endure?

Are any of their recent films as memorable as the studio's beloved classics like 1937's Snow White and the Seven Dwarves?

Not really.

Tools can make you efficient; how you use them determines your effectiveness.

The chasm between the Physical and the Digital

Professionals know that tools are just a multiplier of your skills. Without the underlying skills, tools are useless.

We understand this intuitively with physical tools.

I have no experience in carpentry and I’m not skilled with a saw. Giving me a power saw will make me much more efficient at cutting things than a saw, but no more effective in creating useful furniture. Worse, my effectiveness might be negative, as using it incorrectly could leave me without a couple of fingers.

Yet, with digital tools, that understanding seems to be absent.

Worse, we might shift the blame to the tools instead of our ineffectiveness in using them to further our goals.

If I cut my finger using a power saw, I wouldn't blame the saw for it, I would blame my own lack of skill. But with digital tools like smartphones and social media, we’re all too happy to blame the algorithms.

It’s true that Social media is addictive. Billions of dollars have been spent on the algorithms to keep you hooked for as long as possible. But what is usually not discussed enough is that the algorithms are only giving you what you want.

You can walk away from your tools any time you choose.

Smartphones are incredible tools that help us save memories, find our way with maps, find any information at any time, connect with our loved ones across the Atlantic, and much more. Simply removing social media apps from them removes their addictive nature.

But even social media, for all its addictive features, is an incredibly useful tool.

When used correctly, it lets you find your tribe, build your business, and indulge your curiosity all while munching on some delicious memes. It's the excessive and un-intentional use of social media that causes problems.

The efficiency of new age tools

Most tools, physical or digital have a learning curve. The most complex ones often require hundreds of hours of training to build the skills needed to use the tools effectively. Like AutoCAD for construction design, or Blender for 3D modeling.

The latest digital tools, though, are different.

They can improve your output without any skills. And like traditional tools, they have no addictive component.

They require no more than a description to generate screenplays, create songs, or create a movie scene, or award-winning artwork.

The new-age AI tools abstract away the thousands of hours needed to learn the underlying skills to create a beautiful image, a catchy song, or a moving movie and generate the output at literally the stroke of keys on your keyboard.

New age tools let you create at the speed of thought

Their output might not be too creative or even good, but they reduce the friction in getting started and allow you to iterate fast. And they are getting better at a rapid clip.

They increase your efficiency to an extent that was impossible a couple of years ago. Anyone can write a long blog post in an instant, summarize documents in an instant, and create images that would've taken tens or hundreds of hours to create. The same goes for audio and video.

What about effectiveness?

Do new age tools make you any more effective than before? Not necessarily.

For one, the ease of creation creates a cacophony of competition.

If you’re a creative, your work now must be truly exquisite to stand out in the crowded sea of endless competition from all the new creators.

But there are people making millions using AI and there are people whose lives have changed little from AI.

This is because efficiency is determined by tools, but effectiveness is determined by you.

When tools are used correctly, you can be vastly more efficient and effective!

When people say any new software will make you more productive, what they are saying is it you it will make you more efficient. AI helps you write a blog post in 1 minute.

Whether it helps you with your goals still depends on you because effectiveness depends completely on you.

Effectiveness depends on what you're trying to achieve.
Effectiveness is progress towards your goals.

If you aim to start a coffee shop, and you use AI to generate descriptions of your coffee, posters for the shop and you use social media to promote your new shop to reach more customers, you're using these tools to become more effective, while being efficient as well.

Direction before speed

To be effective, you need to know where you're going and then use tools to help you get there faster.

A car is much faster and much more efficient than a bicycle in terms of moving from point A to point B.

If you want to visit your grandma, who lives two hours away, the car is more efficient and effective.

If your aim is to just explore a wide trail through a wooded area to explore the scene, the bicycle, while being an in-efficient mode of transport, is still a much more effective tool since it helps you explore the forest better.

Whether you have a bicycle or a Ferrari - if you don't know your destination, you will only get lost faster.

Even when you don't know your direction, you can still use tools to figure out your direction faster.

Action produces information.

The faster you iterate, the more information you'll get on what works and does not. Tools can help you iterate faster, eliminate uncertainty, and understand which direction you need to pursue. Then, you can decide which tools truly aid your effectives.

A saw is of little use in my hand and magic in a skilled carpenter's hand.

Tools only work when you do3.

Effectiveness in using tools depends on the user’s skill level and on what they want to create and whether the tools help them get closer to their goals.

As we grapple with the implications of AI and its vast web of impact on our day to day lives, it’s worthwhile to consider how we can wield it to help us achieve what we want.

Tools make you efficient. You decide how they make you effective.

We were getting some minor construction work done at home, and instead of the planned 10 days, it took 1 month.

For a month, the house was turned upside down. That's problematic for someone working from home. Eventually, I started working from the nearby Starbucks.

While I was able to manage office work, all my personal projects went for a toss. Not being able to work on them was stressing me out.

I knew the exact cause, but I could do little about it.

Now that the construction work is done, I can do all my work in peace. The stress caused by the construction project is gone, but something new will eventually take its place.

To deal with Stress, it’s helpful to understand what causes it at the general level.

What is the cause behind any stress?

For things in your control

Here's my theory -

For things in your control, Stress is the gap between Intention and Action. It is the gap between what you planned to do, and what you actually did

We can show this as a simple diagram.

If your intention was to start your own business, but you never take any action to make it a reality, that will weigh on your mind and stress you over the years.

The magnitude of the gap between action and intention determines your stress.

The further you stray from your intended goals, the more stressed you will be. Why you strayed away from your intended goals does not matter much.

In the above case, even though working on my personal projects was in my control, I couldn't do it because I had to deal with the construction work first.

Your stress is proportional to your distraction (from your goals)

This more sinister kind of stress is procrastination on your goals. It can be a slow burning chronic stressor. Never rising high enough to force you to take action, but weighing down on you over the years.

The more you avoid the things that you know you should be doing, the more it can add up over time and lead to more stress.

To reduce stress for things in your control, I think there are only 2 things we can do

1. Do the thing you intended to do (avoid distractions!)
2. Change your intention to match what you are doing.

Alternatively, not having any goals is also an option (though that has its own challenges)

For things outside your control

Stress is the gap between expectation and results

What compounds this stress is not knowing what the results1 will be.

Every student faces this stress until the results are out.
Every person working on a big launch or a big presentation faces this stress.
Every person pursuing something meaningful faces this stress.

We know this kind of stress as pressure. The pressure to perform well.

At its core, this pressure is the uncertainty and worry that you might not get the results you desire.

If you don't care about the results, the gap between your expectations and results will always be zero and you won’t be stressed.

While this works in theory, in practice, you will always care about something and someone. And there will always be times when the results don't match your expectations.

What can we do then to avoid this stress?

Nothing.

You can’t avoid it. The best we can do is manage it.

We must deal with it however best we can on our own.

The Bhagavad Gita offers us timeless advice on dealing with expectations and results.

You have a right to perform your prescribed duties, but you are not entitled to the fruits of your actions. Never consider yourself to be the cause of the results of your activities, nor be attached to inaction.

- Bhagavad Gita Chapter 2, Verse 47

Tennis legend Billie Jean King also offers some perspective:

"Pressure is a privilege....Usually, if you have tremendous pressure, it's because an opportunity comes along." She remembers thinking about the phrase on Centre Court at Wimbledon, realising that she had been dreaming about this moment and feeling a lot of pressure. Even then, she could appreciate how incredible it was to be standing there. "Most of the time... if you really think about it… usually, it's a privilege.”

Stress is something all of us have to deal with, whether we like it or not.

But if we can understand it a bit better, we can diminish its power to affect us and deal with stress much more effectively.

In India, the 10th board examination is the first milestone exam in every students life. The results will carry forward for decades. They will determine the field you get into next year, which will determine the field you’ll get in college.

The exams are so important that if you fail the exam, there is a separate check during your passport application in some cases.

In my 10th board exams, I scored 150 out of 150 in Mathematics.

This was monumental to me because of two reasons.

1. No one in the history of my school had ever scored a perfect score in Math. (Every year, some students scored 148 or 149, but never a perfect score)

2. I was one of only ~16 people out of roughly 1.6 million students that year to get a perfect score. The top 0.001%

The reason I got the perfect score in Math was because of Prof. Shankar. He was a quirky man in his 60s, with thick rectangular glasses and an even thicker mustache. He was just shy of retiring when I joined his tutoring.

We feared him as much as we admired him. More than once, I recall seeing him twist student's ears for not completing their homework. 

He did not tolerate bullshit.

80% of the time, he taught us Mathematics. For some reason, other subjects like social sciences weren't deemed important. 

If it was not for him, I would have never scored a 150 in Math, I might've scored a 148 or 149, but not a 150.

Why? Because he did not tolerate the Chaalse attitude.

The "Chaalse" Attitude leads to mediocrity 

The Gujarati word "Chaalse" roughly translates to "its OK" or "it'll do".

Got a less-than-expected raise at work? Chaalse
Scored 95 out of 100? Chaalse 
Anything go wrong in life? Chaalse 
Anything went right? Chaalse

When things go wrong, and you're down in the dumps, chaalse brings solace. It helps you dig yourself out of a hole and lets you know it's not the end of the world. There is a time and place to use the Chaalse attitude (we’ll cover that at another time).

But when you're aiming for the stars, looking to put a dent in the universe, burning with an insatiable fire to leave your mark on the world, or just wanting to do better, the the chaalse attitude might as well be poison arrow laced with the salacious goodness and comfort of a warm blanket on a cold winter night keeping you permanently sedated in the world of your dreams and preventing you from making them a reality.

How?

Because it makes mediocrity acceptable. 

It makes lower standards acceptable.
It makes lousy design acceptable.
It makes shortcuts acceptable.
It makes anything less than excellence acceptable.

It says it's OK if you did not get a perfect score. You scored 149, it's OK. 

When you start settling for less than exceptional results, you start the decline of excellence.

Ask any legend or master in any field who has spent their life in the pursuit of excellence, and they'll tell you.

No. Nai Chaalse. (It won’t do)

Here’s an example of Jerry Seinfeld on why the show was so successful.

If you want to be the best, you can't lose and say Chaalse.
If you want exceptional results, you can’t skip practice and say Chaalse.

If you want to reach the top, you must reject the "Chaalse" attitude.

Professor Shankar knew this. 

He wanted us to aim for perfection. Aiming and preparing for anything less was not acceptable. the results were out of our hands, but the preparation was in our control.

He did 3 things that pushed me to get the perfect score.

1. He established a high standard - Score full marks in each exam. Every-time.
2. He made us practice, practice, practice - By the time I took the exam, I had practiced both of the maths textbooks, end-to-end, more than seven times.
3. He did not tolerate the "Chaalse" attitude. He called it out everytime we missed a single mark.

"Tumhaara "chaalse" attitude idhar nahi chalega”
(your “it’s ok” attitude will not work here!) 

- Prof. Shankar

The mission's single-minded focus and clarity helped me practice, practice, and then practice some more until every single thing was perfect. 

Every answer, every single step of getting to every answer was perfect. That was the only way to get the perfect score.

Once you do know what works and what you want, aim as high as possible, aim for perfection and most importantly reject the chaalse attitude.

Occasionally, you might come across an old, tarnished utensil that is too hard to clean. No amount of scrubbing or detergent can clean it because it is so dirty.

This is usually because it was probably misused or ignored for a long while. Maybe it was never cleaned after it was damaged; maybe it started rusting because it was improperly stored. The reasons don't matter now; what matters is you now have a tarnished utensil with hard-to-remove stains.

But if you're persistent about cleaning it, your effort, combined with vinegar, baking soda, some special ingredients and 'elbow grease' will eventually yield results.

The tarnish eventually starts to wear off.

The utensil might never be the same; it might still be permanently scarred, yet it will still be better than before.

Life works the same way.

If you don't follow your purpose and if you don't do the things you know deep down you should be doing, a part of you will atrophy.

Maybe not your body, maybe not your mind, but something worse - your soul.

The longer you go without cleaning up your act, the worse the damage.

But there is hope. You can still recover. It might be painful and take much more time and effort, but you can reverse the damage.

Yet, scars will remain; memories of what you've endured.

But isn't that part of being human?

Isn't that part of life itself?

If you have a tarnished utensil, start cleaning.

The Clay theory of life states that the entire world is made up of clay.

Some types of clay are soft, and some are exceedingly hard to mould. 

Each type of clay has its own properties and can be used with other types of clay to shape the world into your vision.

The world is made up of clay, and so are you.

When you are young, the clay is soft. You are easy to mould into any shape. But being young, you cannot mould yourself just yet. You are moulded by your parents, friends, relatives, people around you and their thoughts, dreams, and environment.

As you grow older, you start gaining the ability to mould and sculpt yourself in the way you want. 

But the clay also starts hardening.

You are free to sculpt yourself but are still influenced by the clay around you. And you will always have some part of your early childhood mould.

Everything you read, everything you see, everything you listen to, and everyone you speak to plays a role in determining how you decide to mould yourself. 

If the clay around is round, you will likely choose to be round;
If the clay around is colourful, you will lean towards becoming colourful;
If the clay around you is full of sharp edges, you will carve sharp edges

But you still have the power to choose. 

You can choose to move to a different environment which has the best clay for you.

The older you get, the more your clay hardens. 
The more difficult it gets to change your mould. 
After a certain age, it is almost impossible. 

When you can't sculpt yourself, learn from experts.
When you want specific features, but don't know how, take the help of others.
When you find someone who needs your expertise in sculpting themselves, help them.

Mould Yourself and the World

Just as you are made of clay, so is the entire world.
Just as you can mould yourself, you can also mould the world around you as you see fit. 

Some things are easier to mould than others. 

You can mould smaller blobs of clay yourself.
For bigger, harder blobs, you will need people to join you on your journey to help sculpt the massive blob of clay into the vision you have.

But everyone has the capability to mould themselves and the world around them. 

It is a question of how much time, effort, energy and luck you need to sculpt the world the way you want.

If you have kids, you are moulding the basic structure of their lives.

While you live, there is no escaping the continuous moulding, re-moulding and sculpting. 

Embrace it.

Men are born soft and supple;
dead, they are stiff and hard.
Plants are born tender and pliant;
dead, they are brittle and dry.

Thus whoever is stiff and inflexible
is a disciple of death.
Whoever is soft and yielding
is a disciple of life.

The hard and stiff will be broken.
The soft and supple will prevail.

Tao Te Ching - Verse 76

Happy New Year! This is going to be a short one.

I am a big proponent of planning and reviewing. Plans force you to clarify what you want and measure your progress.

Planning and reviews are just an extension of your thinking at a specific time and your evaluation of your own planning abilities.

Plans serve as reminders of what you need to get done and how so you can avoid all other distractions

Without plans, you don’t know where you’re going.
Without reviews, you don’t know if you’re following the plan.

With both, you can make course corrections as you see fit.

Planning is usually easy, but there is an invisible resistance to reviewing those plans later. The resistance is even stronger if your plans are scattered across pages, notes and software, and are not readily accessible.

To solve this, make one single change.

Instead of writing plans on paper or in a note-taking app, write your monthly and yearly plans as emails and schedule them to be sent your future self.

How it works

At the start of the month, write your plan in an email and send it to yourself, but instead of sending it now, click the arrow next to Send and select Schedule Send.

Schedule it to be delivered to your email address at the end of the month1.

Now, the plan is set, and at the end of the month, you'll get an email from past you on what you had decided to do versus what you actually got done. (if you ever need to recall the original plan, just check your Scheduled folder).

Repeat this every month.

This method works because it makes your plans accessible and introduces zero friction in reviewing them to take further action.

You can apply the same idea to weekly, quarterly or yearly planning as well.

What should the plan look like?

I usually make all items in the plan as either input or output goals.

E.g,

• Input Goal: Exercise 5 hours a week

• Output Goal: Hit 1k views on Youtube

Here’s a template you can use

Email Subject:

W1-2024 Plan

(Replace the number by week or month; E.g., M1-2024 Plan for the monthly plan. Add a “planning” label to all these emails)

Email Body

Single Outcome

[ ] Add here

Work

[ ] - Item #1

[ ] - Item #2

[ ] - Item #3

Health

[ ] - Item #1

[ ] - Item #2

[ ] - Item #3

Personal

[ ] - Item #1

[ ] - Item #2

[ ] - Item #3

Relationships

[ ] - Item #1

[ ] - Item #2

[ ] - Item #3

To know what to prioritize, use the following 4 frameworks in conjunction with the Life framework

Cheer and have a stupendously successful 2024

- Atman

Note: Special thanks to for this ultra useful planning hack

Everyone wants to be rich and successful. Yet, only a few make the orbit-shifting moves that will get them to the top.

To try and explain why, I present:

The Electron Theory of Careers

The Electron Theory of careers states that from a career perspective, we are all a bit like electrons in an atomic orbit. Once we enter a particular career orbit, we tend to follow the bounds of that orbit, with occasional jumps to higher 'energy' orbits depending on the career.

A simplified (non-quantum1) view of the orbits would be something like this.

The career you choose determines your payoff arc.

Some start at a higher level and are thus placed higher on the payoff arc (more money, prestige, power, opportunities); most start at the bottom.

Over time, some jump to higher orbits, usually with an external catalyst that helps us level up to a higher orbit, thus progressing on the payoff arc.

Some sustain the higher levels, and some fall.

Some choose the lower levels willingly; many are stuck to it.

Once you are in a specific orbit, if you continue to perform at an adequate level, you will progress in that orbit, and the payoff curve will climb ever higher until a particular stage.

Some payoff curves are flatter; others are more curved, and some are exponential.

Some people will outperform at every level and jump to higher orbits far faster than others. But the payoff curve remains more or less the same in the same career.

The critical point to note is that this is true of every career.

If you are a taxi driver, you're on the taxi driver payoff curve.
If you are a security guard, you're on the security guard payoff curve.
If you are a big-tech engineer, you're on the big-tech engineer payoff curve.
If you are in banking, you're on the banker payoff curve.

As you jump to higher levels, you also progress along the payoff curve.

You gain more money, more prestige, and likely more influence and power. The higher levels, of course, come with a lot more accountability, responsibility, risk, and possibly stress.

The payoff curve for a daily wage laborer is much flatter than for a software engineer in Big Tech. The labourer's salary and prestige do not increase with experience as much as they do for the engineers.

But regardless of the profession, you can still jump to higher orbits, as we'll cover later.

The Electron Theory of careers is as true for the tea seller, the cobbler, the carpenter, and the plumber as it is for the computer engineer, the lawyer, and the banker.

People stay in the same career orbit because of familiarity, fear and constraints.

Consider the payoff curve of the following two careers.

The payoff for career 1 is much higher. If you are in career 2, it makes sense to shift to career 1.

And some people do shift careers, not necessarily for the material payoff.

Electrons tend to stay in the same orbit unless they absorb energy to jump to a higher level.

We do the same.

We follow the principle of energy conservation. To move to a higher level, you must necessarily do more (or something different) than you currently do to jump to a higher orbit.

This is true for jumps at every orbit.

Jumping orbits is always hard

It is as scary, risky and hard for a daily wage worker to jump to the Big Tech engineer orbit, as it is for a Big Tech engineer to jump on the centimilionaire arc. They are both jumping from different starting orbits, but the perceived fear, risk, effort they have to deal with internally to get to eevn higher orbits may be similar.

This is because changing behavior is challenging.

Add to that external constraints like lack of free time, inadequate skills, lack of ability, overbearing responsibilities, etc.

If you've been in a particular orbit for a while, it will likely be relatively stable. It seems that the natural inclination of humans (like electrons) is also to remain in their steady state. The longer you’ve been in one orbit, the more inertia you have to overcome.

As Newton said

An object at rest remains at rest, and an object in motion stays in motion at constant speed and in a straight line unless acted on by an unbalanced force.

Changing skills or careers takes work. It requires sustained effort and confronting the possibility of starting from zero in a new field.

It can also mean giving up the safe, stable orbit you're on in favor of a new, unexplored one with an unclear payoff.

Take the example of Jeff Bezos, who famously quit his prestigious, well-paying job as a senior VP at a hedge fund to start Amazon.

Consider his potential payoff curves. If he had not left, he would likely still have been fabulously wealthy, but would he have become the richest man in the world?

Starting a new business meant he would have to spend all his time and energy on the company, likely operating at a higher energy level than his previous job and dealing with a much lower payoff at the start.

Of course, the reason he decided to start Amazon was not just the monetary payoff.

Two people can start in the same company at the same time and yet achieve wildly different outcomes.

It depends on who jumps to higher orbits faster.

To jump orbits, take risks, do more, and aim high

Electrons jump orbits when they absorb energy from outside through photons.

You jump career orbits in a similar way.

Someone may inspire you, maybe you're pushed into a situation that requires you to go all out, or maybe a new opportunity opens up.

To jump from a lower orbit to a higher one requires us to do something extra, something more impactful than the demands of the existing orbit.

Unless you change what you're doing, you will not change orbits (outside of the planned jumps based on career experience)

Whether you jump orbits depends partly on you and partly on many other factors outside your control, but it's best to take responsibility for everything related to your career.

The three best ways I've found to jump to higher levels come from Nassim Taleb, Naval Ravikant, and Elon Musk

1. Take risk

2. Use new forms of leverage

3. Aim high

If you are already in a stable, higher orbit (i.e., a well-paying prestigious job), you have more to lose than gain by taking more risks compared to someone in a lower orbit. You can steadily climb ever higher over a decade or more and become wealthy. Letting that go to start your own business is risky.

It might have more potential upside but also far more downside if you fail.

But to jump to a completely different higher orbit, you have to take risks and take more accountability in some way, shape, or form. That can be in a new venture or a new role in your existing job.

Taking risks, by definition, means doing things that don't have certainty.

It includes backing new things, new ideas, and new approaches where outcomes are uncertain. They may or may not work.

If they work, you may reap the rewards that catapult you to a new orbit.

But to enjoy the rewards, you have to take the risk of failure and humiliation by taking accountability for the wins and, more importantly, the losses. As Taleb says, you need Skin in the Game.

Usually, the more uncertain the path and the probability of a desired outcome, the higher the rewards (though not always).

Taking risks does not have to be harmful, though.

If you've built in a margin of safety, like savings or unique skillsets, you're much better placed to recover from most career outcomes where things don't go your way.

Taking career risks also has different levels.

• The most risky is starting without a plan.

• The least risky is starting something on the side on nights and weekends while keeping your job.

But taking a career risk does not necessarily mean leaving your existing job.

It does mean taking more accountability for your work. It means taking on the hard projects. It means taking on the responsibility of launching a new team, product, or division.

If you're successful, you can leapfrog to higher orbits; if not, that's fine.

You can always try again.

How much risk should you take? A bit above your current risk tolerance.

2. Use new forms of leverage

The other lever to shift orbits uses the new forms of leverage. The best description comes from Naval's famous tweetstorm - How to get rich without getting lucky.

Use the new forms of permissionless leverage - code & media to build and share ideas and influence your desired outcomes.

The primary benefit of code & media is

1. It only requires your creativity and consistency to build something meaningful - No one has to give you anything - you can start today by going on YouTube, learning to code, or creating videos and sharing them with the world.

2. It opens up opportunities you would otherwise not have access to.

Distribution is (almost) free. The downside is there is intense competition.

Don’t let that deter you. Share your work and your ideas online. Over time you will find your tribe. Attention is valuable.

"…attention [from others] is a psychological commodity which people value inherently".

- Paying Attention, Karthik Srinivasan

Sharing your ideas with others helps you spread your work, increasing your luck surface area. It increases the probability that your work reaches the right people who can help you along your path.

If you don't want to post online, you can share your ideas at work. Read Shaan Puri's ingenious thread about the value of starting a newsletter at work and how to go about it.

Code and Social Media level the playing field. They give everyone an opportunity.

3. Aim high

My grandfather used to say

Not failure, but low aim is a sin

Always aim high. 

Elon Musk personifies this. His aims are literally out of this world. He backs it up with an unmatched work ethic, and there are few people in the history of the world who have had a more significant positive impact on the world than him (with the companies he founded)

You need to aim high to generate the urgency to take massive action to iterate fast enough to get the desired results.

You don't need to reach there tomorrow, but having something big to aim for is essential to focus your time and energy only on the things that matter.

The Internet makes it easier to jump into higher orbits

You might have heard of Ali Abdaal, who was studying to become a doctor. In 2017, he started posting YouTube videos on the side. Ali now has 5M subscribers on his Youtube channel and makes more than $4.5 million a year with his content business.

Stories like these are not uncommon in today's world.

If you’re skilled and you can build something and sell it, the internet allows you to find your customers.

Take the example of who quit his high-paying job at Amazon to make more than $1M online, or Bhanu Teja, a young indie developer, who quit his software engineering job and is now on track to make over $150k this year through his SaaS products, or Sharan Hegde, a consultant, who started posting finance edutainment videos on Instagram in 2021, and now has more than 2.4M followers.

There are plenty of such examples on Twitter, TikTok, Instagram and more.

In all of these cases, people took the risk of putting themselves in the public eye and they used social media to reach millions of people.

Everyone now has the opportunity to do the same.

Questions is: will you?

Each staircase contains knowledge related to a particular field.

Each step and each level is adorned with ever more complex knowledge.

There are an infinite number of such staircases.

You can easily switch staircases but can climb only one at a time.

On some staircases, you are at the top;
in some, you are at the bottom;
in the rest, you are somewhere in the middle.

You can see some staircases, others are invisible to you (yet visible to others)

Climbing up the knowledge staircase to uncover what lies beyond is a challenge. To climb up, you need focus, effort, and time. You have to struggle and figure out how to climb up yourself. Others can tell you how to climb up, but you must climb yourself.

There are infinite staircases, which means you will likely be at the bottom of most staircases, save a few, which you have spent years climbing.

You will often encounter new ideas as you climb up the staircases. 

You climb one step on the knowledge staircase every time you see, understand, and learn something new.

There are 5 things I hope you can take away from this essay

1. Choose the staircases you want to climb

2. Understand who can help you climb up

3. Open your mind to learning from everyone

4. Ascend the highest levels and beyond on your own

5. Why you should share your knowledge with everyone

Choose the staircases you want to climb.

While there are infinite knowledge staircases, most of them are not helpful to you.

Some staircases are more straightforward to climb than others. You don't need to work too hard to climb them.

You must choose the staircases you want to climb because climbing the wrong staircases has a price.

You can only climb one staircase at a time.

Climbing the wrong staircase means not climbing the ones that will actually help you live the life you want.

People may spend their whole lives climbing the ladder of success only to find, once they reach the top, that the ladder is leaning against the wrong wall.

Thomas Merton

The most problematic staircases are escalators that are going down.

You can spend an eternity climbing them, thinking you are climbing up while staying stuck at the same place.

Algorithmic feeds on any social network are the best example of these escalators. While they can be helpful if used sparingly, more often than not, they can hook you into climbing a downward escalator.

How do you decide which staircases to climb?

I use The Life Framework and my personal operating system to decide. You can use any heuristic to decide, or none at all, the only thing to keep in mind is Don't be a donkey1

Identify the people that can help you climb up

Wherever you're standing, people are standing above you, and people are standing below you.

People on higher levels can help you climb much faster. But it depends on how skilled they are at teaching people on lower levels.

If they stand at the top of the staircase and explain, the beginner will not comprehend as they can’t see the intermediate steps required to get up to that level.

If you talk to people at the top of their game, their advice may seem very generic, very complex, or just right depending on the level they are explaining it from. Most advice will only make complete sense once you've climbed the required steps2.

This explains why not all experts in their fields can be great teachers.

The skills required to teach are different. The approach is different.

The best teachers will estimate the beginner's level, get down to that level, start from there and slowly lift the veil of the unknown.

These are the people who will help you climb up.

You can learn from everyone

You can only see the steps below you after you are at a certain level. Just because you've climbed higher levels does not mean you can see everything below you. 

You can see a part of the knowledge below you.

Knowledge staircases are enormous and amorphous; you will always find new knowledge on different sides of the staircase or if you visit the same steps at different times in your life.

If you've only climbed the stairs from the east side, you will not know what lies on the west side if you haven't taken that path up. If you're always facing the inner side, you won't know what lies on the outside side.

This is why people on similar or lower levels can also teach you many new things.

They may be climbing the same staircase from another side or at a different time, or climbing an entirely different staircase.

Remember, there are an infinite number of staircases. Ideas from a different staircase mi=ght inspire ideas for the stairs you're climbing that you otherwise would not have thought of.

This means that it's possible to learn something from everyone. Even if they are lower down on your staircase (they may be higher up on others).

Ascend the highest levels and beyond on your own

Whichever level you are on, you can see some of the steps below. They contain knowledge that lifted you to your current level.

But above you, you can barely see a couple of levels, maybe a blurry, foggy view. Sometimes, nothing at all.

This depends on the staircase you're climbing.

If it's an unchanging one that others have climbed many times before, you'll see much farther ahead by learning from people than if you're exploring (or constructing) an entirely new staircase, e.g., a pathless path h/t

If you've spent enough time on a particular staircase, sooner or later, you will reach a stage where neither you, nor anyone else, can see any steps ahead.

Congratulations, you've reached the edge of knowledge in that domain.

Is that the end of that staircase? Unlikely.

Every step you take further will require tinkering and exploration that you must do on your own. 

No one has explored it before. 

You might find a dead end, or you might find an elevator that takes you to ever newer heights. You will likely have to invent new way to climb up.

You'll only know by figuring it out on your own.

Share ideas from your staircase and help others climb up

There are always people above you and below you on the knowledge staircases.

This is one of the best reasons to share your ideas with the world. Especially those that you think are obvious. They may be evident to you, from your place in your knowledge staircase, but the same ideas may be profound for others.

This is why I love Twitter. You can observe ideas and how people react to them. You realize many ideas seem obvious to you but profound to others (and vice versa).

People encountering your unique ideas for the first time will be delighted to have your help in climbing up to a higher level. Especially if you’re a trailblazer.

There is another benefit of sharing your knowledge openly - sharing knowledge only increases it.

When you share ideas, you get feedback. Remember from the previous section: You can learn from people at all levels of the knowledge staircase.

Real-time, real-world feedback is one of the best ways to identify the holes in your steps, rectify them, and climb ever higher on the knowledge staircases.

Special Thanks to Nimo for feedback on drafts. Thanks to Seth Godin, Derek Sivers, Shane Parrish and Samyak Pandya for inspiration on improving the ideas in this essay.

What would you pay to have the freedom to do
what you want, when you want, how you want?

Usually, the answer is more than 35 years of your life,
until you’ve earned enough to retire.

A lot of people don’t have a choice in making this decision. Until you earn enough money to cover your basic needs of food, shelter and security, it’s hard to think about anything else.

There are people who have plenty of money, who chase after more at the cost of their former dreams.

There are people who have little money, yet chase their dreams over money.

Last year I quit my full-time job in an Investment Bank for a part-time, fully remote gig.

From working more than 70 hours a week (including weekends side gig), I went to working less than 25 hours a week.

I got a Time raise.

What I did was transfer wealth from one form to another, from prioritizing financial wealth to prioritizing time wealth.

In this essay, I will discuss the different forms of wealth to understand why society at large values financial wealth above all the other forms of wealth.

Lets show wealth on a 2x2 grid based on

• X- Axis: Who it benefits

  • Beneficial Only to you

  • Beneficial to Others

• Y-axis: Convertibility to other forms of wealth

  • Convertibility to other kinds of wealth

  • Non-convertible

The framework will make it easy to understand why some forms of wealth are more preferred than others. Anything high in transferability as well as beneficial to you & others is a coveted form of wealth in society.

We will start from the form of wealth that makes all other forms possible i.e the wealth of time.

Time Wealth

Would you trade places with Warren Buffett in 2023?

You would instantly become one of the top 10 richest people in the world.

But you would also be 92.

Being a dollar billionaire is great, but being a time billionaire may be better. If you have more time, you can earn more money. If you have billions, you still can’t buy more time1.

This excerpt from Tim Ferris’s interview explains it well.

Tim Ferris: So time billionaires. What does that refer to?

Graham Duncan: I was listening to a guy introduced a speaker a while ago. And he was saying people don’t really understand the difference between billionaires and millionaires. He said a million seconds is like 11 days. A billion seconds is 31 years.

…..

And I was thinking of time billionaires that when I see, sometimes, 20-year-olds – the thought I had was they probably have two billion seconds left. But they aren’t relating to themselves as time billionaires. And I was thinking about how if you could – what would Rupert Murdoch, who’s worth $20 billion – he’s 87 years old. What would he pay if he could take the next five years of someone’s 20-year-old healthy body, mind, etc.?

The Pomp Letter

Time Billionaire

Listen now (6 min) | This installment of The Pomp Letter is free for everyone. I send this email to our investors daily. If you would also like to receive it every morning, join the 93,000 other investors today…

Listen now

5 years ago · 66 likes · 10 comments · Anthony Pompliano

Time is the most irreplaceable form of wealth. Without it no other wealth exists.

You can use your time to benefit yourself or others through the work you do.

You can convert it to other forms of wealth by investing your time in it (e.g getting a job to earn money, exercising to become fit, spending time with friends and family for relationships, or learning new skills)

Your free time is most precious only to you. Everyone wants to maximize it because of the optionality it brings. The more free time you have, the more possibilities you can explore.

Yet, everyone wants a piece of your time.

From the online marketers trying to sell you a pair of new sneakers, to engagement farmers looking to grow their online following by baiting you with never-ending clickbait, to your own family, who just want to spend time with you.

Your free time is not beneficial to anyone else unless you give it to them.

Unlike money, which you have to spend (i.e give to others) to live your life, you can be far more selective in who you spend your time with.

Your free time is one of the most convertible forms of wealth, yet it is beneficial only to you. You can’t transfer it to any one else, only you get to enjoy its benefits.

Physical and Mental Wealth

Good genes are inherited physical wealth.
Bad genes are inherited physical debt.

You can squander health just like money.
You squander good genes with a bad diet, poor lifestyle and no exercise.
You overcome physical debt with exercise, rest, a good diet and a healthy lifestyle.

Physical wealth is a form of insurance. It is insurance against the frailties of old age. It is resistance to the inevitable degradation of the body.

Good Physical health, especially in old age is may be even better than monetary wealth.

But good physical health without good mental health is worth little.

Being physically wealthy, but mentally plagued by worries, anxiety, fears, future meetings robs you of the ability to enjoy the happiness of the present.

As Nassim Taleb recently tweeted, a good chunk of true wealth consists of being mentally wealthy. Worriless sleeping, clear conscience, gratitude, absence of envy, frequent laughs, nothing to hide are all forms of mental wealth.

Without health, you can’t do anything else. Physical wealth might be even more valuable that time wealth, because without it you can’t enjoy any of the your wealth (including time).

Physical wealth is not really convertible to any other form of wealth (unless you are a gym trainer or fitness influencer). It is only an enabler to acquire and enjoy the other forms of wealth.

Physical wealth cannot be traded or transferred to others. You being physically health is beneficial to society at large as it means you can contribute to society without being a burden on others. But only you can truly enjoy the day-to-day benefits of peak physical and mental health. No one can transfer it to you and you can't transfer it to others. But you can use it to inspire others.

Relationships Wealth

A wealth of relationships combats the poverty of loneliness.

Family, close friends, friends and acquaintances. All of them contribute to our emotional well-being.

The number of friends and acquaintances does not matter. You don’t get to choose your family and after a certain age, you also don’t get to choose who your close friends are.

Transactional relationships are akin to monopoly money. They are not going help you in real life. Only the quality of relationships matters, not quantity.

A wealth of monetary assets with a poverty of relationships is a special kind of hell. Having the means to enjoy all the material pleasure of life, but no one to share it with.

The point of money is to use it to get what you want of life and share the joys with the people that matter to you.

Prolonged loneliness actually kills, as found out by the National Institute of Aging

According to the National Institute on Aging the health risks of prolonged isolation are equivalent to smoking 15 cigarettes a day.

Social isolation and loneliness have even been estimated to shorten a person’s life span by as many as 15 years.

And old people are the hardest hit as they spend most of their time alone.

You don’t need dozens of friends to avoid the effects of loneliness, just 3 close ones are enough. Numbers don't matter, quality does.

Researchers have also managed to assign a dollar figure to the value of a close friend. Apparently, a close friend provides a life satisfaction boost similar to $150k additional income.

But good friends are far better than any amount of money.

Friends are better than money. Almost anything money can do, friends can do better. In so many ways a friend with a boat is better than owning a boat.

- Kevin Kelly

While recording my first single, I paid a producer a tiny sum of money to produce the song. Drums and more instruments meant paying every additional person, even for small sections.

A friends of mine, a college student, got his first single done for almost free, because his close friends, producers and musicians, helped him out.

The impact of close friends and family cannot be overstated.

You can’t buy quality relationships. The value of your family and friends to you is far more to anyone else.

The joy of a warm, healthy relationship cannot be bought, it cannot be transferred, it cannot be traded, it can only be enjoyed by you, and can only be built up by you over a long period of time time by your own actions.

But you can transfer relationships to a small extent. You don’t really transfer relationships, but the trust both parties have in you. If you introduce a work colleague to a friend who’s hiring for a job, you’ve transferred and expanded your network by providing value to both of them. To that extent, your relationships are valuable to others as well.

Skills Wealth

We’re now increasingly moving to wealth that is both convertible and beneficial to society at large, not just you.

Being wealthy in skills is usually a precursor to becoming wealthy in terms of money.

Skills can be easily traded for more money and prestige.

The rarity of your skills and the demand for it determines how much you get paid for them. There were over 1.2M artists on Spotify with more than 1000 listeners in 2021, out of which just 870 made more than $1M in royalties i.e less than 0.8% of artists made more than $1M in royalties.

You might be blessed with genetic gifts that make make it easier to excel at certain skills. You don’t need to be tall to play basketball but being 6’5” certainly helps.

But there are no shortcuts to getting rich in skills. You must put in the work over a long period of time to build and perfect any skill. While skills once learnt usually stay with you, they may perish if unused. Unlike money which can keep growing, even if you don’t use it, you must continually work on your skills to remain sharp.

Skills can also help you in making friends, entertaining friends & family and gaining status.

Skills do compound to an extent. The more you learn, the better you become at learning, which makes it easier for you to learn new things. Learning the guitar is slightly easier if you already know how to play the piano (and the basics of music theory).

In addition to being convertible to other forms of wealth, skills are also transferrable to a greater extent. While you can’t fully transfer your learned experience in a particular skill to someone else, you can teach skills to others. The entire education industry is built to teach people the skills they need to succeed in life.

Of course, not everything can be taught, but it can usually be learned.

Skills are highly valued because they can easily be converted to financial wealth, and they are beneficial both for you and others.

Financial Wealth

Financial wealth is the most sought after form of wealth in the world.

Money, investments, assets make up financial wealth.

It is the most convertible form of wealth.

You can use it to get almost anything you want (directly or indirectly). Buy the car you want, travel to the most exquisite places in the world, eat the finest food and much much more.

You can convert financial wealth into almost any material things you desire. You can also use it to an extent to buy more time by hiring others to work for you.

You can also convert it to physical wealth (indirectly) by hiring the best doctors, trainers and best chefs for the healthiest food.

You can also convert financial wealth to status & power through means of philanthropy, funding, become a politician and more.

But your wealth is not just beneficial to you, it is also beneficial to everyone around you. When you spend money, you’re transferring wealth to other people (in return for their services). People can sell you things, swindle you, get you to invest in their venture or charm you out of it (sometimes all of it together).

The reason why financial wealth is so coveted is because of the optionality it provides to the individual. Being financially wealthy does not mean just having money, but also the ability to do what you want, when you want, how you want to. Being financially wealthy also means having almost no external obstacles to acquiring all the other forms of wealth.

You don’t need to predict the future, or know what you want in life if you have enough money.

Financial wealth is the most convertible and most transferable form of wealth. It is also the one that provides the most optionality to the individual and the one that is most valuable both to the person who has it and to society at large.

Conclusion

I think one underrated reason why financial wealth is the most coveted form of wealth is because it is also the most visible and measurable form of wealth.

The value of anything is usually measured in terms of money.

The problem with that of course is that is you only see the benefits i.e what you have earned, not what you paid to acquire it.

Its hard to quantify the value of waking up without an alarm, or roaming the beach on a Tuesday afternoon, or spending the entire weekday with your child at the park. It is much easier to know how much money you have in the bank.

Having money means you are wealthy, but you ideally want it with all the other forms of wealth.

Money and the time to enjoy it.
Money and the health to enjoy it.
Money and the people to enjoy it with.

It makes sense to prioritize financial wealth because of the benefits it provides. But it also makes sense to measure what you are paying to acquire it.

Whether you prioritize money above other forms of wealth or not, depends on what you value and what amount of life are you willing to pay for it.

As Naval says,

“Money will solve all your money problems, but it doesn’t get you everywhere”

…

“A calm mind, fit body and a house full of love; these things cannot be bought, they must be earned”

This essay is influenced in part by one of my previous posts called The Life Framework.

References: Naval, Nassim Taleb, Morgan Housel

You create and prioritize tasks to make them easier to track and complete.

You setup processes to execute those tasks faster and easily and at scale.

You commit resources to the processes you've built so that they work in the best possible way

But why?

Why do any of it?

In this essay I will cover the last part of your Personal Operating System, the WHY to your WHAT (and HOW)

Inverting the Golden Circle

In the book Start with Why, Simon Sinek explains the rationale behind starting with Why. When you start with Why, you create a sense of inspiration, loyalty, and motivation towards your mission, both for you and others.

"People don't buy what you do; they buy why you do it."

Successful individuals and organizations start with Why and they have a clear understanding of their purpose and reason for existence.

If you are undertaking any new endeavor, it makes sense to start with Why before tackling the What and the How.

Why then did we not start with WHY while building out our personal operating system?

Because it is hard.

Starting with Why is ideal, but figuring out your Why means potentially confronting long-held beliefs about your life, including beliefs that have been built over decades. It can be hard to find your Why when you're already busy with so many other things.

David Allen echoed the sentiment more than 20 years ago, in his groundbreaking book Getting things Done.

"Intellectually, the most appropriate way ought to be to work from the top down, first uncovering personal and organizational purpose and vision, then defining critical objectives, and finally focusing on the details of implementation. The trouble is, however, that most people are so embroiled in commitments on a day-to-day level that their ability to focus successfully on the larger horizon is seriously impaired. Consequently, a bottom-up approach is usually more effective."

Starting with Priorities allowed us to kickstart the benefits of building our personal OS, but now it's time to focus on the Why.

How do we start to figure out our why? We start with Values and Principles.

Your values & principles are standards that you want to uphold in your life, regardless of all the other troubles in your life. You want to uphold them simply because they are important to you.

Values and principles are not a means to an end, they are the end themselves.

There are no external rewards linked to it, only internal satisfaction.

Your values from childhood to adulthood

In school I had a subject called Value Education. it was the easiest subject at the time. At least so I thought. The books were full of images and stories of children and people upholding the noble values of discipline, cleanliness, honesty and integrity.

• Early to bed, early to rise is healthy, wealthy and wise.

• Cleanliness is next to godliness.

• Honesty is the best policy

• ...

We've all heard some versions of these pithy one liners. Many of us probably ignored them in school, more so in college. Yet we all remember them. As I enter my 30s, many of the values I try to uphold are like the ones I was taught more than 20 years ago.

I sometimes think adults teach children the most important things far before they can appreciate the wisdom of what they are being taught.

Childhood is when you think value education is the easiest and least important subject. Adulthood is when you realize it is one of the hardest and most important ones.

With Value Education, those small pithy one-liners encapsulated centuries of human wisdom on how to live a good life and had stood the test of time.

10 year old me cared about passing the test.
Current me cares about living the life I want.

The motivation now is far higher.

Value education in school was based on a fixed syllabus, meaning it forced everyone to accept the same defined values, regardless of preference. The world would probably be a better place if everyone embodied all the values taught in school, but choice is important. The degree to which someone values something can be different.

As an adult you are free to pick and choose the values that matter to you and live up to them.

You don't have to embrace the values your teachers or parents wanted you to. You are free to choose and embody the ones that most resonate with you.

But the usefulness of values also depends on your goals.

The values of dedication, hard-work, discipline can be downright harmful when applied in the wrong direction.

As Mark Manson points out in his essay on Personal values

I think satirizing Hitler’s incredible productivity and influence perfectly embodies a point I’ve long made about the self-help world: achieving success in life is not nearly as important as our definition of success. If our definition of success is horrific—like, say, world domination and slaughtering millions—then working harder, setting and achieving goals, and disciplining our minds all become a bad thing.

He further elaborates on what makes for 'good' and 'bad values'

Good values are:

Evidence-based
Constructive
Controllable

Bad values are:

Emotion-based
Destructive
Uncontrollable

Some nuance here is important.

All values are not universally virtuous and even virtuous ones don't need to be upheld under all circumstances.

For instance, honesty is usually the best policy, but white lies to help a friend save face in an argument or protect your elderly grandmother from disappointment may be better.

In such cases, the values of friendship and kindness supersede honesty.

Knowing something is different from living it

Knowing your values & principles is not enough; you must live them.

A key part of living up to your values and principles is commitment. Principles are useless unless you are willing to sacrifice for them when it matters.

Historically, people have been willing to risk it all for their values & beliefs.

One of the most famous examples is of Socrates. In 399 BC, Socrates was sentenced to death by the Athenian government for his teachings. In-spite of having the opportunity to escape from prison, he chose to abide by the court's decision as escaping would be inconsistent with his belief to do no wrong

There is no guide that can teach you to live up to your values, but the people who inspire us the most are usually the ones who live a life true to themselves and their values.

People look up to entrepreneurs, musicians, artists, sportspeople partly because they pursue and live up to their dreams, regardless of the challenges they faced.

Michael Jordan valued excellence and would stop at nothing to live up to it. The 6 rings were a result of his pursuit of excellence. This short clip from the incredible documentary - The Last Dance give us a small peek at how he demanded excellence not just from himself but from his entire team, even if it came at the cost of being seen as a tyrant.

Principles are filters for decision making

Knowing your values & principles also confers a big advantage - they can simplify your decision making. Your biggest decisions can be seen through the lens of your principles and the right decisions for you will be clear.

If one of your core values is autonomy, perhaps you might focus on jobs that confer more autonomy or ever consider starting your own business, or maybe one of your values is balance so you might prioritize a job that gives you more time for you and your family

Principles are also applicable outside your personal life. As Ray Dalio points out in his book Principles - they help you compress hard earned wisdom into smaller chunks to simplify decision making. This is useful for dealing with reality to get what you want.

How to know your values

Knowing your values and principles is not so much about finding as it is about recognizing what you already value. It can be hard to articulate what values are most important to you. One of the easiest ways to start is by looking at values that already exist and identifying the ones you connect with. Here is a list of 100 values that I had compiled a while back.

Which values resonate the most?
Which are the ones that you already embody?
Which are the ones you are willing to sacrifice for?

Tests may help as a starting point

Your principles depends on the kind of person you are.

There are plenty of personality tests that can give you a starting point here. The Big 5 is a useful test that can potentially tell you what are some of the things you value.

I personally prefer the PrinciplesYou test by Adam Grant & Ray Dalio. It is fully free and much more relatable as it breaks down the results by Archetypes.

The idea of knowing your values & principles isn't to create a list of values and then refer to them mindlessly like a drone, but more to embody the few ones that you really value and align your life in a way that will fulfill you.

As Friedrich Nietzsche said:

“He who has a ‘why’ to live can bear almost any ‘how."

See all the parts below

Part 1: Priorities

Part 2: Systems & Processes

Part 3: Resources

In my previous role as a Strategist in one of the largest investment banks in the world, I learned 2 big things:

1 - How to build Strategy
2 - What you need to execute it

Strategy alone is useless IF not accompanied by execution. Successful execution of a bad strategy may still lead to failure, but poor execution of a top-tier strategy will also curtail success.

As Derek Sivers says, ideas are just a multiplier of execution.

Strategy is a multiplier of execution.

When we built out strategies, there were two kinds of preliminary resource planning exercises we usually did

• People planning

• Financial budget & projections

In other words - Labour and Capital

Companies have entire departments focussed on resource planning and allocation - FP&A (Financial Planning and Analysis), HR - Human Resources; Some of the largest software companies tens of thousands of people to build Enterprise resource planning software (ERPs)

Maybe you work in one of these departments. You need these teams and software when you're dealing with hundreds or thousands or 100s of thousands of people in a company.

But resource planning and allocation is equally important for you and me at the individual level.

Let us begin.

Types of resources

There are 3 main types of resources - Land, Labour, and Capital; we're not concerned with land (or natural resources for this essay); We will focus primarily on (your) labour and capital

Labour

1. Time

2. Energy

Labour includes derivatives of Time & Energy, namely

• Skills

• Network

Capital

Money, Stocks, Options, Bonds

You use a combination of labour and capital to build or accumulate more capital and tools

Tools

• Software

• Hardware

Everything ever accomplished by anyone, everything you see in the modern world, is through the successful accumulation and deployment of some combination of the above resources and tools.

To achieve your goals, you need to figure out which resources are critical for your success, acquire them and then deploy them in the right amount.

1. Time

Your entire existence runs on it, but you can't see it, can't feel it, can't buy it, can't share it, can't store it, can't know how much you have left, can only use what you have right now, and everyone around you feels like they don't have enough of it.

Everyone wants to be rich, but if you're young (and lucky), you're probably a time-billionaire.

• 1 million seconds is ~11 days

• 1 billion seconds is 31 years

But if you still feel you don't have enough time to do what you want, here's how to make more time for the things you need to get done

How do you make time?

Start with an audit of what you are spending your time on.

In The Effective Executive - Peter Drucker writes about how to start with a Time Audit - unless you know where you are spending your time, you can't know what to cut and what not to

The easiest is pen and paper or just use your online calendar. Maybe your phone also has time-tracking tools inbuilt.

If you've already completed an audit of how you spend your time - the next step is to cut things out. If you've already read through the previous parts and defined your priorities - anything that is not a part of that list should be something you can safely ignore.

If you need some motivation in deciding what not to do - a reminder I've found useful -

We all have about 4000 weeks on this planet.

If you’re 30, you have about 2500 weeks left. (A silver lining - You’re still a Time billionaire)

Maybe that scares you; hopefully that emboldens you to do the work that matters.

Unless you take some time from all the things that are currently taking up your time and allocate it to your new goals - you will not make progress on them. Anything meaningful will take a big chunk of your time for a couple of years, if not a couple of decades.

But I still don't have any time!

A couple of options:

Work on weekends when you can - As Naval Ravikant says - Work as hard as you can

Before I quit my previous job in 2022, for 9 months, I worked Mon-Friday on my day job, then spent another 15-20 hours on the weekends on my part-time gig, which ultimately led to my current role at OSV. Before that, I spent my weekends making music, programming, or doing improv.

Cut out what you can - Netflix, video games, partying, doom-scrolling social media. There are many things that can be cut out to get back a couple of hours a week.

Use constraints - For e.g., work commute - If you use public transportation, use the time while going to or coming back from work for your creative work or learning things that might help you.

I used to spend 2-3 hours every day commuting. While coming back home at night, I'd draw ideas on my phone on the bus and post them as Instagram stories.

Constraints breed creativity.

2. Manage Energy, not time

Time is what you need to get work done, but just because you have time doesn't mean you will get the work done.

Free time without the energy and spirit to get the work done will find its way to other things.

You can manage your energy in 2 ways

• Choosing what to work on

• Choosing when to work on it

How to identify the right things?

Things that bring you joy, that light you up, that give you more energy than they take.

Pre-covid, I would work 12 hours in the office on a weekday, then spend an hour to go to the open mic at 10 pm to perform a 5 min set for 3 people.

Despite the long day, I never once felt tired after performing. Same thing with improv comedy. It did not matter how long or tiring of a day I'd had before - if I performed, I seemed to gain energy.

What are the things that give you energy, and what are the activities that drain your energy? Matt Mochary calls it an Energy Audit(Chapter 9 of The Great CEO Within)

Look at the things you are regularly working on

• What are the things that drain you? Irritate you?

• What are the things that you're always ready for and want more of?

Categorize the activities at work and at home into energy draining or energy replenishing. Remove the items that drain your energy (and spirit) from your life. If you can't remove them, can you delegate them?

Procrastination is the body's way of telling you what it does NOT want to do

Listen to the whispers of your body. Beware of ignoring them for too long. If you ignore them long enough, they no longer speak.

After you've identified the right things, you want to work on them at the right time.

Use your energy at the right time

If you've carved out enough free time for yourself at home or have a flexible schedule at work, you'll enjoy an immense luxury - the luxury of deciding WHEN to work on WHAT.

When is the right time? The easy answer is when you feel like it - when you feel at your absolute best.

The longer answer is it depends. It depends on your environment, your dependents, your own mental state, and your energy levels that day.

Maybe a set time every day works for you, then do that. Maybe you work only when inspiration strikes, then do that (as long as you're getting work done)

Inspiration is perishable. Act on it immediately.

- Naval

The approach that works best for me is usually fixing a deadline and then working on it when I can, alongside a predictable schedule. For e.g., I wrote the first draft of this essay on a 17-hour flight at 3 am to hit a weekend deadline. (The only reason I remember that is because I took a photo because it was so unusual for me)

I've had times where I've stayed up all night programming because I was so into the thing I was building at the time. I've had weeks where I couldn't wait to get up early in the morning to work on something.

If you've chosen the right thing, the timing comes automatically.

If you're managing your time and energy, then you probably want to spend them either building something or selling it.

Skills

The only way to get them is to put in the time and energy required to learn them. No one else can learn skills for you. (You can hire others with the skills you need by giving them money, but that's not really helpful if you're trying to impress your future lady love by playing the guitar for her).

Once learned, skills fade slowly, and muscle memory can last decades.

I can still play Fur Elise on the piano despite barely practicing it for a decade now.

More importantly, skills make you independent and allow you to build and do things without relying on others.

And skills compound over time, so the value you derive keeps increasing with experience.

The same idea applies to meeting new people and building a Network

Network

Maybe you've heard the line "Your network is your net-worth," and it is true to an extent.

It takes a village to raise a child. For most people, building anything valuable requires the help of other people.

The more people you know well, or even better, the more people know you well, the more your opportunity set increases.

A big personal network increases your luck surface area.

And just like skills, the effects of a network compound. After a point, people will want to work with you because everyone knows you to be someone of value. You see this most easily on social media. The bigger accounts keep growing, in part because they are already big.

The social proof is enough.

How do you build your network? By creating something of value and providing it to others.

Help people you can. Provide value. Share your ideas and thoughts online. Build and sell products. Create something incredible! Over time, you establish yourself as a reputable authority. Lead with value with no expectation of reciprocity.

Posting online is a great way to build something and find your tribe.

Every post you make online is an opportunity for other people to get to know you and your work. It is an invitation to engage with you. It is an opportunity for you to build familiarity and trust with new people, while inviting them to be a part of the world you’re building.

If you've used your time and energy well, building skills and a network, then amassing capital becomes almost inevitable.

Capital

Money. The primary benefit of money is it is the most convertible form of capital. You can use it to buy whatever you want. You can buy labor, tools, or other forms of capital.

Money is the ultimate form of optionality.

You don't need to worry about how to use it now; you can use it however you want, whenever you want. And if invested properly, it generates more and more money.

Capital is arguably one of the most important resources in achieving your goals.

If you want to start a company, you need some starting capital to operate. If you want more time, you need to spend money hiring people or buying software.

On an individual level, more money provides a safety net to explore other interests without fear of falling behind. It also gives you the ability to buy the tools you need and hire the help you need to achieve your goals.

Hiring a good personal trainer can cost a bit, but you are basically buying expertise. Instead of figuring it out yourself, you're hiring a professional to guide you on your fitness journey.

If you don't have money, the modern world offers enough opportunity for you to start learning the skills to make it.

“The best teachers are on the Internet. The best books are on the Internet. The best peers are on the Internet. The tools for learning are abundant. It’s the desire to learn that’s scarce.”

- Naval

In terms of how much money you need, and how to manage and invest it. I like Morgan Housel's approach

How to bring it all together

What is the immediate next action you can take to implement what we've covered above?

Start defining your commitment to your goals in terms of the resources you need.

Here's an example:

Goal: Lose 10kgs

Resource Commitment:

🕘 Time
5 hours a week of exercise, 5 hours of meal-planning

🔥 Energy
Do you prefer working out at home / going to the gym / playing sports? Do what energizes you

🧰 Skills
Hire a trainer / sign up for online classes / premium fitness app subscription/meal service

🌐 Network
Find a gym buddy/accountability group / play a sport weekly

💰 Money
Fix an amount you’re comfortable spending every month

By adding in the details of your commitment, you start clearing the roadblocks you might face ahead of time. If you use all the resources you have at your disposal to go after the things you want, you drastically increase your odds of success.

Apply this framework to your goals. I use it in conjunction with The Life Framework to keep things clear and simple.

It changes the level of seriousness with which you pursue your goals.

And that can make all the difference.

Thanks for reading! After finishing this series on How to build your personal operating system, I’ll start publishing shorter essays/notes that are easier to read and digest. I hate digital clutter, so you’ll still only receive 1 email every couple of weeks; I will include links to all the latest posts in it. Cheers!

A goal without an action plan is a daydream.

Nathaniel Branden

Processes are codified actions.

In the previous essay, I talked about building the first part of your personal operating system - the WHAT. In this article, I will cover the HOW to make those WHATs come true.

A couple of baselines descriptions for specificity

• A process is a set of actions to realize a task. 

• Habits and Routines are ingrained processes.

• Systems consist of lots of processes working in tandem.

This essay will focus on processes.

You want your processes to provide direction on what you must repeatedly do to achieve your desired result. The entire point of having processes is to remove the mental burden of deciding what steps to take daily while countering the ever-infinite distractions around us.

Omar Itani describes in well:

Goals are the targets you want to achieve, while systems are the processes you put in place to help you achieve them.
…
Systems tell you what you need to do every day to get there; they’re focused on today.

Effective processes support your goals by taking care of everything surrounding the actual work you need to do.

It is your one-hour hike every weekend that is your 'me' time; it is the half an hour you spend reading to your daughter every night at bedtime; it is the diet plan you follow to reduce your cholesterol.

In this article, I will cover examples of processes I use to show you how you can use them in your own life. 

Add, subtract, edit, and adapt any of these to suit your workflows.

I'll cover processes across four key areas. 

• Overall

• Health

• Relationships

• Work (both personal and professional)

1. OVERALL

Bookends (and starts) for your days:

You're going to go to bed and wake up every day. Creating an enjoyable wake-up and sleep routine that reduces stress and helps you progress toward your goals is worth it.

I've wasted a lot of time staying awake till 5am, but I have never regretted waking up at 5am to get started with the day

While there are different sleep archetypes, I've found I perform at my best when I wake up early and exercise in the morning.

Some routines that I've found helpful if you're looking to set up an optimal morning routine.

• The 20-20-20 Formula from the 5am Club.

• The optimal morning routine by Andrew Huberman.

For nighttime, a couple of things seem to work best.

Light dinner, warm bath, prior exercise in the day, and reducing blue light (ideally no screens). I love warm, yellow-colored lights in the evening.

Matt Walker's Why We Sleep is a comprehensive source for learning all you need to know about optimal sleep.

2. WORK

The biggest unlock is figuring out the intersection of what you enjoy and can become world-class at. Then just work on that. 

The best way to figure out the unique mix of skills you're great at and enjoy, is to work on many different projects and determine what you like.

Regardless of what you’re working on, you might frequently find yourself handling a barrage of work (including personal projects).  

Here are a couple of processes I've found useful for this:

2.1 Use GTD for tracking action items

David Allen's Getting Things Done has endured for over two decades because the process works.

Using it has eliminated a lot of unnecessary stress from worrying if I've missed something that needs to be done.

Matt Mochary has the simplest write-up1 on it to get started.

2.2 Weekly reviews and planning

I have a recurring event on my calendar every Sunday to review the week gone by and plan for the next one. Sometimes I forget to do this, but having it on my calendar reminds me to do it the next week.

I take notes in Obsidian and use a combination of Google Tasks and Google Calendar (they work together seamlessly) for planning the next week. I add all action items to the calendar to block time to work on them.

There are two big benefits to the weekly reviews and planning.

• You learn from the week past by reflecting on it and making changes as needed.

• The planning part provides a solid head-start for the next week.

I use a combination of the frameworks mentioned in the previous essay for planning.

You can extend the same process to Quarterly and Yearly reviews (and planning).

2.3 Weekly emails to your Boss

One of the best things you can do for your boss is to reduce uncertainty by providing clarity. The best way to do this is by being proactive in your communication. At my previous job, I would send 2 emails to my boss every week.

Monday - What I plan to do that week.

Friday - What I actually got done that week.

We follow something similar at OSV as well.

Bonus: At the end of the year, you will have a detailed list of what you've worked on. This will make filling in your annual performance review much easier.

2.4 Use the maker v/s manager schedule to your advantage

Paul Graham has an excellent article on the difference between how makers (like programmers, writers etc.) work and how managers work.

If you’re a creator, the key takeaway of the framework is this:

• Schedule meetings on certain days at certain times (if possible)

• Batch meetings together (as far as possible)

• Have long periods of free time on your calendar for deep work

has a great article that dives deeper on the high cost of distraction and how to avoid it.

Hot Takes

How to focus (and win) in today's distraction-filled world

If you’re new here don’t forget to subscribe so you don’t miss future updates: Distraction is modernity’s biggest blocker to our goals Today I wanted to write on the increasingly difficult problem of interruptions in our modern world and some ideas on what we can do about it. First let’s see how bad the problem really is with some research…

Read more

5 years ago · 13 likes · 2 comments · Adam Singer

2.5 Use deadlines as forcing functions

Depending on how you work and respond to deadlines, this is a helpful hack. If I add a deadline to something, I usually get it done.

This current newsletter is reaching you due to the weekly deadlines I've set for publishing the essays I've been sitting on for years.

Deadlines force you to overcome the inertia of starting something new and prioritizing it over multiple other things that are already going on.

Deadlines are best used in a minimal dose, usually when you're starting new projects and need some momentum. 

3. HEALTH

You're already too late if you ignore health issues until they become a significant problem. If you focus on health before it becomes a problem, it won't become one.

The best course of action I've found is to hire a personal trainer for 6 months to teach you what you need to know about fitness. If you can't hire one, I've also found virtual fitness coaches helpful if you already have some experience in the gym. The other options are Youtube, joining a fitness class, and/or playing sports. 

My health processes are simple.

• Exercise ~5 days a week for ~30 Mins + Walking + Sports wherever possible

• Eat healthy home-cooked meals 80% of the time

• Get 7+ hours of sleep 80% of the time

Sleep is my canary in the coal mine. If I get under 7 hours of sleep consistently, that's a sign I need to change something.

4. RELATIONSHIPS

My processes for relationships are limited to ensuring boundary conditions so that I don't let other parts of my life crowd out the meaningful relationships in my life.

• Calls/dinners with closest friends once a month or more (scheduled beforehand, since it helps co-ordinate time)

• Reply on Instagram/Twitter/Whatsapp stories to stay in touch with other friends etc.

Everything else is organic or already ingrained.

CONCLUSION

The above processes are some of the ones I've used personally and found to be the most effective. But you don't need elaborate processes to succeed. 

The key is to figure out what works for you and do that.

Note: On a personal level, not having processes can be great if that is how you work best. 

Here are a couple of more examples of very different processes followed by some very successful people.

Structured

• Immanuel Kant - The One Rule for Life.

• Benjamin Franklin's daily routine.

• Rob Dyrdek - Probably one of the most extreme examples of quantified tracking that I've seen

Unstructured

• Naval - Work like a Lion.

• Nassim Taleb - His rules for life.

• Daniel Vassallo - Work under uncertainty and The Self Employment Meta Game.

There are things you want to do, but don't know where to start

If everything is important, nothing is

In the past, I've often dealt with the mental weight of having 100 different things to do. The mental strain came from feeling overwhelmed by everything that needed to be done.

No more.

In this post, I will share how you can start to bring order to the chaos of juggling multiple things.

A note before we start: The frameworks I discuss are only helpful if they are a part of your life. This requires repetition.

Planning is hard,

doing things as planned is harder,

and changing the plan in light of new information may be even harder.

Try the frameworks, and see if they suit you.

If they don't, abandon them.

Trying to force-fit them into your life will not work. 

Pick the ones that work best and make them a part of your life.

Let us begin.

You want mental tools to help you visualize your long-term vision as well as plan the daily grind.

You want these tools to be flexible enough to handle planning one-off tasks like buying a new sofa and recurring things like catching up with your friends.

I’ll be discussing four frameworks that I've found helpful in a multitude of situations to clear my mind and lay out what I wanted to do. These frameworks will help you.

• Lay out your North Star using Buffett's 5/25 (I'll also show you what to do if you don't know what you want to do with your life)

• Prioritize day-to-day work with 

  • Eisenhower's Decision Matrix.

  • Shreyas' LNO framework.

• Build boundaries using DWMQ.

These are simple to follow using favorite to-do list apps, notebooks, or even Apple Notes (I use Google Tasks and Taskboard, which is a web wrapper for Google Tasks)

Before you can apply these frameworks, doing one thing first will help.

Pick one single app or notebook to keep track of ALL the things that you need to do.

Having a central place to keep track of everything you need to do will eliminate the mental worry and hassle of going through multiple different apps/notebooks/papers to find what you had written down.

David Allen's Getting Things Done is an iconic system to track and manage everything that you need to do. While the system is excellent for keeping track of items, I've found the frameworks discussed below help me prioritize the items. You can use the system in conjunction with the frameworks given below.

Matt Mochary has an excellent, short write-up on the key points in his book, The Great CEO Within (Made available for free by Matt). Specifically, the chapter on Getting Things Done explains the system's key points in 3 pages.

Let us start with the four frameworks.

Track the big things in your life using the 5 / 25 and the To-don't List by Warren Buffett

Buffett is a legendary investor, and part of his success is attributed to the things he does NOT do. The 5/25 strategy comes from Buffett's conversation with his pilot years ago.

Many years ago, before an airplane takeoff, Warren Buffett walked up to his pilot, Mike Flint, and jokingly said to him, "The fact that you're still working for me tells me I'm not doing my job. You should be out, going after more of your goals and dreams."

Buffett asked Flint to list down his top 25 goals in life and then rank them from 1 to 25

He then asked him to circle the top 5 and asked him how he planned to achieve them. Flint answered that he would spend some time on the top 5, and the rest of it, he would focus on them when he could

Buffett suddenly became serious and told him that everything below the top 5 just became his 'To-Don't' list. If he spent any time on items 6-25, then he would never be able to achieve the top 5

Time is limited, and there are things you want to do in life.

By extension, the only way you will be able to go after the things that matter to you most is if you don't do things that matter less.

"The difference between successful people and really successful people is that really successful people say no to almost everything."

- Warren Buffett

Most people have a to-do list of some kind. But few maintain a To-Don't list.

The to-do list is an excellent way to know what you need to do. But equally important is the To-don't list, which prevents you from being side-tracked from your primary mission.

This is even more relevant in the modern age, where distraction is just a tap away.

How to use this framework for long-term and short-term planning

1. Make a list of all the things you want to do today / this week / this year / in a lifetime - think of it as your bucket list, e.g., getting married, having kids, learning to play the guitar, etc. Don't hold anything back.

2. Rank them from 1 to N.

3. Pick the top 5

4. Only work on the top 5 and be ruthless in ignoring everything else.

5. Every time you cross off something from the top 5, add one new item to the top 5 from the rest of the list.

How to start if you don't yet have any long-term goals

Invert, always invert

Many people don't know what they want to do in life. That is fine

Most people know what they don't want to do in life. This is where you start

Use the same approach but in an inverted manner

Create a list of 25 things you don't want to do. Rank the top 5 and start doing what you need to avoid them.

Manage daily chaos and long-term impact using the 2x2 Eisenhower Decision Matrix

This is one of my favorite frameworks because it lays bare what needs to be done now and later and what must be avoided.

Where does the name come from? The namesake app Eisenhower.me lays it out

Dwight D. Eisenhower was the 34th President of the United States from 1953 until 1961. Before becoming President, he served as a general in the United States Army and as the Allied Forces Supreme Commander during World War II. He also later became NATO's first supreme commander.

Dwight had to continuously make tough decisions about which of the many tasks he should focus on daily. This finally led him to invent the world-famous Eisenhower principle, which today helps us prioritize by urgency and importance.

Eisenhower used this framework as part of his war planning. You and I can use this framework to plan our daily and weekly battles.

Quadrant 1. Urgent and Important:

Anything that needs to get done right away.

This is the fire-fighting zone.

Ideally, you want this to be empty most of the time. This quadrant requires your immediate and prompt response. Examples include A medical emergency, an assignment with a deadline, etc.

Do items in this zone first

Quadrant 2. Not-urgent but important:

This is the most critical quadrant to build the life you want.

You want to spend as much time as possible working on things in this quadrant.

If you don't deal with the things in this quadrant, they will fester and shift to quadrant 1, where you will be forced to firefight. Examples include Company strategy, learning a new skill, exercising, etc.

Schedule the items in this quadrant.

Quadrant 3: Urgent but not important:

Some things need to get done urgently, like paying your TV bill or rescuing the neighbor's 3rd cat from the banyan tree. While urgent, these tasks are not that important (I'm sure your neighbor will disagree)

Delegate these tasks to someone else whenever possible.

Quadrant 4: Not Urgent and not important:

Slacker's heaven.

Bingeing Netflix for hours, getting drunk every weekend, idling around. You get the gist. Pick the poison holding you back from going after what you want, and avoid it.

This quadrant represents the NOT-to-do list.

Eisenhower used this framework as a wartime general, but you can use it just as effectively in daily life.

Prioritize daily tasks with the LNO framework

Shreyas Doshi is one of the top product leaders in the world. His LNO framework is a great way to prioritize tasks based on the perceived impact. The idea simple

Mark every task in your list as

• L (Leverage) - Returns ~10x or more than you put in

• N (Neutral) - Returns ~1x what you put in

• O (Overhead) - Returns <1x what you put in

The thread below is an excellent example of how to use it

DWMQ

Years ago, as a young 20-something about to graduate from college, one of my worries was losing touch with my friends after graduation. I had seen adults who no longer knew their friends from college, and I had no plans to be one who unknowingly lost touch.

Of course, no one plans to drift apart. These things happen when you're busy with other more pressing matters, like impressing your boss by working ungodly hours.

My plan was simple: A fortnightly video call.

I set up a recurring calendar invite. Many of my friends were going abroad for higher studies, and a video call was one of the best ways to connect.

It has worked brilliantly so. We still have those calls, and even though fewer people show up, it's still something I look forward to every other weekend.

So what is DWMQ?

Daily-Weekly-Monthly-Quarterly

Life is what happens when you're busy making other plans

- Allen Saunders

I use DWMQ to set boundary conditions, to help me remind myself of the things that are important to me regardless of how "busy" life gets.

These are things that you don't want to forget to do.

The principal purpose of DWMQ is to ensure you don't lose out on the things you want unknowingly.

How many people do you know who used to play the piano, guitar, or some sport but no longer play it simply because they have become older?

Almost no one un-knowingly stopped.

Other things come up, and after a while, you realize it's too hard to continue because you will now have to start from scratch.

The chains of habit are too light to be felt until they are too heavy to be broken

- Samuel Johnson

How to use DWMQ

Print a sheet with things you want to do daily, weekly, monthly, and quarterly. Pin it to your wall or schedule it in your calendar.

When you get too busy to do the things in DWMQ, let it remind you that you are now unknowingly straying from the path you once wanted.

If you no longer want something on the list, remove it. Use only the parts of the framework that suit you.

E.g.,

• Daily: Exercise

• Weekly: Call friends

• Monthly: Review progress

Use frameworks as guides, not rules

A final note: We've looked at four frameworks that will help you plan and prioritize practically anything you want.

But these frameworks are abstractions. They should not be confused with what is in front of you, i.e., the life you live.

The frameworks are aids to help you get what you want.

But they are not replacements for adaptability. If 2020 has taught us anything, the world can change in a few short weeks, and sticking to the wrong thing can do more harm than benefit.

Use the frameworks, but toss them aside once they've served their purpose.

If you want to download the free printable sheets or the paid editable digital versions, click the button below.

Download Now

Next Saturday I will share the next part of Building a personal operating system - Build rock-solid Processes. Thanks for reading!