Lifehacks

 

1. be as specific as possible. “agi takeoff fast”: define “agi” “takeoff” “fast”
2. there’s no such thing as a coincidence
3. for decisions: autoresolve (1) on specific date (2) to the more unpleasant one
4. let people tell you no. don’t make the decision for them.
5. if you’re ever confused about what to do, just do the right thing
6. expectation of progress towards a goal is key to motivation. we are not motivated if don’t know next step. we are not motivated if we don’t know what the goal is
7. when sending/receiving important email, snooze it for the date when you want to follow up
8. set 1 hour timers to surface thoughts in a google doc and 3m timers to write down next steps.
9. the more you know, the more easily you can see the next steps.
10. key about naps: no need to sleep. brain never fully on, never fully off. If I took a 20 minute nap and didn’t fall asleep, i just took an excellent 10 minute nap!
11. if you don’t have consistent scheduled time for your top goals, you don’t have top goals
12. what are you being a coward about? be specific
13. what are you ashamed of? be specific
14. what makes you angry? be specific
15. everything has an MVP & final version. MVP can usually be done in 10% of the time with a timer for 5-10-15 minutes & ensures you don’t get stuck. what’s the mvp of your current top goal?
16. don’t be ashamed to ask “what do you do?” as the first question at parties.
17. seek out weirdest people at parties.
18. working on the hardest problems requires incredible amount of courage. acknowledge & embrace fear.
19. strong intuition doesn’t mean intuition is right.
20. even if high level intuition is right, without grounding actionable implications likely completely wrong.
21. seek ground truth and poke reality. don’t settle for proxies or for winning arguments.
22. never defer key beliefs. do everything possible to find ppl thinking from first principles rather than from what’s reasonable or what someone else believes
23. be suspicious if you haven’t felt awkward today
24. ppl good at thinking think that thinking is everything; people good at doing think that doing is everything. doers dismiss thinkers & thinkers are scared of doers.
25. if there’s something on your mind, write it down & get it out. maintain full attention on what you’re doing.
26. if you did a sequence of actions 3 times, make a checklist
27. if you have a thought and you don’t like it, you can tell your brain that you don’t like it and drop it.
28. add questions & ideas you want to get back to later to anki, snooze tabs, schedule them in asana.
29. if you don’t find yourself naturally wanting to work in a location, go somewhere else. don’t even bring your computer to the one with bad vibes.
30. send cold emails. assume that everyone is a friend.
31. always have a timer on top & use it to avoid getting stuck
32. what were you thinking about in the shower?
33. lots of alpha in low status
34. a reason why being in the bay area important - standards are high! otherwise easy to forget that there are people who need 10 minutes to blow you away with their energy & insight. lots of important ppl intuitions get fucked.
35. be sus if you haven’t spent a few years feeling like a loser when everyone else was getting ahead
36. if you never feel a particular emotion, it’s probably the brain suppressing awareness of it or suppressing the emotion directly
37. read, don’t listen to books.
38. people think that others have same motivations as them
39. people protect themselves by projecting their fears on others
40. you can decide to pay or not to pay attention to things
41. what’s the default decision?
42. be sus whenever you want to read & research instead of figuring something out yourself. it’s usually avoidance caused by fear.
43. grab a piece of paper and write a feelings diagram asking “why” endlessly
44. if you told someone in the year 1400 that the earth rotates around the sun, they’d either ridicule or burn you.
45. run, don’t walk. literally. “Slow is fake”
46. poke at whatever your 15-year old self felt & believed in.
47. you’ll learn 10x more by talking to the paper’s author for 30 minutes versus reading it for 30 minutes
48. you can’t improve what you can’t measure. if you want to improve on ground-truth, measure ground-truth
49. never give up
50. we become the people whose opinion we care about
51. we become the people we spend the most time (physically and mentally) with
52. get to the point
53. who do you want to be more like? write a list
54. set 5 minute timers and write next steps
55. set a 5 minute timer and start doing the next step
56. how do you feel – not think! – about your current top goal?
57. every document must have a specific goal written at the top of it
58. get to inbox 0 every day, unless you have a specific reason not to
59. set 1 minute timers to surface thoughts
60. close eyes when thinking
61. take sundays off
62. if you don’t want to write google docs, best to avoid me at dinner parties
63. credible commitment not to engage in a certain stimulus is tantamount to removing it entirely.
64. intelligence != genius
65. fewer better arguments
66. what’s the silver bullet?
67. cherish friends who tell you things that make you angry
68. sitting around on the floor with eyes closed thinking & having friends call you a coward both remain extremely underrated
69. easy to replace systems get replaced by difficult to replace systems
70. do something courageous
71. homo erectus were not smart enough to do science. homo sapiens are.
72. be sus if you’re not asking dumb questions
73. feeling stupid now is better than feeling stupid in 10 years
74. if someone is successful but there are no specific problems they solved, it’s probably because they’re good at persuading people rather than solving problems.
75. what thoughts you can’t think?
76. 1 year reorienting, 4 years executing
77. some people are not your friends
78. what’s your purpose?
79. saying things out loud shows inner conflict
80. put on your favorite song and dance
81. “should” sus
82. keep asking why
83. who are your mentors?
84. make sure you trust your own word
85. reasonable priors are an oxymoron bc the world is just fucking weird
86. workspace can be drama free
87. if you want people you don’t like to like you you won’t like yourself
88. at least 30% of the world’s smartest 22 year olds right now are in the bay area hustling to get an o1/j1/h1b
89. writing makes thought visible.
90. will you hire your future boss? think
91. utility monsters are real
92. luck favors the prepared
93. most decisions are fake. we are not aware of options, feel like the right thing is impossible, can’t overcome fear.
94. most decisions have a silver bullet & are autoresolved if set up right.
95. wear a funny hat
96. everything is power-law distributed
97. everything is power-law distributed
98. if you’re not failing you’re not operating at the edge. if you’re not operating at the edge, you’re not learning as much as you can
99. use asana as your task manager
100. ask for help. especially when you’re scared of asking for help
101. keep asking why
102. you haven’t failed until you’ve given up
103. write google docs
104. meditate
105. avoid people driven by fear
106. if someone you respect gives you dumb advice, think about it instead of discarding it immediately.
107. let the world tell you no
108. go to a rave get drunk & dance
109. have a concrete positive vision of the future
110. seek people who see the future
111. seek people who don’t get angry at you for saying what you think, being yourself, and doing what you believe is right
112. if you think you’re introverted, find better friends
113. you decide whether to live in the past or in the future with your every action
114. what will you regret tomorrow?
115. in 1 year?
116. in 10 years?
117. when a prisoner at auschwitz was trying to escape the gas chamber, other prisoners alerted the guards
118. never make decisions on the basis of tax rates
119. if you have more than a few months of runway, start spending more
120. spend 10-20% of your time reorienting
121. ask the girl you like out
122. brain is a wet sausage
123. be kind
124. if you’re 20, you’re probably underestimating yourself
125. update all the way
126. if you weren’t at Los Alamos in 1943, you probably thought nuclear weapons were 20 years away
127. know what you want
128. if you feel bad, low energy, depressed, demotivated, there’s probably a reason & there’s probably a solution
129. the smarter someone is the more they can afford to have terrible epistemics and still be successful
130. you are permitted to do what you believe is right
131. autistic visionaries are not natural-born leaders
132. risks are less risky than you think. take as many as you can.
133. be loyal to your friends
134. the richest people lose the most money, the most connected people get rejected the most, the most successful people fail the most
135. go do something that can fail
136. reflect on your day at the end of it and write down what you learned
137. don’t die

credit: Alexey Guzey