There’s a saying I heard last night that I’ve thought a lot about: Pull the Goalie. It comes from hockey and refers to a move coaches sometimes make in the final minutes of the game to pull their goalie out of the game and put another offensive player in. This move is usually made when the team pulling the goalie is losing by one or two points. The odds of that team giving up a goal increases but so too does their chance of scoring a goal to tie the game in the final seconds. If they give up ...

I’ve been creating videos online for a couple years now and there is a phenomenon that all video creators have experienced which is that the videos you expect to perform well, don’t. And the videos you think will flop end up being your best performers. Expect the unexpected when it comes to the public reception of your ideas. I’ve also heard authors, public speakers, artists, and creatives from all fields express the same sentiment. The lesson? Keep honing the craft. Don‘t expect or rely on e...

How much I recommend this book: 6/10 Read: August 2024 Three type of goals: Massively Transformative Purpose (MTP): This is your most important, lifelong, almost-impossible goal. Think Elon’s “get to Mars” High-Hard Goals (HHG): Goals that get you out of your comfort zone and push you closer to your MTP Clear Goals: Short-term actionable goals that focus you and provide direction. Should be specific, measurable, and achievable within a short time frame, building toward accomplishing your HHG...

A few weeks ago, I met a hero of mine, Derek Sivers: https://youtu.be/ao6iLiFXqxQ He said something that has stuck with me. He said that when he travels, he doesn’t care at all about the tourist attractions or even the food or most of the things people care about. He travels to “inhabit philosophies.” And he does that by meeting people everywhere he goes. That little phrase concisely captures why I have always loved traveling but could never quite put it into words myself. When I was in Nepa...

At an event, they passed around cards with conversation starter questions on them. My group received one that asked, “if there was a museum about your life, what would be displayed in it?” There were two responses I loved. One woman said she would have every book she’s ever read displayed chronologically along with explanations of where she was at in her life at that time and how the book shaped her intellectually. One guy said he would have flags from every country he’s visited and lived in ...

I used to love video games. Thinking back on it, much of my social life in my teenage years revolved around playing Halo or Call of Duty or some other game at my friends’ houses. Then, in college, I got it in my head that video games were a complete waste of time. I got rid of my Xbox and haven’t gamed much since. I had convinced myself that the only thing I should be doing with my time was activities that make me smarter or move me toward making more money. In other words, “useful” things...

This morning, I woke up with an idea for turning an old lead magnet into a paid product. I made some updates to the product, set up a landing page, added a checkout button, recorded a VSL, and no more than four hours after getting the idea, I had the new product for sale. Shortly before writing this article, I had my first sale. That’s the beauty of being a solopreneur. There is zero friction from idea to execution. I don’t have to get anything approved. I don’t have to wait for anyone else. ...

I used to think that the hardest part of a startup was the sheer amount of effort it took to create something from nothing. Now, I think the hardest part is being patient. There are days where it feels like my business is a rocket ship and everything is happening at once. But then there are days like today where nothing much happens at all. And it makes me panic and think I need to shift strategy or add new products or start running ads. The reality is, it’s all a cycle. Tomorrow, I’ll pr...

Listening to Lex Fridman’s interview with Pieter Levels right now: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFtjKbXKqbg Pieter is awesome, I’ve followed his work for several months now. And every time I go down the rabbit hole on his story, I can’t help but feel inspired. It makes me want to try 12 startups in 12 months or drop everything and start building indie apps like he does. He makes it sound so romantic. Travel the world, have complete freedom, make tons of money. And it’s true, he has built a l...

Whenever I feel lost or like I don’t know what my next steps are in life or business or anything else, I whiteboard. I lock myself in my office with my whiteboard, dry erase markers, and some music. For two hours I pace around and I think. I think in the form of graphs, doodles, lists, diagrams, and numbers. I dream in the form of dry erase. Nothing is permanent. I fill the board completely, take a photo of it, erase it, and start over. Multiple times. I emerge from these sessions with clar...

Normally, I enjoy taking public transportation. There is something about it that feels good. It’s economical, it’s efficient, it feels safe and relaxing. I don’t have to worry about parking or fueling up or crashing. Most of the time… Yesterday, I had a miserable time on a bus. I had the misfortunate timing of evening rush hour to try to get to an event. When the bus pulled up to my stop and opened it’s doors, passengers almost spilled out. A few people got off and the mass of people inside ...

I love coffee but… what if it’s the new smoking? I know you’re sharpening your pitchfork and preparing the tar but hear me out. 50 years ago and beyond, nearly everyone smoked and doctors even went as far as endorsing certain brands of cigarettes. It was blasphemy to suggest that smoking might be killing people. Until more research came out and public opinion (and behavior) started to shift. I’m old enough to have caught the very final years of smoking at restaurants being allowed and that see...

I’ve lived in dozens of cities in my life. Whenever I arrive in a new place, I start exploring it. I try as many restaurants as I can, I go to all the parks, I see the major sights. But what inevitably happens after a few months is I stop exploring. I settle into a routine and don’t leave certain boundaries. I settle into a comfort zone, physically and mentally. Yesterday, I spent the day trying new places in a neighborhood on the opposite side of the city where I live. I discovered a new café ...

I’m currently reading Shoe Dog, the memoirs of Phil Knight, the founder of Nike. I can’t put it down. Business biographies and business histories are my favorite genre. Every single successful business I’ve studied has a fascinating story behind it. I’ve never read a single one where the path is predictable or linear. There is almost never a moment in the first decade or two where the success of the business or entrepreneur is secured. Shoe Dog starts from the very beginning of Nike in 1962 a...

There is a commonality with the people I admire the most: they are independent. They aren’t consultants or bankers or government contractors or soldiers. They aren’t people with ‘normal’ careers. They are entrepreneurs. They don’t live (for the most part) anywhere close to where they grew up. They get out of their home country. They don’t do the traditionally ‘safe’ thing in any aspect of life. They do what they want and follow what interests them. They don’t stay inside of a comfort ...

A few days ago, my dog Elvis had his spleen removed. As a result, he isn’t supposed to be active and he definitely cannot jump or else it’ll tear his stitches. Because of this, we blocked the couch that he normally lays on and put the huge futon cushion on the ground. When we got home from the hospital, he immediately walked to the cushion and laid on it. He’s barely left it in the days since. In fact, I write this while laying next to him on the cushion. He’s recovering nicely but until h...

Today, I published a video that I think may be my best one ever. Not only was it fun to make, it’s objectively the highest production quality video I’ve made (using a nice camera and mics). I’m also proud of the story and pacing and how I took over an hour of raw video and compressed it into just 8 minutes. But, viewers don’t agree. Youtube gave it tons of impressions but it’s currently getting the lowest click-through rate of any recent video I’ve posted. And worse, those who click aren’t wa...

Formula for an interesting life: Do interesting stuff > Document > Storytell > Ideate and Iterate > Repeat Do Interesting Stuff Interesting here means interesting to you. How to find what interests you: What pulls your attention? What do you obsess about? What makes you think, “I wonder if X is possible?” Then, complete a challenge related to what interests you. Document Capture yourself doing said interesting stuff via your favorite media i.e. video or writing. Storytel...

Three days ago, my dog had a medical emergency and we thought we were going to lose him. Friday night, as we rushed to the vet hospital and I held him in the back of an Uber, I was prepared for that to be the last time I ever saw him alive. Many tears were shed and it was one of the longest nights of my life. Today, we got him home (minus his spleen). It is an immense joy to have him back. There is a new found appreciation in every moment. The normal tasks of dog ownership like walking him an...

Over the course of the past year, I’ve uploaded over 250 videos to my business’ Youtube channel and grown a small audience. Almost every day there is a trickle of new subscribers and comments. But yesterday, I net lost a subscriber and had no new comments. Ouch. This isn’t the first time that’s happened either. But every time it does, it’s hard not to feel discouraged. Like all my efforts are wasted. Like the YouTube algorithm gods don’t like me. Like I’m doing something wrong with my conten...

Last night, my best friend almost died. I had to rush my 12 year old Husky to the emergency room where they found his spleen had ruptured and he needed surgery. Thankfully, he made it through the night but needs a couple more days at the hospital while he recovers. But, let me back up to a few hours before the emergency situation. Yesterday, I listened to an outstanding TED Talk that got me inspired to start writing. I wrote a story I had been procrastinating on. You can read that story for ...

Yesterday, I listened to an outstanding TED Talk that has me feeling inspired to start writing daily. It’s this one by Mathew Dicks, a professional storyteller: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7p329Z8MD0 Go watch it. In it, he tells how spending 5 minutes each night writing down one story from the day has changed his life. First, his life feels more important because each day he forces himself to reflect on the seemingly mundane events of the day and pull an interesting lesson from it. ...

For the last two months, a toilet in my house has had a problem. After flushing, the water continued to run. It’s small enough that I didn’t call a plumber but big enough to be annoying. I gave a few half hearted attempts to fix it myself but eventually I’d give up and decide it was fine for now. There was a temporary fix where I could remove the back of the toilet, reach my hand into the water tank, and press down on the rubber seal on the bottom to stop the constant running. So I did that. A...

How much I enjoyed it: 6/10 A woman receives a package containing a manuscript for a book written by her ex-husband. Her current husband leaves on a trip to NYC and she starts reading the manuscript. As she reads, the movie’s storyline becomes that of the manuscript which opens with a couple and their daughter taking a roadtrip through the desert of West Texas. They’re driving through the night and they get stuck behind two cars driving slowly side by side. One of the cars drops back and the ...

How much I recommend it: 10/10 I first read this book in 2020/2021 when I was running a small business. After six months of running that business, I hadn’t paid myself yet because I was “reinvesting it all back in the business.” That changed the moment I read this book. Without changing anything else, I started to pay myself and take Profit First. From that moment on, the business was sustainable and I had a lot less stress running it. The traditional accounting principle is that [ revenue - e...

How strongly I recommend it: 6/10 Most of the advice in this book feels pretty generic but there was a few things that stuck out and made it worth reading. 1) Sales are your main priority in business. Everything else is a distraction. Sales, sales, sales. Without sales, there is no business. And you’re not just selling your product. You have to sell yourself, your vision, be able to recruit star employees, etc. 2) Pick an hourly rate for yourself. This is the value you can/should provide to th...

How Much I recommend it: 7/10 Wow. The opening of this novel is vivid and horrible (in a disturbing way, not the quality of writing). The type of scene I’ll never forget. Set in the near future (maybe 2040?), an entire town in India gets killed in a horrific heat wave. Across the country, 20 million die. That scene sets the stage for the urgency and gravity of what’s to come. The book is cleverly written in a way I haven’t seen before. Each chapter is written from a different perspective and t...

My best career advice is to get obsessed with and master “one-to-many” skills - writing, speaking, and video. In that order. Writing is the foundation. Writing pulls ideas out of your brain and brings them into the physical world. From there, it requires you to revise your message until it’s as clear, simple, and short as possible. The writing process itself sharpens your thinking and reveals new ideas. Writing requires the least production of the one-to-many skills. It’s as simple as typing ...

Video link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4KNtxkKzb8Y My notes from watching How to Win the Game of Youtube by MagnatesMedia Youtube is like a video game; you need to level up in different skills: storytelling, camera work, editing, etc there are strategies that can help you win Everyone starts at 0 skills, 0 subs, 0 strategy There are level unlocks like becoming a YT partner Most people post without any strategy Like losing weight (eat fewer calories and exercise), growing on Youtube is si...

1: Get a Credit Freeze. If you’re a US citizen or resident with a social security number, this is the lowest hanging fruit for you. A credit freeze - according to the FTC - restricts access to your credit report, which means you — or others — won’t be able to open a new credit account while the freeze is in place. You can temporarily lift the credit freeze if you need to apply for new credit. When the freeze is in place, you will still be able to do things like apply for a job, rent an apar...

1: Use Brave Browser - Brave is a Chromium-based browser meaning it’s based on the same foundation as Google’s Chrome, which is currenlty the most used brwoser in the world and which means it’s highly compatible with modern websites. Brave has built in ad blockers so you won’t see ads on search engines, Youtube, social media sites, or anywhere else. And Brave is free to download on all devices, you can find it any app store. 2: On all of your browsers, possibly Brave from the previous step, i...

Step #1: Get a passport. If you don’t have that, well, you’re stuck in whatever country you’re from and your options are super limited. Even if you don’t plan to travel or move internationally, it’s wise to have a passport in case you have to get out for any reason - whether that’s for business or possibly a natural disaster strikes your home country or a political revolution makes it no longer fun to live there, then it’s good to have the option to leave. Step #2: Get visas for wherever you w...

From the beginning of human history until about 1800, the way humans traveled didn’t change all that much. And nothing was much faster than a person could run. Whether you were on a boat, on foot, on a horse, or in a wagon, you were moving at maybe 12 miles per hour or less. Anything faster wasn’t sustainable over long distances. From 1800 to about 1970, the modes of transportation developed rapidly. Anyone born in that period had faster modes of transportation than their parents had. First t...

Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hASHO5ap1Sw Sabri: has made $7.8b for thousands of clients in hundreds of country over the past 17 years. Marketing is the most important skill in anyone's career - whether an entrepreneur or an employee Product vs Market: is it all about having a great product? Or great marketing? It's not all or one, it's both. You need both The best businesses have great product and great marketing. Launch your business with an MVP, no more. Only expand once you'...

If you want to set up a private server, I highly recommend this tutorial by Derek Sivers: https://sive.rs/ti ...

Show opened with Tim, the gambler Trump Fundraiser Recap Sacks: Organized the presidential fundraiser for Trump. A whole different level of planning coordinating with Security Service and team. There were no anti-Trump protestors and tons of Trump supporters out on the streets in SF. A huge number of first-time Trump donors came out. Trump is extremely charming and entertaining, has an ability to instantly connect with people. Very sharp, very funny, very high-energy. Chamath: There is a huge ...

How much I recommend it: 9/10 Mastery by Robert Greene was exactly the book I needed at this time in my life. Mastery is finding your “life’s task”, doing an apprenticeship in that thing, then continuing to practice that thing until after years of focused effort and practice, achieving Mastery. Very few people ever achieve Mastery yet every human is capable of it. Most people are too scattered to achieve Mastery. You can only be mastering one thing at a time. For some of the great Masters ...

ChatGPT 4o is here. It’s a massive upgrade on speed, reliability, UI, cost, efficiency, and more. So many amazing examples coming out like live translating, math tutoring, note taking in Zoom calls, and much more. Friedberg: It’s become apparent that there is an evolution underway on the model architecture where each version isn’t a big, bulky overhaul but rather continuous tuning and slight upgrades like apps. This OpenAIs first step toward that future. ChatGPT 4o is close to Claude Opus on pe...

Sam Altman is a guest on the episode today. Sam Altman is the former president of Y Combinator and CEO of OpenAI. When is GPT5 coming out? Sam: We take our time, it won't come out until it's ready. GPT 4 has gotten better even since it was released. These models continually get better and this is the future, a constant improvement. You may just continue to keep training models. GPT4 currently only available to paid users but the goal is to balance a certain amount of tools available for fre...

https://youtu.be/OxbtNsenZJY?si=VZP6rvBDtP9jIrss Sheryl Sandberg is on as a guest. She talked about the sexual violence that occurred on October 7, 2023 by Hamas in Israel. She has been interviewing survivors of the sexual assaults that took place but many people in the media are denying it happened. Sexual violence in war is unacceptable. Throughout history, it has happened with every war but for the last few decades it’s become something unacceptable. There is no black and white here, the wor...

I’ve never enjoyed art. I don’t appreciate or feel pulled toward music or drawing or painting or anything else. And I felt a bit of jealousy toward people who had a creative outlet like those. But, it recently occurred to me: video is my art. Since taking video production classes in high school 15+ years ago, there is something I enjoy about planning, filming, and editing a video. But I never considered it “art.” Benjamin Franklin, Leonardo Da Vinci, and tons of other greats throughout histo...

We might be entering an era where aging becomes a thing of the past, obesity gone, where even paralysis is temporary. I recently finished the book How Innovation Works by Matt Ridley and there's an idea that I can't stop thinking about. I'm obsessed with the intersection of history, science, and business and that book hit that mark for me. The idea I can't stop thinking about is that there are eras to innovation and that during these eras everyone from the politicians to science fiction autho...

How much I recommend it: 5/10 By Devon Eriksen I heard about this book from a post on X, someone was asking for the best science fiction books and this title came up in several responses. It was published last year, 2023, which is what caught my attention. I’ve read lots of sci fi books from the likes of Isaac Asimov and other 20th century sci fi writers but wanted to expand to more contemporary books to what types of futures are being imagined now. Theft of Fire takes place mostly in space w...

How much I recommend it: 8/10 Over a decade ago, as a high schooler, I played the game Fallout on Xbox 360. It’s set in an apocalyptic world with radioactive creatures, underground vaults to explore, and a mid 20th century aesthetic. Fast forward to 2024, that video game franchise has been turned into an Amazon Prime series and a very good one at that. While I enjoyed the game when I was young, I didn’t expect to like the series as much I did. The characters are great, the scenery is stunning...

Google fired 28 protestors who were protesting the war in Israel/Palestine. Google is involved in a $1.2b Israeli government contract. Friedberg: On the one hand, it’s good that Google took a stand but on the other, it’s reflective of a company culture that has been too tolerant of social activism to the point where these employees thought they could get away with it without consequence. Chamath: The Golden Gate Bridge protest and the Google protest are different issues. In a democracy, being ab...

Jason’s out - hurt his tooth eating ribs Fridberg: Announcing All-In Summit 2024 in Los Angeles - September 8-10, 2024 Chamath went to an AI conference with Jonathan Ross, founder of Groq AI. Chamath: Groq could have 50% of the world’s inference compute by the end of next year. Nvidia is following the Intel playbook by defining a metric that defines the market. Intel picked clock speed, which isn’t actually super important to the end user. “All major cities are crumbling”…lots of petty crime,...

I write this from the Atlanta airport on April 4, 2024. This is my first time stepping foot in the United States since December 2022. I feel like a stranger in a strange land. In that spirit, the following is my observations of the customs of this place and its humans. The very first thing I noticed was upon taking my phone off airplane mode. The cellular data is blazing fast! My WhatsApp messages were sending immediately and webpages loading instantly versus taking 3 or 4 or 5 seconds. The 5G...

SBF Sentenced to 25 years in prison FTX customers lost 8 billion due to FTX fraud; no possibility of parole Sacks: SBF turned out to be an actually good investor - he put money in Anthropic (now worth $884M) and Solana. Unlike the Madoff situation, SBF actually made some money but his messiah complex caused him to do shady things. Friedberg: 100% of the investors and account holders will be made whole according to the FTX trustee. Jason: They were hopped up on speed and that lead to some of...

DOJ sues Apple for anti-competitive behavior in five categories. Sacks: Both Apple and the government have good points but the government has no smoking gun in this case. Friedberg: Apple makes great products and consumers are free to switch to Android or Windows or alternatives. Jason: The fact that the App Store can tax every app by 30% is outrageous. They should allow consumers to choose whether they want to get apps off the App Store. Friedberg: Government needs to stay out of this situatio...

A beautiful thing about life is none of us know where this thing is going to end up. And if you're reading these words, you still have a chance to write your story. The thing is, in this story, you get to be both author and main character. You may not get to choose the obstacles or even the supporting characters. But you get to craft your own character and story around them. You can write it in an unintentional and uninspired way. Most do. Or you can be strong, resilient, kind, honest, foc...

Most Based CEO Jason: CEOs seem to be getting more candid and saying what they think rather than filtering everything through a PR team. Played Jensen Huang clip saying “I hope you suffer” and Palantir CEO talking about Wall Street traders doing coke. Friedberg: It seems like the cancel culture mentality is fading away - clearly a positive trend. Sacks: These CEOs aren’t saying anything dangerous. They still aren’t attacking any sacred cows. There wasn’t necessarily any political courage in the...

How much I recommend it: 6/10 The movie was decent but way too long. The movie starts with a woman getting murdered and her body discovered by her boyfriend. The rest of the film is an unraveling of whodunit. The boyfriend, who initially seems innocent, is revealed to be part of a mastermind family behind a corrupt police department and real estate company. The police department was planting drugs in houses, raiding them, capturing the drugs and properties, then selling the properties to the...

Elon is suing OpenAI for starting as a nonprofit and turning into a for-profit. Sacks: Elon feels like he was swindled after having donated to OpenAI as a nonprofit. The meme battle is excellent. Chamath: They used Elon’s name to raise more money early on. But, the personal matter is less important than the legal precedent. If non-profits are allowed to become for-profits, that’s a dangerous loophole to have. Friedberg: OpenAI released a set of documents with Elon himself saying the org should...

Words pull ideas out of the abstract. That’s a fancy way to say that by being able to describe something, you can bring it into existence or at least into your awareness. I’ve noticed this many times in my life. I’ll stumble upon an idea with a name - often these are things that end in ‘law’ (eg. Parkinson’s Law), ‘principle’ (Pareto Principle), or ‘effect’ (Dunning-Kruger Effect) - and by being able to name it, an idea that’s always been there enters my awareness. Some people have a talent ...

Link to the letter: https://www.berkshirehathaway.com/2023ar/2023ar.pdf Opens with a tribute to the recently deceased Charlie Munger Charlie, in 1965, promptly advised me: “Warren, forget about ever buying another company like Berkshire. But now that you control Berkshire, add to it wonderful businesses purchased at fair prices and give up buying fair businesses at wonderful prices. Charlie was the “architect” of the present Berkshire, and I acted as the “general contractor” to carry out the...

How much I recommend it: 7/10 This one is trippy, dark, and thought-provoking. A couple, James and Em, are vacationing on a fictional remote island. The resort they are staying at is isolated from the rest of the island as the tiny country is desperately poor and known to be dangerous for tourists. They befriend another couple, Gabi and Alban, staying at the resort and get invited to leave the resort to go to a beach. They rent a car from a resort employee and head out for a day of drinking ...

Nvidia had record earnings in Q4 2023 with $22B of revenue. Massive growth over the last few years. Stock popped and the market cap gained $270B in one day. Chamath: When companies are too profitable, the margins eventually get competed away. This is going to spur other companies to jump into the fray. Friedberg: Chamath is right so the question is: how long is Nvidia’s lead going to last? We‘ve seen this type of monopoly before with companies like Cisco and Oracle but eventually competitors c...

What stands between me right now and the best possible version of myself is objectively simple. Not easy. In fact, it's really hard. But it's simple. What I mean is that everyone knows objectively what to do to get better at anything in life whether it's running faster, losing fat, saving more money, or getting better at another language. In any of those cases, it's simple. Here are the answers, respectively: Run more and harder. Eat healthier foods and fewer calories. Spend less than you...

Show notes: Are we underestimating or overhyping AI? Friedberg: we have to see productivity gains in the application layer then meet the demand with enough computing power. Arm’s valuation has doubled in the last few weeks. The Vision Fund bought 90% of Arm - giant win for Masa. Chamath: people who don’t understand the market or the tech will critique good investors but time reveals who’s right. Massive credit to Masa for tuning out the crowd and sticking to his convictions. Sacks: Masa is a...

In this new era, every company is a media company. Whether you are a solopreneur or a small business, and whether you’ve accepted it or not, you are a media company. You have to be if you want to be successful. In the past, you could run a newspaper ad or radio ads or even put up a sign and you’d be able to generate some awareness for your product or service. With some exceptions, those don’t work as well anymore. Consumers are inundated with advertising and it’s harder to get noticed. Now,...

For life satisfaction, there are three fundamental questions to address: Who am I doing life with? (partner/friends) Where am I living? (Physical location) What am I doing with my time? (Profession/hobbies) Then, at any given time, there are three things to strive for: Health Wealth Time ...

How much I recommend it: 2/10 This is one of the weirdest movies I have ever seen. Couples are the most important thing in society. And single people get sent to a hotel. The hotel is a 45 day holding area where if they don’t meet someone to partner with, they get turned into an animal. Yup. It’s super weird. Every few days, the single people go hunting with tranquilizer guns for other single people who have escaped the system and are living in the woods. For each one they catch, they earn o...

Here's a simple and quick tutorial to install and run an open-source LLM AI Chatbot on your computer's hard drive. Note: these instructions are for MacOS and Linux (no Windows option at the time of writing) First-time instructions: Go to https://ollama.com/ Click Download Open the Ollama .zip file Open the Ollama app and follow the instructions to setup Copy the Terminal prompt at the end of the dialogue Paste the prompt into your computer's terminal Allow it to install Once done, you offici...

Key phrase is “right now.” I’m a big believer in pivoting my beliefs and philosophies in light of new and better information. I try not to be dogmatic about anything. In my head, the best ideas must win. I’m also sharing this because these three things pretty much cover the topics I write about on this blog. My three things right now are: Technology - Software is eating the world (credit to Marc Andreessen for that line) Self-mastery - The degree to which we get what we want in life or not ...

There is only one battle in life. It’s not me versus my enemies. It’s not me versus my friends or family. It’s not me versus the world, economy, or government. It’s not even me versus intangibles like time, energy, or intelligence. It’s not me versus my competition - in business, in sports, in school, in anything. They don’t matter. There is only one battle. It is me versus me. This is the only battle. Everything else is an excuse. And that’s liberating. In any area of life, I know if...

Show notes: Besties discuss the Apple Vision Pro. Friedberg mentions the huge potential he sees for training and on-the-job augmentation. Chamath expresses concern for the younger generation who is suffering massively from depression and health issues that now they might be spending even more time in virtual worlds. Sacks: we’ve been on the verge of VR ‘happening’ for 30 years but we’re still not there yet - form factor still needs to shrink down and get more natural. Is the Vision Pro like b...

How much I recommend it: 10/10 Author: Eric Jorgensen; Balaji Srinivasan My all-time most read book is Eric Jorgensen’s other book called The Almanack of Naval Ravikant. This book is similar in many, many ways which I why I enjoyed it so much. Both books are compilations of essays, tweets, and transcripts from influential Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and investors - Balaji Srinivasan (in the case of Anthology of Balaji) and Naval Ravikant (in the case of The Almanack of Naval). Both books st...

I have no nostalgia for the past - this is objectively the greatest time to be alive. The last few decades are the first time in known history where the leading cause of death isn’t famine, disease, or war. Instead, the modern human is more likely to die from obesity, addiction, or suicide. Mankind’s basic needs are largely met and now our struggles are ones of abundance. For that reason, I believe, it takes a special discipline to be a modern human. In the majority of countries around t...

Not all dollars are the same. They aren’t the same in how they’re earned nor in how they’re spent. Earning a Dollar Consider a dollar earned through legitimate means versus one earned illegally or immorally. In the case of the legitimately earned dollar, the Earner can sleep well knowing that according to the laws of the country in which it was earned, it belongs to them. And according to the customer or employer who gave it to them, it is the Earners’ as a reward for providing something of ...

How much I’d recommend it: 8/10 Plot w/ spoiler: A medical student persuades her friends to perform an experiment on her which involves stopping her heart for a minute to allow her enter the afterlife, then resuscitate her. She has a very trippy, dream-like experience in the afterlife but toward the end, things start to go dark and turn into a bit of a nightmare. The next day, in class, she is a superstar. She remembers everything she has ever read and is able to diagnose patients quickly ...

How much I’d recommend it: 7/10 Complete plot w/ spoiler: This is a really creepy movie. Set in small-town Pasco, Washington, a mother and her 17-year old homeschooled daughter (Chloe) are living together, preparing Chloe for college. She has her sights set on attending the University of Washington in Seattle. Every day, she eagerly checks the mail for a decision letter but her mom always beat her to the mailman and tells her she’ll let her know if anything comes. Chloe, by the way, is paralyze...

Remember these four words: It was a lesson. For any regret, any missed opportunity, any pain from the past whatsoever: It was a lesson. But it’s only a lesson if something was learned. Most of my regrets come from times I was selfish, dishonest, timid, or cowardly. The right lesson to learn from these are to be more generous, more honest, bolder, and more courageous. The wrong lesson would be to assume that those mistakes define me forever and I cannot fix them in the future. The past is ...

There’s a meme I love called the mid-wit meme. In this meme, there is a bell curve of intelligence from 55 IQ up to 145 IQ. On the left side of the curve, there are the low-wits. The low-wit is depicted as a caveman-looking character with a big forehead and blank stare on his face. In the middle, there are the average intelligence people, the mid-wits. The mid-wit is depicted as a frustrated, crying guy. And on the right, there are the high-wits. The high-wit is depicted as a Jedi. This ...

In college, a friend of mine entered a body building contest. He went from having an average body to Greek god in six months. It was remarkable to watch him prepare. He started with a bulk where he ate a huge surplus of calories every day and worked out daily, sometimes multiple times per day. Then, as the contest approached, he entered a cut where he had a calorie deficit. Throughout it all, he meticulously counted every calorie and every rep of every weight lifted. Now, over a decade l...

This is the blueprint I would give to 18 year old me to become a billionaire within a few decades. It's a framework I wrote in a Notion doc about a year ago and is by no means a prescription for anyone else. It's not necessarily based off of any mainstream financial planning principles. This is solely based off my own risk profile, my circle of competence, the type of investments I like, and the type of responsibility I want to deal with (for example, investing in public markets takes none o...

How much I recommend it: 7/10 Leave the World Behind is a Netflix film in the which cyberattackers take down the grid. Throughout the film, we are only shown one little town in rural New York but presumably the attack is nationwide or even global. Once the grid is down, cell networks fail. GPS doesn’t work. Electricity goes out in NYC. Oil tankers start washing up on shores. And planes are falling from the sky. I really enjoy these type of dystopian stories and I’ve read a great number of t...

How Much I recommend it: 3/10 Life is too short to watch bad movies. The idea behind Old is interesting but this movie was very poorly made and I skipped forward through over half of it. The premise is that a family of four arrives for a vacation at a luxury resort on an unnamed tropical island, probably in the Caribbean. The owner of the resort they are staying at arranges to have them taken to a secret beach that no one else can access. They go, along with some other guests, and get dro...

The following are all quotes from The Almanack Of Naval Ravikant, my favorite book. I re-read it annually, sometimes several times. All credit to Naval: Everybody wants to get rich immediately, but the world is an efficient place; immediate doesn’t work. You do have to put in the time. You do have to put in the hours, and so I think you have to put yourself in the position with the specific knowledge, with accountability, with leverage, with the authentic skill set you have, to be the best in ...

Zero basing means starting from zero. The concept comes from accounting. In business and other organizations, budgets tend to continually grow or at least get neglected. That budget for the [insert irrelevant thing here] is still in the budget even though no one has used one for 20 years. Each year, at year’s end, I like to zero base my life. How I zero base: Unsubscribe from podcasts Unsubscribe from newsletters Unfollow people on social media Delete all the apps off my devices Unsubscr...

How much I recommend it: 8/10 Lucy is a sci-fi thriller in which the main character (played by Scarlett Johansson) overdoses on a drug which causes her brain to work at max capacity and gives her all sorts of incredible abilities. In that sense, it had some similarities to the movie Limitless. The bad guy is a Korean guy named Mr. Jang who has developed a synthetic version of CPH4 (I have no idea if there is any real science to this movie but that is the name of the molecule). He is using Lucy...

I’ve long believed that all problems - both internal and external - can be solved by the mind. After all, nearly everything you and I use on a daily basis has come from the human mind including the airplane, wifi, and running water. As for internal problems like anxiety and depression those are all created by the mind and they can only be solved by the mind that created them. There is one tool that works better than any other I’ve found for channeling the mind and bringing its solutions into ...

How much I recommend it: 7/10 Spanish movie (that I watched in Spanish with English subtitles) This movie has some Back to The Future vibes but is a psychological thriller rather than a comedy. A massive storm in 1989 allows a young kid to communicate through his television with a woman 25 years in the future. It opens with a kid who witnesses some sort of fight going on at his neighbor’s house. He goes over to investigate and finds the neighbor lady dead on the ground with her husband walk...

Everyone wants easy. “Get Rich From Your Couch!” Everyone wants fast. “10 Minute Abs!” Everyone wants simple. “This One Trick Will Make You Happy Forever!” But, there are no hacks and there are no shortcuts. For anything worth doing, the hard way is the easy way. For anything worth doing, the slow way is the fast way. For anything worth doing, the complex way is the simple way. ...

“Do less, better.” - Marcus Aurelius, Meditations I’m a systems and routines guy. I like to set daily habits to move to me toward a goal. But, I tend to take on too much. A pattern that has played out over and over in my life is that I layer on more and more commitments. More and more projects, goals, and habits. My calendar gets cluttered and soon I’m not sticking to any of the systems I established. So I scale back. It’s only when I keep my focus to 1 to 3 things at a time that I ma...

This thought won’t apply to everyone. Just people who want to be happy. And the thought is to overcome the desire to be #1 at anything. I am not encouraging mediocrity or even discouraging competition. But there are some people for whom the demon of being #1 stalks their every move. For them, there is no peace. There is no satisfaction. Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad these people exist. You know them. You work with some of them. You went to school with some of them. And some of them are famou...

Video link: https://youtu.be/dDV1bDiJSWE?si=-Kpq-8vQ37Ok4iE1 These are my notes on Cal Newport’s video: Learn Any Hard Skill in 2024 - How to Eliminate Distraction and Master Productivity Anyone can learn almost anything. However, you cannot learn everything. So you must prioritize your efforts. Also, people will vary in how fast they can learn. There is an element of nature vs nurture in learning. He gave the example of Arnold Schwarzenegger whose dad made him do pushups and squats to get di...

Watched: January 6, 2024 How Strongly I Recommend It: 5/10 Spanish language movie on Netflix Story of an Uruguayan rugby team who got into a plane crash en route to Chile in October 1972. Of 40 passengers and 5 crew, 33 survive the crash. For the next 72 days, they are struggling to survive in the Andes in freezing cold, avalanches, starvation, and hopelessness. Many die along the way but 16 survived to make it off the mountain. The survivors were completely unprepared. They were only wear...

Watched: January 4, 2024 How Strongly I Recommend It: 7/10 [intentionally vague to not spoil] Denzel Washington is Eli, the main character. He is a survivor in a post-apocalyptic world. The film is extremely dark and gray and there is very little color throughout. Eli has a backpack with some basic survival equipment and a large book. And that’s it. He is walking by himself down a desolate road. Occasionally he encounters highway bandits who try to rob him of his belongings but he’s a badass...

New Year's Resolutions - and goals in general - should be based on inputs, not outcomes. Outcome-Based Goals vs. Inputs For most my life I've set outcome-based goals, for example: "Run a 17 minute 5k." "Lose 10 pounds." "Make $100k." I didn't always accomplish my outcome-based goals but the act of setting them helped focus my decisions and motivate me. In that sense, they worked. But, life is random. Injuries happen. Businesses fail. Jobs end. This makes outcome-based goals risky and be...

Each year the besties make predictions on where the world is heading politically and economically. Here are my notes on their predictions: All-in Prediction Pod: Biggest Political Winner of 2024: Sacks: Putin Chamath, Jason, & Friedberg: Third-party candidates - a non-democrat or non-repúblican will rise to be the major contender or candidate (possibly RFK) Biggest Political Loser of 2024: Sacks: Ukraine - they’ve lost over 500K soldiers and a huge amount of the population has fled. B...

Very little of what people create lasts through time and space. When we die, we are - with a few exceptions - forgotten within three generations. Your assets get distributed to your heirs or maybe dropped off unceremoniously at Goodwill. Your business will eventually go under or get bought by a bigger business. The place you worked replaces you with a younger employee. You get a brief moment in time to make your impact. Within days of your funeral, the world moves on. And this is exact...