Ideas That Have Served Me Well
Thoughts I return to often
In progress
Ideas that guide me through life.
Evolution
We are monkeys with certain cognitive and social aptitudes. What feels good is what helped us survive in our ancestral environment. What feels bad is what threatened our livelihood.
The Mind-Body Connection
The mind is the body. The body is the mind.
The Map is not the Territory
You can be walking along, following your map, thinking you’ve got nothing to worry about for miles… and then find yourself knee deep in water. “But there’s no river here!” you exclaim in frustration, staring at your map. But your map is just a representation of the territory. The lack of river on it is no more likely to keep your socks dry than drawing a dragon on it will make one appear.
Your mind continually maps reality. There are things you think that just not true. There are things you don’t think that are. The key point is what goes on in your mind is just a map. It’s a starting point for navigating the world.
You want to be keenly aware of opportunities where you can truly test your map against reality and see how well it holds up. Inaccurate maps can mean wet socks one day and unknowingly walking off a cliff the next.
Hanlon’s Razor
Most things that negatively impact you were not directed at you. Rarely action taken by someone else that causes you some harm was intended to cause you harm. Most people are just trying to get by. Think of anyone who you made a victim of some kind. You didn’t mean it — it was an accident. The same is true for others.
Occam’s Razor
Probabilities multiply. For that reason alone, explanations that require fewer unexpected things to occur will be more likely to be true.
Successful Plans
The same is true for plans. A plan that has two steps, each with a 70% chance of succeeding, is more likely to turn out positively than one that has seven steps, even though each step has a 90% chance (49% vs 48%).
The Qualities of Quantities
Certain numbers impact our brains in non-linear ways. Take the above examples about making a plan. Not only does the two step plan have a slightly better chance of succeeding, I would argue it would lead to even better outcomes more broadly because it increases the salience of risk.
Without careful observation, 90% feels like a given — a certainty. Whereas 70% feels like it’s 50-50. The latter tends to lead to better preparations about how to navigate failure. Awareness of risk helps you make a plan more robust. The assumption of success is a self-defeating prophecy.
Black Swans
Things that your model of reality did not anticipate will occur. They’ll be disruptive precisely because they were not anticipated. Black swans can be positive, however. You want to structure your life so that you can capture positive black swans and absorb the effects of the negative.
Strive for Mastery in Something
You’ll find that lots of people have an opinion on activities that “teach you about life.” Martial arts, chess, surfing, wood work. The list goes on. The truth, as far as I can tell, is that striving for mastery is the teacher. The particular activity is almost irrelevant. What matters is continued effort and the quest to improve each day.
1,000 True Fans
1,000 true fans is an alternative path to success other than stardom. Instead of trying to reach the narrow and unlikely peaks of platinum bestseller hits, blockbusters, and celebrity status, you can aim for direct connection with a thousand true fans. On your way, no matter how many fans you actually succeed in gaining, you’ll be surrounded not by faddish infatuation, but by genuine and true appreciation. It’s a much saner destiny to hope for. And you are much more likely to actually arrive there.