I read a lot of articles and over time I encounter advice lists. Here is a place to consolidate them. This list is intended to be a personal, curated list of things that resonate with me and hopefully with you too.
The best way to criticize something is to make something better.
Admitting that “I don’t know” at least once a day will make you a better person.
Forget trying to decide what your life’s destiny is. That’s too grand. Instead, just figure out what you should do in the next 2 years.
Aim to be effective, but unpredictable. That is, you want to act in a way that AIs have trouble modeling or imitating. That makes you irreplaceable.
Whenever you hug someone, be the last to let go.
Don’t save up the good stuff (fancy wine, or china) for that rare occasion that will never happen; instead use them whenever you can.
The best gardening advice: find what you can grow well and grow lots and lots of it.
Never hesitate to invest in yourself—to pay for a class, a course, a new skill. These modest expenditures pay outsized dividends.
Try to define yourself by what you love and embrace, rather than what you hate and refuse.
Read a lot of history so you can understand how weird the past was; that way you will be comfortable with how weird the future will be.
To make a room luxurious, remove things, rather than add things.
Interview your parents while they are still alive. Keep asking questions while you record. You’ll learn amazing things. Or hire someone to make their story into an oral history, or documentary, or book. This will be a tremendous gift to them and to your family.
If you think someone is normal, you don’t know them very well. Normalcy is a fiction. Your job is to discover their weird genius.
When shopping for anything physical (souvenirs, furniture, books, tools, shoes, equipment), ask yourself: where will this go? Don’t buy it unless there is a place it can live. Something may need to leave in order for something else to come in.
You owe everyone a second chance, but not a third.
When someone texts you they are running late, double the time they give you. If they say they’ll be there in 5, make that 10; if 10, it’ll be 20; if 20, count on 40.
Multitasking is a myth. Don’t text while walking, running, biking or driving. Nobody will miss you if you just stop for a minute.
You can become the world’s best in something primarily by caring more about it than anyone else.
Asking “what-if?” about your past is a waste of time; asking “what-if?” about your future is tremendously productive.
Try to make the kind of art and things that will inspire others to make art and things.
Once a month take a different route home, enter your house by a different door, and sit in a different chair at dinner. No ruts.
Where you live—what city, what country—has more impact on your well-being than any other factor. Where you live is one of the few things in your life you can choose and change.
Every now and then throw a memorable party. The price will be steep, but long afterwards you will remember the party, whereas you won’t remember how much is in your checking account.
Most arguments are not really about the argument, so most arguments can’t be won by arguing.
The surest way to be successful is to invent your own definition of success. Shoot your arrows first and then paint a bull’s eye around where they land. You’re the winner!
When remodeling a home interior use big pieces of cardboard to mock-up your alterations at life size. Seeing things, such as counters, at actual size will change your plans, and it is so much easier to make modifications with duct tape and scissors.
There should be at least one thing in your life you enjoy despite being no good at it. This is your playtime, which will keep you young. Never apologize for it.
Changing your mind about important things is not a consequence of stupidity, but a sign of intelligence.
You have 5 minutes to act on a new idea before it disappears from your mind.
What is important is seldom urgent and what is urgent is seldom important. To get the important stuff done, avoid the demands of the urgent.
Three situations where you’ll never regret ordering too much: when you are pouring concrete, when you are choosing a battery, and when you are getting ice for a party.
The patience you need for big things is developed by your patience with the little things.
Don’t fear failure. Fear average.
When you are stuck or overwhelmed, focus on the smallest possible thing that moves your project forward.
In a museum, you need to spend at least 10 minutes with an artwork to truly see it. Aim to view 5 pieces at 10 minutes each rather than 100 at 30 seconds each.
For steady satisfaction, work on improving your worst days, rather than your best days.
Your decisions will become wiser when you consider these three words: “…and then what?” for each choice.
If possible, every room should be constructed to provide light from two sides. Rooms with light from only one side are used less often, so when you have a choice, go with light from two sides.
Never accept a work meeting until you’ve seen the agenda and know what decisions need to be made. If no decisions need to be made, skip the meeting.
You have no obligation to like everyone, and you are free to intensely dislike a person. But you owe everyone—even those you dislike—basic respect.
When you find yourself procrastinating, don’t resist. Instead, lean into it. Procrastinate 100%. Try to do absolutely nothing for 5 minutes. Make it your job. You’ll fail. After 5 minutes, you’ll be ready and eager to work.
If you want to know how good a surgeon is, don’t ask other doctors. Ask the nurses.
There is a profound difference between thinking less of yourself (not useful) and thinking of yourself less (better).
Strong opinions, clearly stated, but loosely held is the recipe for an intellectual life. Always ask yourself: what would change my mind?
You cannot truly become yourself, by yourself. Becoming one-of-a-kind is not a solo job. Paradoxically you need everyone else in the world to help make you unique.
If you need emergency help from a bystander, command them what to do. By giving them an assignment, you transform them from bewildered bystander to a responsible assistant.
The most common mistake we make is to do a great job on an unimportant task.
Don’t work for a company you would not invest money in, because when you are working, you are investing the most valuable thing you have: your time.
Fail fast. Fail often. Fail forward. Failing is not a disgrace if you keep failing better.
Doing good is its own reward. When you do good, people will question your motive, and any good you accomplish will soon be forgotten. Do good anyway.
Best sleep aid: first, get really tired.
For every success, there is a corresponding non-monetary tax of some kind. To maintain success, you have to gladly pay these taxes.
Do not cling to a mistake just because you spent a lot of time making it.
For small tasks, the best way to get ready is to do it immediately.
If someone is calling you to alert you to fraud, nine out of ten times they are themselves the fraudster. Hang up. Call the source yourself if concerned.
When you try to accomplish something difficult, surround yourself with friends.
You should be willing to look foolish at first, in order to look like a genius later.
Think in terms of decades, and act in terms of days.
The most selfish thing in the world you can do is to be generous. Your generosity will return to you tenfold.
Discover people whom you love doing “nothing” with, and do nothing with them on a regular basis. The longer you can maintain those relationships, the longer you will live.
Forget diamonds; explore the worlds hidden in pebbles. Seek the things that everyone else ignores.
Write your own obituary, the one you’d like to have, and then every day work towards making it true.
Avoid making any kind of important decision when you are either hungry, angry, lonely, or tired (HALT). Just halt when you are HALT.
What others want from you is mostly to be seen. Let others know you see them.
Working differently is usually more productive than working harder.
When you try something new, don’t think of it as a matter of success/failure, but as success/learning to succeed.
If you have a good “why” to live for, no “how” will stop you.
If you are out of ideas, go for a walk. A good walk empties the mind—and then refills it with new stuff.
The highest form of wealth is deciding you have enough.
Education is overly expensive. Gladly pay for it anyway, because ignorance is even more expensive.
The cheapest therapy is to spend time with people who make you laugh.
Always be radically honest, but use your honesty as a gift not as a weapon. Your honesty should benefit others.
A good sign that you are doing the kind of work you should be doing is that you enjoy the tedious parts that other people find tortuous.
Being envious is a toxin. Instead, take joy in the success of others and treat their success as your gain. Celebrating the success of others costs you nothing, and increases the happiness of everyone, including you.
The more persistent you are, the more chances you get to be lucky.
To tell a good story, you must reveal a surprise; otherwise, it is just a report.
Small steps matter more when you play a long game because a long horizon allows you to compound small advances into quite large achievements.
If you are more fortunate than others, build a longer table rather than a taller fence.
Many fail to finish, but many more fail to start. The hardest work in any work is to start. You can’t finish until you start, so get good at starting.
Work on your tone. Often ideas are rejected because of the tone of voice they are wrapped in. Humility covers many blemishes.
When you are right, you are learning nothing.
Very small things accumulate until they define your larger life. Carefully choose your everyday things.
It is impossible to be curious and furious at the same time, so avoid furious.
College is not about grades. No one cares what grades you got in college. College is about exploring. Just try stuff.
Weird but true: If you continually give, you will continually have.
To clean up your city, sweep your doorstep first.
Decisions like to present themselves as irreversible, like a one-way door. But most deciding points are two-way. Don’t get bogged down by decisions. You can usually back up if needed.
Every mistake is an opportunity to improvise.
You’ll never meet a very successful pessimistic person. If you want to be remarkable, get better at being optimistic.
You can’t call it charity unless no one is watching.
When you think of someone easy to despise—a tyrant, a murderer, a torturer—don’t wish them harm. Wish that they welcome orphans into their home, and share their food with the hungry. Wish them goodness, and by this compassion you will increase your own happiness.
Get good at being corrected without being offended.
The week between Christmas and New Year’s was invented to give you the perfect time to sharpen your kitchen knives, vacuum your car, and tidy the folders on your desktop.
There is no formula for success, but there are two formulas for failure: not trying and not persisting.
We tend to overrate the value of intelligence. You need to pair your IQ with other virtues. The most important things in life cannot be attained through logic only.
If you are impressed with someone’s work, you should tell them, but even better, tell their boss.
In matters of the heart, one moment of patience can save you years of regret.
Humility is mostly about being very honest about how much you owe to luck.
Slow progress is still a million times better than no progress.
Recipe for greatness: expect much of yourself and little of others.
The very best way to win a friend is to be one.
Think about what makes you ‘imbalanced’ as a personality, & do things where this gives you an edge.
Once you are ok with people telling you ‘no’, you can ask for whatever you want. (Make reality say no to you.)
Fun is underrated. The best and most creative work comes from a root of joy and excitement. You can feel this in your body.
Environment matters a lot; move to where you flourish maximally. Put yourself in environments where you have to perform to your utmost; if you can get by being average, you probably will. (Greek saying: “A captain only shows during a storm.”)
Later, you’ll be nostalgic for right now.
Do things fast. Things don’t actually take much time (as measured by a stopwatch); resistance/procrastination does. “Slow is fake”. If no urgency exists, impose some.
Moving fast forces you to strip things down to the bare bones.
Wealth can be created, there is not a fixed amount of it in the world. Somebody doing well doesn’t always come at someone else’s expense.
“The world is a museum of passion projects.”
Doing as much as you can every day is a form of life extension.
Always be high integrity, even when it costs you. The shortcuts aren’t worth it.
Figure out what your primary focus is and make progress on that every day, first thing in the morning, no exceptions. Days with 0 output are the killers. (Tyler Cowen)
Pay attention to your production/consumption balance. If you’re only consuming and not producing, fix that.
You don’t do anyone any favors by lurking, put yourself out there!
If you don’t “get” a classic book or movie, 90% of the time it’s your fault. (It might just not be the right time for you to appreciate that thing.)
If you find yourself dreading Mondays, quit.
Lean into the good kind of fear.
Pick some kind of fitness/athletic activity to get addicted to, and get addicted to it for its own sake. (For me, this is running. Zone 2 cardio is underrated.)
Learn how to meditate, even if you don’t end up doing it regularly. The techniques are useful. (99% of books/resources on this are quite bad - I’d recommend looking at Rob Burbea’s talks and jhana practice as a way in.)
No matter how bad things seem, everything passes.
You are probably too risk-averse. Write out the worst things that can happen, realize they’re not that bad, then take the leap.
Do a review of your year, every year, write it out, figure out what was good and what was bad, use this to make your goals for the next year.
Doing things is energizing, wasting time is depressing. You don’t need that much ‘rest’.
Being able to travel is one of the key ways the modern world is better than the old world. Learn to travel well.
Form opinions on things and then find the strongest critique of those opinions. Repeat.
If you really can’t disprove something, it has a chance of being right. (Fallibilism.)
Memorize a few old poems, or texts that mean a lot to you.
At some point in your life, work on a startup, or at least a thing driven by a small group. Small group energy is amazing.
Be careful about rationalizing something that does not feel right. (Utilitarians, this means you!)
Know your ‘triggers’ / what makes you the worst version of yourself.
Figure out what creates enduring value. (A non-exclusive list: great cultural artifacts such as books; great companies/institutions).
Don’t let anyone make you feel small.
Working with people you really respect, and are secretly worried are much better than you and will figure out how dumb you are, is the best.
“Aim for Chartres” (Christopher Alexander) — when doing something, aim to be the best there ever was at it. This compensates for your natural bias, which is to do something mediocre. You have to really aim to be as good as the greats.
Send more cold emails. People respond! Assume everyone’s your friend.
Have a lot of crazy experiences in your 20s.
There are some people who, after you talk to them, you feel more energized and you want to conquer the world or climb a mountain or something. They’re rare but they exist. Go find them and make friends with them.
Move to where the action is. Agglomeration effects are powerful.
Status is fake and transient. Just focus on substance and doing valuable work. Talk about it in public. Beware the inner ring fallacy.
Ask dumb questions. The people who matter won’t judge you for it, and you’ll learn things as a result. (See: How To Understand Things)
Don’t over-index on trends. Just figure out your first-principles view of what’s actually important for the world, and go from there.
There is some wisdom in “fake it till you make it”.
Don’t “slow down” as you get older, speed up. Lean into changes, be curious about new things. Most people seem to go the other way.
Be specific.
Understand power laws. Outlier math rules all.
Stop asking for approval and permission from others. School and work trains people to have this mindset. Instead, figure out what you want to do, and plant the “this is happening” flag. People will come along for the ride.
Werner Herzog to Errol Morris: “when it comes to filmmaking, money isn’t important, the intensity of your wishes and faith alone are the deciding factors.”
Don’t network, make friends. Writing online is great for bringing interesting people your way. Having a wide network of friends really makes a difference to the opportunities you get and how easy it is to launch your projects.
Figure out what gives you new ideas, and make sure you incorporate that into your routine. For me this is talking to people, tweeting, writing in my notebook, long conversations with friends (especially late night or while walking). For other people this is showering, baths, long walks, runs, etc. Make sure you “harvest” these ideas too, i.e. write them down somewhere so they don’t get lost.
When writing, separate the “creator” and the “editor”. The “creator” just writes, and doesn’t worry about quality; the goal is words on the page. Later, you can be the “editor” and shape it into something good.
Be honest about whether something is learning or entertainment. Real learning is extremely hard and effortful. (Podcasts, Atlantic articles, pop science books, anything that’s a bit too digestible is more “entertainment” than real learning).
Any given “bet” you take is likely to fail. Success is making lots of “bets” and trying as hard as possible at each of them. P(success) is higher the more bets you take & the better your execution per bet. (This is also why fast cycle time is so important). Ravin first articulated this to me.
Think in writing. Write Google Docs, scrawl in notebooks. This extends working memory arbitrarily and allows your thoughts to compound on each other. (”The difference between a Turing machine and a finite state machine is the tape.”)
Once in awhile, put away all concepts you read about online and reason “up” from the base of your experience and what you’ve seen and done. (e.g. What were some of the best decisions you made? The worst? Why? Can you apply those lessons now? etc.)
80% utilitarian, 15% deontologist, 5% virtue ethics.
Most intelligent people want status, prestige, wealth and the like -- even the ones who claim not to. “Genius” is a distinct category to intelligence and geniuses are motivated by entirely different things and are socially strange (and often selfish) people. Ayn Rand is a bad writer but is one of the very few people who grokked this and made it explicit.
Scrolling and reading too much drowns out your inner voice.
Be very suspicious of a priori arguments on empirical matters (e.g. “AI will certainly kill everyone”), they’re usually wrong no matter how convincing. Reality is endlessly surprising. (Cf. Knightian uncertainty.)
There’s a lot of alpha in being willing to do “menial” work (take notes, send out agendas, order pizza, manually inspect raw data, whatever). Beware over-delegation and being too far from the details.
One key to effective negotiation is to have multiple options and be OK with it not working out. Even if you really need the thing, it’s never your only choice: reframe and create alternative options until you have multiple outcomes you’re ok with. (See BATNA.)
Luck isn’t a constant, it increases with surface area: be in the right places, have lots of conversations, put yourself out there, ask for what you want and be optimistic and positive. See #52.
The most valuable feedback usually hurts a lot.
If you want think originally and differently, seek uncorrelated inputs. Read minor works, older things, obscure journals.
There's more than one way to do something
The hate will come at the same rate as the love. There will always be people who are so dissatisfied with themselves that they have to project that onto other people. And instead of trying to focus on the negativity, I tend to try to put more energy into the people and the things that are showing me love, support and good energy.
There's more than one way to do something
Do smaller loads of laundry
Being vulnerable means taking off our armor. Being vulnerable means taking off our armor and going in not knowing how we'll be received, but putting ourselves out there a little bit anyway.
Go where the energy goes. What has good vibes? What makes you feel good about yourself? Where is that good energy? Head in that direction.
It's not all about you. When I'm in a situation where a tough decision has to be made and it feels personal, I remind myself it's not all about me, and that I'm one piece of a bigger universe that's at play right now.
Expect yourself to change. We all change every five years or so. More or less, we have to expect ourselves to change, and we have to expect people in our lives to change. That little piece of advice has given me a lot of space for room and for growth.
When people show you who they are, believe them
Pace out your self-improvement, Don't be so overly involved with your self-improvement. Accept the gifts and abilities that you have, and don't spend so much time trying to develop new ones that you sacrifice your gifts. Be yourself.
I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.
I wish I didn't work so hard.
I wish I'd had the courage to express my feelings.
I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.
I wish that I had let myself be happier.
You can’t change other people, and it’s rude to try.
It is a hundred times more difficult to burn calories than to refrain from consuming them in the first place.
If you’re talking to someone you don’t know well, you may be talking to someone who knows way more about whatever you’re talking about than you do.
The cheapest and most expensive models are usually both bad deals.
Everyone likes somebody who gets to the point quickly.
Bad moods will come and go your whole life, and trying to force them away makes them run deeper and last longer.
Children are remarkably honest creatures until we teach them not to be.
If everyone in the TV show you’re watching is good-looking, it’s not worth watching.
Yelling always makes things worse.
Whenever you’re worried about what others will think of you, you’re really just worried about what you’ll think of you.
Every problem you have is your responsibility, regardless of who caused it.
You never have to deal with more than one moment at a time.
If you never doubt your beliefs, then you’re wrong a lot.
Managing one’s wants is the most powerful skill a person can learn.
Nobody has it all figured out.
Cynicism is far too easy to be useful.
Every passing face on the street represents a story every bit as compelling and complicated as yours.
Whenever you hate something, it hates you back: people, situations and inanimate objects alike.
Ralph Waldo Emerson’s works alone can teach you everything you need to know about living with grace and happiness.
People embellish everything, as a rule.
Anger reveals weakness of character, violence even moreso.
Humans cannot destroy the planet, but we can destroy its capacity to keep us alive. And we are.
When people are uncomfortable with the present moment, they fidget with their hands or their minds. Watch and see.
Those who complain the most, accomplish the least.
Putting something off makes it instantly harder and scarier.
Credit card debt devours souls.
Nobody knows more than a minuscule fraction of what’s going on in the world. It’s just way too big for any one person to know it well.
Most of what we see is only what we think about what we see.
A person who is unafraid to present a candid version of herself to the world is as rare as diamonds.
The most common addiction in the world is the draw of comfort. It wrecks dreams and breaks people.
If what you’re doing feels perfectly safe, there is probably a better course of action.
The greatest innovation in the history of humankind is language.
Blame is the favorite pastime of those who dislike responsibility.
Everyone you meet is better than you at something.
Proof is nothing but a collection of opinions that match your own.
Knowledge is belief, nothing more.
Indulging your desires is not self-love.
What makes human beings different from animals is that animals can be themselves with ease.
Self-examination is the only path out of misery.
Whoever you are, you will die. To know and understand that means you are alive.
Revenge is for the petty and irresponsible.
Getting truly organized can vastly improve anyone’s life.
Almost every cliché contains a truth so profound that people have been compelled to repeat it until it makes you roll your eyes. But the wisdom is still in there.
People cause suffering when they are suffering themselves. Alleviating their suffering will help them not hurt others.
High quality is worth any quantity, in possessions, friends and experiences.
The world would be a better place if everyone read National Geographic.
If you aren’t happy single, you won’t be happy in a relationship.
Even if it costs no money, nothing is free if it takes time.
Emotions exist to make us strongly biased towards or against something. This hinders as often as it helps.
Addiction is a much greater problem in society than it’s made out to be. It’s present in every person in various forms, but usually we call it something else.
“Gut feeling” is not just a euphemism. Tension in the abdomen speaks volumes about how you truly feel about something, beyond all arguments and rationales.
Posture and dress change profoundly how you feel about yourself and how others feel about you, like it or not.
Everyone thinks they’re an above average driver.
The urge to punish others has much more to do with venting frustration than correcting behavior.
By default, people think far too much.
If anything is worth splurging on, it’s a high-quality mattress. You’ll spend a third of your life using it.
There is nothing worse than having no friends.
To write a person off as worthless is an act of great violence.
Try as we might to be otherwise, we are all hypocrites.
Justice is a human invention which is in reality rarely achievable, but many will not hesitate to destroy lives demanding it.
Kids will usually understand exactly what you mean if you keep it to one or two short sentences.
Stuff that’s on sale usually has an annoying downside.
Casual swearing makes people sound dumb.
Words are immensely powerful. One cruel remark can wound someone for life.
It’s easy to make someone’s day just by being uncommonly pleasant to them.
Most of what children learn from their parents isn’t taught on purpose.
The secret ingredient is usually butter, in obscene amounts.
It is worth re-trying foods that you didn’t like at first.
Problems, when they arise, are rarely as painful as the experience of fearing them.
Nothing — ever — happens exactly like you pictured it.
North Americans are generally terrible at accepting compliments and offers of help.
There are not enough women in positions of power. The world has suffered from this deficit for a long time.
When you break promises to yourself, you feel terrible. When you make a habit of it, you begin to hate yourself.
A good nine out of ten bad things I’ve worried about never happened. A good nine out of ten bad things that did happen never occurred to me to worry about.
You can’t hide a bad mood from people who know you well, but you can always be polite.
Sometimes you have to remove certain people from your life, even if they’re family.
Anyone can be calmed in an instant by looking at the ocean or the stars.
There is no point finishing a book you aren’t enjoying. Life is too short for that. Swallow your pride and put it down for good, unfinished.
There is no correlation between the price of a brand of batteries and how long they last.
Breaking new ground only takes a small amount more effort than you’re used to giving.
Life is a solo trip, but you’ll have lots of visitors. Some of them are long-term, most aren’t.
One of the best things you can do for your kids is take them on road trips. I’m not a parent, but I was a kid once.
The fewer possessions you have, the more they do for you.
Einstein was wiser than he was intelligent, and he was a genius.
When you’re sick of your own life, that’s a good time to pick up a book.
Wishing things were different is a great way to torture yourself.
The ability to be happy is nothing other than the ability to come to terms with how things change.
Killing time is an atrocity. It’s priceless, and it never grows back.
If you want to get paid, find the contrast. No one hears you if you sneeze in the middle of New York. But if you sneeze in a library, everyone does. The same concept applies to work. It's better to dominate a small pond than drown in an ocean.