On Anti Goals, Writing Epic Shit & Time
Hey friends, happy Sunday!
No new posts this week as I spent the majority of my time finishing up a freelance project. I'm aiming to get a lot more done next week with a few posts I'm working on and another few projects in the works!
Anyway, let's get onto the Filter.
On Writing Epic Shit
I recently found this older post from Corbett Barr called "Write Epic Shit" and it really resonated with me.
In the post he talks about how building an audience online is all about creating great things.
Write things that make people think. Inspire people. Change lives. Create value. Blow people away with your usefulness.
The same applies to other avenues like youtube and podcasting. It can be easy to get caught up in the minute details when the only thing that really matters is creating great shit.
I often employ a similar strategy when working with clients, sure design is important and it can help but really great design should get out of the way to help enhance everything else. The content is what matters.
On Anti-Goals
Goals are often overinflated, people spend so long focusing on their goals that they forget to actually enjoy the journey. This framework from Andrew Wilkinson on The Power of Anti-Goals was a fascinating read.
Andrew talks about how "A lot of success in life and business comes from knowing what you want to avoid: early death, a bad marriage, etc."
Instead of thinking about what you want your perfect day to look like invert your thinking and focus on the worst day imaginable and how you can avoid it.
Once you establish what your worst day may look like you can then work backwards setting Anti-Goals.
“It is remarkable how much long-term advantage we have gotten by trying to be consistently not stupid, instead of trying to be very intelligent.” –Charlie Munger
If you're looking for an introduction on how to apply inversion to more areas of your life I'd highly recommend this post from James Clear: Inversion: The Crucial Thinking Skill Nobody Ever Taught You
On Time
Another old post I stumbled upon this week was "The days are long but the decades are short" from Sam Altman. Sam is a fascinating person, at the time of writing this he was the president of YCombinator and has since gone on to co-found Open AI along with Elon Musk and others.
The article is a series of lessons he's learnt, these two were my favourite:
On work: it’s difficult to do a great job on work you don’t care about. And it’s hard to be totally happy/fulfilled in life if you don’t like what you do for your work. Work very hard—a surprising number of people will be offended that you choose to work hard—but not so hard that the rest of your life passes you by. Aim to be the best in the world at whatever you do professionally. Even if you miss, you’ll probably end up in a pretty good place. Figure out your own productivity system—don’t waste time being unorganized, working at suboptimal times, etc. Don’t be afraid to take some career risks, especially early on. Most people pick their career fairly randomly—really think hard about what you like, what fields are going to be successful, and try to talk to people in those fields.
Minimize your own cognitive load from distracting things that don’t really matter. It’s hard to overstate how important this is, and how bad most people are at it. Get rid of distractions in your life. Develop very strong ways to avoid letting crap you don’t like doing pile up and take your mental cycles, especially in your work life.
Tweet of the Week
Favourite Quote of the Week
"Competition is for Losers: Avoid competition. Stop copying what everybody else is doing. If you work at a for-profit company, work on problems that would not otherwise be solved. If you’re at a non-profit, fix unpopular problems. Life is easier when you don’t compete. (Hint: don’t start another bottled water company)." - David Perell
Final Notes
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Have a great Sunday,
- Stephen