"As long as you are aiming at happiness, you cannot obtain it. The more you make it a target, the more you miss the target."

"IF you focus less on achievement for yourself AND give yourself to a larger cause THEN the more good things happen to you AND the more you help others"

"At that moment that you are no longer concerned with becoming a happy or a successful man or a woman, at that moment happiness installs itself by itself."

"You get from the world what you give to the world."

"Isn't it considerable that, instead, life expects something from you?"

"Those inmates or prisoners were most likely to survive the camp period were: 1. Oriented toward a future 2. Orientated for becoming free again in the future 3. Oriented to a meaning that they had to fulfill the future, a task that they had to complete in the future, and/or to be reunited with their beloved people in the future, again (most important)."

"Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country."

"If you want to be massively successful, do NOT set ambitious goals, according to studies."

"I’m now convinced that curating short form video presents one of the best opportunities for thought leaders that has existed in the last 10 years."

"Editing video is way easier than you think Social media algorithms love short form videos Short form video is a limited-time opportunity Short form video is engaging to consume"

"Editing video with Streamlabs’s tool is like editing text in a word processor. For example, to edit the video below, I just edit the text on the left and then the video on the right automatically updates. More specifically, if I delete a word from the transcript, it automatically clips that part of the video. If edit the spelling of a word in the transcript, it updates the subtitle in the video."

"In 2020, the two other big social media platforms (YouTube and Instagram) copied TikTok and made short form videos a key part of their algorithm. In other words, they gave a boost in newsfeed reach to short form video and decreased the reach of other formats accordingly."

"I now understand that once something unique works, the advantage you get from it disappears in 2-3 years. The reason is that once everyone knows that something works, there is a mad dash to do it. As a result, it gets crowded."

"short form video is powerful because it cuts out all of the fluff and gets right to the most interesting and important part."

"[PERSON]’s Top 10 Mental Models 10 Hacks On [TOPIC] From Experts How To Get [BENEFIT]"

"As I research, I can post something everyday. Therefore, I’m now using 90% of the research I do on the day I find it. More specifically, every time I learn about a topic or person that seems important to know, I scour YouTube for relevant interviews and speeches. Then, I publish the best, most relevant clip."

"Selling Your Sawdust. With this approach, you take the byproduct of your idea creation workflow that you’d normally throw away, and you turn it into its own product."

"Clipping the best ideas of the best experts helps you skip years of trial-and-error Clipping videos is easier than producing your own Clipping helps you take advantage of the Celebrity Effect You can use clips to support your ideas"

"As a thought leader, you can think of each video that someone else has posted as an experiment. And you can think of YouTube as a platform that reveals the results of all of these experiments publicly."

"if you want to gain traction, a proven way is to borrow other people’s celebrity. This is why blockbuster films have many celebrities, and it’s why companies have celebrity spokespeople."

"it can take years to bridge the taste-talent gap. What this means is that you’ll have enough taste to recognize that the quality of your work isn’t up to what you’d like it to be. But, not enough talent to bridge the gap."

"“The most important, and indeed the truly unique, contribution of management in the 20th century was the fifty-fold increase in the productivity of the manual worker in manufacturing.” — Peter Drucker"

"“The only way to raise living standards over the long term is to raise productivity.” — Ray Dalio"

"if societal and individual productivity growth continues to plateau or decline, it could mean war, generational lifestyle stagnation, our currency going to zero over time, the rise of communism, environmental catastrophe, and stalling of innovation."

"The productivity paradox is arguably the most important puzzle that will determine the future of our society and our careers."

"More productivity doesn’t mean less work for employees. Workers feel pressured to work harder even as they become more efficient."

"Workers aren’t receiving the gains from their increased productivity. The gains in productivity are not redistributed to workers in a way they feel is fair."

"For many, productivity culture is a tool that the ruling class uses in the context of capitalism to get as much work out of workers as possible."

"“The first step is to understand where we are. We’ve spent 40 years wandering in the desert, and we think that it’s an enchanted forest. If we’re to find a way out of this desert and into the future, the first step is to see that we’ve been in a desert.” — Peter Thiel"

"The productivity impact of the shift to Internet-connected computers is much smaller than we think. In fact, We’ve already experienced most of the benefits from it (primarily between 1994–2004)."

"The technologies (electricity, combustion engine) that came in the 20th century are much more impactful on our productivity than the computer revolution."

"The impact of the computer revolution is primarily on information, communication, and entertainment while the 20th century revolutions were much more broad and had a bigger impact on our living standards."

"“Well, I guess like all of these fallacies, the problem is that we have so little insight into our own intelligence that we don’t know what things are … the things that are easy for us are so invisible to us. We don’t know how hard they are for machines. That’s part of the problem is that we don’t understand our own intelligence well enough to make predictions about how complex machine intelligence is going to be.”"

"AI breakthroughs are followed by narratives about how AI is imminent and about to change everything. The reality is that the advance does have a major impact, but its impact is spread over many years or decades thus impacting the productivity growth rate less than we might expect."

"On a personal level, whatever our goal is (meaning, happiness, aliveness, money, impact, connection), we want to get to it faster and easier with all else being equal."

"Ultimately, what we really want is a new kind of productivity. We want a kind of productivity that is actually more productive, more inclusive, leaves us time for an uninterrupted personal life, and ultimately feels better — more purpose, more fulfillment, more aliveness, and less hurry."

"We don’t automatically become more productive just by doing the same thing over and over. Rather, once we become good enough, our performance typically plateaus. In academic circles, this is known as the OK Plateau."

"the one big thing you can do first to develop an improvement mindset is to set aside five hours a week to deliberate learning, reflection, and experimentation."

"Warren Buffett has spent 80% of his time ever since he was a child just reading and thinking."

"1. Charlie Munger (billionaire investor): Analyze what can go wrong instead of what can go right."

"Things constantly go wrong no matter how smart and hardworking you are."

"“Invert, always invert: Turn a situation or problem upside down. Look at it backward. What happens if all our plans go wrong? Where don’t we want to go, and how do you get there? Instead of looking for success, make a list of how to fail instead — through sloth, envy, resentment, self-pity, entitlement, all the mental habits of self-defeat. Avoid these qualities and you will succeed. Tell me where I’m going to die so I don’t go there.”"

"When people only ‘fantasize’ about the future, they actually end up taking less action than they would if they also thought about what could go wrong and made plans to avoid it."

"Being both pessimistic and optimistic is better than just being optimistic. One of the best ways to win is not to lose."

"2. Warren Buffett (billionaire investor): Use checklists to avoid stupid mistakes."

"Ignorant mistakes happen when you don’t know better. Stupid mistakes happen when you do know better."

"Warren Buffett and his 40-year business partner, Charlie Munger, don’t attribute their success to raw intelligence or brilliant ideas. Instead, they attribute a large part of it to consistently avoiding stupid mistakes by religiously following basic tenets and ideas they know will work."

"“We try more to profit from always remembering the obvious than from grasping the esoteric.”"

"3. Ray Dalio (billionaire investor): Learn how to think independently so you can be smarter than everyone else."

"“You can’t make money agreeing with the consensus view,” asserts Ray Dalio"

"To Dalio, the key to having enduring, extraordinary performance is to do what others won’t or can’t AND to be right."

"“Whenever you’re betting against the consensus there’s a significant probability you’re going to be wrong, so you have to be humble.”"

"Build deep relationships with people who have accomplished the goals you want to accomplish. By building relationships based on mutual trust and respect, where others want you to succeed, people share information they never would publicly. For more on this strategy, read Reid Hoffman’s strategy."

"Entrepreneurs who can conduct more experiments will discover more new data and therefore have a big advantage."

"4. Jeff Bezos (Amazon founder): Invest in what will NOT change instead of only what will change"

"Jeff Bezos shows that big trends are only part of the story. It’s also about doing the exact opposite and focusing on what does not change."

"“It’s impossible to imagine a future 10 years from now where a customer comes up and says, ‘Jeff I love Amazon; I just wish the prices were a little higher,’ or ‘I love Amazon; I just wish you’d deliver a little more slowly.’”"

"Since its founding in 1994, Amazon has focused, like a laser, on the simple idea that people will always want to buy products as cheaply, easily and as quickly as possible."

"Become the best in one core area by continually investing in it over time, rather than jumping from trend to trend and starting over each time."

"5. Steve Jobs (Apple co-founder): Use storytelling to make your vision more compelling; not mission-speak."

"According to academic studies on storytelling, great stories transport others into a whole other world and, in doing so, alter their beliefs, cause a loss of access to real-world facts, evoke emotions, and significantly reduce their ability to detect inaccuracies."

"6. Reid Hoffman (LinkedIn founder): Build deep, long-term relationships that give you insider knowledge."

"In the information age, one of the best ways to get information is not from just being better at searching Google, it’s from learning how to build a network and get the information you need through that network, Hoffman says."

"Hoffman refers to the information that only exists in people’s heads as the ‘dark net.’ This includes information that is not searchable online, in any book, or in any classroom and never will be."

"“Ten extremely informed individuals who are happy to share what they know with you when you engage them can tell you a lot more than a thousand people you only know in the most superficial way.”"

"Be extremely picky about whom you spend a lot of time around."

"No matter how successful you are, building deep relationships still takes a lot of time. So, it’s critical to turn relationship building into a habit."

"7. Elon Musk (SpaceX and Tesla co-founder): Use decision trees to make better decisions."

"Musk admits that he thought the most likely outcome for both SpaceX and Tesla was failure. However, they were both so important to the future of humanity and had so much potential that he felt the risk was worth it."

"If there is even a tiny chance that doing something could destroy you, it’s a very bad idea."

"8. Sara Blakely (Spanx founder): Train yourself to love failure rather than to fear it"

"the only way to protect yourself from failure is to not try, or to not try anything hard at least, both of which are sure and direct routes to mediocrity. The only way you can achieve anything big is by daring to try big things, and if you do that failure is inevitable."

"Elon Musk puts it, “If things are not failing, you are not innovating enough.”"

"we should ALL learn across multiple fields in order to increase our odds of breakthrough success."

"the founders of the five largest companies in the world — Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Warren Buffett, Larry Page, and Jeff Bezos — all polymaths (who also follow the 5-hour rule)."

"Each new field we learn that is unfamiliar to others in our field gives us the ability to make combinations that they can’t. This is the modern polymath advantage."

"“The compositions of the most successful operatic composers tended to represent a mix of genres…composers were able to avoid the inflexibility of too much expertise(overtraining) by cross-training,”"

"This thirst for knowledge allowed him to get exposed to a variety of subjects he had never necessarily learned about in school."

"It is important to view knowledge as sort of a semantic tree — make sure you understand the fundamental principles, i.e. the trunk and big branches, before you get into the leaves/details or there is nothing for them to hang onto."

"“Developing the habit of mastering the multiple models which underlie reality is the best thing you can do. “"

"By looking at lots of diverse cases when we learn anything, we begin to intuit what is essential and even craft our own unique combinations."

"1. What does this remind me of? 2. Why does it remind me of it?"

"At the deepest level, what we can learn from Elon Musk’s story is that we shouldn’t accept the dogma that specialization is the best or only path toward career success and impact."

"“We are in an age that assumes that the narrowing trends of specialization to be logical, natural, and desirable… In the meantime, humanity has been deprived of comprehensive understanding. Specialization has bred feelings of isolation, futility, and confusion in individuals. It has also resulted in the individual’s leaving responsibility for thinking and social action to others.Specialization breeds biases that ultimately aggregate as international and ideological discord, which in turn leads to war.”"

"What is equally important but almost completely overlooked is the fact that someone could become the best at a skill in just 100 sessions — approximately 100 hours."

"Deliberate Practice * 10,000 Hours = World-Class Skill"

"Deliberate Practice * Skill Selection * 100 Hours = World-Class Skill"

"The 100-Hour Rule is the theory that to master a topic and get the benefits of greatness doesn’t need to take 10,000 hours. Rather, it can often take approximately 100 hours if you break down skills into rare and valuable micro-skills."

"First, the 100-Hour rule gives fast results."

"“Many things aren’t fun until you’re good at them . Every skill has what I call a frustration barrier, a period of time in which you’re horribly unskilled and you’re painfully aware of that fact.” — Josh Kaufman"

"Second, the benefits of learning grow exponentially as we go from novice to competent to world-class."

"This stacking approach is typified by the world’s top entrepreneurs and investors"

"The perfect target market for a startup is a small group of particular people concentrated together and served by few or no competitors."

"Sequencing markets correctly is underrated, and it takes discipline to expand gradually. The most successful companies make the core progression — to first dominate a specific niche and then scale to adjacent markets — a part of their founding narrative."

"Thiel’s three-step approach echoes Warren Buffett’s 1 mental model, which is the Circle Of Competence. This framework advocates the idea that you should always stay in niches where you have a comparative advantage."

"Step 1: Break skills into their subskills (i.e. micro-skills)"

"Step 2: Identify the $1,000/hour skills with little competition"

"To find these $1,000 skills, plot the micro-skills you identified in step 1 on the following graph. To find a valuable skill, think about how much employers or customers would theoretically pay per hour for that skill. To find a rare skill, target smaller, underserved micro-niche like Peter Thiel recommends."

"Step 3: Learn $1,000/hour skills with a month-long learning challenge"

"According to his own account, rather than focusing on investment theory like a laser, he has studied widely and deeply in many fields, including microeconomics, psychology, law, mathematics, biology, and engineering, and applied insights from them to investing."

"Pavlov discovered that with the right conditioning, dogs would salivate not just when eating food, but also in anticipation of it when he walked into the laboratory. Munger applies the same logic to business."

"“The first rule is that you’ve got to have multiple models — because if you just have one or two that you’re using, the nature of human psychology is such that you’ll torture reality so that it fits your models.”"

"“It’s like the old saying, ‘To the man with only a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.’ But that’s a perfectly disastrous way to think and a perfectly disastrous way to operate in the world.”"

"Rule 1: Learn Multiple Models"

"Rule 2: Learn Multiple Models From Multiple Disciplines"

"Rule 3: Focus On Big Ideas From The Big Disciplines (20% Of Models Create 80% Of The Results)"

"Rule 4: Use A Checklist To Ensure You’re Factoring in the Right Models"

"Rule 5: Create Multiple Checklists And Use The Right One For The Situation"

"Albert Einstein was trained in physics, but to formulate his law of general relativity, he taught himself an area of mathematics far removed from his expertise, Riemannian geometry."

"When it comes to drilling into one domain,the competition is generally fierce. Narrowly specializingalso leaves you vulnerable to the ever-more daunting forces of change."

"Bill Gates recalls that the longest correspondence he’s had with Charlie Munger wasn’t about an investment, it was about the mating habits."

"According to multiple, peer-reviewed studies, simply being in an open network instead of a closed one is the best predictor of career success."

"More accurate view of the world. It provides them with the ability to pull information from diverse clusters so errors cancel themselves out. Research by Philip Tetlock shows that people with open networks are better forecasters than people with closed networks."

"Ability to serve as a translator / connector between groups. They can create value by serving as an intermediary and connecting two people or organizations who can help each other who wouldn’t normally run into each other."

"The top performing studies had references that were 90% conventional and 10% atypical (i.e., pulling from other fields). This rule has held constant over time and across fields. People with open networks are more easily able to create atypical combinations."

"Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something."

"The broader one’s understanding of the human experience, the better design we will have."

"We can all be heroes. It just takes a little faith as you follow your heart and curiosity into unknown worlds. As Steve Jobs said, “You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. ”"

"“Without Warren Buffett being a learning machine, the [Berkshire Hathaway investing] record would have been absolutely impossible. The same is true at lower walks of life. I constantly see people rise in life who are not the smartest, sometimes not even the most diligent, but they’re learning machines. They go to bed every night a little wiser than when they get up.”"

"Collecting the most useful, universal, and timeless mental models in the world to build a base of rare and valuable knowledge that is instantly practical, applies across domains, will never expire, and that will compound — all to become a modern polymath."

"Using the 5-Hour Rule to set aside a minimum of 5 hours per week (typically 25 for me) for deliberate learning."

"The idea is simple: Teach what you learn — as soon as you learn it."

"“I don’t know what I think until I write it down.” ― Joan Didion"

"Research shows that when we teach what we learn, something magical happens in our minds. We suddenly notice mistakes in our thinking. We have more creative insights. Our ideas become sharper. We remember what we learned for longer. We see patterns more effectively."

"Looking at text and expecting to learn is not far off from looking at food and expecting to get its nutrients. We need to digest our life experiences just like we digest our food. Without some form of active processing, almost everything we read is lost within weeks."

"When we incorporate teaching into our daily lives, we exponentially increase our learning potential, build deeper relationships with those around us, and make a bigger impact on the world."

"There is NOTHING more scalable than teaching."

"Teaching may be the future of the sharing economy."

"At the end of the day, we are ALL each other’s teachers on some level — whether it be as colleagues, friends, mentors, parents, or spouses."

"Teaching others what we have learned is one of the noblest things we can do with our short time on this planet."

"We humans are designed to learn and teach."

"Knowledge is an innately social organism. It wants to move, to land in other’s minds, to connect to other knowledge."

"“No one learns as much about a subject as one who is forced to teach it.” ― Peter Drucker"

"The famous Roman philosopher and statesman Seneca once proclaimed, “While we teach, we learn.”"

"In 2016, Buffett took things a step further and wrote a 50-year retrospective. Writing about the report, he says, “As you might guess, I ended up being the prime beneficiary of this effort. There’s nothing like actually writing something out to clarify thinking.”"

"Learning Conversations. Many of the most remarkable insights in history came from pairs of friends who spent years dialoguing, conversing, and debating with each other."

"“When one teaches, two learn.” — Robert Heinlein"

"As you move down the pyramid from internal to external, the benefits of the Explanation Effect mental model increase exponentially."

"The easiest way to get started with the habit of teaching is by creating a daily “Today I Learned” email. The idea is inspired by the popular Today I Learned subreddit."

"the Harvard research that spending 15 minutes at the end of the day can increase your learning for the day by 23%."

"Build deeper relationships. By sharing what you’re learning with others, you stay connected, and you help people grow in their own life."

"“Share your knowledge. It is a way to achieve immortality.” ― Dalai Lama"

"“If the ladder is not leaning against the right wall, every step we take just gets us to the wrong place faster. “ — Stephen Covey"

"each of these innovators and investors are saying you should focus on investments that are rare & valuable."

"To be an outlier, you need to be a contrarian who is smarter than the market."

"whenever you’re betting against the consensus there’s a significant probability you’re going to be wrong, so you have to be humble."

"If your skills match everyone else, then you’re a commodity."

"If you want solid returns, simply learning skills everyone says are important is probably a solid bet. But, tautologically, if you want to be in the top 1%, you need to think differently than 99% of others and be right. You can’t expect to follow the herd and somehow beat the herd."

"“You have to be odd to be number one.” — Dr. Seuss"

"learning rare & valuable skills is following the Hero’s Journey — the most common archetypal myth that has existed across all human societies throughout time."

"History repeats itself. But sometimes it takes decades or even centuries to repeat itself. So people shouldn’t just use their own life experience to draw big conclusions."

"“What do you believe is true that no one else agrees with you on?”"

"While Most People Search For In-Demand Skills, Top Learners Search For Rare & Valuable Skills"

"Many of the scientific ideas we take as obvious were at one point heretical (the earth revolves around the sun, time is not constant) and many of the biggest technology breakthroughs seemed like toys at first (Internet)."

"Learn valuable skills with hidden benefits. Humans have value blindspots. They under-estimate skills with abstract, long-term payoffs; micro-skills; skills from other disciplines; and classic ideas that have been forgotten."

"Be first Face difficulty Look for hidden benefits Redefine value"

"many of the most impactful individuals, both contemporary and historical, have been generalists: Elon Musk, Steve Jobs, Richard Feynman, Ben Franklin, Thomas Edison, Leonardo Da Vinci, and Marie Curie to name just a few."

"10+ academic studies find a correlation between the number of interests/competencies someone develops and their creative impact"

"“The future belongs to the integrators.” — Educator Ernest Boyer"

"He not only makes atypical combinations of skills, he also makes atypical combinations of personality traits."

"What many fail to see is that each brings something valuable to the table and that all of these skills combined lead to great ideas seen by large audiences."

"“Study the science of art. Study the art of science. Develop your senses — especially learn how to see. Realize that everything connects to everything else.” — Leonardo Da Vinci"

"Polymath Advantage 1: Creating an atypical combination of two or more skills that you’re merely competent can lead to a world-class skill set."

"If you want something extraordinary [in life], you have two paths: 1. Become the best at one specific thing. 2. Become very good (top 25%) at two or more things."

"Polymath Advantage 2: Most creative breakthroughs come via making atypical combinations of skills."

"Researcher Brian Uzzi, a professor at the Northwestern University Kellogg School of Management, analyzed more than 26 million scientific papers going back hundreds of years and found that the most impactful papers often have teams with atypical combinations of backgrounds."

"The top performing studies cited atypical combinations of other studies (90 percent conventional citations from their own field and 10 percent from other fields)."

"Polymath Advantage 3: It’s easier and faster than ever to become competent in a new skill."

"Isaac Newton famously proclaimed, “If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.”"

"Polymath Advantage 4: It’s easier than ever to pioneer a new field, industry, or skill set."

"Polymath Advantage 5: It future-proofs Your career."

"“It is not the strongest or the most intelligent who will survive but those who can best manage change.” -Charles Darwin"

"In an environment of accelerating change, we’re going to have to become polymaths to survive. We’re going to have a dozen careers. Each one is going to require new skills."

"Polymath Advantage 6: It sets you up to solve more complex problems."

"Polymath Advantage 7: It helps you stand out and compete in the global economy."

"By becoming a polymath and developing a unique skill set that few others have, then you’ll be able to differentiate yourself and charge more."

"“What’s the one thing you believe is true that no one else agrees with you on?”"

"“The best projects are likely to be overlooked, not trumpeted by a crowd; the best problems to work on are often the ones nobody else even tries to solve.” — Peter Thiel, founder of PayPal and billionaire investor ($3.3 billion net worth)"

"Generalists who fail to synthesize their knowledge into value for others stand to flounder in their career, perhaps having an impressive encyclopedic knowledge, but no real impact."

"Polymaths, on the other hand, are what Nassim Taleb calls “anti-fragile.” Changes to the environment make them stronger. As new paradigms of business emerge or their passions grow, they can quickly combine their existing skill sets in a myriad of ways."

"“The greatest scientists are artists as well.” — Einstein"

"mental models transcend disciplines. They are the invisible links that connect disciplines together"

"once you learn the “80/20 Rule,” which states that, in many domains, 20 percent of your efforts produce 80 percent of your results, you can use this mental model to improve efficiency and impact in every area of your life as well as every field you study forever."

"mental models are key to becoming a better polymath."

"“In my whole life, I have known no wise people (over a broad subject matter area) who didn’t read all the time — none. Zero.” — Charlie Munger, Self-made billionaire & Warren Buffett’s longtime business partner"

"Learning is the single best investment of our time that we can make. Or as Benjamin Franklin said, “An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.”"

"“Intellectual capital will always trump financial capital.” — Paul Tudor Jones, self-made billionaire entrepreneur, investor, and philanthropist"

"1. While goods are becoming demonetized, knowledge is becoming increasingly valuable"

"futurist Peter Diamandis calls rapid demonetization, in which technology is rendering previously expensive products or services much cheaper — or even free."

"While goods are becoming demonetized, knowledge is becoming increasingly valuable."

"Those who work really hard throughout their career but don’t take time out of their schedule to constantly learn will be the new “at-risk” group. They risk remaining stuck on the bottom rung of global competition, and they risk losing their jobs to automation, just as blue-collar workers did between 2000 and 2010 when robots replaced 85 percent of manufacturing jobs."

"The irony is that the problem isn’t a lack of jobs. Rather, it’s a lack of people with the right skills and knowledge to fill the jobs."

"knowledge is the new money."

"2. Knowledge often serves as a medium of exchange and store of value"

"unlike money, when you use knowledge or give it away, you don’t lose it. In fact, it’s the opposite. The more you give away knowledge, the more you: Remember it Understand it Connect it to other ideas in your head Build your identity as a role model for that knowledge"

"Transferring knowledge anywhere in the world is free and instant. Its value compounds over time faster than money."

"It connects you to communities of people you didn’t even know existed. It puts your life in perspective by essentially helping you live many lives in one life through other people’s experiences and wisdom."

"3. Knowledge investors will be the new wealthy"

"Employees, entrepreneurs, and investors combine time, knowledge, and money in different ways"

"more investment markets gives more people the opportunity to use their unique and valuable knowledge to find great investments."

"more assets means that people can get a return on their learning faster."

"The exploding number of assets in the world gives more people the chance to profit from their unique knowledge. Furthermore, the rewards for learning will increase exponentially."

"In the web 3.0 era, platforms like, Mirror.xyz, Brave, and Audius, give monetary ownership to users and creators for the value they generate."

"If you have early access to insider knowledge on what will take off, you will make more money. And the key is that you’re getting ownership off of your knowledge, not your money."

"With web 3.0, creators and users who create value on platforms get financial ownership. For the first time, becoming a smart early adopter will get you paid."

"it has never been easier to convert knowledge into money."

"Constant learners who cultivate a unique and valuable perspective on the world will be able to profit from their knowledge"

"The Internet democratized access to knowledge. Web 3.0 democratizes access to investing. Combine the two and we see the rise of the knowledge investor."

"A knowledge investor: Treats learning like an athlete treats practice Spends most of their day learning Develop a latticework of mental models Studies emerging trends Invests his or her time and money in the best time-bound opportunities"

"understanding and using mental models is one of the most universal skills that EVERYONE should learn. It provides a strong foundation of knowledge that applies across every field."

"we need to stop thinking that we only acquire knowledge from 5 to 22 years old, and that then we can get a job and mentally coast through the rest of our lives if we work hard. To survive and thrive in this new era, we must constantly learn."

"The long-term effects of intellectual complacency are just as insidious as the long-term effects of not exercising, eating well, or sleeping enough. Not learning at least 5 hours per week (the 5-hour rule) is the smoking of the 21st century and this article is the warning label."

"“Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.” — Mahatma Gandhi"

"“By working less and learning more, I might seem to get less done in a day, but I get dramatically more done in my year and in my career.”"

"Learning is no longer a luxury; it’s a necessity."

"Consistently finding the time for reading and learning even if you are really busy and overwhelmed or feel like procrastinating Increase the results you receive from each hour of learning by using proven hacks that help you remember and apply what you learn"

"I wanted my knowledge to be an asset that would: Get traffic (ie, search engines, others sharing it, social media) Earn passive income by people paying for access Serve as a resource for me decades into the future"

"While there are many articles and books on how to take private notes better, I’ve found almost nothing on how to take better public notes."

"By sharing our knowledge publicly, we let our knowledge do the work for us like money earns us interest when invested."

"Make your notes default-public"

"As much as investors are wealthy “on paper” because they own stocks, you are wealthy “in brain” because of your skills and knowledge."

"Sharing what you learn helps you remember it (more on this later). So, if you don’t share now, you will forget more and more of the critical subtleties that others need to learn from you."

"Everyone is a teacher. Knowledge is abundant. The more you give it, the more you have it. When you teach others, you teach a student and create a future teacher. You become a link in the chain of wisdom that gets passed from human to human and generation to generation."

"the term, “sell your sawdust” comes from lumber mills. When trimming wood, sawdust is left on the ground. Originally, that sawdust was thrown away. Now there are whole markets for sawdust."

"When most people learn, they unknowingly over-focus on Snow Cone Knowledge. Snow Cone Knowledge is valuable if you use it now, but it’s worth nothing if you let too much time pass by because it either gets outdated or becomes irrelevant."

"Just In Case Knowledge. This is when you spend time learning something that you may or may not use in the future."

"Titanium Knowledge is durable knowledge that is used often and keeps its value over decades"

"Even if something is 1,000x less valuable on any given day, over your lifetime it might be 10x more valuable. Many top performers across fields innately think in decades while others think in months."

"In order to build a note-taking system which is an asset that gives you passive benefits for decades, you need to focus on titanium knowledge."

"Over time, I began to realize that no matter what I was studying, I kept on collecting the same types of things over and over"

"While Roam and Obsidian opened my eyes, I still found them lacking key features I wanted: I wanted my notes to be public by default I wanted my notes to look beautiful I wanted my thousands of pages of notes to be optimized for search engines"

"Within the context of a site, the more pages you have, the more you need search, navigation, breadcrumbs, links (normal/backlinks), and other devices to help users navigate to what they need."

"one of the biggest arguments against public notes is that people don’t want to take more detailed and contextualized notes in order to make them legible and valuable for others. They’d rather focus more on absorbing new information."

"when we know that our notes can be viewed publicly, our notes become more in-depth and organized."

"Value for future self. Speaking from personal experience, the context is critical for your future self 5–10 years from now who won’t remember any of the current context."

"Learn deeper. Knowing that our notes could be viewed by others serves as a forcing function to more deeply process the info you consume, which leads to faster learning. I call this the Explanation Effect."

"Knowledge is similar. We’re all sitting on millions of dollars worth of knowledge that we’ve spent decades learning. But, it’s not enough to discover valuable knowledge. You have to package and refine it if you want others to experience its value."

"making the transition from private to public notes can be hard. Some common challenges are: Impostor’s syndrome: “Are my notes good enough to be shared with others?” or “Is what I’m learning valuable to others?” Tool Lock-In: “I don’t want to learn another tool or approach. I will stick with whatever notetaking system I have.” Time: “Is it even worth the time to package my notes so others see their value? Or would my time be better spent taking in more information?”"

"Out of all the interventions we can do to make smarter decisions in our life and career, mastering the most useful and universal mental models is arguably the most important."

"“Those who understand more of them and understand them well [principles / mental models] know how to interact with the world more effectively than those who know fewer of them or know them less well. “"

"“It is important to view knowledge as sort of a semantic tree — make sure you understand the fundamental principles, i.e. the trunk and big branches, before you get into the leaves/details or there is nothing for them to hang onto.”"

"20% of relationships lead to 80% of happiness."

"Every month, you’ll master one new mental model."

"We’ll focus on the most powerful and universal models first."

"The Fundamental Productivity Blindspot Explains Why We Overlook So Many Life-Changing Improvement Opportunities Everyday"

"We can’t see the immense opportunities for improvement right in front us everyday."

"Therefore, we don’t devote much time to deliberate, continuous improvement."

"As a result, we don’t improve, which reinforces our initial belief that there’s nothing to improve."

"Symptom 1. We drastically underestimate our potential to improve"

"In The Brutal Truth About Life-Changing Opportunities We Overlook Every Day, I share example after example of how, throughout history, we overlooked fundamental technologies sitting right in front of us for centuries."

"This phenomenon counters the conventional wisdom that as soon as some important innovation becomes feasible, somebody develops it."

"Symptom 2. We drastically overestimate how productive we are day-to-day"

"Symptom 3. We drastically underestimate how unproductive we are"

"Symptom 4. We underestimate the incredible power of continuous improvement because compounding is hard to understand"

"Symptom 5. We don’t understand what it means to be deliberate about improvement, so we settle"

"“Understanding both the power of compound interest and the difficulty of getting it is the heart and soul of understanding a lot of things.”"

"However, as I’ve spent more time studying, practicing and teaching learning how to learn along with the history of productivity improvement, it has become more and more clear that what people call lifelong learning is more aptly called hobby learning (and sometimes even junk learning)."

"First, very few people consistently set aside significant time for learning."

"Second, most people don’t have the core frameworks for improving productivity that have been proven over and over throughout history."

"Implication: The Fundamental Productivity Blindspot has vicious consequences."

"“In the decade after Frederick Winslow Taylor first looked at work and studied it, the productivity of the manual worker began its unprecedented rise… On this achievement rest all of the economic and social gains of the 20th century.” — Peter Drucker"

"It’s built on three timeless ideas that have increased productivity for eons — specialization, continuous improvement through experimentation, and standardization:"

"Timeless Productivity Principle 1: Specialization"

"Interestingly, the top investor in history, Warren Buffett, also considers specialization (circle of competence in his words) as one of his central mental models for making better investing decisions."

"While many knowledge workers consider themselves specialists, by the standards of the world’s most productive manufacturers, they are hardcore generalists."

"Timeless Productivity Principle 2: Continuous Improvement Through Experimentation"

"If the productivity of a simple task like shoveling can be 2x’d, imagine the potential for improvement for more complex knowledge work activities."

"Timeless Productivity Principle 3: Standardization"

"One of the most impactful and surprising innovations he made in order to make this incredible feat happen is known as autonomation or the “Stop-Fix” approach."

"But over time, the “errors began to drop dramatically”."

"Through this counterintuitive, effective Stop-Fix practice, productivity and quality were dramatically improved. And a key to this practice working was having a standard for quality that was tracked and upheld."

"Most knowledge workers don’t have a standard and never hear any alarm bells even though they are being unproductive."

"Why aren’t we just copying and pasting what worked in the past, applying it to knowledge workers, and calling it a day?"

"The Bad News: We Don’t Seem To Be Learning From History"

"At the exact moment you’d think that productivity would skyrocket because of computers and the Internet, it stalled"

"“The most important contribution management needs to make in the 21st century is similarly to increase the productivity of knowledge work and knowledge workers.” — Peter Drucker"

"Specialization, experimentation, standardization have worked for eons. We’re not using it enough for knowledge work."

"Specialization: Get clear on your comparative advantage where you do things more easily, at a higher level, and while having more fun than others."

"Experimentation: Rather than just having a to do list, have a to improve list."

"Standardization: Define your standard of quality. Then, make sure everything you ship meets that standard."

"There’s a famous saying that goes, “Where there is a will, there is a way.” The opposite is also true. We’ve found the way. We just need to find the will."

"“The greatest CEOs that we ever studied manage for the quarter… century.” ― Jim Collins"

"Most people play popular games — games with predefined boundaries that are played in crowded sandboxes."

"This fringe thing that people called the Internet was growing at an incredible 2,300% per year."

"“Things just don’t grow that fast! The Internet might be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,”"

"“Combinatory play seems to be the essential feature in productive thought.” — Einstein"

"The most common way that scientists and inventors use mental simulation is to model their craft in their head."

"Bottom line: we are born with an incredible ability to simulate reality using mental models. (yet, we often waste it)"

"“Please forgive a father who is so bold as to turn to you, esteemed Herr Professor, in the interests of his son . . . All those in a position to judge the matter can assure you that he is extraordinarily studious and diligent and clings with great love to his science . . . He is oppressed by the thought that he is a burden on us, people of modest means.”"

"Starting from an early age, Einstein had one-on-one tutoring in mathematics. Although, he showed a very large passion and talent for the subject, he did poorly on it in school."

"And throughout his career he looked at fantasy, not rational thought, as the secret to his creative impact. “When I examine myself and my methods of thought, I come to the conclusion that the gift of fantasy has meant more to me than my talent for absorbing knowledge,”"

"“Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.” — Einstein"

"As he conducted these visualizations, Einstein saw a conflict between his intuition and Maxwell’s equations, which at the time formed the prevailing theory of how electromagnetism worked."

"More than two dozen patents were issued from Einstein’s office between 1901 and 1904 for devices that used electromagnetic signals such as radio and light to synchronize clocks.”"

"From a young age, Tesla developed an aptitude for conjuring imaginary people, societies, and worlds."

"Science shows that those who have a better theory of mind are better able to predict how others will respond in certain situations."

"“Survival machines that can simulate the future are one jump ahead of survival machines who can only learn on the basis of overt trial and error. The trouble with overt trial is that it takes time and energy. The trouble with overt error is that it is often fatal. Simulation is both safer and faster.” — Richard Dawkins (Evolutionary Biologist)"

"Step 1: Build a mental model of how your field actually works."

"Step 2: Test the mental model in your mind, by mentally stimulating different scenarios."

"Step 3: Test the accuracy of your mental model in the real world."

"“Our success at Amazon is a function of how many experiments we do per year, per month, per week, per day.”"

"Step 4: Repeat steps 1–3 with the lessons you learned in steps 2 and 3."

"When we simulate scenarios in our head, we immediately get a subtle gut instinct on what will happen and an emotion (ie — “something is off here.” or “This is perfect.”)."

"“The mind is neither a logical nor a probabilistic device, but instead a device that makes mental simulations. Insofar as humans reason logically or infer probabilities they rely on their ability to simulate the world in mental models … This idea was first proposed a generation ago. Since then, its proponents and critics have revised and extended it in hundreds of publications.” —Princeton University professor Philip Johnson-Laird and researcher Sangeet Khemlani"

"Yes, cognitive biases are important. Yes, rationality is critical. But, so too is imagination and insight!"

"Because, if you look deeply at many of our society’s biggest breakthroughs, before there were logically proven, there was often many years of wild flights of fantasy before they had the flash of insights they became known for."

"The most important skill anybody can learn is the ability to learn rare and useful skills on-demand."

"In fact, the opposite is true. Not only is learning how to learn not taught, our popular culture is filled with dangerous learning myths that sabotage people’s success and cause them to waste countless hours learning mediocre skills they don’t remember for more than a few weeks and never apply."

"“In order to keep up with the world of 2050, you will need not merely to invent new ideas and products but above all to reinvent yourself again and again.”"

"Boyd decided that the primary determinant to winning dogfights was observing, orienting, planning, and acting faster. In other words, how quickly one could iterate. Speed of iteration, Boyd suggested, beats quality of iteration."

"Observe the other aircraft"

"Orient yourself by analyzing the situation"

"Decide what to do"

"Act (steer or fire)"

"The underlying model of the OODA Loop also applies in a much broader context…"

"Immediately, I saw the connection with our own intelligence as animals and humans…"

"“There are three principal means of acquiring knowledge: observation of nature, reflection, and experimentation. Observation collects facts; reflection combines them; experimentation verifies the result of that combination.”"

"Information. Taking in information via people, info, and experiences."

"Algorithms. Processing that information unconsciously and via reflective questions. And then taking notes."

"Experimentation. Taking action on the reflections to identify and move forward on the highest leverage actions without procrastination."

"Feedback. Identifying key variables and rapidly seeing the impact of your experiments on those variables."

"And that the things you do learn and invest in should be knowledge that is cumulative, so that the knowledge builds on itself."

"This chart is essentially why Albert Einstein reportedly referred to compound interest as the eighth wonder of the world."

"The Learning Loop, on the other hand, is the best model for improving your success and impact in the real world."

"“When a new venture does succeed, more often than not it is in a market other than the one it was originally intended to serve, with products or services not quite those with which it had set out, bought in large part by customers it did not even think of when it started, and used for a host of purposes besides the ones for which the products were first designed.” — Peter Drucker"

"One of the most famous sayings in Silicon Valley is that no business plan survives first contact with the customer. No matter how smart or experienced an entrepreneur is, there is always a gap between what they think the customer will buy or use and what they actually do."

"Rather than having huge learning loops where one mistake can take months to learn and kill the company, the goal is to shrink the learning loops so you can make many small mistakes quickly and learn from each one as you go along."

"Most people view meetings as going through an agenda. In other words, they view it as being about execution only. A good meeting is one that gets through the agenda as quickly as possible."

"Address fixed mindset and limiting emotions at each stage. Each stage of the learning loop evokes different emotions. Those emotions range from positive (wonder, confidence, patience, resolution) to negative (impatience, insecurity, confusion, frustration)."

"As I performed this research, I noticed something surprising. Many of the top companies and entrepreneurs in the world have independently found an optimal number that is the same…"

"They spend 20% of their time on activities on experiments and skill-building."

"What percentage of our workweek should we spend on learning and experimentation in order to have a thriving career?"

"3M has had an informal 15% Rule for decades."

"3) GaryVee Also Follows The 20% Rule"

"4) Navy Seal Jocko Willink Makes The Case For The 20% Rule"

"Based on my research, I believe that the 20% Rule applies to high-skill knowledge workers who do non-routine activities."

"5. Genentech, one of the largest companies in the world, follows the 20% Rule"

"6. 95% of people I surveyed think the 20% Rule would make them more productive"

"All of my research over the past few years has convinced me to increase my learning time from one hour per day to 3–4 hours instead."

"Every single moment in life is a learning opportunity. How do I capitalize on them?"

"Adaptive learning is learning how to learn in every situation."

"Becoming an adaptive learner means mastering T.E.E.M.Z:"

"Time: Find and make time in your schedule"

"Energy: Have energy rituals that prevent you from crashing"

"Environment: Select environments that facilitate learning"

"Mindset: Turn fixed mindsets into growth mindsets"

"Zone: Move overwhelming triggers into the learning zone"

"Double time is combining learning with other activities you already do as part of your schedule."

"I do the sauna five times per week. For each session, I get 25 minutes of reading and reflection in the sauna and then another 20 minutes as I cool down."

"Deliberate learning is based on the idea of deliberate practice pioneered by Anders Ericsson."

"The power of deliberate learning is that it is one of the top tools that world-class performers use to become the best at their craft."

"Amazingly, those 15 minutes are only 1/33 of the total time but drive 20% of the learning gain."

"There is always one skill I want to get better at. These incremental improvements compound over time. They’re the difference between someone stagnating and someone becoming a world-class performer."

"Counterintuitively, one of the best times to learn is when we take breaks."

"“Never go to sleep without a request to your subconscious.” — Thomas Edison"

"Before he goes to sleep, Reid Hoffman, founder of LinkedIn, asks himself a few questions:"

"“The very first thing I do when I get up, almost always, is to sit down and work on that problem because that’s when I’m the freshest. I’m not distracted by phone calls and responses to things, and so forth. It’s the most tabula rasa — blank slate — moment that I have. I use that to maximize my creativity on a particular project. I’ll usually do it before I shower, because frequently, if I go into the shower, I’ll continue to think about it.”"

"“My journaling system is based around studying complexity. Reducing the complexity down to what is the most important question. Sleeping on it, and then waking up in the morning first thing and pre-input brainstorming on it. So I’m feeding my unconscious material to work on, releasing it completely, and then opening my mind and riffing on it.”"

"“If they’re thinking about it right before bed, they’re thinking about it consciously. They’re not releasing the conscious mind, which is a huge part of that… [It’s] that core Hemingway principle of writing and then finishing his workday leaving something left to write. Right?… It’s very interesting, but he would always speak about the importance of stopping your thinking at that point. And he would relax. He would drink wine. And also for me as a chess player, I found if I studied it earlier and then released it, then I was able to dream about the insight.”"

"Basically, low energy is to learning as light is to vampires."

"When you focus on energy, then you realize that sleep and naps are fundamental to the learning process as they keep us in the learning zone throughout the day."

"Similarly, one of the reasons I chose to be a writer and teacher is that learning is fundamental to the whole process. I am literally getting paid to learn. In my previous company, learning was something I did on the side."

"Fixed and growth mindset are just two mindsets that impact learning out of many."

"Put more simply, experiences that are outside of our comfort zone, but before our burnout zone are particularly transformative…"

"With practice, triggers can fuel learning rather than block it. For example, self-made billionaire investor and entrepreneur Ray Dalio has built a whole system to turn triggers into learning opportunities."

"“The Pain Button can be used like a personal journal. Because pain is a signal that something may be going wrong, the purpose of the app is for one to write down and reflect on the “pain” one is experiencing in order to understand what’s causing them and to deal with those causes effectively.”"

"The more that we are able to keep our state in or near the learning zone, the more of the day is available to us for learning."

"I personally believe that we are here, alive on this planet in this moment, to learn and grow. To embody wisdom and then role model it through our actions and transmit it through our words. When we do this, we become one with the universe’s process of evolution and creation. For me, growth is tightly connected to purpose. It is an end to itself. It gives joy and meaning."

"By devoting more time toward learning, you not only become more successful, you live a more purposeful life."

"When it comes to BHAGs, goals are often OBSTACLES to LARGE feats of innovation rather than enablers. Furthermore, goals can sap motivation."

"Another researcher found that people who are too focused on goals are actually less lucky."

"Whereas average scientists view their hobbies as having nothing to do with their work, Nobel laureates don’t look at their hobbies as hobbies. They look at them as fundamental parts of their creative process."

"Everything we learn or experience is fodder."

"Are modern polymaths"

"Explore their curiosities and meander"

"Follow the 5-Hour Rule (spending at least five hours per week on deliberate learning)"

"persistence and curiosity."

"Jeff Bezos believes Amazon’s success is directly correlated with the number of experiments they perform."

"The tension is that my curiosities are rarely on the direct path to my goals, making pursuing them hard to justify."

"Downside 1: Goal obsession can lead to being unlucky"

"unlucky people miss chance opportunities because they are too focused on looking for something else."

"Lucky people are more relaxed and open, and therefore see what is there rather than just what they are looking for."

"The goal paradox is that the people who most fixedly pursue a goal might also be the worst at recognizing opportunities along the journey."

"Downside 2: Achieving goals can leave you feeling empty"

"“The most common reaction of the human mind to achievement is not satisfaction, but craving for more.” —Yuval Noah Harari"

"We’ve all had this experience of going after empty goals. We think a goal is going to change everything, so we sacrifice our health or our close relationships (or both) for it. Then, in the end, we realize that what we sacrificed may have been more important than the goal itself."

"Downside 3: The second you set a goal it starts to become stale"

"“The reason that most of us are unhappy most of the time is that we set our goals, not for the person we’re going to be when we reach them, but we set our goals for the person we are when we set them.” — Jim Coudal"

"Many of the people we have built relationships with still value the goal. As a result, it’s hard to give up."

"Downside 4: Goals can make you feel insecure"

"First, most people tend to set big goals that stretch them and to set aggressive deadlines."

"And, even when we are aware of the Planning Fallacy, it still takes way longer than expected. This is known as Hofstadter’s Law."

"Downside 5: Goals can reduce learning"

"Downside 6: Goals can actually make you feel unmotivated"

"The dip (aka — the long middle). After the initial excitement wears off, and you can’t see the light at the end of the tunnel, it’s easy to give up."

"Many of these downsides are inherent to the goal-setting model itself."

"For Great Innovation, Stepping Stones Beat Goals"

"Surprisingly, researchers Kenneth Stanley and Joel Lehman are finding that the algorithms most effective at solving the kind of big, hard problems that we see in the real world are NOT the ones based on setting a goal, measuring progress, and then checking each milestone off as they complete it."

"The goal model is effective when the steps between where you are now and where you want to go are clear."

"[Ambitious] objectives actually become obstacles towards more exciting achievements, like those involving discovery, creativity, invention, or innovation — or even achieving true happiness. In other words (and here is the paradox), the greatest achievements become less likely when they are made objectives. Not only that, but this paradox leads to a very strange conclusion — if the paradox is really true then the best way to achieve greatness, the truest path to “blue sky” discovery or to fulfill boundless ambition, is to have no objective at all."

"“Study hard what interests you the most in the most undisciplined, irreverent and original manner possible.”"

"To accomplish something big, you do NOT set ambitious goals and then work backwards. Rather, you follow the stepping stones immediately in front of you that give you the most novel paths forward, even if you aren’t sure exactly how that stepping stone will pay off in the future."

"1: Novelty is a great shortcut for detecting great stepping stones"

"As you become more expert on habits though, novelty becomes harder to find. Trial and error is no longer enough. You need to change how you think. You need a more complex model."

"“A lot of people who spend a long time trying to figure out how to solve tough problems in one industry don’t ask, ‘Well, is there some way we could apply that solution to a different industry? And that can be really, really powerful.” — Elon Musk"

"The important point is that novelty (and interestingness) can compound over time by continually making new things possible. So instead of seeking a final objective, by looking for novelty the reward is an endless chain of stepping stones branching out into the future as novelty leads to further novelty. Rather than thinking of the future as a destination, it becomes a road, a path of undefined potential."

"2: Humans are uniquely good at perceiving novelty"

"“Behind any serendipitous discovery there’s nearly always an open-minded thinker with a strong gut feeling for what plan will yield the most interesting results.”"

"3: Humans are wired to love and be motivated by curiosity"

"To be motivated, we do NOT need huge goals. Curiosity is an innate and incredibly powerful drive. And, it can be cultivated."

"If you want to accomplish huge creative feats, embrace your inner curiosity. Goal setting is powerful, but best used for short-term goals where the path between where you are and where you want to be is clear."

"For me the answer to these questions comes down to what I call the curiosity filter."

"Am I so fascinated by this that I’d be willing to spend serious effort learning more?"

"“Curiosity will conquer fear even more than bravery will; indeed, it has led many people into dangers which mere physical courage would shudder away from.”"

"“Curiosity is a delicate little plant which, aside from stimulation, stands mainly in need of freedom. It turns out that like many delicate plants, in order to flourish, curiosity needs to be cultivated.”"

"Our longest correspondence was a detailed discussion on the mating habits of naked mole rats and what the human species might learn from them.”"

"The Rise Of The Expert-Generalist"

"“Someone who has the ability and curiosity to master and collect expertise in many different disciplines, industries, skills, capabilities, countries, and topics., etc. He or she can then, without necessarily even realizing it, but often by design:"

"See the world more accurately and make better predictions of the future because they are not as susceptible to the biases and assumptions prevailing in any given field or community."

"Have more breakthrough ideas,"

"Build more open networks, which allows them to serve as a connector between people in different groups."

"The best way to explain is to take the case of one he uses constantly, which he calls Two-Track analysis. It combines insights from psychology, neuroscience and economics about the nature of human behavior."

"How they would succumb to the pull of a number of irrational psychological biases that seem to be “programmed” into the human brain."

"“It’s like the old saying, ‘To the man with only a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.’"

"“And the models have to come from multiple disciplines — because all the wisdom of the world is not to be found in one little academic department.”"

"“Being an expert-generalist has helped Bain see things for our clients that others miss, as we provide unique insights from one industry into another. The approach has differentiated Bain from its competitors.”"

"What’s more, those who can bridge the gaps between silos are becoming more valuable than ever as the amount of knowledge in the world and its fragmentation continue to accelerate."

"The amount of academic research is doubling every 9 years"

"The business world has placed great emphasis on focus, and rightly so. It is a vital ingredient of success. But more emphasis must now be placed on curiosity."

"We dismiss usable principles of success by labeling them as personality quirks."

"What’s often missed is the paradoxical interplay of two of his seemingly opposite qualities; maniacal focus and insatiable curiosity."

"Jobs’ curiosity fueled his passion and provided him with access to unique insights, skills, values, and world-class people who complemented his own skillset."

"“The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.” —Alvin Toffler"

"Look for information that actually increases in value over time. When it comes to knowledge, think like an investor, not a consumer."

"Junk Learning Source 2: A Little Knowledge Is Dangerous"

"“The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt.”"

"Being too specialized can hurt future learning if done alone. Supplement by spending more of your time learning fundamental knowledge that doesn’t change."

"Learning is a circular process of taking in information, reasoning with that information, experimenting in the real world, getting feedback, and then taking what learn to go through the cycle again."

"For example, if all we’re collecting is bad ideas, then our reasoning is going to be bad, which is going to lead to ineffective actions and so on."

"Next, junk learning can cause physical changes in our brain, which then hurts our ability to function effectively"

"For example, one of the ideas I learned growing up was that sales is a bad thing. This single idea literally changed my brain and made me resistant to information on how to become better at this vital business skill."

"Finally, junk learning is like a disease that spreads throughout the brain and causes more junk learning"

"The problem comes when we build our buildings on a poor foundation with shoddy bricks (junk learning)."

"And if we keep adding new knowledge to an unstable building, it eventually falls down. These building collapses are our existential crises (i.e., quarter-life and mid-life crises) where we hit bottom after reconsidering our deepest beliefs."

"The central premise is that the best strategy in the media world of books, movies, TV, and music is to focus on creating high-quality blockbusters rather than churn out volume."

"Junk learning effectively equivalent to brain damage and impairs our ability to function in the world."

"Junk Learning Source 1. The “Facts” We Know Are Slowly Being Debunked"

"The book that woke me up to this reality is The Half Life of Facts: Why Everything We Know Has An Expiration Date,"

"You would need to spend at least five hours per week, 48 weeks a year, to stay up to date."

"Now, if that isn’t enough to blow your mind, consider that 90 percent of the scientists who have ever lived are alive today."

"One of the biggest distinctions in the world of personal finance is between purchases and investments. Purchases immediately lose value while investments have the potential to increase in value."

"While you still need to keep on top of cutting-edge breakthroughs in a field, in general, many people undervalue learning investments in a stable base of knowledge that doesn’t change."

"In my opinion, mental models are one of the best learning investments anyone can make, because they apply across fields and across time, and will continue to apply to many situations in the future."

"“The greatest obstacle to knowledge is not ignorance; it is the illusion of knowledge.” — Historian Daniel Boorstin"

"The idea is simple but counterintuitive: In learning any new domain, our confidence is actually highest when we start."

"However, Dunning and Kruger found that when we don’t know what we don’t know, we overestimate our abilities."

"No matter how much we know, we only know a fraction of all there is to know. We must assume our own ignorance. An attitude of caution can help us avoid developing false beliefs that can lead to irrational decisions."

"Junk Learning Source 3: Our Confirmation Bias Makes Us Progressively More Dumb"

"Confirmation bias is our tendency to only look for and believe information that supports what we already think, and to dismiss evidence to the contrary."

"It also drives home another important lesson. A very small amount of disconfirming evidence can disprove a much larger body of confirming evidence."

"One of the biggest daily examples of confirmation bias involves our social media bubbles: We read the same sites, listen to the same friends (who agree with us!), and watch the same news over and over, which only confirms what we already believe."

"Jean Piaget, one of the greatest psychologists, showed that we grow our own knowledge the most when we transform our thinking to be able to accomodate external knowledge that doesn’t fit at first."

"Assimilation — We use our existing base of knowledge to understand a new object or situation."

"Accommodation — We realize that our existing base of knowledge does not work, and needs to be changed in order to effectively deal with a new object or situation."

"On the other hand, we go through a growth spurt when we actively search for disconfirming evidence and allow accomodation to happen."

"In other words, reading about facts we disagree with can provoke the same sort of response we’d feel if we were being chased by a lion."

"Amazingly, what the study found is that the same parts of the brain (for example, the amygdala) that respond to PHYSICAL threats also respond to INTELLECTUAL threats."

"We need to identify and stress-test our most fundamental beliefs about the nature of reality — and learn how to handle the strong emotions that will come up when we do."

"Junk Learning Source 4. We Trust the Wrong Ideas and the Wrong People"

"But this superpower can go wrong if we copy the wrong things from the wrong people. Unfortunately, we do this all of the time as a result of the Halo Effect. This is a cognitive bias that makes us trust a person’s advice in one area of life simply because they are an expert in another area."