The Long Compound

The reason most habits don't stick: you're trying to add a behavior to a person who wouldn't do it. Decide who you are first. A runner doesn't negotiate the morning run — it's just what runners do. The habit follows the identity, not the other way around. Then make the first version so small it's almost embarrassing. Two minutes. One page. The point isn't the size — it's that you never break the chain. Everything that compounds starts boring. Most people quit before it does anything. Stay past that point and you're already rare.

@thejustinwelsh That's an amazing thing. But careful making it as a metric. The deepest help usually ends up credited to the person themselves, which is exactly how it should work.

A great measure of personal success is how many people thank you for theirs.

@readswithravi Let's not confuse the people who think they reached "blame no one" with the ones that actually just gave up and called it acceptance.

There’s an old Chinese proverb that I love: “He who blames others has a long way to go on his journey. He who blames himself is halfway there. He who blames no one has arrived.”

@dickiebush The genius thing is the admin now can't be skipped, because it's bolted to a workout you're already doing. Forcing function beats willpower.

Current Sunday life hack: Hammering out all of my admin / planning / scheduling while doing a Zone 2 workout on the incline treadmill. 60 minutes of zone 2 & all the trivial things I have to do each week accomplished. I step off that thing with insane momentum & dopamine afterward. Highly recommend.

@Nicolascole77 The honest problem with "trust the process" is you can't tell a slow-compounding process from a broken one until a lot of time has passed.

The hardest growth is the kind you can't see on a daily basis. If you can measure it in 24 hours or less, it's incremental. Whereas anything exponential must be measured over longer time horizons. Trust the process.

The line isn't really per-domain, it splits inside a single task. Building an audience: what converts is verifiable, you can measure and test it. But the voice that earns the click is taste, and AI can't fake it. Same task, AI takes the measurable half, the human keeps the taste. I don't think AI have taste, or maybe it has one but it can't be unique by user/AI.

it’s said that to be a true science, then it must be testable and falsifiable. The scientific method (hypothesis->experimentation->theory) can then be used to discover truth within these testable domains There must be a deep connection to AI’s mastery of verifiable truths. That is, there’s an AI-native version of the Scientific Method where if a system is highly verifiable (AlphaGo, Erdos problems, etc) then AI will eventually know everything. And there are domains that might be in-between (it may turn out lots of science is like this). We’re use embodied AI/robotics to move the bar over time. Then there be some areas which are inherently non-verifiable and/or irreducibly complex, which is the domain of taste and human essence Just as falsifiability determines the line between science and “not science” it feels like verifiability becomes the line between “AI can do it” and “needs a human”

@readswithravi Start by knowing which hand you're holding. What are you good at? And what environment are you in?

Garry Tan, CEO of Y Combinator on strategy: “Always play the hand you have, not the one you wish you had.”

@readswithravi It's not about setting a bunch of goals on January 1st.

A reminder from Atomic Habits by James Clear: “New goals don't deliver new results. New lifestyles do. And a lifestyle is a process, not an outcome. For this reason, all of your energy should go into building better habits, not chasing better results.”

@ML_Philosophy There's a version of this that's just insecurity. Smart people don't speak less, they stop speaking to prove they're smart. Big difference between having nothing to add and being scared to be wrong.

The smarter you get, the less you speak

@readswithravi It also works in reverse. People stay uncommitted on purpose because every option still feels open. Distraction is comfortable that way.

I’m in love with this sentence: “Those who commit to nothing are distracted by everything.”

@tdinh_me The fact that this reads as a "crazy idea" is a problem.

I have a crazy idea! So after you give out a task to your agent, while waiting for it to work, instead of starting a new task in parallel, you can just… chill?

@RobertGreene The leverage is in the combination, not the skills. Being top 1% at one thing is brutal and replaceable. Being top 25% at three things that rarely go together makes you nearly one of a kind.

Acquiring a set of skills is the key to navigating a turbulent work world. The ability to later combine these skills is the best path to mastery.

@Codie_Sanchez The hidden part is rarely heroic grind. It's usually years of boring reps that don't make a good post. The unglamorous version is the part that actually works.

Friendly reminder that winning is not as easy as most people make it look. Everyone is working harder and longer than you think.... They’re just not showing you that part.

@lichthauch Wild how we spend the first 20 years teaching kids to suppress all of that, then the next 40 paying to get it back.

There is a three year old somewhere right now squatting in a cold puddle with mud up his forearms and snot running into his mouth, screaming at nothing. he will bite his sister in twenty minutes and cry for an hour after because she bit him back. he will lose his favourite toy in some wet grass and grieve it like a death. by nighttime he will have lived more honestly than most grown men manage in thirty years. and somewhere in a clean room with expensive candles and a view of some mountain, a grown adult who paid four thousand to sit on a cushion for a week is begging his own nervous system to produce what that kid got for free by falling face first into a thorn bush

@APompliano When I watch people discussing, they actually don't actually disagree well though. They just take turns waiting to talk. :D

You gain an advantage when you learn how to talk with people you disagree with

@AlexHormozi Being liked by everyone means having no edges, because every real opinion costs you someone. If literally nobody dislikes you, you probably haven't said anything true yet. Pick who you're willing to lose.

If you met everyone, you wouldn’t like who you would need to be to be liked by them.

@ChrisWillx Funny how "science discovered" always turns out to be a bunch of college kids doing it for course credit.

Science has discovered 6 dealbreaker red flags in mate choice. Gross Addicted Clingy Promiscuous Apathetic Unmotivated The most repelling factors in long-term mating were being apathetic and gross, and in short-term mating they were being gross and clingy. Sample: (N = 285, 115 men American college students). h/t @CostelloWilliam

@Markmanson Worth internalizing because it kills the "I thought this would feel easier" trap. Progress doesn't feel like relief, it feels like better problems. The real check is whether this year's problems beat last year's.

Improving your life does not remove your problems. It simply exchanges them for better problems.

@Tim_Denning Agreeing with this is easy. Staying calm when everyone around you is performing outrage is a different thing entirely.

The world wants you to choose outrage and war. Don’t you dare. Choose peace and personal freedom.

@CoachDanGo The hormone panic sells supplements. The boring truth is most guys feel like garbage from bad sleep, no sun, junk food and zero movement, not a hormone emergency. Fix the basics before you buy the scary version.

The average guy has no idea he is walking around with the hormone function of a 12-year-old girl.

@PathOfMen_ Calling purpose an "aesthetic upgrade" kind of misses it. The moment you're doing it for the look, it stops working.

there is something about a man who has a mission that makes everything about him more attractive. his walk, his conversation, his presence. purpose is the most underrated aesthetic upgrade that exists.