Personal Development Archives

10,000 Experiments Rule by James Altucher

James Altucher is one of the most interesting people I’ve found online. He is an author, popular podcaster, financial writer, standup comic, chess master, entrepreneur, and probably many other things I’m forgetting.

In this podcast, he provides background information on many of the endeavors he’s tried, failed, and succeeded at. It’s a great lesson in just trying stuff and taking bold action. I highly recommend listening to this episode.

“Most things that you do, should fail. If you don’t fail enough, means you’re not doing enough experiments. The more experiment you do, the more interesting life, experience, and the more successful you’ll have!”

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You are a Time Billionaire

This is one of the most powerful ideas I’ve come across. If you are only going to read one thing today, spend a couple of minutes thinking about this short summary.

Anthony Pompliano shares an important idea from a past Tim Ferris podcast with Graham Duncan, the co-founder of East Rock Capital.

“It perfectly breaks down the difference between a time billionaire and a dollar billionaire. One has financial resources and the other has life resources. Our society overvalues the former, but undervalues the latter.”

Here is an excerpt of that conversation:

“Graham Duncan: A million seconds is 11 days. A billion seconds is slightly over 31 years. And I was thinking about – Tyler Cowen has a thing about cultural billionaires –

Tim Ferriss: Marginal Revolution?

Graham Duncan: Yeah. In one of his books, he talks about cultural billionaires. I feel like in our culture, we’re so obsessed, as a culture, with money. And we deify dollar billionaires in a way that – it’d be nice to co-opt that term the way Tyler Cowen did with cultural billionaires. And I was thinking of time billionaires that when I see, sometimes, 20-year-olds – the thought I had was they probably have two billion seconds left. But they aren’t relating to themselves as time billionaires.

And I was thinking about how if you could – what would Rupert Murdoch, who’s worth $20 billion – he’s 87 years old. What would he pay if he could take the next five years of someone’s 20-year-old healthy body, mind, etc.? And for that 20-year-old, how would they price it? Because I was thinking at various points of my career, I might have sold the next five years for something.

And over time, my pricing has gone vertical because the next five years, if I were to lose – and the key to this question is that you can’t sell the five at the end of your life. You gotta sell them right now. I don’t know how I’d price it because my kids are of a certain age that they’ll never be again. But I don’t know that I live every day that way. But I aspire to.

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How long it took YouTube creators to get followers

Simple tweet on the power of consistency and hard work.

“Mind blowing stats. How long it took YouTube creators to get followers (averaged):

1M: 3,873 videos
100k – 1M: 1,171 videos
10k – 100k: 418 videos
1k – 10k: 151 videos

Persistence, focus, and patience are key in anything!”

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James Altucher: How to find success no matter what your interest is

James Altucher and his producer Jay Yow talk about what success is, and how do you turn your “favorite” list and passion into a road map to success.

James talks about how you need to get good at the Skills, Domain, and Field for the niche you choose.

This is a great way to look at how to become an expert in your niche.

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Start Before You’re Ready

If you are procrastinating on a new project, this post might offer the inspiration to just start. Marie Forleo offers some simple, but well-needed motivation. I was supposed to start this newsletter last year, so I definitely understand. If you don’t know Marie Forleo, you should check out MarieForleo.com. The exemplary professionalism of her website and videos, along with her charismatic stage presence is what every thought leader should aspire to. If you want to get an idea of the potential of starting before you’re ready, check out Marie’s first blog back in 2006. 24 years of hard work have gotten her to where she is today. Start with where you are and put in the effort to improve. How much can you improve with two decades of experience?

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Temporal Discounting: The Battle Between Present and Future Self

“As humans, we tend to favour our present self at the expense of our future self. Our present self will eat an extra piece of cake, skip a training session, drink too much, stay up late, or procrastinate; our future self is left dealing with the consequences. This phenomenon is called temporal discounting. The further in the future the consequences, the least we pay attention to them.” Anne-Laure Le Cunff offers strategies to help us make better decisions now that will lead to better outcomes in the future.

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Learn by Doing the Real Thing, Not the Fake Thing

Scott Young has a follow up to his post on how to learn new things. This applies to doing almost anything that takes consistent effort. (I recommend reading the Do the Real Thing post first, then Obstacles to the Real Thing.) “Business owners who spend more time printing business cards than finding clients. Students who create elaborate multicolored folders for their classes instead of sitting down and studying. People trying to get in shape who buy fancy workout gear instead of exercising. Pretend activity instead of the real thing.” I think we all succumb to this type of busywork to avoid what really needs to be done.

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Where to Find the Hours to Make it Happen

Seth Godin has pithy post on procrastination and doing important work. He links to an even better post by Derek Sivers. “When you experience someone else’s genius work, a little part of you feels, “That’s what I could have, would have, and should have done!” Someone else did it. You didn’t. They fought the resistance. You gave in to distractions. They made it top priority. You said you’d get to it some day. The resistance is Steven Pressfield’s idea in his great book The War of Art. “Are you a writer who doesn’t write, a painter who doesn’t paint, an entrepreneur who never starts a venture? Then you know what “Resistance” is.” These are simple ideas, but a good reminder to keep you focused. Bring something cool into the world!

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Robin Sharma: The Morning Routine of Millionaires

Best-selling author of The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari, Robin Sharma is on Lewis Howes podcast this week. Robin’s recent book, The 5 AM Club is about spending the first hour of the day on exercise, reflection and meditation, and learning. I personally, am a night owl so I’ve always been skeptical of those recommending getting up early. However, when I do wake up early, I get a ton done and it’s a great start to the day. Are you an early bird or a night owl?

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The Best Career Advice I’ve Ever Gotten

Best-selling author and entrepreneur, Ryan Holiday explains his canvas strategy for building your career. Ryan Holiday apprenticed with author Robert Greene early in his career and has since worked with industry giants like Tucker Max and Tim Ferris. “Imagine if for every person you met you thought of some way to help them, something you could do for them, and you looked at it in a way that entirely benefitted them and not you. The cumulative effect this would have over time would be profound.” – I certainly wish I invested more time in apprenticeships. Maybe it’s not too late? It would be great if mid-career professionals could have virtual apprenticeships of some sort. I think there’s a business in there somewhere.

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How Anne-Laure Le Cunff Wrote 200 Articles In One Year

Anne-Laure Le Cunff shares her simple analog productivity system she uses to stay focused on her 3 most important tasks each week. I love the simplicity of having a regular practice like this. She also shares the tools and process for writing three articles per week for her 14k subscriber “mindful productivity” newsletter at Ness Labs. In addition to writing all this content and running a startup, Le Cunff is also doing a master’s degree. She seems to have it all figured out.

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Mindset is Everything

This is not directly business-related, but I think it’s worth a listen. Shane Parrish interviews 8X Olympic speed skating champion Apolo Ohno. Apolo had some natural ability early on, but didn’t take training seriously when he first started. After a big push from his father, he decided to really go all-in into his training physically and mentally. He goes into detail about what it really takes to become world-class.

I think the importance of mindset can often be underestimated. Most podcasters quit before 10 episodes. Most bloggers don’t last 6 months. Most Indie Hackers don’t make any money. It takes a lot of mental fortitude to push through continual rejection and failure. You need to convince yourself that you will succeed.