Back to Home

Principles

Most of these principles are not original (is anything?). I have linked to sources where I can remember them.

I don't always live up to these principles. The ones marked ** are what I most need to get better at. I find that codifying and regularly looking at this list helps me lead a more aligned life.

Last updated: Nov 2024

On Living

  1. Choose being kind over being right
  2. Treat people the same regardless of their status relative to yours. Humans are social animals, people notice
  3. Never be mean, especially not to someone who can hurt you by doing nothing
  4. Friendships are as important as family. Invest in your friends and prioritize making new ones. The larger the universe's friendship stock, the better off we will all be
  5. You settle for the love you think you deserve. Value yourself more and you will be more thoughtful in whom you prioritize
  6. Surround yourself with people whose eyes light up when they see you coming (Andre De Shields)
    1. By extension, praise easily and often. (this also extends to social media - don't lurk, if you like something, say something)
  7. Everything and everybody has a light, and it's your job to find it (Tikkun Olam)
  8. ** Everyone has black holes in their lives; scarcely talked about events that shape the rest of their being. Remember that as you negatively judge someone (Krista Tippett)
  9. Treat animals the same way you treat humans. These distinctions are arbitrary and constructed (Lulu Miller)
  10. Everyone — atheists included — has a God. For many people, it is money, fame and power. Know what yours is (David Foster Wallace)
    1. By extension, find your temple. Going there will give you peace. Museums are one of my temples
  11. Conversations are a form of art. Treat conversation like improv - "your job as an improviser is not to come up with clever lines but to make your partner’s shitty line sound good."
  12. People who enjoy "exploring" ideas versus "defining" ideas make for more interesting conversation
  13. The best kind of charisma is when you make the other person feel that you are seeing the best version of themselves. We sometimes call this flirting
  14. A majority of people's decisions are driven by signaling. This is not inherently bad. If you see the world this way, a lot more things start to make sense (Robin Hanson)
    1. I'm pretty sure my desire to post this list online (it's been on my Notes app for a while) is to signal that I'm a reflective person. Now that I have, I hope it's working
  15. Approach every negotiation with the belief that there exists a win-win outcome. If you haven't found it, you haven't looked hard enough.
  16. Reading fiction will help you understand people better (George Eliot, among others)

On Learning

  1. Be curious and expand your Umwelt. Have a lot of diverse experiences - it is an energizing way to spend time. (Tyler Cowen via Scott Rogowski - the whole piece is great)
  2. Epekho (via Montaigne). I admit I haven't figured out how this principle interacts with (1)
  3. You can learn anything you set your mind to. The more you believe this, the more true it will be
  4. Regularly examine your worldview and look for floating beliefs. Any belief that isn't connected to an anticipated experience is likely unhelpful
  5. Your identity comes in the way of seeing clearly. Prune your "identity surface area". Avoid using labels to describe yourself, use verbs instead. Group identities are especially pernicious (George Kateb)
    1. If you are offended often, it likely means you have a large identity surface area.
    2. An implication for Living: be conscious of other people's identities as you engage in conversation. A large share of unintended emotional harm comes from not doing this
  6. Never let your ego get too close to your position in a conversation
  7. Look for 'edges', they are great places to learn
    • "I have always felt that the action most worth watching is not at the center of things but where edges meet. I like shorelines, weather fronts, international borders. There are interesting frictions and incongruities in these places, and often, if you stand at the point of tangency, you can see both sides better than if you were in the middle of either one. This is especially true, I think, when the apposition is cultural" (The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down)
  8. Improve your vocabulary and language. It will improve your thinking (Proust, Sapir-Whorf hypothesis)
  9. ** Reflect on your suffering, it will help you see more clearly. Most of this list was first written after a melancholic period (Jensen Huang, Proust)

On Working

  1. ** You are not your career.
  2. You control whether you think your work has meaning. The meaning-making part has less to do with your work and more to do with your ability to convince yourself
  3. Luck is a massive factor in career outcomes. You can improve your luck but most of it is out of your control (Farnam Street). Remember that in both the good times and bad
  4. Your career will likely be 40+ years long. Remember that as you make decisions, you will likely have multiple careers
  5. Great managers who believe in you are transformative. They will change the arc of your career and sense of self
  6. Every job has some bullshit. You can only decide what kind of bullshit you're willing to take
  7. Think of work as a video game you're choosing to play. It makes the hard days easier
  8. There is 'alpha' in willing to roll up your sleeves and do the work nobody wants to do
  9. You cannot be successful without engaging with the detail. The best professionals do not hesitate to go deep if they need to
  10. First principles thinking can get you surprisingly far. Expertise mainly helps in getting to the right answer faster
  11. Networking is a terrible idea. Instead, replace it with (4) from "On Living" (Joseph Kennedy, among others)
    • "I think JPK's exceptional rise is much more defined by his ability to build and sustain relationships with a wide variety of people than anything else he does well (dedication and commitment, analytical ability etc.). At b-schools we spend a lot of time talking about "networking", which I think is terrible phrasing, instantly framing the complex act of forming a new relationship as a mercenary, transactional interaction. I think the right way to do it is to have a prevailing belief that friendships are important and helpful and that what goes around comes around, while approaching each new person as a potential relationship where you must attempt to add value in their life. I think Nasaw phrases it wonderfully: "Friendship was, for him, a priceless commodity. He had a gift for friendship, though he knew it did not always come easily, that one had to work at it, stay in touch, celebrate the good times, offer condolences in the bad. I spent most of my teenage years in a community that narrowly believed that skill only comprised qualitative analytical ability, a framing that results in all other qualities being seen as stop-gap, less-worthy ways of achieving success. People like JPK help disprove this idea: a lot of people can do math, it isn't sufficient."