Learning and Goal-Setting (with Michael Simmons)

1. Embrace Emergent Goals

Instead of rigidly setting long-term goals, adopt a “stepping stone” philosophy where you build capabilities that create multiple future options, allowing your ultimate goals to emerge over time.

2. Clarify Intrinsic Values

Understand your core intrinsic values (e.g., altruism, community, personal happiness) and use them as a decision criterion to guide your actions and evaluate opportunities, rather than solely pursuing external goals or social validation.

3. Implement Five-Hour Rule

Dedicate about an hour per day (or five hours a week) to deliberate learning and improvement, as exemplified by Ben Franklin and other successful individuals.

4. Read Voraciously & Smartly

Cultivate a habit of reading a ridiculously large number of books by really smart people, as this is a simple yet powerful “hack” to becoming very smart.

5. High Criteria for Learning

Study fewer successful people more deeply, focusing on those with success across different industries and decades who constantly reinvent themselves, to discern skill from randomness.

6. Develop Platform Learning

Analyze large datasets of successful examples (e.g., top-performing articles, bestselling books, long-running ads) in a field to identify patterns and refine your intuition, rather than relying solely on traditional books or personal experience.

7. Aim for “Best in World”

When creating content, strive to make it the absolute best on a narrow topic for a specific audience, recognizing that exceptional quality is crucial for success in a competitive attention economy.

8. Balance Optimization Approaches

Alternate between taking immediate, small steps towards a goal (local optimization) and periodically re-evaluating long-term objectives and desired “peaks” (global optimization) to ensure progress is both rapid and well-directed.

9. Combine Experimentation & Iteration

Use “cheap experiments” (e.g., quick blog posts) to test ideas and get initial feedback, but then deliberately iterate and improve upon successful concepts to achieve “blockbuster” quality.

10. Master Attention-Grabbing Packaging

For ideas to be consumed, master the art of crafting compelling titles, images, and subtitles, as these are the first elements people see in newsfeeds and determine whether content is clicked.

11. Bridge Disparate Knowledge Fields

Gain a significant advantage in your career by integrating knowledge and practices from different, often siloed, fields (e.g., journalism, marketing, academia), even if they traditionally “dislike” each other.

12. Actively Update Information

Recognize that information decays (facts become false, more accurate views emerge, or truths become outdated) and actively seek to update your knowledge to stay current.

13. Be Open to Surprises

View unexpected outcomes, opportunities, and things that don’t work as valuable learning experiences and potential stepping stones, rather than hindrances to a fixed goal.

14. Utilize “Double Time” Learning

Integrate learning into tedious tasks by listening to podcasts or audiobooks while doing chores, driving, or walking, maximizing time efficiency.

15. Cultivate Learning Friendships

Invest time in relationships with others who love learning, turning conversations into opportunities to share and help each other learn.

16. Leverage Google Scholar Research

Use Google Scholar to find the most cited papers and journals in a sub-discipline to quickly grasp important themes and what a field is discussing.

17. Consult Systematic Reviews

Efficiently learn about a topic by finding systematic reviews, where experts summarize and synthesize existing literature, rather than piecing together individual studies.

18. Triangulate Expert Worldviews

To quickly ascertain truth on a topic, identify two or three smart experts with different worldviews and focus on areas where they agree.

19. Analyze Adversarial Collaborations

Seek out discussions or papers where researchers respond to each other’s work, highlighting holes and disagreements, to gain a deeper understanding from different perspectives.

20. Study Classic Advertising

To understand how to effectively sell ideas and capture attention, read foundational advertising books from the early 20th century, as they contain timeless wisdom from an era of rigorous testing.

21. Prioritize Value Density

When simplifying information, aim to increase “value density” (value delivered per minute of consumption), ensuring that brevity enhances rather than diminishes the overall benefit to the user.

22. Inspire Genuine Capabilities

Inspire others by convincing them of their genuine capabilities and the potential for excellent achievement through a process, without deluding them about their current skill level.

23. Actively Disprove Beliefs

Foster continuous adult development by actively seeking out knowledge and perspectives that challenge and disprove your most fundamental beliefs, leading to radical personal growth.

24. Be Honest About Motivations

Acknowledge and understand all your motivations, including selfish ones, rather than denying them, to better balance them with altruistic desires and avoid “fake altruism.”

25. Invest in Public Brand

Build a public personal brand and reputation as a thought leader, as this creates a platform for future opportunities, attracts capital and talent, and allows for greater impact across different ventures over the long term.

26. Create Missing Resources

When you find a topic difficult to learn due to a lack of good resources, take the initiative to create the comprehensive and clear resource you wished you had.

27. Avoid External Judgment

Do not choose behaviors primarily based on how you think others will judge you; instead, align actions with your deeper intrinsic values, especially regarding people not important to your life.