Here are some princiles I live by:

1. Live simply

Ask yourself:

  • How can you simplify it further?
  • What can you automate?

2. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you

Ask yourself:

  • What if I am wrong, even a 1% probability?

  • Be kind.
    Be kind

  • Be nice. Before you are old, attend as many funerals as you can bear, and listen. Nobody talks about the departed’s achievements. The only thing people will remember is what kind of person you were while you were achieving. Also it is hard to cheat an honest & kind man.

  • Have empathy.

  • Be honest.

  • Be compassionate.

  • Don’t ask, Don’t get.
    Dont ask dont get

  • Give attention to people 100%. When you are talking to someone, talk to someone. When you are going for lunch with someone, go for lunch with someone. Don’t multi-task, the ability to focus and concentrate on one single task will get you ahead in life. That is something that you have to do.

  • Assume positive intent. Nearly all people have a positive intent towards you. Remember it is not personal. Incentives drive behaviour.

  • If you are angry, do not respond for 1 day. Anger & fear give bad advice. Control your anger. So it does not control you. Anger seldom brings you anything good. It obstructs your rational thought process. Don’t respond or act when you are angry. Breathe in. Let it go. Act once your anger subsides.

  • Become a go-giver. Help people as much as you can because you feel good. Don’t expect anything in return though there is a strong reciprocation tendencity.

  • Both quantity and quality time matter. There is nothing like quality time. If you don’t have quantity then sometimes you don’t have quality too.

  • When wrong, Apologize. Don’t justify your actions. Admit that you screwed up. To make mistakes is human. To own your mistakes is divine. Mistakes become harder to correct the longer they linger. Apologize quickly, specifically & sincerely.

  • Accept the compliment. When you receive a compliment, say thank you. We often ruin compliments by devaluing the statement or acting overly humble. Internally, you might think this prevents you from appearing arrogant or smug. The problem is that by deflecting the praise of a genuine compliment, you don’t acknowledge the person who was nice enough to say something. Simply saying “Thank You” fully acknowledges the person who made the compliment and allows you to enjoy the moment as well.

  • Speak up. There is some immorality in silence. The immorality to remain silent when there is evil afoot. If you are seeing someone being suffered. When honest people fail in their duty to speak up they wound the dharma.

  • Do not hold grudges. If you do, it is only going to make your life bitter. Life becomes much easier when you learn to accept an apology you never get. When someone is nasty, rude, hateful, or mean with you, pretend they have a disease. That makes it easier to have empathy towards them which can soften the conflict. Sometimes good people act badly. You continue to do what is right. Release the grudge as if it was a poison. Let it go.

  • Forgive. When you forgive others, they may not notice, but you will heal. Forgiveness is not something we do for others; it is a gift to ourselves.

3. Think long term

Ask yourself:

  • Can I win this game?
  • Can I do this for every day for the rest of my life?
  • Will it move the needle if done well?
  • Will the person who I am trying to become do this?
  • Will this matter 30 days from now?
  • What’s the highest leverage task that you can do right now?
  • Can this be your superpower? Can you do this 10x better than the competition? Can you win this game?
  • Is it worth doing given your hourly price?

  • Top 10%. Don’t work in a job or develop a skill in which you don’t believe that you can be in the Top 10% of the people. Why? Becuase all benefit accrues to the best.

  • Stay within your circle of competence. Size of the circle is not relevant but being inside the circle of competence is important.

  • Short term loss is ok. Optimize for the long term even if that means you lose in the short term.

  • Focus on asymmetric upsides. Focus on things that have a huge upside (unlimited) if they go right and very low upside if they were to go down.

  • Vote with actions. Every action you take is a vote in the direction of the person you want to become.

  • Focus on things that raise your energy. Avoid things that bring down your energy. If you do this you’ll be able to do things for longer.

  • Do things that compound. All the gains in life come from compounding so focus more on compounding

  • 5 years people rule. Life is too short to spend time with people who you would not want to spend time in 5 years as well.

  • Do things that you can do consistently. If you can’t do something for long consistently there is no point in doing that. You are better off spending time on something else

  • Focus on your strengths. Focus on what you are good at as you’ll be able to do this for the long term. Look at the animal kingdom — Cheetah focus on its running, Dogs use their smell, they all use their strengths to their advantage to overcome predators. That is what you have to do as well.

  • Deep over shallow. Deep connections, Deep Knowledge. Planck Knowledge vs Chauffer Knowledge.

  • Deep Work. In a world full of distractions, the ability to do deep work is a superpower

  • Have Patience,e No matter how great the talent or efforts, some things just take time. You can’t produce a baby in one month by getting nine women pregnant — Warren Buffett

4. Carpe Diem.

Ask yourself:

  • Is this something that you control?
  • Will this matter 30 days from now?
  • Does it help reduce your digital time?
  • If today were the last day of my life, would I be doing what I am about to do today?
  • Do you enjoy doing it? Does it give you energy?

  • Take a break.
    Take a break

  • Be in the moment. Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, but today is a gift that is why it is called the present — Master Oogway

  • Focus on having a good day. Do what you enjoy because that way your daily life is good. A day makes a month, month makes a year and then a year makes a life.

  • Focus on doing the best in that point in time. Don’t think about the future or the past.

  • Reduce digital time and be more outdoors. Everytime I increase my digital time my eyes feel tired and I am unable to concentrate. The tiredness induces me to eat sugar and then I fall into a loop of increased stress. Generally I want to take decisions that will help me reduce digital time.

  • Everything in life happens for a good reason. Thought in the moment we might not realise why.

  • Be happy today. The greatest predictor of your future happiness is your happiness today. Carpe Diem — Karen Peacock

5. Live by an inner scorecard

Ask yourself:

  • Were my intentions clear?
  • Would you rather be the world’s greatest lover, but have everyone think you’re the world’s worst lover? Or would you rather be the world’s worst lover but have everyone think you’re the world’s greatest lover? - Warren Buffett

  • Be genuine. Mean what you say and say what you mean.

  • Be authentic. Be yourself. Everyone else is taken. This is the only way to escape competition. No one can compete with you on being you. There is no one out there that shares your same genetic makeup let alone your life experiences. What might work for someone might not work for you. Different strategies work for different people - chose one that works for you. Don’t worry about being original - it is overrated but be authentic. Always credit the original though. You add value to people’s material and usually people are happy. Examples, Matt Mochary crediting all the books he has read, Rory sutherland always crediting the ideas, Sapiens from Yuval Noah Harrari a colection od ideas, Bill Bryson a synthesis of research.

  • Be honest with yourself. If you don’t accept the reality, who will? The moment you recognise your own weakness you can start to do something about it. But if you don’t even recognize it you are smoke.

  • Accept First. The first step towards getting somewhere is to accept where you are. Next is deciding that you are not going to stay where you are. After that comes the plan.

  • Most people overestimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what they can do in ten years. — Bill Gates

6. Learn by Doing

Ask yourself:

  • What can you do to get quick feedback?
  • Is it good enough?
  • What is the 1 big thing that you’ll get done today?

  • Am I 80% there already?

  • Learn by Doing.
    Learn by Doing

  • Practice.
    Dont wait for perfect

  • Believe in power of cloning. If you see someone doing something smart, just do something similar and copy it. Clone it. I feel no shame it. Just credit the original creator.

  • Creating is the best way to learn. Spend atleast 50% of your time you consume each weak into creating too.

  • Done > Perfect. Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good. Progress > perfection. Make a choice and move on. Just ship. The cost of perfection is inaction. Action is the antidote to anxiety.

  • Embrace iteration. Anything you do you get better with iteration. Without iteration you just don’t know so many things.

  • Ask yourself and others a deadline. A deadline weeds out the extraneous and the ordinary. It prevents you from trying to make it perfect, so you have to make it different. Different is better.

  • Learn from experience. There is really no substitute for experience. You don’t know what you don’t know. You can read stacks of books, get mentors, take courses, or make the perfect plan. You’ll still yourself making mistakes. It’s only when the mistake stings you properly that you learn and don’t forget. The best and quickest way to learn is through experience. There is a difference between seeing a picture of a snake and having a live snake thrown on your lap. It is not that you can’t learn from other people’s experience. It is just that you learn best from your own experience.

  • The more you create, the more powerful you become. The more you consume, the more powerful others become — James Clear

  • Most people don’t start. Most people who start don’t continue. Most people who continue give up. Many winners are just the last ones standing — Sahil Livanga

  • The only way to know if someone wants something is by shippong it.

  • In the beginner’s mind, there are many possibilities, in the expert’s mind, there are a few — Shunryo Suzuki

  • The two best teachers — experience & doing

  • You learn more from failure than from successs

7. Be Intentional

Ask yourself:

  • Are you a man of action or are you a man of contemplation?

  • Think big. What can you achieve in the next 10 years?

  • Reflection > Reading New Content

  • The only constant in life is change — Heraclitus

  • What you do speaks so loudly, I can’t hear what you’re saying — Ralph Waldo Emerson

  • Change happens automatically but for progress you need to work — Jess Sims

  • Go as far as you can see; when you get there, you’ll be able to see further — J.P.Morgan

  • Worrying is like a rocking chair, it gives you something to do, but it gets you nowhere. — Erma Bombeck

  • Cut your losses. Double down on what’s working

  • The man who asks a question is a fool for a minute, but the man who does not ask is a fool for life — Confucius

  • God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference — Reinhold Niebuhr

  • Focus on what you can control. There is no point worrying about things that you can’t control. It will only cause anxiety. Focus on what you can and leave the rest to God.

  • Agar Aap Sochte Hain
    Agar Aap Sochte Hain
    English version here.

  • Set the agenda. Or someone else will. If you don’t decide what you want for yourself someone else will. Don’t waste your time living someone else’s life. You need to be proactive with what you want. You are more likely to get it. If you don’t know what you want, you end up with a lot that you don’t. Own your career and your life.

  • Stop seeking permission. When you spend all your energy looking for other’s permission, approval and acceptance you run out of steam for the things you actually want to do.

  • Do what’s good for you. If Coinbase can rescind offers for hundreds of people after explicitly saying that they wouldn’t, despite having $6 billion in cash reserves, and Tesla can lay off 10% of it’s workforce. while giving Elon Musk a $23 billion bonus, then you can change your mind after you accept an offer to do what’s best for you. Especially if that means accepting a better role. Companies take care of themselves. You take care of you.

  • Do what interests you. We get more out of what interests us. The sad reality is that many people don’t enjoy their jobs, nor do they learn much from them. If you combine this with the fact that we spend over a third of our lives working, you have a situation where money is the only reason you are waking up each morning for a long long time.