PROTECT YESES

“I would say that I still focus on certain areas to optimize. I still pull certain levers. And what I would say I have become much better at and it takes practice. It's gonna sound so rudimentary is asking simply, what are you optimizing for before you optimize? Why are you optimizing? You can get very, very, very good, very optimized, very efficient at doing something unimportant that does not make it important.”

“One of the culprits, one of the biggest causal factors for why people have trouble saying no is they don't have big enough yeses to defend. And for instance, if you had a brand new child, if you had or someone you loved, God forbid, had a serious cancer diagnosis, if you had a tiger by the tail and knew that you were working on a business, I'm using an extreme example on purpose, that could be worth billions of dollars, you would not have trouble saying no to things.”

“So in effect, the analogy that I've drawn for some friends is you wanna play soccer, but first, you're gonna read all the textbooks and get a master's degree and PhD in soccer. And then you're gonna practice dribbling and penalty shots and so on by yourself. And you wanna become as perfect a player as possible by yourself before you ever actually get on the field and play the game of soccer, and you can start to believe that you're playing soccer by yourself. There's always more room for improvement. You're never going to be perfect. And if you get caught in that trap, which is the partial trap of self help, you're always polishing this self and it can become this real recursive, dangerous trap, this fixation on the self.”

“I remember talking to Jerry Seinfeld, and one of his conclusions was, if you lift weights and do Transcendental Meditation, that'll solve pretty much all your problems. And I'm paraphrasing, but it wasn't too far from that. He's like, if you lift weights and do TM, it will solve most of your problems.”

“I have not had social media on my phone in three years. Why? Because I feel like you are bringing a butter knife to a gunfight if you have these tools on your phone. And if it's too scary to unplug for three years, you don't have to commit to that. I didn't in the beginning. It's like, do a one or two weeks social media fast, at least on your phone. So I can still access social media if I need a hit of the heroin. I can still access social media through my laptop, but it adds enough friction that I'm not gonna end up looking at Instagram while I'm on the toilet and wondering why I can't feel my legs 40 later.”

“My recommendation would be talk to your doctor, replicate the test, do the test again the next week, maybe on a different day, and see if you can replicate the error. Because, for instance, if you had a heavy weekend of drinking or a fatty meal the night before, and then you do your blood test 8AM the next morning fasted. Well, you might look like you're on the road having heart attack in two months, but actually it was just behavior and diet. So replicate, replicate.”

“I did one day and Dan, this time around, it was just like a switch. Basically, the next day, and it has now been two or three months, and I don't wanna set expectations that it'll be this way for everyone. It seems to be particularly effective, yes, for depression, but it seems to be particularly effective in a very small sample size at this point for anxiety and OCD. And it's just a different life. It is a different life.”

“I am always checking for contraindications between medications and also supplements because doctors will miss these. They might not miss the most obvious, but there are some that are not as obvious. For instance, like there are sleep medications like trazodone, which really affect the serotonergic system. It's effectively, this is an overstatement, but it's effectively a failed antidepressant. So if you don't know that, and it's not technically exactly an SSRI like a Prozac, but there are some similarities, if you don't know that because you're taking a sleep medication and then you go out and take something that's contraindicated for this entire class of serotonin specific antidepressants, like you can get yourself into trouble.”

“Professor goes in and he puts out on the desk in front of the students, like a large Mason jar, a handful of big rocks, three or four, a bunch of gravel, and then a bunch of sand. And he challenges the students, asks them first how they would fit as much as possible into the mason jar. And they try different approaches. So if you put in the sand first, then you get a little bit of gravel in, can't fit the rocks. Well, ditto, if you put the gravel in first, then you put in the sand. Maybe you fit one rock. Okay. And ultimately, the lesson is you have to put in the big rocks first, then the gravel fits around that, and then you can fit in the sand.”

“I choose projects based on which projects will allow me to win, even if they fail. What does that mean? I assume that any project could fail for reasons totally outside of my control. It's happened before. It'll happen again. Happens to people every day. So how am I then choosing things to commit to? I am optimizing for what I will learn, right? The density of learning and also the relationships that I'll deepen or develop.”