Seek wealth, not money or status. Wealth is having assets that earn while you sleep. Money is how we transfer time and wealth. Status is your place in the social hierarchy.

Seek Wealth

Understand that ethical wealth creation is possible. If you secretly despise wealth, it will elude you.

Ignore people playing status games. They gain status by attacking people playing wealth creation games.

You’re not going to get rich renting out your time. You must own equity - a piece of a business - to gain your financial freedom.

You will get rich by giving society what it wants but does not yet know how to get. At scale.

Pick an industry where you can play long term games with long term people.

The Internet has massively broadened the possible space of careers. Most people haven't figured this out yet.

Play iterated games. All the returns in life, whether in wealth, relationships, or knowledge, come from compound interest.

Pick business partners with high intelligence, energy, and, above all, integrity.

Don't partner with cynics and pessimists. Their beliefs are self-fulfilling.

Learn to sell. Learn to build. If you can do both, you will be unstoppable.

Arm yourself with specific knowledge, accountability, and leverage.

Specific knowledge is knowledge that you cannot be trained for. If society can train you, it can train someone else, and replace you.

Specific knowledge is found by pursuing your genuine curiosity and passion rather than whatever is hot right now.

When specific knowledge is taught, it’s through apprenticeships, not schools.

Building specific knowledge will feel like play to you but will look like work to others.

Specific knowledge is often highly technical or creative. It cannot be outsourced or automated.

Embrace accountability, and take business risks under your own name. Society will reward you with responsibility, equity, and leverage.

The most accountable people have singular, public, and risky brands: Oprah, Trump, Kanye, Elon.

“Give me a lever long enough, and a place to stand, and I will move the earth.” - Archimedes

Fortunes require leverage. Business leverage comes from capital, people, and products with no marginal cost of replication (code and media).

Capital means money. To raise money, apply your specific knowledge, with accountability, and show resulting good judgment.

Labor means people working for you. It's the oldest and most fought-over form of leverage. Labor leverage will impress your parents, but don’t waste your life chasing it.

Capital and labor are permissioned leverage. Everyone is chasing capital, but someone has to give it to you. Everyone is trying to lead, but someone has to follow you.

Code and media are permissionless leverage. They're the leverage behind the newly rich. You can create software and media that works for you while you sleep.

An army of robots is freely available - it's just packed in data centers for heat and space efficiency. Use it.

If you can't code, write books and blogs, record videos and podcasts.

Leverage is a force multiplier for your judgement.

Judgement requires experience, but can be built faster by learning foundational skills.

There is no skill called “business.” Avoid business magazines and business classes.

Study microeconomics, game theory, psychology, persuasion, ethics, mathematics, and computers.

Reading is faster than listening. Doing is faster than watching.

You should be too busy to “do coffee," while still keeping an uncluttered calendar

Set and enforce an aspirational personal hourly rate. If fixing a problem will save less than your hourly rate, ignore it. If outsourcing a task will cost less than your hourly rate, outsource it.

Work as hard as you can. Even though who you work with and what you work on are more important than how hard you work.

Become the best in the world at what you do. Keep redefining what you do until this is true.

There are no get rich quick schemes. That's just someone else getting rich off you.

Apply specific knowledge, with leverage, and eventually you will get what you deserve.

When you're finally wealthy, you'll realize that it wasn't what you were seeking in the first place. But that's for another day.

From the eponymous tweet storm of Naval Ravikant. I have benefitted heavily from this guy.

philosophy

Philosophy

moneyandinvestments

Money & Investments

business

Business

How to Get Rich (without getting lucky): Naval Ravikant

Imagination frees us from the confines of our immediate reality. Imagining the future enables us to evaluate alternative paths forward, anticipate how we would feel if they happened, and choose which to pursue. For instance, by simulating a potential event via mental imagery, we can “test out” in the mind potential emotional consequences.

Imagining possible futures

Counterfactual thinking (alternative versions of one’s personal past) refers to the comparison of reality to hypothetical alternatives (“what if I had made different choices”). People create counterfactual alternatives to reality when they imagine how things would have turned out differently. Imagined alternatives may trigger guilt, remorse, and shame. However, thoughts about how things could have turned out differently provide a roadmap for change.

Counterfactual thinking

Imagining events from a distance encourages abstract thinking that boosts creativity. After several years of experience, people start to repeat themselves; it becomes more of the same old approach. They become insiders. One of the most effective ways of cultivating an outsider perspective is to feel distant from the problems. For example, traveling, getting away from the places we spend most of our time. The distance allows one to view problems in a more imaginative way. Suddenly, the mind is aware of those considerations that were previously ignored, and those facts that should be ignored.

Distancing from the problem

Any situation that affects our ability to visualize events and situations may affect our judgments. Visual images are more emotionally salient than words. We recall emotionally charged events far more than mundane ones. However, this emotional partiality impairs our ability to see the big picture. For example, lawyers have known for a long time that the vividness of the testimony offered by a witness can influence the judgments made by a jury.

The vividness effects

Imagination is central to understanding and interpreting figurative language. Metaphors are figures of speech to convey a truth about the real world. They are transferred from another context to give us new ways to think. We can imaginatively see a particular perspective on the focus of the metaphor. For example, the phrase, No man is an island, implies that no one is truly self-sufficient.

Metaphor

Delusions and ordinary cases of self-deception have been characterized as disorders of imagination. Delusions can be characterized as beliefs that are dysfunctional in their content or formation. That is, a delusion is an imagined interpretation that is mistaken by the subject as a belief.

The dark side of imagination

Imagination is deeply connected with reality. What we imagine can affect what we believe and vice versa. The richer the personal experience is, the richer the ingredients for imagining. That is, imagination is nourished by various resources on which the person can draw. Through books, art, discussions with others, and education, we can build our knowledge of events and places that we have never experienced.

How to improve your imagination

A good imagination enables us to transcend present circumstances.

personaldevelopment

Personal Development

problemsolving

Problem Solving

creativity

Creativity

5 Benefits of Imaginative Thinking

It never ceases to amaze me: we all love ourselves more than other people, but care more about their opinion than our own.

Our obsession with others’ opinions of us likely stems from the brain’s tribal aged instincts— stuck in a point of evolution when disapproval could have meant abandonment, and abandonment could mean death.

Age Of The Individual 

Being liked by everyone or becoming popular on social media— these are “preferred indifferents.” They’d be nice to experience, but the absence of these experiences does not hinder our true ability to achieve happiness, at all.

Preferred Indifferent

What is to be prized? An audience clapping? No. No more than the clacking of their tongues. Which is all that public praise amounts to – a clacking of tongues.

When another blames you or hates you, or when men say anything injurious about you, approach their poor souls, penetrate within, and see what kind of men they are. You will discover that there is no reason to be concerned that these men have this or that opinion about you.

Stoic emperor Marcus Aurelius—despite being one of the most talked-about men in history—managed not to care what others may have thought of him.

The ancient Stoics were ahead of time when it comes to the art of not caring about how others perceived them. How did the manage to not care about opnions?

artsandculture

Society, Arts & Culture

Stop Caring What People Think 📽️ - Einzelgänger

Eat not to dullness; drink not to elevation.

1. Temperance

Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself; avoid trifling conversation.

2. Silence

Let all your things have their places; let each part of your business have its time.

3. Order

Resolve to perform what you ought; perform without fail what you resolve.

4. Resolution

Make no expense but to do good to others or yourself; i.e., waste nothing.

5. Frugality

Lose no time; be always employed in something useful; cut off all unnecessary actions.

6. Industry

Use no hurtful deceit; think innocently and justly, and, if you speak, speak accordingly.

7. Sincerity

Wrong none by doing injuries, or omitting the benefits that are your duty.

8. Justice

Avoid extreams; forbear resenting injuries so much as you think they deserve.

9. Moderation

Tolerate no uncleanliness in body, cloaths, or habitation.

10. Cleanliness

Be not disturbed at trifles, or at accidents common or unavoidable.

11. Tranquility

Rarely use venery but for health or offspring, never to dullness, weakness, or the injury of your own or another's peace or reputation.

12. Chastity

13. Humility

My intention being to acquire the habitude of all these virtues, I judged it would be well not to distract my attention by attempting the whole at once, but to fix it on one of them at a time; and, when I should be master of that, then to proceed to another, and so on, till I should have gone thro' the thirteen; and, as the previous acquisition of some might facilitate the acquisition of certain others, I arranged them with that view, as they stand above.

How to acquire these virtues, Franklin advised:

WikipediaIn "The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin," we find a list of thirteen virtues "all that at that time occurr'd to me as necessary or desirable."

habits

Habits

communication

Communication

Benjamin Franklin Thought Everyone Should Possess These 13 Virtues 

Friedrich Nietzsche is what comes to mind when we say "Nihilism". He's a German philosopher and the one who provided a detailed discretion and diagnosis of nihilism; that all values are baseless and so things are meaningless. It's an extremely pessimistic and full of radical skepticism philosophy that frequently gets criticism for condemning the purpose of existence. As its name says, "Nihilism" comes from the Latin word "Nihil", which means Nothing.

Nihilism Quotes: For knowing the meaning of nothing 

“To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering”

“Everything in the world displeases me; but, above all, my displeasures in everything displeases me”

“The modern mind is in complete disarray. Knowledge has stretched itself to the point where neither the world nor our intelligence can find any foot-hold. It is a fact that we are suffering from nihilism”

“But in the end one needs more courage to live than to kill himself”

“There is no one as dangerous as he or she who has nothing to lose”

“Destroy or be destroyed-there is no middle way! Let us then be the destroyers!”

“The problem is not suffering itself or oblivion itself but the depraved meaninglessness of these things, the absolutely inhuman nihilism of suffering.”

“what are you looking for? There is no Truth. There’s only action, action obeying a million different impulses, ephemeral action, action subjected to every possible and imaginable contingency and contradiction, Life. Life is crime, theft, jealousy, hunger, lies, disgust,stupidity, sickness, volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, piles of corpses. what can you do about it, my poor friend?”

“I think human consciousness, is a tragic misstep in evolution. We became too self-aware, nature created an aspect of nature separate from itself, we are creatures that should not exist by natural law. We are things that labor under the illusion of having a self; an accretion of sensory, experience and feeling, programmed with total assurance that we are each somebody, when in fact everybody is nobody. Maybe the honorable thing for our species to do is deny our programming, stop reproducing, walk hand in hand into extinction, one last midnight – brothers and sisters opting out of a raw deal.”

“Though nihilism has been relentlessly criticized for overemphasizing the dark side of human experience, it might be equally true that this overemphasis represents a needed counterbalance to shallow optimism and arrogant confidence in human power. Nihilism reminds us that we are not gods, and that despite all of the accomplishments and wonders of civilization, humans cannot alter the fact that they possess only a finite amount of mastery and control over their own destinies.”

Nihilism is not a friendly philosophy; it exploits humanity's bad side, and it may irritate you. Except for what we give it, there is no objective order or structure in the world. The nihilist realizes that all values are baseless and that reason is powerless after penetrating the facades that support convictions. But even in Nihilism you can still find something. Active nihilists have a great deal of autonomy in deciding how to conduct their life. It's not easy to figure out what your life's purpose is. It necessitates a delicate balance of stiffness and flexibility.

Nihilism Philosophy - How to live in nihilism 

These ideas of philosophy are profoundly great for people who doubt out existence. 

These nihilism quotes offer insight into what a nihilist is (and is not) and what they believe. What do you think of nihilism?

religionandspirituality

Religion & Spirituality

50 Nihilism Quotes About The Implications of Nothingness

“If anyone says that the best life of all is to sail the sea, and then adds that I must not sail upon a sea where shipwrecks are a common occurrence and there are often sudden storms that sweep the helmsman in an adverse direction, I conclude that this man, although he lauds navigation, really forbids me to launch my ship.”

Lucius Annaeus Seneca

Stoicism 

Caring too much for objects can destroy you. Only—if you care for a thing enough, it takes on a life of its own, doesn’t it? And isn’t the whole point of things—beautiful things—that they connect you to some larger beauty?

I had the epiphany that laughter was light, and light was laughter, and that this was the secret of the universe.

A great sorrow, and one that I am only beginning to understand: we don’t get to choose our own hearts. We can’t make ourselves want what’s good for us or what’s good for other people. We don’t get to choose the people we are.

That life - whatever else it is - is short. That fate is cruel but maybe not random. That Nature (meaning Death) always wins but that doesn’t mean we have to bow and grovel to it. That maybe even if we’re not always so glad to be here, it’s our task to immerse ourselves anyway: wade straight through it, right through the cesspool, while keeping eyes and hearts open. And in the midst of our dying, as we rise from the organic and sink back ignominiously into the organic, it is a glory and a privilege to love what Death doesn’t touch.

Stay away from the ones you love too much. Those are the ones who will kill you.

When you feel homesick,’ he said, ‘just look up. Because the moon is the same wherever you go.

But sometimes, unexpectedly, grief pounded over me in waves that left me gasping; and when the waves washed back, I found myself looking out over a brackish wreck which was illumined in a light so lucid, so heartsick and empty, that I could hardly remember that the world had ever been anything but dead.

Every new event—everything I did for the rest of my life—would only separate us more and more: days she was no longer a part of, an ever-growing distance between us. Every single day for the rest of my life, she would only be further away.

My favourite quotes from the goldfinch that say everything that needs to be said.

WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE "The Goldfinch is a rarity that comes along perhaps half a dozen times per decade, a smartly written literary novel that connects with the heart as well as the mind....Donna Tartt has delivered an extraordinary work of fiction."--Stephen King, The New York Times Book Review Theo Decker, a 13-year-old New Yorker, miraculously survives an accident that kills his mother. Abandoned by his father, Theo is taken in by the family of a wealthy friend. Bewildered by his strange new home on Park Avenue, disturbed by schoolmates who don't know how to talk to him, and tormented above all by his longing for his mother, he clings to the one thing that reminds him of her: a small, mysteriously captivating painting that ultimately draws Theo into the underworld of art. As an adult, Theo moves silkily between the drawing rooms of the rich and the dusty labyrinth of an antiques store where he works. He is alienated and in love--and at the center of a narrowing, ever more dangerous circle. The Goldfinch is a mesmerizing, stay-up-all-night and tell-all-your-friends triumph, an old-fashioned story of loss and obsession, survival and self-invention, and the ruthless machinations of fate.

books

Books

WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE "The Goldfinch is a rarity that comes along perhaps half a dozen times per decade, a smartly written literary novel that connects with the heart as well as the mind....Donna Tartt has delivered an extraordinary work of fiction."--Stephen King, The New York Times Book Review Theo Decker, a 13-year-old New Yorker, miraculously survives an accident that kills his mother. Abandoned by his father, Theo is taken in by the family of a wealthy friend. Bewildered by his strange new home on Park Avenue, disturbed by schoolmates who don't know how to talk to him, and tormented above all by his longing for his mother, he clings to the one thing that reminds him of her: a small, mysteriously captivating painting that ultimately draws Theo into the underworld of art. As an adult, Theo moves silkily between the drawing rooms of the rich and the dusty labyrinth of an antiques store where he works. He is alienated and in love--and at the center of a narrowing, ever more dangerous circle. The Goldfinch is a mesmerizing, stay-up-all-night and tell-all-your-friends triumph, an old-fashioned story of loss and obsession, survival and self-invention, and the ruthless machinations of fate.

Donna Tartt is an accomplished writer whose work has resonated with readers around the world. Donna Tartt has published several books that explore a range of topics, from fiction to nonfiction, and has received critical acclaim for the ability to weave compelling narratives. Donna Tartt's writing style is known for its depth and authenticity, and has earned quite a loyal following of readers.

Donna Tartt

The Goldfinch

Get up, and put your shoulders to the wheel - how long is this life for? As you have come into this world, leave some mark behind.Otherwise, where is the difference between you and the trees and the stones? They, too, come into existence, decay and die.

As you have come into this world, leave some mark behind. 

We have wept long enough. No more weeping, but stand on your feet and be men. It is a man-making religion that we want. It is man-making theories that we want. It is man-making education all around that we want.

We have wept long enough.

This world is not for cowards. Do not try to fly. Look not for success or failure. Join yourself to the perfectly unselfish will and work on. Know that the mind which is born to succeed joins itself to a determined will and perseveres.

Join yourself to the perfectly unselfish will and work on.

When there is conflict between the heart and the brain, let the heart be followed.

Think not that you are poor, money is not power, but goodness, holiness.

<ul><li>The faculty of organization is entirely absent in our nature, but this has to be infused.</li><li>The great secret is - absence of jealousy.</li><li>Be always ready to concede to the opinions of your brethren, and try always to conciliate. That is the whole secret.</li></ul>

Give structure to scale yourself.

This I lay down as the first essential in all I teach: anything that brings spiritual, mental or physical weakness, touch it not with the toes of your feet.Religion is the manifestation of the natural strength that is in man.

What world wants is character. The world is in need of those whose life is one of burning love, selfless. That love will make every word tell like thunderbolt.

Be brave, be brave! Man dies but once. My disciples must not be cowards.

<ul><li>Bold words and bolder deeds are what we want.</li><li>Awake, awake, great ones! The world is burning with misery.</li><li>Can you sleep? Let us call and call till the sleeping gods awake, till the god within answers the call. What more is in life?</li></ul>

BE BOLD, Awake yourself to the reality!

Try to expand. Remember, the only sign of life is motion and growth.

<ul><li>Give up the awful disease that is creeping into our national blood, that idea of ridiculing everything, that loss of seriousness. Give that up.</li><li>Be strong and have this Shraddha, and everything else is bound to follow.</li></ul>

Give respect to earn respect.

Arise, awake, and stop not till the desired end is reached. Be not afraid, for great power, throughout the history of humanity, has been with the people. From out of their ranks have come all the greatest geniuses of the world.

THE SUMMARY. Be brave, be steady, be patient. Awake, arise and stop not till the goal is reached, Vivekananda would have been a Dev+blogger if he lived today :) 

motivationandinspiration

Motivation & Inspiration

politics

Politics

Words of Inspiration by Vivekananda

To be successful in many careers, it's not enough to be right. You have to be right and think differently (e.g. scientists, investors).Independent mindedness is the art of being right when everyone else is wrong.

Think Different, Think Unique, Be Right When Others Are Wrong

<ul><li>Contrarian nature.</li><li>Display an amusement in denying conventional wisdom.</li><li>Relentless fact-checking.</li><li>Have a desire to determine the truth.</li><li>Curiosity.</li><li>Novel ideas that drive progress.</li></ul>These characteristics need not be possessed in equal measure. Also, don't hold an extreme belief in any specific truth. Believing conspiracies is worse than being convinced by orthodox beliefs.

Characteristics of Independent-Minded People 

Conventionally minded people may be unwilling to admit or even unaware that they are conventionally-minded.How to develop independent mindedness:<ul><li>Develop relationships with independently-minded individuals</li><li>Attempt to empathize with diverse individuals.</li><li>Be generally skeptical or untrusting of conventional wisdoms.</li><li>Avoid fads.</li></ul>

What To Do If You Don't Possess An Independent Mindset

productivity

Productivity

How to Think for Yourself

Thinking outside the brain means skillfully engaging entities external to our heads - the feelings and movements of our bodies, the physical spaces in which we learn and work, and the minds of the other people around us - drawing them into our own mental processesBy reaching beyond the brain to recruit these "extra-neural" resources, we are able to focus more intently, comprehend more deeply, and create more imaginatively - to entertain ideas that would be literally unthinkable by the brain alone

The Emerging Science of Thinking with the Whole World Beyond the Brain

Even our metaphors for the mind have taken us further and further from our essential nature as creatures shaped by our environment and our interactions with other creatures, dishonouring Rachel Carson's science-rooted poetic insight that "there is in us a deeply seated response to the natural universe, which is part of our humanity."We left Plato's cave of consciousness and, corralled by Descartes and the Industrial Revolution, reduced the mind to the brain and explained its workings by drawing analogies to the technology of the hour.

The Reduction Of The Mind

Thought happens not only inside the skull but out in the world, too; it’s an act of continuous assembly and reassembly that draws on resources external to the brain. For another: the kinds of materials available to “think with” affect the nature and quality of the thought that can be produced. And last: the capacity to think well — that is, to be intelligent — is not a fixed property of the individual but rather a shifting state that is dependent on access to extra-neural resources and the knowledge of how to use them.

Understanding Mental Processes

One major aspect of this extended mind is our capacity for interoception — an awareness of the internal sensations of the body that gives us a kind of non-conscious knowledge, which we might term intuition but which is rooted in concrete embodied experience and somatic pattern-recognition. We might not detect the signals consciously, but we respond to the information they carry.

Interoception - Our 8th Sense

When a potentially relevant pattern is detected, it’s our interoceptive faculty that tips us off: with a shiver or a sigh, a quickening of the breath or a tensing of the muscles. The body is rung like a bell to alert us to this useful and otherwise inaccessible information. Though we typically think of the brain as telling the body what to do, just as much does the body guide the brain with an array of subtle nudges and prods. Researchers have even captured the body in mid-nudge, as it alerts its inhabitant to the appearance of a pattern that she may not have known she was looking for.

Benefits Of Our Interoceptive Sense

Our whole body is connected to the universe, and we have reduced it to a machine.

mindfulness

Mindfulness

scienceandnature

Science & Nature

The Magpie in the Mind: The Emerging Science of Thinking with the Whole World Beyond the Brain

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