Here is a link to the book on Amazon.

Chapter 1: Building Wealth

…its not really about hard work. You can work in a restaraunt and work 80 hours a week, and youre not going to get rich.

Getting rich is about knowing what to do, who to do it with, and when to do it.

It is much more about understanding that purely hard work.

Yes, hard work matters, and you cant skimp on it, but it has to be directed in the right way.

…if you cant code, write books and blogs, record videos and podcasts.

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

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

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.

Study Recommendations

What to study	Recommened Book
Microeconomics	The Sovereign Individual by James Dale Davidson
Game Theory	Compleat Strategyst by JD Williams
Psychology	Awareness by Anthony De Mello Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
Persuasion	Pre-suasion by Robert Cialdini
Ethics	The Book of Five Rings by Miyatomo Musashi
Mathematics	Godel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter
Computers	Real-World Cryptography by David Wong

Reflections on Wealth

“…if you’re looking towards the long term goal of getting wealthly, you should ask yourself,

• Is this authentic to me?
• Is it myself that I am projecting?
• Am I productising it?
• Am I scaling it?
• Am I scaling with labour or with capital or with code or with media?

Sales

…you can improve sales skills. You can read Robert Caldini, you can go to a sales training seminar, you can do door-to-door sales. It is brutal but will train you very quickly. You can definitely improve your sales skills.

Leverage and Judgement

I only really want to do things for their own sake. That is one definition of art.

Whether it’s business, exercise, romance, friendship, whatever, I think the meaning of life is to do things for their own sake.

Ironically, when you do things for their own sake, you create your best work.

Even if you’re just trying to make money, you will actually be the most successful.

Forget rich vs. poor, white-collar vs. blue-collar. Its now leveraged vs. unleveraged.

…worry as much about time management.

I would love to be paid purely for my judgement, not for any work.

I want a robot, capital or computer to do the work, but I want to be paid for my judgement.

Hourly Rate and Outsourcing

Value your time at an hourly rate, and ruthlessly spend to save time at that rate.

You will never be worth more than you think you’re worth.

CHOOSE YOUR OWN HOURLY RATE!

Another way of thinking about something is, if you can outsource something or not do something for less than your hourly rate, outsource it or don’t do it.

If you can hire someone to do it for less than your hourly rate, hire them. That even includes things like cooking. You may want to eat your healthy home cooked meals, but if you can outsource it, do that instead.

Status Games and Making Decisions

Status games are always going to exist. There’s no way around it, but realise most of the time, when you’re trying to create wealth and you’re getting attacked by someone else, they’re trying to increase their own status at your expense.

They’re playing a different game. And it’s a worse game. It’s a zero-sum game instead of a positive-sum game.

We spend very little time deciding which relationship to get into. We spend so much time in a job, but we spend to little time deciding which job to get into.

Choosing what city to live in can almost completely determine the trajectory of your life, but we spend so little time trying to figure out what city to live in.

Retirement, Luck and Youth

Retirement is when you stop sacrificing today for an imaginary tomorrow.

When today is complete, in and of itself, you’re retired.

You created your own luck. You put yourself in a position to capitalize on luck or to attract luck when nobody else created the opportunity for themselves.

Ways to get lucky:

• Hope luck finds you.

• Hustle until you stumble into it.

• Prepare the mind and be sensitive to chances others miss.

• Become the best at what you do. Refine what you do until this is true. Opportunity will seek you out. Luck becomes your destiny.

… the closer you want to get to me, the better your values have to be

The most common bad advice I hear is: “You’re too young.” Most of history was built by young people. They just got credit when they were older. The only way to truly learn something is by doing it. Yes, listen to guidance. But don’t wait. [3]

This is not to say it’s easy. It’s not easy. It’s actually really freaking hard. It is the hardest thing you will do. But it’s also rewarding. Look at the kids who are born rich-they have no meaning to their lives.

Amazing how many people confuse wealth and wisdom

Chapter 2: Building Judgement

Judgement

If you want to make the maximum amount of money possi-ble, if you want to get rich over your life in a deterministically predictable way, stay on the bleeding edge of trends and study technology, design, and art

become really good at something.

TECHNOLOGY | DESIGN | ART

You have to put in the time, but the judgment is more important.

The direction you’re heading in matters more than how fast you move, especially with leverage.

Picking the direction you’re heading in for every decision is far, far more important than how much force you apply.

Just pick the right direction to start walking in, and start walking.

“Clear thinker” Is a better compliment than smart

The number one thing clouding us from being able to see reality is we have preconceived notions of the way it should be.

What you feel tells you nothing about the facts— it merely tells you something about your estimate of the facts.

Do our perceived expectations define our sense of self?

Shed Your Identity to See Reality

It’s really important to be able to uncondition yourself, to be able to take your habits apart and say,

Okay, this is a habit I probably picked up when I was a toddler trying to get my parent’s attention. Now I’ve reinforced it and reinforced it, and I call it a part of my identity.

Does it still serve me?

Does it. make me happier?

Does it make me healthier?

Does it make me accomplish whatever I set out to accomplish?

Beliefs and Biases

I used to identify as libertarian, but then I would find myself defending positions I hadn’t really thought through because they’re a part of the libertarian canon.

If all your beliefs line up into neat little bundles, you should be highly suspicious.

Almost all biases are time-saving heuristics¹. For important decisions, discard memory and identity, and focus on the problem.

Radical honesty just means I want to be free.

Part of being free means I can say what I think and think what I say.

They’re highly congruent ²and integrated.

Theoretical physicist Richard Feynman famously said,

“You should never, ever fool anybody, and you are the easiest person to fool.”

The moment you tell somebody something dishonest, you’ve lied to yourself. Then you’ll start believing your own lie, which will disconnect you from reality and take you down the wrong road.

Read the greats in math, science, and philosophy.

Ignore your contemporaries and news.

Avoid tribal identification.

Put truth above social approval.

Because most people are intimidated by math and can’t independently critique it, they overvalue opinions backed with math/pseudoscience.

You know that song you can’t get out of your head? All thoughts work that way. Careful what you read.

CALM MIND

FIT BODY

HOUSE FULL OF LOVE

these things cannot be bought. They must be earned.

Chapter 3: Learning Happiness

Happiness and Peace

Maybe happiness is not something you inherit or even choose, but a highly personal skill that can be learned, like fitness or nutrition

Today, I believe happiness is really a default state. Happiness is there when you remove the sense of something missing in your life.

Happiness is a very evolving thing, I think, like all the great questions. When you’re a little kid, you go to your mom and ask, “What happens when we die? Is there a Santa Claus? Is there a God? Should I be happy? Who should I marry?” Those kinds of things. There are no glib answers because no answers apply to everybody. These kinds of questions ultimately do have answers, but they have personal answers.

It you ever want to have peace in your life, you have to move beyond good and evil.

Real happiness only comes as a side-effect of peace. Most of it is going to come from acceptance, not from changing your external environment.

Actions that improved my happiness

I have lowered my identity.

I have lowered the chattering of my mind.

I don’t care about things that don’t really matter

I don’t get involved in politics.

I don’t hang around unhappy people.

I really value my time on this earth.

I read philosophy.

I meditate

I hang around with happy people

We accept the voice in our head as the source of all truth. But all of it is malleable, and every day is new. Memory and identity are burdens from the past preventing us from living freely in the present.

Is the space between thoughts inner peace ?

There’s a great definition I read: “Enlightenment is the space between your thoughts.” It means enlightenment isn’t something you achieve after thirty years sitting on a mountaintop. It’s something you can achieve moment to moment, and you can be enlightened to a certain percent every single day.

Is the space between thoughts inner peace ?

Anxiety and Meditations

There’s this “nexting” thing where you’re sitting in one spot thinking about where you should be next.

It’s most obvious if you ever just sit down and try and do noth-ing, nothing. I mean nothing, I mean not read a book, I mean not listen to music, I mean literally just sit down and do noth-ing. You can’t do it, because there’s anxiety always trying to make you get up and go, get up and go, get up and go. I think it’s important just being aware the anxiety is making you unhappy.

The anxiety is just a series of running thoughts.

The fundament delusion: There is something out there that will make me happy and fulfilled forever.

The enemy of peace of mind is expectations drilled into you by society and other people.

If you can’t see yourself working with someone for life, don’t work with them for a day.

Hedonic adaptation is more powerful for man-made things (cars, houses, clothes, money) than for natural things (food, sex, exercise).³

Politics, academia, and social status are all zero-sum games.

Positive-sum games create positive people.

Increase serotonin in the brain without drugs: Sunlight, exer-cise, positive thinking, and tryptophan⁴.

In any situation in life, you always have three choices: you can change it, you can accept it, or you can leave it.

You’re going to die one day, and none of this is going to matter. So enjoy yourself. Do something positive. Project some love.

Make someone happy. Laugh a little bit. Appreciate the moment. And do your work.

Chapter 4: Saving Yourself

BE YOURSELF…WITH PASSIONATE INTENSITY

You don’t make any decisions. You don’t judge anything. You just accept everything. If I do that for ten or fifteen minutes while walking around, I end up in a very peaceful, grateful state. Choiceless Awareness works well for me.

Meditation is turning off society and listening to yourself.

Hiking = walking meditation

Journaling = writing meditation

Praying = gratitude meditation

Showering = accidental meditation

Sitting Quietly = direct meditation

IMPATIENCE WITH ACTIONS…PATIENCE WITH RESULTS

A busy mind accelerates the passage of subjective time.

The Modern Struggle

Up against armies of scientists and statisticians weaponizing abundant food, screens, and medicine into junk food, clickbait news, infinite porn, endless games, and addictive drugs.

Chapter 5: Philosophy

The real truths are heresies. They cannot be spoken. Only discovered, whispered, and perhaps read.

“So the important part is not the answer, it’s the question”

Before you can lie to another, you must first lie to yourself

To find a worthy mate, be worthy of a worthy mate

1. Heuristics = mental shortcuts that help people make decisions, solve problems, and form judgments. ↩︎
2. Congruent = in agreement or harmony. ↩︎
3. Hedonic adaptation: refers to the phenomenon where individuals return to a baseline level of happiness despite significant positive or negative changes in their circumstances or life events. ↩︎
4. Tryptophan: essential amnio acid found in various moods….helps produce proteins and certain brain-signalling chemicals….precusor to serotonin…invloved in producing melatonin….rich in poultry, eggs, cheese, nuts and seeds. ↩︎