being a good student is a coachable
skill and I gave up on so many things in
life whether that was basketball I
concluded I was bad at languages and
ninth-grade and so on and so forth and I
think so many people run into this where
they banded things and they accept the
partial completeness where they’re like
ah my voice just isn’t good I’m just not
good at X and usually if you track that
back it’s because a parent or a teacher
or some authority figure criticized you
right really heavily and it turns out
that if you just get a better toolkit
sort of a better set of questions that
you can do things that seem impossible
to the untrained setting really low
expectations not what a lot of people
expect and what I spoke to say Rick
Rubin’s and he has a musician who’s
stuck great musician but they’ve
developed performance anxiety about
songwriting for whatever reason he will
say do you think you could get me one
sentence or maybe two words that you
like like tomorrow that’s it two words
can you do that for me and he gives them
a micro assignment best writing advice
that I probably ever received and I’ve
received a lot of good writing advice
but I can get myself really wound up
because I expect perfection to flow from
my fingertips like magic and that never
happens so then I beat the hell out of
myself
and that makes me less likely to put pen
to paper in the first place and I’ll
procrastinate
which is why if you write two crappy
pages per day you’ve won the day that’s
a successful writing day and that does a
few things it helps you to maintain
enthusiasm because you’re constantly
winning and of course on many days
you’ll write more than two we get to two
then you go to five or to ten but if
you’re on an off day great to copy pages
even if you never use it it’s a
successful day and that I think for
longer-term projects and extended
creativity is really important but the
story that this writer told me with that
tip he said okay this is where this
comes from
did you know that IBM when it was the
800-pound gorilla it was an undefeatable
sales force do you know what one of the
rules was it’s like no he says well what
do you think their quotas were and I was
like oh I’m sure it was really hot
because they wanted to motivate their
guys to get after it you just know their
quotas were the lowest in the industry
and the rationale was we don’t want our
salespeople to be intimidated to pick up
the phone we want them to feel like
they’re going to pass their quota
quickly which they did and then they
shot well past it and clobbered the
competition so the counterintuitive
pairing of love expectations leading to
higher performance is really odd what
that is is performance anxiety that
you’ve imposed on yourself because your
expectations are too high
it’s like just lower your standards
lower your standards till you get
started you’re the average of the five
people you associate with most that’s
like a basic tenet of my life and
Silicon Valley where I live and
my other career is investing in
early-stage startups and I’ve been very
successful in that Twitter Facebook
first free money proceeded money advisor
to uber first advisor to Evernote
Alibaba what you realize though when you
meet these people when you sit down and
talk to you the people who start those
types of companies and by the way like
they all start out where everyone else
starts up and that’s another like II
hear these criticisms like oh that’s
easy a really big blog and it’s like
well I started with zero readers just
like everybody else and you find that
that those thinkers and doers fall into
the category of examining the anomalies
as opposed to dismissing them so I think
that there are kind of two binary
choices that you have there are probably
others but when you see someone who’s
doing something that you think is really
incredible you can you can either build
yourself up or tear them down to make
yourself feel better and tearing them
down doesn’t do anything for you it’s an
illusion I think it’s Carlos Castaneda
actually who said you know whether you
make yourself happy or you make yourself
miserable the amount of energy required
is the same
I focus on building yourself up and the
way you do that is by asking better
questions and the power of these
questions is just incredible so Peter
Thiel for instance the the first money
into Facebook co-founder of PayPal
co-founder of Palantir I mean a
billionaire many times over one of
Peters favorite questions is why can’t
you accomplish to your 10-year goal in
the next six months and when you when
you apply these ridiculous constraints
your thinking has to change you can’t
just up shift one year you have to get
an entirely new car to think about that
so to speak and these guys just do not
accept the shoulds and musts at all and
so you want to look for the odd
behaviors that produce good results and
that can be replicated so for instance
if you want to become a world-class
learner treat reality is negotiable
because ultimately what we have to do
what we should do are usually a very
fragile collection of just socially
reinforced beliefs and just because
something is said often does not make it
true like it takes a lifetime to learn
language complete nonsense complete
adults can learn languages five to ten
times faster then children period you
know kids just don’t have jobs and
mortgages if more information were the
answer we’d all be billionaires with
six-pack abs it’s just just absorbing
not even absorbing just reading and
watching and listening to more isn’t
enough that you have to apply it you
have to use in sentence you have to have
rewards and punishments set for yourself
so you actually get things done
timelines etcetera so that’s that’s one
another one is don’t be a donkey and the
reason is there’s a I want to say it
might be a philosophers paradox but I
don’t think it is nothing it’s just
parable about burdens ass
so burdens ask about a donkey it’s about
a donkey who is thirsty and hungry and
there’s water on one side a few feet
away and hey on the other and he can’t
decide whether to do the hay first the
hay first or the water the hay or the
water and he dies of thirst at the end
of it he couldn’t do them sequentially
in effect you can do almost everything
you want in life but you can’t do it at
the same time and if you can just
dedicate yourself to one thing for even
a year and then the next thing for a
year you can do those ten things but if
you try to do all ten at once you’re
gonna be burdens s you know should do
this for they do this which they focus
on this person list so don’t be a donkey
it’s so easy to sit behind screens and
sit on our couches and just learn new
information it feels good and it’s safe
there’s no risk in watching a youtube
video and it’s so easy to create excuses
for why we haven’t taken our first step
maybe it just seems all too big you
don’t know where to start
well let’s consider Tim Ferriss his idea
today what’s the smallest possible step
that you can take today that will bring
you that much closer to achieving your
goal if you take that small step I
promise you that the rest of the road
will seem a whole lot less daunting
comment down below that one small
that you can take today [Music]
skill and I gave up on so many things in
life whether that was basketball I
concluded I was bad at languages and
ninth-grade and so on and so forth and I
think so many people run into this where
they banded things and they accept the
partial completeness where they’re like
ah my voice just isn’t good I’m just not
good at X and usually if you track that
back it’s because a parent or a teacher
or some authority figure criticized you
right really heavily and it turns out
that if you just get a better toolkit
sort of a better set of questions that
you can do things that seem impossible
to the untrained setting really low
expectations not what a lot of people
expect and what I spoke to say Rick
Rubin’s and he has a musician who’s
stuck great musician but they’ve
developed performance anxiety about
songwriting for whatever reason he will
say do you think you could get me one
sentence or maybe two words that you
like like tomorrow that’s it two words
can you do that for me and he gives them
a micro assignment best writing advice
that I probably ever received and I’ve
received a lot of good writing advice
but I can get myself really wound up
because I expect perfection to flow from
my fingertips like magic and that never
happens so then I beat the hell out of
myself
and that makes me less likely to put pen
to paper in the first place and I’ll
procrastinate
which is why if you write two crappy
pages per day you’ve won the day that’s
a successful writing day and that does a
few things it helps you to maintain
enthusiasm because you’re constantly
winning and of course on many days
you’ll write more than two we get to two
then you go to five or to ten but if
you’re on an off day great to copy pages
even if you never use it it’s a
successful day and that I think for
longer-term projects and extended
creativity is really important but the
story that this writer told me with that
tip he said okay this is where this
comes from
did you know that IBM when it was the
800-pound gorilla it was an undefeatable
sales force do you know what one of the
rules was it’s like no he says well what
do you think their quotas were and I was
like oh I’m sure it was really hot
because they wanted to motivate their
guys to get after it you just know their
quotas were the lowest in the industry
and the rationale was we don’t want our
salespeople to be intimidated to pick up
the phone we want them to feel like
they’re going to pass their quota
quickly which they did and then they
shot well past it and clobbered the
competition so the counterintuitive
pairing of love expectations leading to
higher performance is really odd what
that is is performance anxiety that
you’ve imposed on yourself because your
expectations are too high
it’s like just lower your standards
lower your standards till you get
started you’re the average of the five
people you associate with most that’s
like a basic tenet of my life and
Silicon Valley where I live and
my other career is investing in
early-stage startups and I’ve been very
successful in that Twitter Facebook
first free money proceeded money advisor
to uber first advisor to Evernote
Alibaba what you realize though when you
meet these people when you sit down and
talk to you the people who start those
types of companies and by the way like
they all start out where everyone else
starts up and that’s another like II
hear these criticisms like oh that’s
easy a really big blog and it’s like
well I started with zero readers just
like everybody else and you find that
that those thinkers and doers fall into
the category of examining the anomalies
as opposed to dismissing them so I think
that there are kind of two binary
choices that you have there are probably
others but when you see someone who’s
doing something that you think is really
incredible you can you can either build
yourself up or tear them down to make
yourself feel better and tearing them
down doesn’t do anything for you it’s an
illusion I think it’s Carlos Castaneda
actually who said you know whether you
make yourself happy or you make yourself
miserable the amount of energy required
is the same
I focus on building yourself up and the
way you do that is by asking better
questions and the power of these
questions is just incredible so Peter
Thiel for instance the the first money
into Facebook co-founder of PayPal
co-founder of Palantir I mean a
billionaire many times over one of
Peters favorite questions is why can’t
you accomplish to your 10-year goal in
the next six months and when you when
you apply these ridiculous constraints
your thinking has to change you can’t
just up shift one year you have to get
an entirely new car to think about that
so to speak and these guys just do not
accept the shoulds and musts at all and
so you want to look for the odd
behaviors that produce good results and
that can be replicated so for instance
if you want to become a world-class
learner treat reality is negotiable
because ultimately what we have to do
what we should do are usually a very
fragile collection of just socially
reinforced beliefs and just because
something is said often does not make it
true like it takes a lifetime to learn
language complete nonsense complete
adults can learn languages five to ten
times faster then children period you
know kids just don’t have jobs and
mortgages if more information were the
answer we’d all be billionaires with
six-pack abs it’s just just absorbing
not even absorbing just reading and
watching and listening to more isn’t
enough that you have to apply it you
have to use in sentence you have to have
rewards and punishments set for yourself
so you actually get things done
timelines etcetera so that’s that’s one
another one is don’t be a donkey and the
reason is there’s a I want to say it
might be a philosophers paradox but I
don’t think it is nothing it’s just
parable about burdens ass
so burdens ask about a donkey it’s about
a donkey who is thirsty and hungry and
there’s water on one side a few feet
away and hey on the other and he can’t
decide whether to do the hay first the
hay first or the water the hay or the
water and he dies of thirst at the end
of it he couldn’t do them sequentially
in effect you can do almost everything
you want in life but you can’t do it at
the same time and if you can just
dedicate yourself to one thing for even
a year and then the next thing for a
year you can do those ten things but if
you try to do all ten at once you’re
gonna be burdens s you know should do
this for they do this which they focus
on this person list so don’t be a donkey
it’s so easy to sit behind screens and
sit on our couches and just learn new
information it feels good and it’s safe
there’s no risk in watching a youtube
video and it’s so easy to create excuses
for why we haven’t taken our first step
maybe it just seems all too big you
don’t know where to start
well let’s consider Tim Ferriss his idea
today what’s the smallest possible step
that you can take today that will bring
you that much closer to achieving your
goal if you take that small step I
promise you that the rest of the road
will seem a whole lot less daunting
comment down below that one small
that you can take today [Music]
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