First Steps..

I have decided to start this journey with Naval Ravikant’s famous tweetstorm “How to Get Rich (without getting lucky)”. This series of tweets does not only contain entrepreneurial and economic maxims but also philosophical wisdom. The tweetstorm is written to be information-dense, very-concise, high-impact and timeless.

So it seems to me to be the best place to start in my journey, I am hoping that this will be the 20% that will provide me with 80% of the results.

Naval’s tweetstorms have been compiled into a short ebook by Eric Jorgenson available for free here. (I was sicked I hadn’t thought of this first, he even got Tim Ferriss to be apart of the project, aghhhh)

I started by quickly reading through the book and now will proceed by going through it slowly, as per Naval’s advice “- the better the book, the more slowly it should be absorbed”. (I wonder if he includes the “Almanack of Naval Ravikant” in this?)

At the start of the book Tim Ferriss advises the readers to “pay attention… but don’t simple parrot his words. Follow his advice… but only if it holds up after security and stress-testing in your own life. Consider everything… but take nothing as gospel”.

This advice can be seen repeated many places and it is no where near my first time hearing it. Recall the famous Bruce Lee quote “Adapt what is useful, reject what is useless, and add what is specifically your own”.

While Bruce’s quote is more accessible to me than Tim’s I still have a problem with this. Some maxims like  “reading is faster than listening, doing is faster than watching” are easy to test and determine but how am I going to scruitise “play long-term games, with long-term people”…

Maybe a start would be to think of examples for and against each point…

However, is that scrutiny enough?

After some thought I decided before I examine each point and give examples, I should make sure I fully understand them at a foundational level.

How does one understand something at a foundational level?

I’m not sure exactly, but what I have decided to try is the Feynman technique I read about in Scott H. Young’s book “Ultralearning”. Check out the description below.

THE FEYNMAN TECHNIQUE

1. Write down the concept or problem you want to understand at the top of a piece of paper.

2. In the space below, explain the idea as if you had to teach it to someone else. If it’s a concept, ask yourself how you would convey the idea to someone who has never heard of it before. If it’s a problem, explain how to solve it and—crucially—why that solution procedure makes sense to you.

3. When you get stuck, meaning your understanding fails to provide a clear answer, go back to your book, notes, teacher, or reference material to find the answer.

So everyday I am testing myself by trying to explain the entire tweetstorm, well the main points, on a blank sheet of paper.

This technique is working surprisingly well and I will continue to do it until the concepts are inscribed in my core.

I don’t know how I will know when to stop…