Be clear and thoughtful about ‘what game you’re playing’ in life or business, then ’lean into playing to that’ because different games require distinct skills and environments for success.
Set up your life and environment to align with your obsessions, as this enables you to dedicate intense, compounded effort that few others will match, leading to significant achievement.
Identify someone who has excelled in your desired domain and create a ‘blueprint’ by obsessively learning everything about how they achieved their success, using them as a virtual mentor.
Begin by emulating your chosen blueprint or role model exactly, then gradually adapt elements that don’t authentically resonate with you and incorporate new ideas to evolve into something uniquely your own.
Ensure complete alignment across your stated goals, hiring practices, team culture, client relationships, and even fee structures to reinforce your chosen strategy (e.g., long-term investing) and enable consistent decision-making.
Continuously accelerate your learning curve by creating case studies, writing down your reasoning for decisions, tracking outcomes, measuring your performance, and adapting your approach based on feedback.
Develop a ‘predatory instinct’ to actively seek out and deeply investigate criticism, threats, or disconfirming information, viewing it as the most valuable input for challenging beliefs and improving.
Always prioritize first principles thinking to arrive at an independent view and the truth, rigorously pulling on opposing threads and being comfortable with being different from the crowd.
Instead of attempting to predict specific outcomes and positioning for them, focus on building resilience in your strategy and resources to absorb unexpected events, maintaining optionality and adaptability.
When facing setbacks, invert your thinking to embrace them as an inevitable ‘part of the struggle’ or ‘hero’s journey,’ focusing on how to effectively play the hand you’ve been dealt rather than succumbing to ‘why me’ thinking.
Rigorously evaluate where you spend your time by asking if an activity will yield the ‘highest return on time,’ recognizing that time is a finite resource more critical than capital.
Don’t stop short in your analysis; push until you achieve the ’last 5%’ of understanding, where you make a breakthrough and can distill the true essence or core driver of a business or problem.
Practice clarifying your thinking by distilling complex work (e.g., lengthy reports) down to a few key points, as achieving simplicity on the other side of complexity demonstrates profound understanding.
When consuming information, always strive to go directly to the primary source to remove filters and process it authentically, rather than relying solely on others’ interpretations or distillations.
Maintain a mindful fixed cost base in your personal life to avoid needing investments or ventures to work, which can compromise your temperament and emotions, leading to poor risk-adjusted decisions.
Instill a mindset where practice is approached with the same respect, effort, dedication, and intensity as the actual game or performance, rather than coasting and expecting success without full effort in preparation.
Identify and consistently practice the equivalent of ‘scales’ for investors, such as deferred gratification, thinking probabilistically, and internalizing uncertainty, to inoculate yourself and enhance decision-making.
As an investor, focus on things ’that you touch, see, know, understand’ and that are accessible to you, like analyzing businesses related to what you spend money on, to leverage your inherent knowledge.
Internalize the concept that you will not be right most of the time (e.g., 55% right is good in investing), which is crucial for managing expectations and maintaining resilience, especially for high achievers.
Keep an investment journal to track and describe your emotions during decision-making, as studies suggest that a better understanding of one’s feelings correlates with improved investment performance.
Implement a rule, such as not selling on the same day a strong emotion (e.g., frustration with management) arises, to create space for reflection and a more objective decision, reviewing your original thesis.
Implement a decision analytics system to review past decisions, identify personal strengths, weaknesses, and biases (e.g., regret aversion, endowment effect), and use this data for continuous improvement.
Based on identified biases, create real-time ’nudges’ (e.g., automated emails) within your system that remind you of your biases when they appear, encouraging you to think objectively before acting.
Avoid myopically focusing on one perceived ‘important thing’; keep your mind open to other critical factors in the mosaic, and aggressively pursue any ‘flags’ or disconfirming information that emerge.
When seeking critical information from leaders, frame questions in a way that forces them to respond to potential issues (e.g., ‘We’ve been hearing about turnover, why is that?’), preventing deflection and eliciting honest answers.
Actively seek out individuals who hold opposing views or disagree with your position, as intellectually wrestling with counter-arguments is crucial for challenging convictions and uncovering truth.
Strive to hold strong convictions, but always hold them loosely, maintaining a willingness to ’totally flip your view’ if new, compelling counter-evidence emerges, demonstrating intellectual ambidexterity.
Embrace the idea that ’the secret to a good idea is a lot of ideas’ by constantly ’turning rocks’ and exploring new possibilities with enthusiasm, maintaining a love for the process of discovery.
Actively seek unfiltered information and contemporary views, especially from younger individuals or those closest to the problem, to avoid filtered information and stay connected to the cutting edge.
Apply the filter ‘Is it knowable?’ to arguments or discussions; if the answer is no, acknowledge ‘you might be right’ and move on, saving time and energy on subjective or unknowable topics.
Define success as having a meaningful pursuit and using your strengths and skills to help other people, particularly those who possess a hunger for achievement but lack the knowledge of how to pursue it.
The primary way to instill a strong work ethic in children is by setting an example, allowing them to witness your consistent effort and ‘grind every day,’ even if they don’t fully comprehend the difficult moments.
Support your children in discovering what they can be ‘obsessed about,’ regardless of the specific domain, and encourage them to be deliberate and intentional in practicing and leaning into that passion.
Continuously adapt your ‘game’ to align with your authentic self and leverage your strengths, recognizing that market conditions and personal resources (like growing capital) evolve over time.
To identify obsessed CEOs for investment, look for a track record of ‘demonstrated action’ and ask generative questions about culture or advice for new hires that force them off script, revealing genuine passion.
When evaluating leaders, simply ask ‘What’s important to you?’ to quickly discern whether their focus is on building something special long-term or merely hitting short-term quarterly guidance.
Exercise extreme caution when investing in public market turnaround situations, as they have ‘very low base rates’ of success due to short market tolerance and the difficulty of dramatic change under public scrutiny.
Even for long-term decisions (e.g., 4-5 year investments), track many incremental steps, holding yourself accountable to what you said you’d be looking for, identifying what worked/didn’t, and adapting along the way.
When diverging from the crowd, ensure it’s ‘advantageous divergence’ by being thoughtful and correct in your independent view, rather than being contrarian merely for the sake of it, to generate positive results.
Concentrate your efforts on a few key areas where you can make a significant difference, and when you have clear conviction, ‘push on it’ by going deep and sizing positions meaningfully.