📶 101 Things I Learned This Year (2022 Edition)

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We shared the coolest things we learned last year, you all seemed to like it, so we’re doing it again.

Here are 101 things I learned this year about people, business, and life.

I hope you enjoy.

1. Your rating system changes based on the environment you create. If you’re around 6’s all the time, eventually you forget 10’s exist. This applies to all things in life. If you want to improve your situation, improve your environment.

2. Luck is the macro result of thousands of micro actions. People don’t get lucky. Luck eventually finds them.

3. Society wants you to experience less randomness so you become predictable. Less variability means it’s easier to fit you in a bucket, create marketing campaigns for your bucket, and sell to you. Especially as a young person (<30), you should optimize for randomness in your day.

4. The more obsessed you become with probabilities, the more shocked you are of deviations. The world is becoming more data driven, and we rely more on numbers and less on intuition. Question everything before accepting it as truth.

5. Trillions of dollars in value would cease to exist of every person was in incredible shape. If you are in control of your physical and mental health, you’re unprofitable. Become unprofitable.

6. The world is becoming more and more frightened of being direct. Life is too short to not say what you want. Stop walking on eggshells. People will respect you more for it.

7. Distribution through a social media audience is becoming less powerful as humans become more distracted. You’re competing with everybody else, and you’re going after people on platforms they don’t use for purchasing decisions. Find ways to escape the content rat race with evergreen content.

8. You can only be interesting if you have interesting stories AND you can tell those stories well. A boring life is a wasted life. An interesting life is only interesting if it can be told.

9. If you get to where you want to be and have nothing to show for it, aren’t you going to feel like an idiot? Success is not a final destination. Enjoy the process.

10. The world has not grown more sophisticated. It has only gotten more complicated. You’re typically overthinking it. Dumb it down.

11. When you’re miserable, you’re driven to change. When you’re happy, you’re driven to complacency. Think about all of the things that drive you to complacency and comfort. Every one of these things plateau your growth.

12. The “pursuit of happiness” was never the objective of life. This idea only began to pop up with the post-war generations. Find meaning, and you will find happiness.

13. The skills that got you to where you are today are the same ones that are holding you back from reaching the next level. This took me too long to learn. Getting a business off the ground requires you to do everything yourself. Scaling a business requires you to delegate everything. Totally different skillsets, and you’ll be stuck in the first phase until you can move to the second.

14. If it’s not going to grow over time, it’s not worth doing. Relationships, health, businesses - it’s all the same. Stop wasting your time on things that don’t compound.

15. A lot of success and evil was rooted from time spent alone. When you’re alone with your thoughts, you’re influenced by the information you consume and the motivations you have. Different variables, different outcomes.

16. A 401k and 30-year mortgage are only good investments if you are bad with money. Good investment decision for a lot of people, but you learn nothing from forced savings.

17. Progress to some is deterioration to others. Not everybody wants innovation. Actually, a lot of people want the opposite. Easy to forget this when you live online all day long.

18. Your sales process should reflect the type of offering you are selling. Cold email works with transactional business models (one-time / success-based fees). The majority of subscription purchases happen because of trust built before purchase (word of mouth / SEO).

19. If you want bad service, start the agreement by haggling over price. If you sell any type of service, don’t do business with broke clients. It won’t work out.

20. Life is a series a baggage accumulation. You’re only truly free for a finite amount of time. Make the most of it.

21. It’s easier to make big bets when you’re poor. The more you earn, the more you subconsciously want to protect that wealth. If you’re young and reading this, what risks are you taking today that can improve your situation?

22. Life rewards an antifragile portfolio, but people don’t. If you spread yourself too thin, you will burn bridges, and you’ll have to continually find new people to work with. Play long-term games with long-term partners.

23. All radical ideas are the result of too many years of safety. If you are in a life or death situation, do you think anybody cares about political correctness?

24. The only “independent thought” you own, is deciding WHO to listen to. The people you surround yourself, the content you consume, the songs you listen to - all of it influences your subconscious, and your subconscious influences your actions.

25. The best way to build trust with people is shared struggle. The next best way is to prove you can help them avoid struggle.

26. Life is becoming freer for the individual and more unstable for the family. This creates a situation better for adults and worse for kids. Choose which is more important to you.

27. Internet influence is not the real world. If you have a few thousand followers and nobody in your local community knows your name, you’re still a loser. Log off.

28. The overwhelming majority of people have zero hobbies and fill that void with depressing routines. Find purpose, and you’ll never be bored.

29. Salaried employees have the worst tax structure of any type of worker. Paying federal and state taxes every paycheck is the same as giving an interest-free loan to the government. The more you work as a W2, the more tolerant you become of taxes being taken out.

30. Life is literally all about reps. Whoever refines their process the most, wins.

31. “The society that separates its scholars from its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting by fools.” Leaders throughout history have gone through some type of struggle to earn that badge of honor. That rarely applies anymore.

32. If you’re tolerant of everything, you stand for nothing. Fence sitting on every issue is less honorable than picking a side.

33. Sloppiness in one area of life always seems to carry over to the next. How can you be trusted with money if you can’t be trusted to dress well?

34. The minute you start obsessing over passive progress, your spirit dies. Progress is not linear. Passive income is for retirees, not young people. Grow.

35. How to improve your situation: find remote work, learn how the world works, build something on the side, stack assets. Not for everybody, but it seems to work well for those that do it.

36. Making money is as simple as just placing yourself between where money is already flowing. Where is money trading hands today? Where can you insert yourself in that process? This > flying in the dark building something nobody wants.

37. The music you listen to is subconsciously controlling your emotions. If you listen to degenerate trash all day, don’t be surprised when you start having degenerate behavior.

38. Pattern interruptions are the best way to get somebody’s attention. Start noticing the default patterns, and deviate from them.

39. Drowning yourself in delusion is better than living a life of being “realistic”. Delusional optimism will force you to grow; being realistic will hold you back.

40. If you hate filtering for what you want (high-value friends, good looking people, people with money), you need to curate a better environment. Usually you’ll have to pay for curation in one form or another.

41. A life without commitment is a life without meaning. The best things in life come from compounding. Find the people and things that are worth pursuing, and play long-term games.

42. The more you spend on where you live, the more time you subconsciously want to spend there to justify the investment. As a young person, I’d argue that your luck is correlated to the amount of time you spend out of your comfort zone, so you should expect your luck to slow down whenever you upgrade your living arrangements.

43. When your enemy is making a mistake, say nothing. A wise man once said nothing.

44. A pretty website will solve 90% of your trust issues. If you’re building an online business, you’re selling trust. Trust is hard to come by when your first impression underwhelms.

45. Most of what you “want” has been programmed into your mind. Do you actually want what you think you want?

46. Being obsessed with research, analysis, etc. is a form of fear. If you want to understand how something truly works, you have to test it yourself in the real world. Reps > theory

47. Humans are obsessed with predictions, and we build technology to scratch this itch. The more we apply this tech, the less we question things for ourselves.

48. The only true way to find fulfillment in your work is to work on things that you have control of. Not saying it’s impossible to be fulfilled as an employee, but I know a lot of dead broke entrepreneurs that enjoy life more than the my banker friends that trade six figures for being a glorified spreadsheet monkey.

49. Building software is a lot less complex than people in tech tell you it is. Most of the people that pitch how hard it is to build software work in roles where they have no understanding of what they’re talking about.

50. There is a lot of value in sharing obvious things rarely said. You probably already know most of the things on this list, but you rarely hear it.

51. Selling something that makes people more $ > selling something that saves people time > selling anything else. Easier ROI, easier sales.

52. Good writing: person reading understands what you’re trying to say. Good persuasion: person reading feels understood. Aim for persuasion.

53. Most information is irrelevant. Knowing what to ignore has become a skill conquered by few.

54. The interesting fact about polarity is that when you make a group of people dislike you, the people who do love you, start to love you 10 times more. The loudest voices are often some of the most polarizing.

55. Nobody wants to be sold something that will make them “just a bit better” than who they are right now. Create offers, not products.

56. The ability to access dopamine from effort is the ultimate cheat code of the 1%. Finding purpose in your work turns work into play. Once you find this, nobody can compete with you.

57. People don’t mind ads, but they do mind being bothered. If your ads are entertaining, you get a free pass.

58. Bladder theory of corporate finance: the more cash that builds up in the treasury, the greater pressure to piss it away. This applies to business and personal finance. Keeping up with the Joneses is a losing game.

59. The more steps you put in your path, the more afraid you are to do it yourself. Usually you don't need "X more years to learn X, Y, Z". You need to act more and worry less about others' perception of you.

60. The more sources of information you consume, the less you’re training your brain to think for itself. If you’re constantly looking for advice, it means your gut is incapable of making a decision for you.

61. Not wanting something is as good as having it. You'll always feel poor if your wants match your paycheck.

62. You build your life up over a long period of time. Since decisions compound, the earlier you get started the better off you will be. The biggest regret you'll have a year from now should be not starting sooner.

63. Only scarce things have value. The more you speak, the less value your words have. The more you’re seen, the less value your presence has. The less availability, the more valuable your time is.

64. No apex man has ever existed without wielding an unfair advantage from an unfair position. Genghis Khan, Michael Jordan, Julius Caesar, Donald Trump. All of them got to where they are because they combined their unique advantage from a unique position. If you want to sit at the bottom of the mountain in your skill / business / endeavor, you have to apply your own advantage AND combine it with an unfair position.

65. Every person on the planet has an unfair advantage, but most aren't aware of it. Born wealthy? You can leverage connections, money, access, travel experiences, etc. Born poor? Rely on street smarts, survival instinct, willingness to do anything, etc. What is your unfair advantage given the position you occupy?

66. If you’re selling on platforms, you have to be 100x more persuasive on social because you're asking someone to stop what they're doing and do what you want them to do instead. Gain attention on platforms, capture information, sell through other channels.

67. Nature does nothing uselessly.

68. The best marketing doesn’t look like marketing. If you’re sending emails with the sole intent of having people click into links to buy your products, you will never scale.

69. Long time horizons improve behavior. Short time horizons worsen your judgement.

70. If you’re in the content business, you are way better off creating evergreen content. If you don’t create content that people will find valuable in a year, you’ll be stuck on a content treadmill.

71. Truth is learned, not told. You can search for it, but you have to find it.

72. It’s never been easier to stand out as a good writer. Every day you skim through multiple articles, e-mails, and social media feeds. Most of it mediocre noise. But every once in a while you come across something that snaps you out of the dull haze of your modern lifestyle.

73. People are more likely to click on a headline with an odd number as the statistic. Would you be reading this if this wasn’t the case?

74. Perfectionism is a dream-killer. You’ll never be able to find somebody to do exactly as you have it in your head, but you’ll have to make this tradeoff if you ever want your business to grow.

75. Humiliation and mental torture breaks down people faster than physical pain. You can improve mental pain tolerance by improving your physical pain tolerance first. If you aren't regularly hitting the gym, start there.

76. When you build a business you're more at war with yourself than you are with your competitors. Your own laziness and mental bullshit is a bigger threat to your business than anything the competition does.

77. You should constantly be looking for people that have gone through more than you. You learn less from somebody that has had an easier path than you.

78. "Don't worry about failure; you only have to be right once."

79. Generally speaking, the path with the least amount of pain is the wrong route to choose. Anything worth committing to should not be easy. Things are "free" for a reason.

80. We spend 99% of our lives working towards moments that will encompass a mere 1% of our lives, then we feel nostalgic about the 99%. Appreciate the process so you can appreciate the outcome.

81. The more narrow your choices are, the more freedom you have. More options only creates more dissatisfaction. The less you have to think about choices, the more you can enjoy your decisions.

82. You’re either hardworking, or you’re smart; you cannot be both. You’ll never be able to outwork somebody with leverage. Build leverage through code, media, capital, or labor so that you can have others work for you.

83. Sometimes the most attractive titles are reserved for the most soul-destroying labor. Do you prefer status or peace of mind?

84. The more prepared person wins, but you get credit for action and not preparation. Prep in private, win in public.

85. “Let us not underestimate the privileges of the mediocre. Life is always harder as one mounts the heights - the cold increases, responsibility increases. A high civilization is a pyramid: it can stand only on a broad base; its primary prerequisite is a strong and soundly consolidated mediocrity.” Judge a man by the size of the problems he faces.

86. You can’t learn if you’re talking. Shut up.

87. Generally speaking, you should read old books and avoid new ones. People used to write books to transfer knowledge. People that write books now do it for money, notoriety, or to sell other things to their audience.

88. There is no light without dark. There is no glory without suffering.

89. Partnership jobs are for people that work in sales but don’t want to say that they work in sales. (Coming from a guy that used to work in partnerships.)

90. The world doesn’t run on greed, but it does run on envy. People today live easier lives than any other time in history, but we don’t want to recognize this because somebody else will always have it better than we do.

91. Money drives passion more than passion drives money.

92. Everybody wants hacks to the things that actually make a difference. SEO, audience building, building wealth - all of this takes TIME. Any guru selling you on the idea that you can skip the line to see results is full of shit.

93. The majority of content you will read from this point forward will not be written by a human. If you want your content to stand out, you HAVE to have original thoughts.

94. You can build a brand by either being exclusive or being popular. You’ll kill a brand if you try to do both.

95. People hate being told what to do, but love figuring things out on their own. Kids hate rules from their parents. Students hate rules from teachers. Workers hate rules from bosses. How are you leveraging this in your business? Are you stuck on an outbound treadmill (telling the customer to buy from you), or are you making it easy for your ideal customer to a) find you and b) pay you?

96. Consistently writing on the internet is one of the highest forms of leverage in human history. People used to rely on violence in order to get their point across. Now you can reach millions typing behind a laptop.

97. People are choosing to be alone more and more. How they choose to spend that alone time determines a lot of future outcomes.

98. We live in a society of learned helplessness. Academia aids this. If you care about somebody, let them figure it out themselves.

99. Want to ruin a place? Make it popular. Applies to locations, clubs, and (most) online places.

100. “The world rewards the people who are best at communicating ideas, not the people with the best ideas.” - David Perell

101. “You are the most valuable asset in your portfolio. Your reputation is a proxy for your future earnings.” - Jack Butcher

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