Hello there,
This week, I want us to pause and reflect on the last 20 editions (in 20 weeks) of my Bits by Muigai newsletter. To do this, I’m going to highlight, my favourite liners from each edition.
Here we go!!
- How I Assess Work. Higher internal efficiency is repeated action enhanced through batching of tasks that operate on a similar energy frequency. The secret lies in allowing for the least cognitive switch between the Menial:Creative to reap the benefits of the other. In other words, it is infinitely easier to unstick ourselves from one menial task to another. Rather from a menial task to a creative task. This speeds the leeway through which our basal ganglia trivializes, automates, and dumps tasks into our “no-brainer” category.
- Moving Irregardless. For overly researched, low-velocity topics. Read the original source material. Strip the idea using first principles. Get to the core of the idea. Triage. Reference on demand. Focus on doing. Remember. For most people, learning has become an escape from doing.
- Vectors of Antifragility. If we live our lives not preparing for a Black Swan event, we are like a turkey who expects with every farmer visit comes more food. Until thanksgiving. It is easy to put vectors of antifragility (optionality) on the back burner. More so since they fall into the important but not urgent categorizations in our lives and tend to be marginalized when chasing the current.
- Barbell Strategy. Beknownst to many is the idea that we should hedge our main gig with a side gig to curtail the downside and potentially reap the upside. Unbeknownst to many is that certain careers operate in a domain where only 1% of players can reap rewards to the order of 50%.
- Thoughtfulness. What is your most original thought? Enjoy asking yourself questions. Hard questions. For it is through questioning, that you get to actively practice idea generation. If you generate lots and lots of ideas, the higher the probability you will stumble upon a good idea(s). I often imagine an African continent that is more prolific in shared thoughtfulness. Through personal blogs, newsletters as a focal point then distributed through social media and Medium. Not the other way round.
- Priming. Life is like walking into a theatre mid-way through a movie and having to make sense of it. You have no idea what the movie is about. There is no poster or trailer. You walk in and do as the rest. Sit. Stare. Watch. How much you end up watching versus how much you end up acting versus how much you end up producing, is dependent on how well you prepare, do, and build up from your two minutes audition(s).
- Freedom. Freedom has both an exoteric and esoteric meaning. If you pay close attention, high achievers often speak of another kind of freedom.
- Progress. To hedge against the sneaky deception of progress. We need to create a robust progress meter that is multi-dimensional accounting for easy, hard, and harder things.
- Optionality. Central to optionality is that prediction in a highly uncertain world is impossible. Instead of forecasting, position yourself in such a way that you have optionality. That way, whatever happens, all you have to do is evaluate once you have all the information and make a rational decision. An option is a substitute for knowledge.
- Systems. The idea of having a mapped out life OS. A personal Knowledge Management System seems rather odd. That branch of individual systems is not congenial to us. Paradoxically we go to work – and there is a clear and cut system. Why? Because we understand that systems scale. But you know what we know more of? Goal-setting.
- Emergence. Organized simplicity (i.e. a single machine) lends itself to detailed analysis. Random, unorganized complexity (i.e. gas molecules in a jar) lends itself to statistics. We have lacked a scientific means for dealing with systems between these two extremes. This is the vast land of Medium Numbers. Organized complexity, the region too complex for analysis, and too organized for statistics. This is the region of general systems.
- Entropy. When you create a system, entropy lurks in. When you don’t have a system, entropy still lurks in. But the difference is that in the former you will be able to identify the constraint faster and in a more objective way. In the latter, the constraint is harder to find resulting in self-doubt, and personal resentment.
- Constraints. I think of life as an aggregation of stages (rites of passage), each with unique inputs needed to achieve certain outputs. What stands in our way, is our ability to overcome the constraints. Now imagine if you could see your life purpose through the TOC lens aka thinking in limits. Would it increase inertia or lead to a clearer path to our destination?
- Blackouts.?. Perhaps the scariest aspect of blacking out is that ‘you can do anything in a blackout that you can do when you’re drunk’. At or around the 0.15 mark, the hippocampus experiences interrupted coverage and starts playing paper and scissors. Some memories are recorded. Others aren’t. For others, nothing at all. Total shutdown. But it is entirely possible that the frontal lobes, cerebellum, and amygdala of that same drinker—at the same time—can continue to function more or less normally.
- Healing does not necessarily mean healing from physical illness, or return to the level of functioning pre-illness, only. It is the restoration of a sense of meaning, purpose, sense of self, and quality of life, despite struggles with the illness. Psychological healing is a 6-step process. Acceptance, insight, action, self-esteem, healing, then meaning.
- Linchpin. It is possible to have a lot of satisfied workers who do lots of $10 tasks without long term visions ($10k) through hand-me-down scenarios. Satisfiable because a slew of 120 $10 tasks over a month equals a $1200 per month pay. Not too shabby eeeyyy.
- Agency. When you have high agency you feel a high sense of control over cultural stories and beliefs not just control over your life. High Agency is a foundational value that doesn’t just allow you to create a grandiose vision and sit on it. It is histamine for action, for progress – from the start, through boundless challenges, through deceit, hopelessness, resourcelessness.
- Weak Ties. While the average person focuses on the inner circle as the sole epicenter of value, the super connectors, mavens, influencers, influential politicians seek to exploit the weak tie relationships. How we engage the weak tie is a key differential because it brings us non-redundant information across structural holes. This is how we inhabit more worlds than we live in.
- Multidimensionality. What is the role of fables and mythology, in modern society, if it were not to “imagine a meaning, a sense to our lives, to satisfy our hunger to believe that the muck and chaos of daily existence does, after all, tend somewhere. It’s the origin of religion, and also of storytelling – or aren’t they both the same thing? As Voltaire said of God: if he did not exist, it would have been necessary to invent him.”
- Bets. Learning to distinguish the difference between results and decisions is what thinking in bets is all about. Decisions are bets on the future. They aren’t “right” or “wrong” based on whether they turn out well or not.
? Cheers to 20 +1 more editions.
Thank you for your continued readership and support.
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Always feel free to shoot me an email at muigai@solomonmuigai.com with questions, critiques, half-formed ideas with a need of jack to bring to life, or just to say hey.
Until next Saturday, have a happy weekend.
Solomon Muigai.