Weekly Reads: Life Principles, Belief Testing, and Startup Survival
Actionable insights from Nabeel Qureshi, Eliezer Yudkowsky, and Paul Graham.
Hi 👋, here are my week's readings that stood out for their actionable insights!
Nabeel S. Qureshi
This week, I wanted to read a few pieces from Nabeel which I found insightful. I will first dive into a few highlights from his archive and I encourage you to follow him on Substack.
Principles
63 life lessons from Nabeel. Some that I think are very important:
The environment you live in matters a lot; move to where you flourish maximally.
Do things fast: I would add that most work is optional, so first figure out what matters most, then do it fast. A good enforcer is to set deadlines.
Wealth can be created: wealth is not a zero-sum game.
Figure out your primary focus and do it first thing in the morning.
Produce surplus: your production minus consumption should be positive, preferably a big number.
Put yourself out there! I write about this in "create surface area for luck"
Learn how to meditate.
When you are in a high-pressure situation, remember that everything passes and understand the worst outcome isn't that bad at all.
You are too risk-averse, take the leap. This is hard to do because it goes against our nature but can be extremely rewarding if done right.
Know your "triggers" or what brings out the worst version of yourself.
Status is fake. Just focus on substance and doing valuable work.
Understand power laws and compounding effects in life.
Don't ask for approval and permission to do things: in other words, your bosses don't know much either, and they're relying on you to figure things out.
Be willing to learn from others. The most valuable feedback usually hurts a lot. However, you need to have taste in recognizing good from bad takes.
Advice That Actually Worked for Me
I am a big fan of actionable knowledge. That's why I liked this list of direct tips from Nabeel. I think some items in his list are more optional than others, here's what I think are the most important ones:
Maximize energy levels: you do this by building good morning habits (exercise, meditation, putting everything in order) that give you enough energy to work on the most important thing in the morning. That by itself motivates you to finish the optional low-energy items by the end of the day. Controlling this loop is essential.
Do the most important thing first thing in the morning,
and don't check social media until you've done it: I disagree with Nabeel on social media, I don't want to check any socials until the day ends (~8PM).Tell the right stories about yourself: I think this matters a lot. If you believe you won't do anything, then that belief makes you more likely to not do anything. Beliefs are self-fulfilling prophecy machines. You can use this to your advantage, if you believe you can make it, you will act in ways that will set you up for it.
Get in the habit of Fermi estimation, looking up key quantities, and using upper and lower bounds: use data to escape the narrative fallacy. Do napkin math to bound your expectations and think from first principles when the situation requires it.
Do a weekly review: I think planning and reflections are very important alongside dedicated focused work. I write about my routine in "My weekly Review Habit" and about focus in "Things I do to stay focused".
Synthesize things as you read: we don't only want to memorize quotes. When reading, working, discussing, etc., we need to recognize when a mentioned concept or idea is so important that we need to stop and re-think it, internalize it, maybe set a backlog task to look into it in more detail later.
How to Sell?
I know nothing about being a good salesperson, but this read gave me a good starter framework if I ever approach the topic. It systematically tackles important questions like:
How do I know the chance of converting someone before I approach them?
Who do I want to approach in a potential buyer company?
What are the human psychological biases I need to tap into to convert?
How should a meeting with a potential client be structured?
How can I close a deal?
Some counterintuitive learnings:
The potential buyer should do most of the talking.
You don't want to pitch, you want the client to realize they want your product by themselves.
If you realize your product is not a good fit for them, cut it short and recommend the best (sometimes competitor) product that could serve their needs.
Making Beliefs Pay Rent
I revisited this post by Eliezer and it still rings true. Our personal heuristics or models about the world are critical because they help us make decisions at all times. We need to continuously test their validity:
Start by having as few heuristics as possible. A way to minimize our beliefs is to remove the ones that are non-falsifiable (we can't disprove them) and the ones that don't actually help us do anything (non-usable).
Since the remaining heuristics are falsifiable (they claim predictive power), we need to document their predictions and verify them. Example: when you disagree with someone, remember to check the result of their course of action versus yours.
Beliefs should be predictive and always pay rent in the form of correct predictions. The habit of documenting your predictions and reflecting upon their results in an honest manner is enough to solidify your world model.
Default Alive or Default Dead?
There are very important things in life that we give little thought about, don't even consider sometimes, or ignore. Examples:
Deciding where to spend most of your life.
Picking a partner.
Investment options.
Sometimes we do this because we think we can't know the right answer and action beats inaction. Other times we fail to recognize the importance of the topic.
One that's especially important to founders is mapping the burn rate before product-market fit. Paul Graham shares simple yet effective advice to model this problem well:
Calculate your burn rate and runway precisely. Most founders are surprisingly vague about these numbers. Default alive means your growth trajectory will lead to profitability before you run out of money. Default dead means it won't. If you're default dead, you have two options: cut costs or increase revenue. Most focus only on revenue, but cutting costs is often faster and more reliable. The key insight: knowing which state you're in changes everything about how you should operate. Default alive companies can focus on growth and innovation; default dead companies must focus on survival first.