My Favorite Links
Accelerating the spread of interesting and valuable ideas
I’m on a mission to use the Internet to accelerate the spread of interesting and valuable ideas.
There’s a ton of noise out there so I wanted to provide a simple and easy directory to explore high-quality ideas from high-quality people.
Below you can find a collection of my favorite books, blogs, podcasts, and videos. I’ve spent years collecting these links and now, I’m excited to share the best of the best with you.
It’s organized à la Ben Franklin’s proverb, "Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise."
I hope this page will help you spend more time learning and less time searching.
5 All-time Favorites
Fear-Setting: The Most Valuable Exercise I Do Every Month: I believe fear setting was the most valuable exercise I did in 2021. Fear setting, popularized by Tim Ferriss, is a journaling and thought exercise that prompts you to reflect on a couple of simple questions to help you better understand the things you fear, with roots in Stoic thinking. Seneca (ancient Stoic philosopher) prescribes that people should look into their fears, explore them, question them, and then try to test them in real life. Our fears become spun out of proportion in our minds and can cause us a lot of pain and discomfort.
“We suffer more often in imagination than in reality.” – Seneca
So much of what we do is regulated by fear rather than what our actual goals are. Hence, fear setting often proves to be more valuable than goal setting. The reason is simple: fear effectively controls everything we do.
“The more you run from your fears, the bigger they get, but the more you go into them, the more they tend to vanish like a mirage.” – Terry Crews
Often, my fears are completely unjustified and the decisions are easily reversible. Our fears are our constraints. He who is fearless is limitless. Fear setting is a game-changer. Seriously.
“I can trace all of my biggest wins, and all of my biggest disasters averted back to doing fear setting at least once a quarter” – Tim Ferriss
The Tail End: This was one of the most interesting articles I’ve read in a while, as it provides a completely different perspective on how to think about time. “Instead of measuring your life in units of time, you can measure it in activities or events.” It completely reframed how I think about spending my time and provided a shocking, but needed, reminder that life is shorter than we think and time is our most precious resource. Use it wisely.
The Trouble with Optionality: As a business student, you hear the term “optionality” thrown around a lot; as something that’s desirable and should be sought after. While options are valuable in the face of volatility or uncertainty, this article reframes optionality, when optionality can be dumb and how the pursuit of optionality can be a death spiral.
The 4-Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferriss: The 4-Hour Workweek is likely the single book that has made the biggest impact in my life. This book opened my eyes to entrepreneurship and all the outlets that exist in today’s world to be “entrepreneurial” outside of the traditional model of building a business. Tim promotes marching to the beat of your own drum, challenges our most basic assumptions to achieve massive breakthroughs, reframes productivity as a tool to free time up to spend it on things you love, and left me with an idea I haven’t stopped thinking about: there is a better path to life if you’re willing to explore the unknown. We can make our lives exceptional if we have the courage to embrace uncertainty and challenge the status quo. Life is meant to be enjoyed.
The Tao of Seneca: Vol 1-3: Stoicism can be thought of as an operating system for thriving in high-stress environments. At its core, it teaches you how to separate what you can control from what you cannot, and it trains you to focus exclusively on the former. Further, it provides ideas that are designed to be applied to your life and aims to make people less emotionally reactive, more aware in the present tense, and more resilient. I’ve also found it dramatically increases my ability to appreciate the small things in life.
In my option, The Letters of Seneca are the most accessible and enjoyable entry point into stoicism. The letters are short, easy to understand, actionable, and provide some great insight. I’m trying to read ~1 a day, although my consistency with this is a different question.
Healthy
The 4-Hour Body by Timothy Ferriss: The 4-Hour Body is written to be a comprehensive guide to improving your health and well-being, and is centered around three core ideas: (i) Much of our general knowledge about health and fitness simply doesn’t stand up in lieu of scientific experimentation and testing, (ii) Really small changes consistently, in diet or exercise, produce big results, (iii) Measurement > Motivation. The biggest thing that stood out to me, even after playing competitive sports and working out most of my life, was how many assumptions I’ve made about health and well-being that were plain wrong. Reading the 4HB helped me kick-start a new weightlifting plan and diet, and drive some impressive results in fat loss and muscle gain. Optimizing your health doesn’t need to be painful or take a ton of time.
The Nine Principles of Harmony: I’ve been writing down “Always Forward - No hurry, No Pause” for a few months now, as a daily reminder of the importance of consistency over sheer productivity. I constantly struggle with the feeling of being rushed, and the frustration of not being able to get everything done today. But, this serves as a reminder that I don’t need to move at lightspeed to achieve great results. As Tim Ferriss says, “you don’t need to go through life huffing and puffing, straining and red-faced; you can get 95% of the results you want by calmly putting one foot in front of the other.”
Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End by Atul Gawande: In Being Mortal, author Atul Gawande “tackles the hardest challenge of his profession: how medicine can not only improve life but also the process of its ending.”
How to Create a Breakthrough in Any Area of Your Life by Tony Robbins: Tony is world-class at helping people achieve optimal performance. The three steps to create a breakthrough in your life are: State-Story-Strategy. The underlying idea is that before you create your story and formulate a strategy for your day, to achieve a specific goal or tackle a problem, you want to improve your physical and mental state to be alert, awake, and attentive. This is the same reason why many top performers exercise and meditate first thing in the day.
Navy Seal Admiral Shares Reasons to Make Bed Everyday
Hiking 80 Miles Alone in Torres Del Paine
Wealthy
How to Get Rich by Naval Ravikant: In this article, Naval Ravikant lays out his timeless principles for wealth creation. He touches on why leverage is your ticket to wealth, why you should partner with people who are high in energy, intelligence, and integrity, why you should embrace accountability, and much more.
The Diderot Effect: Why We Want Things We Don’t Need — And What to Do About It: Life has a natural tendency to become filled with more. We are rarely looking to downgrade, simplify, eliminate or reduce. Our natural inclination is always to accumulate, add, and upgrade. The Diderot Effect hypothesizes that obtaining a new possession often creates a spiral of consumption which leads you to acquire more new things. As a result, we end up buying things that our previous selves never needed to feel happy or fulfilled.
Tim Ferriss #475: Mr. Money Mustache — Living Beautifully on $25-75K Per Year
Ramit Sethi’s Money Rules: Ramit Sethi is a personal finance advisor and entrepreneur as well as the author of the 2009 New York Times bestseller I Will Teach You To Be Rich. He’s one of the most interesting thinkers I’ve come across in the realm of personal finance. Ramit posted his personal “10 Money Rules” that he uses as guiding principles to make decisions around his personal finance. There are some real gems here.
That Will Never Work: The Birth of Netflix and the Amazing Life of an Idea by Mark Randolph: That Will Never Work explores the genesis of Netflix, told by Mark Randolph who initially created the idea (for a DVD delivery business) and was the CEO of Netflix for the first couple of years before Reid Hastings took over. It dives into detail about the challenges that Netflix faced and acutely captures the feeling of this early-stage company that is struggling to get its footing in a dynamic business environment. One of the most memorable parts of this book, and Mark’s response to everyone who told him “that will never work” for Netflix, are these three words: nobody knows anything. People who tell you that your idea will “never work” have no clue what will and what won’t work because the future is so unpredictable. You have to remain confident that if you work hard, constantly learn and live with integrity, things will work out.
How to Build a Million-Dollar, One-Person Business: Using real case studies from people that have built successful businesses, this post shows you that building a cash flow generating, low maintenance business is entirely possible. It even provides a couple of prompts to kickstart your journey. The life of your dreams is completely within reach. Less intelligent people have done it.
How to Create a Million-Dollar Business This Weekend (Examples: AppSumo, Mint, Chihuahuas): This post condenses the concept of creating a muse, an idea covered in-depth in The 4-Hour Workweek. While it’s not a path to an easy $1M, there are a ton of helpful tips, tricks, and tools for those of you who are looking to start a business.
Wise
The Not-To-Do List: 9 Habits to Stop Now: A common idea I’ve noticed across my reading is that happiness is not derived from the addition of positives, but rather the elimination of negatives. “Not-to-do” lists are often more effective than to-do lists for upgrading performance. The reason is simple: what you don’t do determines what you can do.
Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown: Essentialism is a disciplined, systematic approach for determining where our highest point of contribution lies, then making execution of those things almost effortless. Essentialism is about deliberately distinguishing the vital few from the trivial many, eliminating the non-essentials, and then removing any obstacles so the essential things have a clear, smooth passage. To embrace the essence of Essentialism requires we replace these false assumptions with three core truths: “I choose to,” “Only a few things really matter,” and “I can do anything but not everything.” If you don’t prioritize your life, someone else will.
Slow Dance, David L. Weatherford: Slow Dance has been one of my favorite poems from this past year. It’s a quick and fairly easy read with evoking imagery. It’s stuck in my head as it contains a great message about appreciating the present moment and the time we have. It ties into an idea I’ve been thinking a lot about, which is slowing down, enjoying the present moment, and trying to resist always rushing to the next thing. There’s no end destination to rush towards. Life isn’t a race.
When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi: The memoir of Paul Kalanithi, a neurosurgeon at Stanford University, who was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer in his mid-thirties. Kalanithi uses the pages in this book to not only tell his story, but also share his ideas on how to approach death with grace and what it means to be fully alive. In his final weeks on earth, he reviews the events of his life in an attempt to answer the question 'What makes a life worth living?'”
Warren Buffett: “Really Successful People Say No To Almost Everything”: This is one of the best articles I’ve come across on defining and capturing the importance of focus. Part of focus comes from the ability to engage in deep work - blocking out 3-4 hour time periods to work on a difficult but high impact task - but the forgotten part of focus is the ability to ruthlessly prioritize the few essential things and say no to everything else. Learn how Buffett’s focus has propelled his success and his strategy for prioritizing the essential activities in his life.
Tim Ferriss #466: Richard Koch on Mastering 80/20 Principle
The Big Rocks of Life: Stephen Covey has a great analogy on prioritization in life. He explains that “big rocks” (your biggest priorities or outcomes) have to be placed first in your bucket (your time, energy, focus) before small rocks, pebbles, and sand, for everything to fit. If you let sand, small tasks that feel productive but don’t really matter, fill your bucket you will never be able to fit in your big rocks - the things that count. The message is simple: prioritize what matters. This story completely changed how I prioritize my time and helped me eliminate or de-prioritize a lot of the minutiae.
Dune by Frank Herbert: Dune is widely regarded as one of the best sci-fi novels of all time. Frank Herbert does a fantastic job at creating an immersive universe with characters and a storyline that are easy to get lost in. The lessons in the story on confronting fear are very powerful and have helped me understand and overcome my fear more than any non-fiction book I’ve come across. You learn a ton and it’s a hard one to put down.
Episode #1309 of The Joe Rogan Experience with Naval Ravikant
RETHINK EDUCATION: The Biology of Learning Featuring Dr. Andrew Huberman: Dr. Andrew Huberman is a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford and has the #1 health and fitness podcast on Spotify. In this talk, Andrew breaks down the concept of neuroplasticity in really digestible terms and provides a scientifically-backed approach to increasing neuroplasticity and fostering accelerated learning. In other words, he tells you how to learn as effectively and quickly as possible with clinically backed data. Powerful stuff.
The Value of Probabilistic Thinking: Spies, Crime, and Lightning Strikes: Probabilistic thinking is essentially trying to estimate, using some tools of math and logic, the likelihood of any specific outcome coming to pass. It is one of the best tools we have to improve the accuracy of our decisions. In a world where each moment is determined by an infinitely complex set of factors, probabilistic thinking helps us identify the most likely outcomes. When we know these, our decisions can be more precise and effective.
"Productivity" Tricks for the Neurotic, Manic-Depressive, and Crazy (Like Me): Tim Ferriss lays out the 8 step process he uses to maximize efficiency and efficacy (doing the right things), even on days he feels like doing nothing. This process drastically improved my ability to focus on the 20% of work (inputs) that drive 80% of the results (outputs).
The three-or-four-hours rule for getting creative work done: This article is a great intro to the concept of Deep Work. It provides a refreshing perspective on time management, suggesting “you almost certainly can't consistently do the kind of work that demands serious mental focus for more than about three or four hours a day”. Productive work can only be achieved by carving out three to four hour periods of uninterrupted time and focusing on one task. Often you can get miles ahead of the competition by being consistent in this work pattern while prioritizing the essential tasks that need to be completed, regardless of their level of comfort. It’s shocking how frequently this three-to-four hour work period shows up in accounts of the habits of the famously creative, ranging from Charles Darwin to Charles Dickens to Carl Jung.
How Tim Ferriss Uses The Five Minute Journal - 6 Tips For New Journalers: For anyone interested in journaling, this article is a great launchpad. The Five Minute Journal is an amazing tool, part of my morning ritual, and this article is extremely helpful in learning how to journal for maximum effect.
Personality Assessment for Individuals: This personality assessment is an inexpensive but comprehensive 100-question test that takes about 15-minutes to complete. It was initially developed in Dr. Jordan Peterson’s lab by a team of professional psychologists and university professors that study personality psychology and neuroscience. Following the test, a report is generated with your ranking on each of the five major personality traits, the sub-components that make up those traits, and what each ranking suggests about your personality. It’s surprisingly accurate and provided a helpful window in understanding more about myself and why I act the way I do.
If— by Rudyard Kipling: “If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster; And treat those two impostors just the same…” This has been one of my favorite quotes of all time and has been my laptop background for several years. It succinctly captures the impact of your perception on life events. In life making mistakes is mandatory but learning is optional. It encourages a lot of bigger questions. What is success and what is failure? Are they anything more than the benchmark I set in my head? How do I define success?
The Happiness Advantage by Shawn Achor: Shawn dispels the myth that happiness is a destination we get to after years of stress and hard work, by leveraging scientifically-backed research. Rather, we become more successful when we are happier and more positive, not the other way around. Happiness is the joy we feel striving for our potential.
The Science of Well-Being - Laurie Santos, Yale University: I took this course, offered 100% free from Coursera, back in 2019, and over two years later I still remember a lot of the lessons it taught me. The lectures are engaging, and the course covers a lot of interesting concepts, from the things that don’t make us happy (but we think they do) to the things that truly make us happy (but we don’t think they do) and also why people are so bad at prioritizing their own happiness. The course is refreshingly actionable as it provides weekly “happiness challenges” each week, after explaining the scientific benefits behind each challenge. If you’re interested in positive psychology or just being happier, I would highly recommend it. Much better than your typical self-help book.
Why You Need a "Deloading" Phase in Life: One of my favorite things about Tim Ferriss is his ability to lateral timeless and proven concepts into brand new areas. In this post, he explains how the concept of deloading, common in weightlifting and bodybuilding, can be applied to business to recover and rejuvenate and act as a force multiplier to increase your productive output. He also reminds you that life is not only about work. There can be a lot of fun involved … if you let it. “I’ve used “deloading” to decrease my anxiety at least 50% while simultaneously doubling my income. Deloading for business consists of strategically taking my foot off the gas. I alternate intense periods of work with extended periods of — for lack of poetic description — unplugging and fucking around”.
The Top 5 Uncommon Timesavers for Bloggers/Writers: In this short post, Tim explains five simple but high-impact tips to multiply the quality of your writing and provide some direction in the confusing blogosphere. A must-read for anyone writing online.
How to Build a High-Traffic Blog Without Killing Yourself: In this presentation, Tim Ferriss explains why he blogs, his guiding principle in writing, how he researches and writes, and additional random findings that contributed to his blog skyrocketing to the top 1000 most popular blogs in the world after 6 months of launch. Tim is world-class at testing and running different experiments to uncover seemingly obvious but brilliant truths. There are a ton of gems in here for current or future writers. The important thing is not being a good writer, it’s having a voice.
The Ultimate Guide to Writing Online: In this guide, David Perell outlines his seven pillars to becoming a successful online writer. It’s jam-packed with actionable tips, helpful tools, and reference resources. It’s another must-read for anyone writing online or considering going down that avenue. “Writing online is the fastest way to accelerate your career”.
40 One-Sentence Writing Tips: Advice for anyone who writes anything.
How To Take Smart Notes: 10 Principles to Revolutionize Your Note-Taking and Writing: In our information age, people read and listen to a ton of content. The reality is that without any systematic plan in place to capture insights, much of our knowledge intake is recreation. You forget almost everything you read and can’t draw on key ideas later on. It feels productive in the moment, but it’s a waste of time. I learned this lesson the hard way. After over two years of reading non-fiction, I realized that I couldn’t remember the simplest ideas from previous books. Never mind apply them to improve my life. Countless hours invested but little to show for it.
How To Take Smart Notes is a book on note-taking. Through identifying the principles that stand the test of time despite huge changes in technology, this book explains how you can master the art of creative note-taking, produce more insightful writing, and fulfill your full potential. It outlines an external system you can design to capture ideas to remember and reference them in the future. If you’re a student or someone who reads frequently, this book will change your life.
How to Remember What You Read: “Why is it that some people seem to be able to read a book once and remember every detail of it for life, while others struggle to recall even the title a few days after putting down a book? The answer is simple but not easy. It’s not what they read. It’s how they read. Good reading habits not only help you read more but help you read better”.
Tim Ferriss #144: Joel Stein — How to 10X Your Results, One Tiny Tweak at a Time
I am amazed at the sheer volume and variety of the knowledge producers you have encountered, engaged with, deeply understood and synthesized in your brief life thus far. Thanks for batching them for us and helping us make more sense of our lives.