My Principles

Apr 26, 2025

My Personal Operating Principles

version: 2.1, updated 2025-08-23

My principles are something I revisit regularly. In this version I focus on describing the attitude through which I want to experience life. I’m also aiming for compression – shorter principles are easier to remember.

1. Build an Antifragile Core

“The obstacle is the way”—Ryan Holiday

  • The body is a temple. Prioritize sleep, exercise, and stress management. Meditate a bit, or at least be mindful when I walk Kaya.
  • Adopt a barbell strategy: anchor in low-risk fundamentals—health, financial reserves, relationships—while taking calculated, asymmetric bets.
  • The mind is like a pickle jar—it has limited capacity and you must be selective about what goes in and what you think about. In particular, this includes practicing good cogsec—your attention is precious and easily hijacked.
  • Intensity ≠ self-immolation—schedule monthly white-space days.

2. Act with 10x Agency

“You can just do things”—someone on X

  • Don’t just consume, ACT. /s now is the time for action /s
  • Play at a higher level. Use AI to amplify output.
  • Invest time in micro-projects and learning.

3. Be Earnest

“I am both the sculptor and the clay, the alchemist and the quicksilver.”

  • FEEL EVERYTHING. Approach life like a child granted backstage access to the cosmic play.
  • Say the awkward compliment. Ask the “dumb” question.
  • Confess fascination quickly.
  • Welcome each experience fully without clinging to fixed outcomes.
  • Let curiosity drive you to explore diverse perspectives and opportunities.

4. Prioritize What Compounds

“Be good to your future self by prioritizing what compounds: capital investment, relationships, audience building, discipline, and self-reflectiveness.” - Julian Shapiro

  • Build equity and keep burn low.
  • Cultivate high-trust, long-term relationships.
  • Reflect regularly on the value of family, children and friends.
  • Attention > Intelligence. But intelligence still matters, just that we need to focus now on 1. fundamentals 2. ability to learn new fields of knowledge quickly (Hamming).
  • Move fast.

5. Recalibrate Relentlessly

“The map is not the territory.”

  • Realize that truth isn’t in conflict with your other goals.
  • Learn tools that make it easier to see clearly.
  • Appreciate the emotional rewards of scout mindset.
  • Operate in Real-Time. If you need time to think, create it.
  • See in Functionally Un-Fixed Ways.
  • Mind the Matrix: Perceptions ≠ realities.
  • Workshop Through Sparring: Thinking that isn’t stress-tested is daydreaming, and it’s easier than ever now.
  • Develop Deep Memory: Historical amnesia breeds bad strategy.

Credits

Inspired by Zvi Mowshowitz, Julian Shapiro, Venkatesh Rao, Julia Galef, Paul Graham, Ilya Sutskever, Bryan Johnson’s Don’t Die, vividness.live, roon, Nassim Taleb, Nick Cammarata, Dario Amodei, Sam Altman.

The four futures for cognitive labor:

  • Like mechanized farming. Highly productive and remunerative, but a small part of the economy.
  • Like writing after the printing press. Each author 100 times more productive and 100 times more authors.
  • Like “computers” after computers. Current tasks are completely replaced, but tasks at a higher level of abstraction, like programming, become even more important.
  • Or, most pessimistically, like ice harvesting after refrigeration. An entire industry replaced by machines without compensating growth.