2020... what a year.
I just put the finishing touches on my Annual Review.
Here are 30 lessons I learned about myself and the world across five areas:
• Health
• Wealth
• Relationships
• Online creativity
• Personal operations
🧵👇🏼
1. Health starts with removal, not addition.
This year I officially hit 100 lbs lost. And looking back, it wasn't what I started doing, but what I stopped doing that got me there.
Fewer carbs, fewer beers, fewer hours sitting, these things add up.
The most "disciplined" people actually are the most undisciplined.
But they recognize and accept this.
So they set up constraints that prevent them from having to rely on self-control and willpower.
If you can't sit comfortably alone with the voice in your head, no amount of "success" will change that.
12 weeks alone in NYC during peak-COVID forced me to learn this lesson.
The times I felt best: eating healthily and reading philosophy.
The times I felt worst: eating horribly and doom scrolling.
This is the closest thing you can get to primal living in the modern world.
Start the day with a walk and watch your energy, mood, and creativity soar.
These will be different for everyone.
But start looking for the fundamentals of what makes you feel good.
Then find a way to do them every day.
7. Everything changes when you stop trying to save and start trying to earn.
My goals to start 2020 all started with "save X every month."
But you can only take expenses so low.
Which has higher ROI? An hour spent budgeting or an hour spent learning copywriting?
If you view money, opportunity, or success as scarce, it will avoid you.
The world, especially the internet-enabled world, is full of opportunity.
Set aside X amount of money that you will invest in these three areas every month.
Your health, time, and energy are assets with high ROI.
Your cash flow will dominate your net worth gains in your early years.
This one deserves a longer post, but the last place to be with your money when you're young is in cash.
The S&P 500 bottomed the day there was a five-block line outside of Trader Joes in NYC.
And people have been calling for a top ever since, but it can and will keep going.
12. Thoughtfully invest in communities to form strong relationships.
Online communities are like a curated resource for like-minded people.
The price of entry is peanuts to the long-term benefits of the relationships you will form.
You can meet anyone in the world online.
But you have to put yourself out there and start sharing your ideas and worldview.
As I shared more online, I begin to meet incredible people. I set a simple goal to meet one new person every week, but most weeks I ended up with more.
Now, these people are some of my best friends.
I can't wait to enjoy dinners with my closest friends again.
Especially with how many smart people I've met this year, those conversations are going to be epic.
@david_perell introduced me to this idea and now I think about it every day.
Find the 10 people that push you forward, make you more creative, work in different domains, and see the world with a unique lens.
Then, double down on them.
17. Writing online is the highest leverage habit in human history.
I can trace everything good that happened to me this year back to writing.
But writing and *publishing online* brought the most amount of good.
I spent months inconsistently sharing into the void.
It was only when I committed to tweeting every day, writing four threads every week, and producing consistently that things accelerated.
I got the chance to meet and interact with many people who were ~a year or two ahead of me.
The most valuable question I asked: what do you wish you knew a year ago?
In the beginning, you need to share way more ideas than you feel comfortable sharing.
Make noise, and listen for signal from both yourself and others.
In the age of capturing attention, the ability to create media assets is more valuable than coding.
My prediction is we will see "content creator" boot camps similar to coding bootcamps in the next few years.
Humans cannot comprehend exponential growth in real-time.
Going from 150 to 300 followers is not +150, it's +100%.
Focus on your doubling time. If it's constant, you're growing exponentially.
If it's accelerating: look out.
The closest thing you get is the turn of a New Year.
That's when I started writing my newsletter, one year ago.
But I wish I started six months before that, before I felt "ready."
24. Become obsessed with finding leverage and efficiency.
The first principles of my productivity are leverage and efficiency.
I want to store my time finite time and energy into infinite assets.
With everything else, I want to be ruthlessly efficient.
Looking back at my goals for 2020 made me laugh.
It's impossible to see one year into the future.
So this year, I'm focusing on 12-week goals and systems.
Much is made about mental models and cognitive biases.
But applying them isn't easy. In looking back at my decisions, the most-common bias is sunk costs bias.
So now I look for it everywhere.
Ask "why" more often with any of your systems, goals, or habits.
Throughout the year I found myself doing things week after week that were inefficient, but never stopped to ask why.
This was the best framework I learned in 2021 (h/t @shaanpuri)
• Know where you are (brutal honesty.)
• Know where you want to be (long-term visioning.)
• Know the next step you need to take (immediate clarity.)
Action, not planning, creates clarity.
I took on a lot this year.
I produced most consistently when I invested in creating systems and designing my environment to reduce friction.
The smoother my systems, the faster I could ship.
This is a reminder to myself.
So I'm reflecting on one question to end 2020: what if I took every goal I'm about to set and 10x'd it? Would that change how I spend my time, energy, and attention?
Every week I share thoughts and links on the growth of people, businesses, and systems.
Join 1,718 others 👇🏽
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2020... what a year.
— Dickie Bush \U0001f4ca (@dickiebush) December 30, 2020
I just put the finishing touches on my Annual Review.
Here are 30 lessons I learned about myself and the world across five areas:
\u2022\xa0Health
\u2022\xa0Wealth
\u2022 Relationships
\u2022\xa0Online creativity
\u2022\xa0Personal operations
\U0001f9f5\U0001f447\U0001f3fc
More from Dickie Bush 📊
Atomic Habits from @jamesclear changed my life.
In Atomic Habits, James lays out the Four Laws of Behavior Change.
1. Make it obvious
2. Make it attractive
3. Make it easy
4. Make it satisfying
Here's how to leverage them to build a daily writing habit (🧵✍🏼):
Habits are made up of a four-part feedback loop:
1. Cue
2. Craving
3. Response
4. Reward
Building a habit means intentionally designing each part of this feedback loop.
1. Make it obvious
2. Make it attractive
3. Make it easy
4. Make it
Before you start to build a writing habit, it's important to understand the real goal.
Your goal isn't to start writing.
Your goal is to become a writer.
Why the subtle difference?
Because behavior change is identity change.
We don't stick to habits that aren't aligned with our identity.
Luckily, habits that align with your identity are easy to stick to.
Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you want to become.
So to become a writer, we have to consistently cast "writer votes."
Step 1: Make it obvious
Time and location are the most important habit cues.
You MUST leverage them to build your writing habit.
Every great writer has their sacred hours.
This thread can help you find
In Atomic Habits, James lays out the Four Laws of Behavior Change.
1. Make it obvious
2. Make it attractive
3. Make it easy
4. Make it satisfying
Here's how to leverage them to build a daily writing habit (🧵✍🏼):
Habits are made up of a four-part feedback loop:
1. Cue
2. Craving
3. Response
4. Reward
Building a habit means intentionally designing each part of this feedback loop.
1. Make it obvious
2. Make it attractive
3. Make it easy
4. Make it
The Habit Loop
— James Clear (@JamesClear) November 5, 2018
To better understand how a habit works and how to improve it, let's divide a habit into four stages.
1. Cue
2. Craving
3. Response
4. Reward
These four stages create a feedback loop. Your mind is endlessly running this loop and learning from its experiences. pic.twitter.com/sURCbTPp3N
Before you start to build a writing habit, it's important to understand the real goal.
Your goal isn't to start writing.
Your goal is to become a writer.
Why the subtle difference?
Because behavior change is identity change.
We don't stick to habits that aren't aligned with our identity.
Luckily, habits that align with your identity are easy to stick to.
Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you want to become.
So to become a writer, we have to consistently cast "writer votes."
Step 1: Make it obvious
Time and location are the most important habit cues.
You MUST leverage them to build your writing habit.
Every great writer has their sacred hours.
This thread can help you find
Sacred Hours...
— Dickie Bush \U0001f6a2 (@dickiebush) December 2, 2020
A life-changing concept.
What are they and how to find yours: (thread) pic.twitter.com/AHSMqwtTb0
More from Life
How to get smarter very fast:
Interact with smart people here on Twitter who have different world-views than you do.
And let them change your mind on something.
Here are the 30 people you should follow (along with my favorite tweet from each)👇👇
Twitter can be terrible if you follow negative people.
It can also be more valuable than a college degree if you follow (and network with) the right people.
You get to look right into their brain and read a daily narrative of HOW they think.
Ok lets go:
#1: @ShaanVP
You know he's all about venture capital based entrepreneurship. I'm about small (non-sexy) business. We disagree on a lot of stuff.
But he's done it and he's won. Bonus follow: @theSamParr (@myfirstmilpod podcast
#2: @fortworthchris
He is where I want to be in 15 years. Has built a massive real estate private equity firm from the ground up. Super grounded with what the way he does business and his podcast @theFORTpodcast is top
#3: @Julian
I'm a scattered thinker and procrastinator.
Julian is a master of clear thinking and simple but effective writing. A world class example of content marketing and
Interact with smart people here on Twitter who have different world-views than you do.
And let them change your mind on something.
Here are the 30 people you should follow (along with my favorite tweet from each)👇👇
Twitter can be terrible if you follow negative people.
It can also be more valuable than a college degree if you follow (and network with) the right people.
You get to look right into their brain and read a daily narrative of HOW they think.
Ok lets go:
#1: @ShaanVP
You know he's all about venture capital based entrepreneurship. I'm about small (non-sexy) business. We disagree on a lot of stuff.
But he's done it and he's won. Bonus follow: @theSamParr (@myfirstmilpod podcast
10 years ago, Netflix spent $0 on original content.
— Shaan Puri (@ShaanVP) January 14, 2021
This year:
Netflix: $11B
Apple: $6B
Disney: $1B
+ amazon, hulu HBO etc.
=
$20B+
Here's a crazy startup idea to take a swing at this $20B+ content pi\xf1ata. \U0001f447 Here's a quick business plan \U0001f914
#2: @fortworthchris
He is where I want to be in 15 years. Has built a massive real estate private equity firm from the ground up. Super grounded with what the way he does business and his podcast @theFORTpodcast is top
When buying a deal, every day that goes by, the potential for tunnel vision grows.
— Chris Powers (@fortworthchris) January 7, 2021
Obsessing over executing detailed Due Diligence early and efficiently is paramount to limiting this.
#3: @Julian
I'm a scattered thinker and procrastinator.
Julian is a master of clear thinking and simple but effective writing. A world class example of content marketing and
THREAD: 10 significant lies you're told about the world.
— Julian Shapiro (@Julian) January 9, 2021
On startups, writing, and your career:
THREAD: 12 Things Everyone Should Know About IQ
1. IQ is one of the most heritable psychological traits – that is, individual differences in IQ are strongly associated with individual differences in genes (at least in fairly typical modern environments). https://t.co/3XxzW9bxLE
2. The heritability of IQ *increases* from childhood to adulthood. Meanwhile, the effect of the shared environment largely fades away. In other words, when it comes to IQ, nature becomes more important as we get older, nurture less. https://t.co/UqtS1lpw3n
3. IQ scores have been increasing for the last century or so, a phenomenon known as the Flynn effect. https://t.co/sCZvCst3hw (N ≈ 4 million)
(Note that the Flynn effect shows that IQ isn't 100% genetic; it doesn't show that it's 100% environmental.)
4. IQ predicts many important real world outcomes.
For example, though far from perfect, IQ is the single-best predictor of job performance we have – much better than Emotional Intelligence, the Big Five, Grit, etc. https://t.co/rKUgKDAAVx https://t.co/DWbVI8QSU3
5. Higher IQ is associated with a lower risk of death from most causes, including cardiovascular disease, respiratory disease, most forms of cancer, homicide, suicide, and accident. https://t.co/PJjGNyeQRA (N = 728,160)
1. IQ is one of the most heritable psychological traits – that is, individual differences in IQ are strongly associated with individual differences in genes (at least in fairly typical modern environments). https://t.co/3XxzW9bxLE
2. The heritability of IQ *increases* from childhood to adulthood. Meanwhile, the effect of the shared environment largely fades away. In other words, when it comes to IQ, nature becomes more important as we get older, nurture less. https://t.co/UqtS1lpw3n
3. IQ scores have been increasing for the last century or so, a phenomenon known as the Flynn effect. https://t.co/sCZvCst3hw (N ≈ 4 million)
(Note that the Flynn effect shows that IQ isn't 100% genetic; it doesn't show that it's 100% environmental.)
4. IQ predicts many important real world outcomes.
For example, though far from perfect, IQ is the single-best predictor of job performance we have – much better than Emotional Intelligence, the Big Five, Grit, etc. https://t.co/rKUgKDAAVx https://t.co/DWbVI8QSU3
5. Higher IQ is associated with a lower risk of death from most causes, including cardiovascular disease, respiratory disease, most forms of cancer, homicide, suicide, and accident. https://t.co/PJjGNyeQRA (N = 728,160)
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Fake chats claiming to be from the Irish African community are being disseminated by the far right in order to suggest that violence is imminent from #BLM supporters. This is straight out of the QAnon and Proud Boys playbook. Spread the word. Protest safely. #georgenkencho
There is co-ordination across the far right in Ireland now to stir both left and right in the hopes of creating a race war. Think critically! Fascists see the tragic killing of #georgenkencho, the grief of his community and pending investigation as a flashpoint for action.
Across Telegram, Twitter and Facebook disinformation is being peddled on the back of these tragic events. From false photographs to the tactics ofwhite supremacy, the far right is clumsily trying to drive hate against minority groups and figureheads.
Declan Ganley’s Burkean group and the incel wing of National Party (Gearóid Murphy, Mick O’Keeffe & Co.) as well as all the usuals are concerted in their efforts to demonstrate their white supremacist cred. The quiet parts are today being said out loud.
The best thing you can do is challenge disinformation and report posts where engagement isn’t appropriate. Many of these are blatantly racist posts designed to drive recruitment to NP and other Nationalist groups. By all means protest but stay safe.
There is co-ordination across the far right in Ireland now to stir both left and right in the hopes of creating a race war. Think critically! Fascists see the tragic killing of #georgenkencho, the grief of his community and pending investigation as a flashpoint for action.
Across Telegram, Twitter and Facebook disinformation is being peddled on the back of these tragic events. From false photographs to the tactics ofwhite supremacy, the far right is clumsily trying to drive hate against minority groups and figureheads.
Be aware, the images the #farright are sharing in the hopes of starting a race war, are not of the SPAR employee that was punched. They\u2019re older photos of a Everton fan. Be aware of the information you\u2019re sharing and that it may be false. Always #factcheck #GeorgeNkencho pic.twitter.com/4c9w4CMk5h
— antifa.drone (@antifa_drone) December 31, 2020
Declan Ganley’s Burkean group and the incel wing of National Party (Gearóid Murphy, Mick O’Keeffe & Co.) as well as all the usuals are concerted in their efforts to demonstrate their white supremacist cred. The quiet parts are today being said out loud.
There is a concerted effort in far-right Telegram groups to try and incite violence on street by targetting people for racist online abuse following the killing of George Nkencho
— Mark Malone (@soundmigration) January 1, 2021
This follows on and is part of a misinformation campaign to polarise communities at this time.
The best thing you can do is challenge disinformation and report posts where engagement isn’t appropriate. Many of these are blatantly racist posts designed to drive recruitment to NP and other Nationalist groups. By all means protest but stay safe.
