3 Minute Monday
Hi friend,
Today is very exciting, the Modern Wisdom Community is now live.
There’s an exclusive episode with Jonny & Yusef waiting for you as a welcome gift.
I’ve always been interested in great conversations.
That’s why I’m starting a space on Locals where we can create a positive community.
It’s a place where we can discuss episodes, share insights, hacks, articles, memes, workouts, ideas, wins, fails, everything.
But more importantly, you’ll find a group of people who are all interested in the same things as you and want to help you become a better human.
You can join for free or support the show for as little as $5 (£3.64) per month to access all content plus get the ability to post & reply on the newsfeed. (A special thank you to those who offer more)
Think of it as crowdsourcing your personal growth.
Onto some insights…
I’ve been thinking about overthinking recently.
Probably overthinking about overthinking to be honest.
And I came across a tweet.“This is your annual reminder that you don’t need to resolve your issues, you don’t need to deal with your emotional baggage, you don’t need to process your trauma, you don’t need to confront your past, you don’t need to figure yourself out, you can just go ahead and do the thing.” — Eliezer Yudkowsky
We believe we need to prepare much more in imagination than reality.
Especially after the last 18 months of more fear and less variety and fewer adventures, a bit of increased rumination and neuroticism seems likely.
You must account for this.
We can kid ourselves into believing that until we’ve got our head in the right place, we can’t move forward in the way we want to.
We can’t leave that job or start that project or ask that person out who we fancy prior to ridding ourselves of the things we believe are holding us back.
But life isn’t waiting for you.
At all.
Time will continue to tick along while you wait and try to create the optimal environment to finally make a move.
Perfectionism is procrastination masquerading as quality control.
Think about it this way.
Guy 1 spends all day at work thinking about how he needs to go to the gym later on.
The last time he went to the gym it was a bit uncomfortable.
And he’s tired.
And the gym was actually kind of mean and made him feel hurt.
But he knows he needs to go.
So he debates in his head all day.
Should I go, shouldn’t I go?
Am I ready, am I not ready?
Eventually, using what feels like a superhuman effort, he finally drags himself to the gym and gets a session in.
Guy 2 also needs to go to the gym.
He also got a bit messed up last time he went.
But he doesn’t think about it at all during the day, he knows he should go when work finishes, so he waits for work to finish.
Then when the time comes, he grabs his bag and goes to the gym.
The end result of both people is the same – they achieve the goal they wanted of going to the gym.
But one has suffered and wasted 8 hours of precious life being distracted, and used a metric ton of willpower to achieve it because of fears and past traumas.
Presuming that we need motivation or preparation to do things is often untrue.
You don’t need motivation to do the thing.
You just need to do the thing.
MODERN WISDOM
I do a podcast which has had 25 million+ downloads. You should subscribe on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
This week’s upcoming episodes:
Monday.
Daniel Sloss – Scottish comedian and the king of breakups is back to discuss dating, Tinder, friendships, death and drugs. Don’t miss this.
Thursday.
Paige Harden – how do genes impact our success and happiness in life? Should this influence how we look at social equality? Really interesting.
Saturday.
Not sure yet. Maybe David Pakman talking about how the Left moves past identity politics.
THINGS I’VE LEARNED
1.
“Any sufficiently complicated legal system is indistinguishable from saying ‘lol fuck you’ to all the peasants who can’t afford lawyers when a noble rips them off.” — Eliezer Yudkowsky
2.
The creator economy is failing to spread the wealth.
—Top 1% of Twitch streamers earn 50%+ of all revenue.
—Top 1% podcasters earn almost all ad revenue.
—Top 10 Substacks make $20M.
This is where criticisms of dominance hierarchies fall apart.
There is no more equal-opportunity industry than online creators.
It’s completely egalitarian.
If you’re good and consistent, people will pay attention to you.
But as with all hierarchies, the people with the most competence will rise to the top.
And the Matthew Principle takes over to help those winners win more.
You can’t dictatorially flatten the attention distribution so that more 15 year olds in their bedroom get extra attention and Logan Paul gets less.
Tipping and micropayments may help solve this.
But probably not meaningfully, or soon.
3.
Don’t be a billionaire in China.
A Chinese billionaire dies every 40 days.
Unnatural deaths have taken the lives of 72 mainland billionaires over the past 8 years.
15 were murdered, 17 committed suicide, 7 died from accidents and 19 from illness.
14 were executed.
Welcome to China.
LIFE HACK
Ask what the budget is when negotiating price.
Let’s say someone asks you to do some freelance work or consultancy.
You have no idea how to price your services.
It could be £300 or £3000.
Ask the client “what’s the sort of ballpark budget you’re trying to stick to here? I’m keen to make this work for both of us.”
The ball is now in their court.
They’ll tend to come back a little under where they’re prepared to pay at an absolute max.
It means that you’re going to avoid massively underpricing and leaving tons on the table.
And avoids massively overpricing where you kill the discussion there and then.
And if the price is too low for you, then you can say that you can’t make it work, “let me know if you can get closer to £x00” and walk away with the relationship intact.
Big love,
Chris x
Join the Modern Wisdom Community here.
PS
I’m off to Florence next weekend. Ready to seamlessly blend Peak Tourist with Peak Assassin’s Creed Nerdery.
