A list of reflective questions to ask yourself Antifragile Availability bias Black Swan Bottlenecks Cause and Effect Compound Interest Confirmation Bias Create momentum to make progress Emergence Environment Design Every field has some core principles and ideas upon which all other derive Evolution Excellence is mundane Fail Fast So You Can Fix Early Feedback Loop First instinct fallacy Force multiplier Free Rider Problem Friction Gall's Law Hanlon's Razor Haskell Hickam's Dictum Hindsight Bias How to Acquire Mental Models Increase your leverage to become more productive Innovation Multiplier Inversion Leverage Local maxima vs. Global maxima Mario Marketing Mental Models Metcalfe's Law Minimize time getting into position, just go Mise en place Network Effects Not making time for yourself first leads to burnout Occam's Razor Opportunity Cost Overton windows Perverse Incentive Positive Sum Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc Fallacy PP 1 - Introduction to Haskell PP 2 - Types and classes PP 3 - Functions and lists PP 4 - Recursion PP 5 - Higher-order functions PP 6 - Declaring types and type classes Premature Optimization Reciprocity Regression to the Mean Sharpen the saw Sherlock Holmes and Mental Models Signal vs. Noise Skin in the Game Stop being ungrateful of having so little life, and be grateful that you were given any at all Survivorship bias Take on the role before you can assume the role The Barbell Strategy The Diderot Effect The Dunning-Kruger Effect The Feature-Positive Effect The Ivy Lee Method for daily planning The Law of Inertia The Lindy Effect The Map Is Not The Territory The Mere-Exposure Effect The Pareto Principle The Pauli Exclusion Principle The Pratfall Effect The QEC method The Red Queen Effect Theory of Constraints To catch a second wind, you have to stay in the game long enough Using notes to advance in life Via Negativa Wittgenstein's Ruler Working on vs. working in Your second brain should actively grow and compound Zero Sum

Signal vs. Noise

Signal is what matters. Noise is just that: filler, distractions, what doesn’t move the needle.

Focusing on the signal is essential.
But most in the world is noise.
So how do you hone in on the signal?

General heuristics for finding signal

In the bolded main bullet, I write the heuristics. In the subpoints, I give examples of what follows from them.

If it isn’t relevant in 1 year, it isn’t now.
- Don’t follow the news. If it’s relevant, it’ll find its way to you.
Curate your sources of information, but make room for serendipity.
- Make curated feeds, e.g., twitter lists, for topics you are interested in. Then you’ll see only what you want to see.
- Block ads.
- Unsubscribe from newsletters you were automatically subscribed to.
- Immediately filter out anything you don’t care about.
- Why make room for serendipity? How do you know that you aren’t at the local maxima for information curation? You don’t, which is why you make room for serendipity: you allow for a bit of randomness in the system. This may be through curators or self-exploration—making time to explore once in a while.
  - As Amos Tversky said: ’ The secret to doing good research is always to be a little underemployed. You waste years by not being able to waste hours.
Leverage tools for capturing information for later.
- Much of what you stumble upon online seems very important and pressing to read in the moment. By adding it to a read-later system, the novelty period wears off, so you are better suited to judge whether consuming it is worth it.
- My system: How I Process Inputs From the Internet.
Finding signal requires you know what to look for.
- If you don’t know what constitutes signal, you cannot discern it from noise. Therefore, you need to carefully define what you are focusing on, so you can know what you should not focus on.
- This lets you be aware of Opportunity Cost. If you know what you should focus on, you know what in that area moves the needle the most. Therefore you can also classify the low ROI activities or things as noise, in comparison to the high ROI activities or things.

Incoming links: Mental Models

Outgoing links: ’ The secret to doing good research is always to be a little underemployed. You waste years by not being able to waste hours, How I Process Inputs From the Internet, Opportunity Cost

Signal vs. Noise

Signal is what matters. Noise is just that: filler, distractions, what doesn’t move the needle.

Focusing on the signal is essential.
But most in the world is noise.
So how do you hone in on the signal?

General heuristics for finding signal

In the bolded main bullet, I write the heuristics. In the subpoints, I give examples of what follows from them.

If it isn’t relevant in 1 year, it isn’t now.
- Don’t follow the news. If it’s relevant, it’ll find its way to you.
Curate your sources of information, but make room for serendipity.
- Make curated feeds, e.g., twitter lists, for topics you are interested in. Then you’ll see only what you want to see.
- Block ads.
- Unsubscribe from newsletters you were automatically subscribed to.
- Immediately filter out anything you don’t care about.
- Why make room for serendipity? How do you know that you aren’t at the local maxima for information curation? You don’t, which is why you make room for serendipity: you allow for a bit of randomness in the system. This may be through curators or self-exploration—making time to explore once in a while.
  - As Amos Tversky said: ’ The secret to doing good research is always to be a little underemployed. You waste years by not being able to waste hours.
Leverage tools for capturing information for later.
- Much of what you stumble upon online seems very important and pressing to read in the moment. By adding it to a read-later system, the novelty period wears off, so you are better suited to judge whether consuming it is worth it.
- My system: How I Process Inputs From the Internet.
Finding signal requires you know what to look for.
- If you don’t know what constitutes signal, you cannot discern it from noise. Therefore, you need to carefully define what you are focusing on, so you can know what you should not focus on.
- This lets you be aware of Opportunity Cost. If you know what you should focus on, you know what in that area moves the needle the most. Therefore you can also classify the low ROI activities or things as noise, in comparison to the high ROI activities or things.

Incoming links: Mental Models