things to double down in 2024
“Simplicity is difficult because most of us are overcompensating for uncertainty.
Adding something is easy. But removing something is hard, because it requires conviction. It’s easier to hedge against uncertainty, entertain multiple paths, and dilute your focus than to develop a strong opinion about what to exclude.”
This is an essay about how deleting stuff i) will help you reach clarity of mind and ii) be more impactful on what matters.
I have a thesis that life works in a power law dynamic. That is, no more than 3 or 4 traits/actions are responsible for driving substantial progress. Everything else is noise.
Steve Jobs, for instance. Obsession, wonderful product taste, and independent thinking made him a legend. I'd bet that 90 to 95% of Jobs’ success is directly associated with these traits.
Committing to fewer traits/actions to intentionally double down on the right ones is powerful. It's powerful because you play with a free, calm, crystal-clear mind and allocate horsepower to what matters.
“You don’t want to be the guy who succeeds in life while being high strung, high stress, and unhappy. Leaving a trail of emotional wreckage with you and your loved ones. You want to be the person who gets there calmly. Quietly.
You want to be the person when there's a crisis going on, you're the calmest in the room and still figures out the right answer.”
Naval
When we enter a year with a lack of clarity on the top 4 things we have to be consistently excellent at, we aren't optimizing for clear thinking and playing right the power law game.
Confusion compounds when clarity absences. No matter if this is in business, career, or personal life. If it isn't crystal clear what are the only 4 things you're committing with horsepower, confusion will compound faster than you think.
If the answer to “What are the 4 commitments I'll be allocating my body and soul this year?” isn't obvious and you can't answer with less than 10 seconds of thinking, you still have a cloudy mind. That's dangerous. (PS: make your judgment if you agree with me or not)
I spent December, 31 gaining clarity on my 4 big commitments for 2024. I'd like to share it publicly.
1. People: intersection of talent and genuineness
Curiosity about me: every time I make an intro between 2 people, I create a WhatsApp group called intro [name 1] <> [name 2].
I checked yesterday the stats. 44 intros were made. 3.6 per month. It means almost an intro per week for a whole year. WOW.
The most interesting of it was: not a SINGLE chat I didn't appreciate and exited with a feeling of inspiration for doing more. Once you have the highest bar for people you're around, you create a special flywheel of ambitious, genuine, kind people to connect with. It compounds. Imagine it after 5 - 10 years.
By the high bar, I mean a unique intersection of highly skilled individuals with an honest feeling of genuineness. I can't describe it, you have to feel it. It's like “Wow, this person is incredibly talented, and above all, a nice person to be around. I'd drink a beer with him/her.”
Definitely something to double down on. Make more intros, with more quality and more intentionally. (I'm very grateful for each one of you. You know who you are)
2. Alinea: Outcome-oriented
“Outcomes are what count; don’t let good process excuse bad results.”
I'm super excited for 2024 at Alinea. We have huge clients onboard. Crystal clear vision of where we want to be in 6 months. I'll be working as a PM for our B2C product and it's a completely new challenge for me.
It's a privilege at a such young age to work with talented people, on a complex/billion-dollar problem such as health waste, with openness to move fast and break things, backed by amazing investors (Founders Fund, General Catalyst) and be accountable for crucial testing/building.
The key here is to be obsessed with outcomes and cultivate brutal intolerance to low-impact ‘to-do lists’. This is one of those ‘obvious’ yet powerful practices that is crucial to building anything meaningful. “Am I driving impact or just busy?
3. 2x Leverage: long-term calmness, short-term urgency
Putting your thoughts out to the world is interesting. You don't see results instantly, not in the first week, the first month, or even after 3 months. It's an exercise of delusional belief in the compounding principle.
In 2023 I started putting my thoughts out to the world. I'd go crazy when I saw someone like one of my essays while I was sleeping, working, or at college. I was like “Wow. I was sleeping and someone was reading how I think. No marginal effort. I've written this only once, but it's like I repeated it 200x”
“The final form of leverage is brand new—the most democratic form. It is: “products with no marginal cost of replication.”
The most interesting and the most important form of leverage is the idea of products that have no marginal cost of replication. This was only invented in the last few hundred years. It started with the printing press. It accelerated with broadcast media, and now it’s really blown up with the internet and with coding. Now, you can multiply your efforts without involving other humans and without needing money from other humans.”
Writing is a long-term game. Most of the value of it is in the future I can't even envision. And, I'm calm because I can see myself writing for the next decade with moderate value captured because I love doing it. This is the long-term calmness principle.
On the other hand, I'll be turning 22 this year and am in no way close to having solid proprietary leverage. Yellow flag. This is the short-term urgency principle. It's time to double down in building a proprietary leverage.
Friend suggestion: If you're in your 20s and are ambitious and smart, I highly recommend start putting your thoughts out. Make it easy to luck find you. Make it a decade bet on yourself.
4. Family: House full of love
It'll be 4 years since I moved from my parents’ house. They're the reason why I decide every day to push myself to the limits and overcome my fears and insecurities.
Worth doubling down because it's about them at the end of the day.
Final Thoughts
“Concentrate your resources on a small number of high-conviction bets; this is easy to say but evidently hard to do. You can delete more stuff than you think.”
Delete noise. Double down. Be picky when deciding and intense when executing.
Here we come, 2024!