• Reading
• Physical activity
• Mindfulness
• Relationship building
Spent time—actions that don’t.
When choosing what to do, prioritize investing time, not spending it.
The Rooms Razor
If you have a choice between entering two rooms, choose the room where you're more likely to be the dumbest one in the room.
Once you're in the room, talk less and listen more.
Bad for your ego—great for your growth.
Occam's Razor
When you're weighing alternative explanations for something, the one with the fewest necessary assumptions should be chosen.
Put simply, the simplest explanation is often the best one.
Simple Assumptions > Complex Assumptions.
Simple is beautiful.
Listen Mode
If you encounter someone with opinions or perspectives very different from your own, listen twice as much as you speak.
Our natural tendency when we hear a view we disagree with is to respond and refute it.
Default to Listen Mode. You'll learn way more that way.
The Lion Razor
If you have the choice, always choose to sprint and then rest.
Most people are not wired to work 9-5—long periods of steady, monotonous work.
If your goal is to do inspired, creative work, you have to work like a lion.
Sprint when inspired. Rest. Repeat.
The Smart Friends Razor
If your smartest friends are all interested in something, it’s worth paying attention to.
If that something seems crazy, it's worth paying a lot of attention to.
The passions of the smartest people in your circles are a looking glass into the future.
The Young & Old Test
Make decisions that your 80-year old self and 10-year-old self would be proud of.
Your 80-year-old self cares about the long-term compounding of the decisions of today.
Your 10-year-old self reminds you to stay foolish and have some fun along the way.
The Duck Test
If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it’s probably a duck.
You can determine a lot about a person by observing their habitual actions and characteristics.
When someone tells you who they are, believe them the first time.
Hanlon's Razor
Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.
In assessing someone's actions, we shouldn't assume negative intent if there's a viable alternative explanation—different beliefs, lack of intelligence, incompetence, or ignorance.
Hitchens’ Razor
Anything asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.
Newton’s Flaming Laser Sword
If something cannot be settled by reasonable experiment or observation, it's not worth debating.
*These will save you from wasting time on pointless arguments!*
The Opinion Razor
"I never allow myself to have an opinion on anything that I don’t know the other side’s argument better than they do." - Charlie Munger
Opinions are earned—not owed.
If you can't state state the opposition's argument clearly, you haven't earned an opinion.
The Writing Knife Block
If you're struggling to understand something, try writing it out.
When you write, you expose the gaps that exist in your logic and thinking.
Study to fill the gaps.
Writing is the ultimate tool to sharpen thinking--use it as a "knife block" for life.
Taleb’s “Look the Part” Test
If forced to choose between two options of seemingly equal merit, choose the one that doesn’t look the part.
The one who doesn’t look the part has had to overcome much more to achieve its status than the one who fit in perfectly.
The Braggers Razor
Truly successful people rarely feel the need to brag about their success.
If someone regularly brags about their wealth or success, it's fair to assume the reality is likely a small fraction of what they claim.
The Reading Razor
When deciding what to read, just read whatever grabs you.
When it stops grabbing you, put it down.
Avoid the trap of only reading “impressive" books that bore you to death.
Never establish reading vanity metrics as goals.
The Stress-Reward Test
Too many people take on stress that has no upside.
If something is going to be stressful, consider whether the reward is sufficiently outsized to justify the stress.
If it isn't, don't take it on.
Those are 20+ razors that will simplify decision-making.
Follow me @SahilBloom for more writing on growth, decision making, and more.
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Beautiful visualization of these razors by @SachinRamje. Nicely captured in a single printable page!
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force a refresh
(1) Regularly look back at your work from 6 months ago. If it makes you cringe, you’re doing something right.
(2) Make one new friend and catch up with one old friend every week.
(3) Lean into everything that makes you feel stupid or embarrassed.
I often find that it’s hard to *feel* our own progress when we are in the trenches every single day.
Looking back at our output from ~6 months ago is a forced zoom out—it allows you to see the trend line.
If you cringe at your old work, you know you’re progressing.
Making one new friend each week forces you to talk to strangers and increases your luck surface area. You encounter new ideas that compound. It builds network breadth.
Catching up with an old friend each week strengthens those relationships over time. It builds network depth.
I was standing on the sidewalk with my son when an older man approached me.
He said:
“I remember standing here with my newborn daughter. An old man came up to me and said ‘It goes by fast, cherish it.’ Well, my daughter is 45 now. It goes by fast, cherish it.”
Don’t blink.
Sometimes these tiny, unexpected moments and interactions can breathe so much new life into you.
This simple label made an entire generation of kids 100x more likely to purchase a music album.
The most genius marketing campaign of all time?
The Streisand Effect: An attempt to censor information has the unintended consequence of increasing awareness of that information.
Named after Barbara Streisand, who attempted to legally suppress a public image of her coastal Malibu home, which inadvertently expanded the reach of the photo.