1/ The TALKERS want to sell you complex but fast solutions because their incentives are aligned to do so. Complex to justify they are needed and fast because it sells easier than the slow.
2/ Those that DO quickly find out that solutions in reality are simple, but slow and compounding.
3/ I certainly don't claim to be one of these DOers, but the areas in which I have seen to most personal growth happen to be the areas I employ the simplest strategies. 1.Fitness 2.Education (mental model acquisition).
4/ Fitness: through much trial and error I have found that the most returns have been derived simply from pushups, pull-ups, simple core exercises, and burpees.
5/ Perhaps even more important is the intensity in which you employ such exercises rather than the exercises themselves. (sidenote: cultivating a love for long-distance running (also simple) has had great returns as well.
6/ Education: I dropped out of my university, in short, because it had become a roadblock in the education I was deriving from following my curiosity.
7/ Since this decision, I have learned more in a year than I had in all the preceding years in my life, all which were spent bogged down in formal education in other words complex in all of the worst ways.
8/ It's astonishing how fast you can learn by avoiding everything you are "supposed" to learn and go after what you are curious about in an extremely undisciplinary manner.
9/ Another note could be said about the value in throwing yourself in brand new and challenging circumstances and watching your brain naturally adapt aka learn.
10/ The thread in all of these strategies as I mentioned in the beginning is that they are uber-simple and rely on compounding (outputs becoming inputs).
11/ Giving 100% intensity in a (simple) workout is not only fruitful in the short run but because you increase your intensity threshold (in reality your probably at 10% intensity as a beginner) your next workout will be even more fruitful (intensity is both and output and input).
12/ Cultivating a love for long distance running compounds as well: the more your do it, the more you love it, the more you do it ad infinitum.
13/ Curiosity is my favorite because it has at least two feedback loops that contribute to its compounding. The first one has to do with ignorance. Ignornace is the fuel that gives curiosity its fire.
14/ Curiosity can be seen as an all out war on what one is ignorant of, thus leading to knowledge. But as we know from our man John Archibald, our shore of ignorance grows with our island of knowledge, thus more fuel to our fire of curiosity, compounding onward.
15/ Another feedback loop that benefits from can be seen when you view curiosity as a compass.
16/ When you first start to use it, it might not point you towards the most important stuff, but the more you use it, the better calibrated it gets, eventually you find yourself curious about things far more enlightening that what's on the university docket.
17/ Complex solutions, due to their mental burden, are not sustainable. It is tax the unaware pay at the expense of rent-seeking charlatans out to make a buck. Look for the simple rules that benefit from compounding over time.
