Is success reproducible?
Both success and failure have repeated patterns.
Context and wording may be different, but the principles repeat.
âAll stories told have been told before. We tell them to ourselves, as did all men who ever were. And all men who ever will be. The only things new are the names.â - Brandon Sanderson
At first sight, this post may seem not actionable at all.
I wonât put you in a work scenario and tell you how to navigate the situation.
But itâs the most actionable post.
You just have to think about how the principle can apply to you.
I donât want to ground you in my thinking.
Rather, I want you to think for yourself about these principles.
#1 Listen more than you speak
I tended to speak a lot and dominate conversations.
The best way to convince people is to bring their thinking close to yours. You wonât achieve this if you donât know what they are thinking.
Donât brute-force ideas into their minds. It never works.
#2 Hold opposing ideas in your mind
Donât accept things because someone said so.
Thatâs a heuristic fine for the short term, but once challenged it breaks apart.
Seek different perspectives and exercise critical thinking to understand them.
#3 Amor Fati (Love Fate)
A flame consumes everything you throw at it. Good or bad, itâll use it to burn brighter.
I used to fight with life, to hold a grudge against it.
Instead, accept whatever it brings. Focus on what you control, your actions. Decouple them from the results.
Have faith that the right actions will bring compounded results over time. Our brain canât comprehend exponential growth. Youâll have to trust and wait.
#4 Create a strategy
Random actions bring random results
Apply the scientific method to your life. Write down a hypothesis, experiment with it, collect results, and iterate.
Time is only wasted when you donât do what you intended to do.
You live a life of integrity when you act according to a plan. It creates a long-lasting feeling of accomplishment.
Remember to plan also time for your hobbies.
#5 Donât hold your opinions too tight
Nothing has changed. But because I have changed, everything has changed.
If you canât change your mind, then you are not open to grow.
Do periodic self-assessments to challenge your current mental models.
Life is lived inside out. Thereâs no reality because we all perceive reality through our lenses.
Identify what comes from you and your experience and whatâs an assumption you got from other people.
#6 Reduce distractions.
Depth brings happiness, fulfillment, and accomplishments.
Shallowness brings despair, emptiness, and regret.
Work without distraction. Have periods of silence in your life. Pay attention to the thing you are doing right now.
#7 Produce and consume.
Donât be a passive reader. A professional feed scroller.
If you want to get good at something, explain it to someone else.
I have seen this first-hand while writing this newsletter or helping new hires onboardâŚ
Learn in public. Document the process. Be vulnerable and youâll learn faster.
#8 Learn one level deeper.
âAll non-trivial abstractions, to some degree, are leakyâ - Joel Spolsky
Thereâs always some edge case that breaks the abstraction.
You donât need to go ten levels deeper into CPU microinstructions or how atoms work.
Just one level deeper to identify when the abstraction fails and the underlying principles of the next layer.
This gets you to the root cause of a bug, of your low energy, of your sad feelings.
#9 Get close to people living the life you want.
Our avoidance feelings prevent us from taking action.
Itâs much easier when you have a case study in front of you.
I can attribute the influence of working out to my friend Ălvaro. I can attribute the influence of writing a newsletter to my friend Alex.
âWe are the average of the 5 people around usâ. Even if it sounds like a clichĂŠ, itâs true.
#10 Regular maintenance for peak performance
Pushing one area boosts your performance.
But you canât push forever.
At some point, you hit diminishing returns. Your highest return on investment is paying attention to the unattended areas to become balanced again.
Highly successful people have become unbalanced, think about Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Steve JobsâŚ
But even with that, we see how people like Zuckerberg have become much better at communication after their success. At some point that was the best for him.
Unless you can be world-class if you keep pushing in one direction, donât grow extremely unbalanced. Sharpen the saw.
Tell me in the comments how these principles have made an impact on your life.
Sharing our experience will help others realize it can also work for them.
Remember #9. Itâs easier when we have real case studies in front of us.
đ Weekly applause
These are some pieces of content I have enjoyed during the week:
Hungry Minds from Alex Zajac. I donât like âthe newsâ as I can become trapped in always checking something new. I rely on others to curate news for me and this newsletter is my go-to source for tech news.
How Hashnode Generates Feed at Scale from
. Feed geneartion is a typical system design interview question. Here is a description of a solution pre-computing feeds with an event-driven architectureSide Hustle Simplified: Two Marketing Terms Engineers Need for Extra Earnings from
. A good reminder that content will create a positive impact in your future. The best moment to start marketing yourself is when you donât need it.Level up your tech career from
and . A good set of skills to get ahead at work9 key lessons learned on my path from Engineer to VP đ from
and . A list of lessons learned from Eugeneâs career. Some of them are the same ideas in this post, with different words.Vague Feedback Blocking Promo? from
. Feedback is a superpower, but not-actionable feedback doesnât provide value. Instead of blaming it on the person writing the feedback, iterate on it to make it actionable.
This is the type of list you want to stick to your wall. It has a level of stoicism to it mixed with your experience.
I'd like to add a #11: Simplicity wins (not only in software design).
Achieving simplicity is extremely complicated today. Social media and the 10 billion dollar self-help industry with all the frameworks, guides, and free PDFs trying to "help" you. It's genuinely hard to tune out, select the one thing you want to act on, and just do it every day, but deep down, we all know it's what we should do.
I fight with this daily, but it's worth it because the choice is mine.
Here's where I chose simplicity, and it helped me:
Reading: Stoicism classic > modern-day philosophers
Self-improvement: Picking one thing > improving 10 aspects of your life at once
Peace: Acknowledging most things are out of your control > trying to change your surroundings
Thanks for the mention, Fran! đ¤
Very concisely and directly written. I like how you demonstrated your ideas in the shortest words possible.
I agree with the 10 principles. I especially relate to #9 learn one level deeper. Learning in depth first mode is important when it comes to levelling up.
Good one Fran!