The Best of Collab Fund

If you find something that is true in more than one field, you’ve probably uncovered something particularly important. The more fields it shows up in, the more likely it is to be a fundamental and…

«“your margin is my opportunity,” which is the same concept. The biggest opportunities happen when a hot talent meets a cold industry.»

A few things I’ve come to terms with: There is rarely more or less economic uncertainty; just changes in how ignorant people are to potential risks. You should obsess over risks that do permanent…

«Most assholes are going through something terrible in their life. People hide their skeletons, which requires blind forgiveness of their quirks and moods because you’re unaware of what they’re dealing with.»

A few short stories whose lessons apply to many things: Author R.L. Stine is one of the bestselling authors of all time. His Goosebumps series of scary kids books have sold over 400 million copies.…

«A book is far more than what the author wrote; it is everything you can imagine and read into it as well.”»

Steven Pressfield wrote for 30 years before publishing The Legend of Bagger Vance. His career leading up to then was bleak, at one point living in a halfway house because it had cheap rent. He once…

«A unique skill, an underrated skill, is identifying the optimal amount of hassle and nonsense you should put up with to get ahead while getting along.»

Steamboat Willie put Walt Disney on the map as an animator. Business success was another story. Disney’s first studio went bankrupt. Later cartoons were monstrously expensive to produce, and financed…

You spend years trying to learn new stuff but then look back and realize that maybe like 10 big ideas truly changed how you think and drive most of what you believe. Brent Beshore recently listed the…

Nov 2, 2022 SHARE ↓ The most important decisions in your life may be whether to marry, who to marry, and whether to have kids. But none of those topics are taught in school. They’re hardly even…

In 1984 Jane Pauley interviewed 28-year-old Bill Gates. “Some people call you a genius,” Pauley said. “I know that might embarrass you but …” Gates deadpans. No emotion. No response. “OK, I guess that…

There’s a saying – I don’t know whose – that an expert is always from out of town. It’s similar to the Bible quote that no man is a prophet in his own country. That one has deeper meaning, but they…

«“All businesses are loosely functioning disasters” Brent Beshore says. But it’s like an iceberg, only a fraction is visible.»

In 2004 the New York Times interviewed Stephen Hawking, the late scientist whose motor-neuron disease left him paralyzed and unable to talk since age 21. Apparently in a good mood, the Times asked…

«there’s almost a complete ignorance of expectations, especially managing them with as much effort as we put into changing our circumstances.»

When faced with a problem, rarely do people ask, “What is the best, perfect, answer to this question?” The more efficient question is often, “What answer to this question can I obtain with the least…

«“You are more likely to learn something by finding surprises in your own behavior than by hearing surprising facts about people in general.”»

Three rare and powerful skills: 1. Understanding how people justify their beliefs in a way that makes you respect their delusions. A rare and useful skill is understanding that people you find to be…

Jan 25, 2022 SHARE ↓ Scott Adams, the Dilbert creator, says he doesn’t have any extraordinary skills. He’s a pretty good artist. He’s kind of funny, an OK writer, and decent at business. But multiply…

«most incredible things come from compounding, and compounding isn’t intuitive because the incremental inputs are never exciting on their own.»

The fastest way to get rich is to go slow. Many beliefs are held because there is a social and tribal benefit to holding them, not necessarily because they’re true. Nothing is more blinding than…

«We should be careful praising winners or criticizing failures, because they often made similar decisions with different degrees of luck.»

A trick to learning a complicated topic is realizing how many complex details are a cousin of something simple. John Reed writes in his book Succeeding: When you first start to study a field, it seems…

«Most people are blind to their own faults. As Ben Franklin wrote, “Vice knows she’s ugly, so she hides behind a mask.”»

David Cassidy seemed to have the best life you could imagine. A teenage heartthrob who sold out arenas and was so popular his shows turned into stampede risks. From the outside it looked like as…

«False confidence makes the eventual reality all the more shocking. Some are more susceptible to risk than others, but no one is exempt from being humbled.»

An irony of studying history is that we often know exactly how a story ends, but have no idea where it began. Here’s an example. What caused the financial crisis? Well, you have to understand the…

Former General Electric CEO Jack Welch once nearly died of a heart attack. Years later he was asked what went through his mind while he was being rushed to the hospital in what could have been his…

«Psychologist Jonathan Haidt says people don’t communicate on social media; they perform for one another. Spending money is like that, too.»

The night before the D-Day invasion, a nervous Franklin Roosevelt asked his wife Eleanor how she felt about not knowing what would happen next. “To be nearly sixty years old and still rebel at…

«The future is always endlessly unpredictable. What changes isn’t the level of uncertainty, but the level of people’s complacency.»