
Ideas That Changed My Life - lowmemcpu
https://www.perell.com/blog/50-ideas-that-changed-my-life?ref=alexcarpenter.me
======
dang
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23445944](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23445944)

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lowmemcpu
> 16\. Russell Conjugation: Journalists often change the meaning of a sentence
> by replacing one word with a synonym that implies a different meaning. For
> example, the same person can support an estate tax but oppose a death tax —
> even though they are the same thing.

I found this one particularly interesting

~~~
sidpatil
The most recent famous example I can think of is "Obamacare" versus the
"Affordable Care Act".

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sx2scvIFGjE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sx2scvIFGjE)

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dummydata
"11\. The Never-Ending Now: The structure of our social media feeds blinds us
to history, as it causes us to live in an endless cycle of ephemeral content
consumption. The structure of the Internet pulls people away from age-old
wisdom. "

I frequently find myself in this mode. Whether it's the latest youtube video
or tweet. There's something to be said about looking back at past events and
investigating what you might have failed to learn or appreciate.

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MattGaiser
> 9\. Competition is for Losers: Avoid competition. Stop copying what
> everybody else is doing. If you work at a for-profit company, work on
> problems that would not otherwise be solved. If you’re at a non-profit, fix
> unpopular problems. Life is easier when you don’t compete. (Hint: don’t
> start another bottled water company).

The problem here is making sure that you are solving a real problem at all.

There are many companies out there doing something unique, but that is because
what they are doing has limited/no value. Juicero comes to mind.

Without competition, you also cannot get an honest assessment of where you
stand.

~~~
tylerwince
I totally agree with your first point, and you lost me on the last sentence.
Competition is a great data point, but just because you don't have any
competition doesn't mean you aren't solving a real problem.

~~~
MattGaiser
To me it would be extremely rare that the identification of a problem is
unique. A particular solution? Sure.

On the other hand, lots of people are solving problems which are not real.

I agree that finding a unique problem is possible, but it is more probable
that you are missing something.

~~~
tylerwince
Sure. I also wonder if Perrel is hitting on the idea of avoiding competition
by Thiel.

[https://mastersofscale.com/peter-thiel-escape-the-
competitio...](https://mastersofscale.com/peter-thiel-escape-the-competition/)

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blakesterz
I got to #15...

"15\. Law of Shitty Click-Through Rates: Most marketing strategies have a
short window of success, as click-through rates decrease as tactics mature.
For example, the first banner-ad has a click-through rate of more than 70%.
Now we avoid them with ad-blockers."

And I thought WOW, 70% and I was curious if that's true. At least according to
The Atlantic that is not true, but the number is still pretty darn high.

"The banner ad that’s widely described as the first ever was a little
rectangle purchased by AT&T on HotWired.com in 1994. About 44 percent of the
people who saw it actually clicked on it."

[https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:rH9hEb...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:rH9hEb025K0J:https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/04/the-
first-ever-banner-ad-on-the-web/523728/+&cd=11&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)

(Not trying to take away anything from this list, just sharing what I found)

~~~
Nextgrid
This should be considered for every business that optimizes for "engagement".
When introducing a change to increase engagement, ask yourself whether people
actually want to engage. Otherwise, you'll end up increasing your metric in
the short-term but lose in the long term on customer satisfaction or another
metric you are not tracking (or can't track in an automated way).

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justicezyx
> 8\. Talent vs. Genius: Society is good at training talent but terrible at
> cultivating genius. Talented people are good at hitting targets others can’t
> hit, but geniuses find targets others can’t see. They are opposite modes of
> excellence. Talent is predictable, genius is unpredictable.

This, at least in US, I think the society is focusing too much energy on
cultivating genius, and a lot of talents are left idle with literally
meaningless work (for example, convincing people to click on ads).

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weeksie
This is a listicle of context-free ideas distilled into bon mots. Great for
going viral, especially among the VC twitter crowd.

The problem with these lists is that they give the impression that you're
learning something when you're really just consuming Content.

~~~
tylerwince
This is true. The only way you actually learn something here is by taking
ideas as a starting point to identify where they are prevalent in your own
life.

~~~
weeksie
Which is fair. These can be good jumping off points. It would be wonderful if
Perell credited (for example) the book The Goal for his reference to the
Theory of Constraints, etc.

~~~
tylerwince
Yeah -- I think him and those like him (Tiago Forte, etc) would argue that
they have "remixed" the idea enough to call it their own... which is highly
debatable IMO.

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pc86
> 7\. Mimetic Theory of Conflict: People who are similar are more likely to
> fight than people who are different. That’s why Civil Wars and family feuds
> create the worst conflicts. The closer two people are and the more equality
> between them, the greater the potential for conflict.

Wars between countries are certainly more common than civil wars, aren't they?
And I'm not sure I understand the link between "worst conflicts" and "greater
potential for conflict."

~~~
dragonwriter
> Wars between countries are certainly more common than civil wars, aren't
> they?

 _Far_ more people are killed in intrastate armed conflict than interstate:

[https://reliefweb.int/sites/reliefweb.int/files/resources/Du...](https://reliefweb.int/sites/reliefweb.int/files/resources/Dupuy%252C%2520Rustad-%2520Trends%2520in%2520Armed%2520Conflict%252C%25201946%25E2%2580%25932017%252C%2520Conflict%2520Trends%25205-2018.pdf)

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tylerwince
#20 - The Bike-Shed Affect seems to plague everyone. In fact, this article
from Perrell is what inspired me to write about how to use collaborative
meeting agendas to stop this from happening.

TL;DR: Force everyone to make the simple and easy decisions asynchronously
before you get into a synchronous meeting. This forces you to talk about the
big, hard problems when you are meeting live. It has saved our team hours of
wasted meeting time.

[https://productsolving.substack.com/p/bike-shed-
effect](https://productsolving.substack.com/p/bike-shed-effect)

